MSI R9 280X never exceeding 15 FPS in BF4

[Matthewmatt3]

I'm about to seriously throw this card out the window if I can't fix this problem.

Anyways, My problem is exactly what the title says, I can't get this card to exceed 15 FPS in BF4 and the GPU usage never goes above 30%. I'm new to the AMD scene because my old 460(Which at this point can out-perform my new 280X) Had driver issues.

My specs are the following:

Win7 x64
Intel Core i7 2600K
Gigabyte Z68 X P-UD3 Mobo
8GB of 1333Mhz RAM
650 Watt Corsair PSU.

I would also like to state that I'm on my fourth MSI 280X from newegg because of the same problem. And there is no overheating as the card doesn't go past 30% usage.

I've also tried all compatable drivers for this card to no avail. Help would be appreciated.

 

[Mahisse]

It sounds really strange. Maybe they're just pulling your chain and keep sending a faulty card back to you. You should probably just demand a full refund and go for another card or at least manufactor of the card. The fact that the card doesn't work in other systems is a pretty good indication that the card is broken but the chance of getting a faulty card back three times should be really small 😱...

 

[Matthewmatt3]

It sounds really strange. Maybe they're just pulling your chain and keep sending a faulty card back to you. You should probably just demand a full refund and go for another card or at least manufactor of the card. The fact that the card doesn't work in other systems is a pretty good indication that the card is broken but the chance of getting a faulty card back three times should be really small 😱...

You could be right about the faulty card thing. After the second RMA they said they can only send me used/refurb cards. And I'm on my sixth card.

I'll try calling them about a refund. If I get the refund and get the same card somewhere else with the same problems, I can tell you this much, I'm never, EVER buying another AMD card again.
I'd rather pay $250-$300 more for an nVidia card that at least *Somewhat* works.

 

[Mahisse]

Well it's understandable that you wouldn't go with AMD based on your experience but I hope that your case is extraordinary. Well I know it's extraordinary ...

 

[smeezekitty]

This whole thing seems impossible. 6 cards across 3(?) systems

 

[Matthewmatt3]

Well it's understandable that you wouldn't go with AMD based on your experience but I hope that your case is extraordinary. Well I know it's extraordinary ...

This whole thing seems impossible. 6 cards across 3(?) systems

Haha. I don't think I would call it "extraordinary" I think I would prefer the word unimaginable. Seriously though, This is crazy but also angering at the same time. It's a shame, I really like MSI and I really wanted the 280X because of Mantle as well as the price. If I get this refund from newegg, I might try out a Sapphire 280X to see if it was something with MSI, because, All the problems with 280X's that relate to mine are all made by MSI.

If the Sapphire 280X does the same thing I think I'll just cut my losses and save up for a GTX 780 or 780ti.

 

[iam2thecrowe]

Here's a picture of what it actually does when gaming.

As you can see, every clock speed, voltage and all that spikes from the absolute maximum, to the very minimum every 1-2 seconds.
This happens in all three systems with PSU's ranging from 600 to 1200 Watt's. The only thing that could be the cause is the fact that all three PSU's are made by Corsair, And to go through SIX 280X's with the same exact problem is making me now think some how either all three PSU's are magically faulty at the same time, that I just got incredible luck with six 280X's or the combination of the Corsair PSU's and the GPU's don't work well together.

So confused now, but I think I might be getting somewhere here.

And yes, That 21 FPS is the absolute maximum I've seen from these cards, Ever.

the vddc of the card is downthrottled, should be 1.25v. go into ccc and up the power limit. install sapphire trix, not msi afterburner i had problems with it, and force constant voltage and crank it right up. Oh, and just in case, if you installed any lucid virtue software, uninstall it.

this is my 7970, which is the same gpu as your 280x

 

[Matthewmatt3]

Here's a picture of what it actually does when gaming.

As you can see, every clock speed, voltage and all that spikes from the absolute maximum, to the very minimum every 1-2 seconds.
This happens in all three systems with PSU's ranging from 600 to 1200 Watt's. The only thing that could be the cause is the fact that all three PSU's are made by Corsair, And to go through SIX 280X's with the same exact problem is making me now think some how either all three PSU's are magically faulty at the same time, that I just got incredible luck with six 280X's or the combination of the Corsair PSU's and the GPU's don't work well together.

So confused now, but I think I might be getting somewhere here.

And yes, That 21 FPS is the absolute maximum I've seen from these cards, Ever.

the vddc of the card is downthrottled, should be 1.25v. go into ccc and up the power limit. install sapphire trix, not msi afterburner i had problems with it, and force constant voltage and crank it right up. Oh, and just in case, if you installed any lucid virtue software, uninstall it.

this is my 7970, which is the same gpu as your 280x

I already capped the power limit at +20%. I'll try Sapphire Trix though. And what is "lucid virtue"?

 

[Matthewmatt3]

Alright, I did everything you said and this happened:

Everything is normal exept for the GPU usage, Which NEVER went above 23%. This is with a system running a 4960X @ 4.5 GHz 16GB of RAM and an 850 Watt PSU.

 

[Omegaclawe]

Alright, I did everything you said and this happened:

Everything is normal exept for the GPU usage, Which NEVER went above 23%. This is with a system running a 4960X @ 4.5 GHz 16GB of RAM and an 850 Watt PSU.

Low GPU usage like that is usually a driver-related issue, where the driver is running too slow to submit the batches provided by the game in a timely manner... which is indicative of a CPU bottleneck.

Which should absolutely not be happening on any Intel Core i5 or greater, let alone an extreme edition chip.

Could you perhaps check what your CPU / RAM Usage / Temps are while this is going on? If it's not near 100% and not lower than 15% or so, I'd be a bit lost as to what the issue is.

 

[Matthewmatt3]

Alright, I did everything you said and this happened:

Everything is normal exept for the GPU usage, Which NEVER went above 23%. This is with a system running a 4960X @ 4.5 GHz 16GB of RAM and an 850 Watt PSU.

Low GPU usage like that is usually a driver-related issue, where the driver is running too slow to submit the batches provided by the game in a timely manner... which is indicative of a CPU bottleneck.

Which should absolutely not be happening on any Intel Core i5 or greater, let alone an extreme edition chip.

Could you perhaps check what your CPU / RAM Usage / Temps are while this is going on? If it's not near 100% and not lower than 15% or so, I'd be a bit lost as to what the issue is.

This is going to sound crazy, but, The CPU usage is anywhere from 60% usage all the way up to 100% usage.
Probably trying to pick up the slack from this lazy card... /sarcasm

Anyways I could understand the 60% CPU usage, even for an Extreme Edition, but 100% doesn't seem right.
Also, I tested the last three cards I got in my friends 8350 system as well with around the same results.

As soon as all the systems get their original cards placed back in they work normally again. Which is why I'm confused.
I am now starting to think that sarcasm I said up there could be true, but I doubt that's how computers operate. It's just the only thing that seems to fit...

 

[Matthewmatt3]

Also, CPU and GPU usage is perfectly normal in benchmarking programs, It's only when I play a game that this happens...

 

[redbadboy]

Go to ccc and put the power up to 20%.

 

[Matthewmatt3]

Go to ccc and put the power up to 20%.

If you actually read half of the topic you would have noticed that I did that multiple times.

 

[redbadboy]

Go to ccc and put the power up to 20%.

If you actually read half of the topic you would have noticed that I did that multiple times.

With you're 12 year IT experience. Did you make sure you plug in both 6-pins and 8-pins ?

 

[redbadboy]

I keep seeing all these people with the EXACT card I have gaming at 120+ FPS is BF4 on Ultra. Some of them with worse CPU and PSU's than me. It's driving me crazy to the point that I'm about to throw the card straight into the bin and cut my losses.

And before you say "Oh get a 770 or a 780" I would have, but, EVERY Nvidia card I had would lock up and bluescreen CONSTANTLY after the 320.xx drivers. AMD was my last hope, But obviously neither card manufacturer can just WORK.

Sorry for the rant, I've been dealing with Newegg support as well as AMD/ATi support for almost two months. I've gone through soon to be SIX 280X's with the same damn problem!

Apparently 20 years IT experience can't even fix this card.

Btw, with that card it's impossible to get 120 FPS on ultra.................

 

[Mahisse]

With you're 12 year IT experience. Did you make sure you plug in both 6-pins and 8-pins ?

I have to admit that I was thinking the same thing at some point but giving that the card has been tested in different "high end" systems I assumed that someone would had pointed that out .

 

[Matthewmatt3]

With you're 12 year IT experience. Did you make sure you plug in both 6-pins and 8-pins ?

I have to admit that I was thinking the same thing at some point but giving that the card has been tested in different "high end" systems I assumed that someone would had pointed that out .

Actually yes, I did. I did actually check just now to see if I in fact did do that.
Sadly though, I managed to actually plug in all required connectors into the card.

 

[redbadboy]

Are you running any Adobe Flash Player applications on the background?
Example: Playing Youtube on the background can toggle your GPU to switch down to 300mhz.

 

[Omegaclawe]

Alright, I did everything you said and this happened:

Everything is normal exept for the GPU usage, Which NEVER went above 23%. This is with a system running a 4960X @ 4.5 GHz 16GB of RAM and an 850 Watt PSU.

Low GPU usage like that is usually a driver-related issue, where the driver is running too slow to submit the batches provided by the game in a timely manner... which is indicative of a CPU bottleneck.

Which should absolutely not be happening on any Intel Core i5 or greater, let alone an extreme edition chip.

Could you perhaps check what your CPU / RAM Usage / Temps are while this is going on? If it's not near 100% and not lower than 15% or so, I'd be a bit lost as to what the issue is.

This is going to sound crazy, but, The CPU usage is anywhere from 60% usage all the way up to 100% usage.
Probably trying to pick up the slack from this lazy card... /sarcasm

Anyways I could understand the 60% CPU usage, even for an Extreme Edition, but 100% doesn't seem right.
Also, I tested the last three cards I got in my friends 8350 system as well with around the same results.

As soon as all the systems get their original cards placed back in they work normally again. Which is why I'm confused.
I am now starting to think that sarcasm I said up there could be true, but I doubt that's how computers operate. It's just the only thing that seems to fit...

Indeed the 100% doesn't... though even with Windows's aggressive core parking settings, I'm pretty sure that's not causing the problem either, which is usually more along the line of lag spikes than low-constant frames, anyway.

So... depending on what that 100% is being used for... in the case that it's all being used by the Game, the game is managing to choke out the driver for CPU time... this should not be happening. You might try elevating the priority on the driver processes (at your own risk).

In the event that it's mostly the game but also the driver processes to some extent, this is intended, but abnormally high for the game. Either way, probably some other issue.

If it's some other process entirely, there's your issue. Compatibility or otherwise.

If you can't figure out what's using it, even after showing processes from all users... conglaturations. You (likely) have some kind of nasty rootkit.

Either way, AMD cards are hit -hard- by a lack of available CPU power, whereas Nvidia ones tend to run fine. Probably an issue of driver threading optimization or some such newfangled coding nonsense. AMD's actually using mantle as a way of pushing proper parellelization of driver tasks onto the developer instead of handling it themselves... which (some) developers actually love, because then they can optimize those tasks for the game they're working on. [/rant]

 

[Mahisse]

I'm serious convinced that you have been receiving the same cards you already tried once if you have tried six "different" cards now. Just get another card from a different supplier as fast as possible. If what you are saying is true; that all other cards that you've tried in your systems work fine and you've installed the card correctly it's faulty cards. Unless you have something weird tweaked in the BIOS or system it must be the cards that are faulty.

 

[Kari]

You could try TMonitor to take a look at the actuall real time cpu frequencys as well. The really high cpu usage doesn't sound normal and I was thinking that maybe the cpu is stuck at idle clocks for some reason...
http://www.cpuid.com/softwares/tmonitor.html

 

[vrumor]

When this thread started he was at his 3rd return. How did you get 2 or 3 more cards to try in the last 4 or 5 days?

 

[mohit9206]

Your 280X has locked itself down to very low core and memory speeds while gaming.Go into CCC and amd overdrive and accept the agreement and manually set the core and memory speeds to stock and increase fan speed to 100%.Disable power saving if it has been enabled,save settings and try playing a game.Also dont use beta drivers if possible.Use 13.12 whql.

 

[Matthewmatt3]

Your 280X has locked itself down to very low core and memory speeds while gaming.Go into CCC and amd overdrive and accept the agreement and manually set the core and memory speeds to stock and increase fan speed to 100%.Disable power saving if it has been enabled,save settings and try playing a game.Also dont use beta drivers if possible.Use 13.12 whql.

I've already done this. Also, The clock speeds shoot all the way up to the maximum allowed without breaking a sweat, It's the GPU usage and VDDC that are not normal, as seen in the pictures.

 

[Matthewmatt3]

I'm serious convinced that you have been receiving the same cards you already tried once if you have tried six "different" cards now. Just get another card from a different supplier as fast as possible. If what you are saying is true; that all other cards that you've tried in your systems work fine and you've installed the card correctly it's faulty cards. Unless you have something weird tweaked in the BIOS or system it must be the cards that are faulty.

I'm going to try to get my money back from newegg and send the cards back, I'll probably get a Sapphire 280X from another store. If that card doesn't work I'll probably send it back and get what I should have gotten, a GTX 780.