[SOLVED] My integrated APU A10-7850k Gpu started working very slowly.

[Nako1991]

Hello, hope you can help me because im stuck.



First of all, SPECS:

Motherboard: ASUS A88XM-A

CPU/GPU: AMD A10-7850K Radeon R7

Memory: DDR3 G.Skill 8GB 1333 Mhz F3-2666C12-8GTXD (single, I know it throttles the cpu but I had no problem until now)

PSU: Generic chinese / Seasonic 750W M12 II Evo

HDD: WDC WD10EZEX-00BN5A0

Cooling: Corsair Hydro H80i V2



Okey, the problem started a month ago, the pc started to randomly freeze for 1-10 seconds when i was playing games, rendering them unplayable. At this time the PC was running with the generic chinese PSU (i know, but i had no money to upgrade). The problem seemed to be kinda random, and it always happened when the pc was under stress, gaming opening 12 chrome tabs at once, etc. Then it became a biggern concern because it started to do it almost all the time, even when trying to open the start menu on windows. I first tought it could be a software problem, drivers, or dust collected in the pc. So i started to troubleshoot.

First of all I cleaned all the pc components, focusing on processor fans and dissipator, even opened and cleaned the PSU.

I tought this could solve the problem, the performance improved but the problem persisted.

Second I tried solving the software aspect of it, a clean install. The PC needed a format anyways so i went with it, formatting the entire disk (after doing backups) and creating new partitions with the last edition of windows 10. I installed the original drivers that I had all stored in a folder in Documents waiting for this day, they are old drivers but worked fine the last 2 years.

Tought it could be a driver problem so uninstalled the old ones and installed the latest ones from AMD website. Nope, same thing, constantly freezes. Until now i had tried 3 drivers and all had the same problem (original windows drivers, old ones that i had and new ones just downloaded from the amd site). So it wasn't the drivers.

Again, this didn't solve the problem, the pc still kept freezing and unfreezing.

Third I downloaded Hardware monitoring and testing tools, after a clean install, it had to be some hardware issue.

Tested the S.M.A.R.T hdd and it looked fine, tested the RAM, and no problem, ram problems would BSOD the pc, so i didn't suspect much about them. Tested the CPU and it went just fine, no freezes or anything.

I tried getting a good reading on CPU or GPU temperatures but every single monitoring program kept giving me odd readings, CPU was 25º C to 35º under load, that's crazy low and i think it's inaccurate. GPU was from -5º to 7º (yes negative number). I don't live in alaska or have a room temperature of -20º so that is simply not true. Programs used were MSI Afterburner, CPUID HWMonitor, SpeedFan and BIOS monitor settings, none of wich gave good readings.

After that i tought maybe the chinese PSU was the problem, I had a plan of switching for a better one but times were rough, so I asked a friend to lend me his PSU to test it on my pc, he gladly did.

After I Switched the PSU for the Seasonic one, the problem disappeared... or would I say, morphed.

With the new PSU the PC didn't froze again, but the performance decreased dramatically, GPU side speaking. I used to play League of Legends at 60fps on high, now i could manage 20 fps on ultra low. The data un CPUID tells me that the GPU clock is at 351mhz, when it should be ~700mhz (i think it could be because of a single slot ram, but again i always had it and i had no problems before). Also every time there is a video task, the GPU instantly goes to 100% and doesn't even compare with the performance it had before.

I tried switching drivers after changing the PSU with no luck.

Im stuck right now, everything works but the gpu is much slower than before, the new PSU works just fine, I want to make sure that is the real problem before buying a new one.

Does the old PSU broke the GPU side of the amd processor? Is that even possible? Why is it so slow now even after replacing the PSU? why the problem changed, if it was something about the voltage it should be fixed by now.

Any help would be appreciated, thanks in advance =D.

 

[justin.m.beauvais]

It is pretty common for cheap PSUs to deliver unsteady power to the system. In some cases it can pass voltage spikes through the system. I would not be surprised if a jolt made it through and damaged the APU. The damage could also be in the power circuitry on the motherboard. In this case it would be providing steady but insufficient power using the Seasonic PSU leading to poor performance, and using the cheap PSU it would be providing fluctuating power under load that drops out of tolerance and crashes the system. I've seen problems a lot like this in other kinds of electronics.

However, you don't seem to have tried resetting the BIOS configuration. I would give that a shot before going looking for a new APU or motherboard, but this seems like kinda a long shot and I expect that your APU or motherboard have taken some damage, or just gotten old, but anything remotely possible is worth a try.

Replacement hardware is the most likely fix... but I don't think we can be sure it is the APU or motherboard unless you can get another APU to test with. It might be better to just replace them both.

 

[Obakasama]

The above makes sense.

The only other aspect is you should be using AMD Overdrive to monitor thermal margin, rather than another hardware monitor to monitor temperature, of the processor. Personal experience suggests the reading in other hardware monitors will border on the high side rather than low (makes me somewhat suspect a sensor has gone wrong or something).

 

[Nako1991]

Hello thanks you very much for your replies Justin, Altought unspecified, under the "may be a software problem" section I indeed resetted BIOS to factory settings, that didnt fix the problem, It's good advice though.

Yeah that explanation makes sense, I was trying to replace the components to pinpoint the problem but my friend uses Intel and i have AMD, so i could only switch the PSU. And that solved half the problem.

There is a test that's not switching components i can do to try to pinpoint whats the problem? Until now benchmarks and stress tools says everything works fine, just very slow.

Obakasama thanks for replying =D, i'll try using AMD overdrive to check my CPU/GPU temps, thanks for the advice.

 

[Obakasama]

Also thermal margin works 'the other way': the higher the thermal margin, the cooler the CPU is; and the lower the thermal margin, the closer it is to thermal throttling.

 

[justin.m.beauvais]

Hello thanks you very much for your replies Justin, Altought unspecified, under the "may be a software problem" section I indeed resetted BIOS to factory settings, that didnt fix the problem, It's good advice though.

Yeah that explanation makes sense, I was trying to replace the components to pinpoint the problem but my friend uses Intel and i have AMD, so i could only switch the PSU. And that solved half the problem.

There is a test that's not switching components i can do to try to pinpoint whats the problem? Until now benchmarks and stress tools says everything works fine, just very slow.

Obakasama thanks for replying =D, i'll try using AMD overdrive to check my CPU/GPU temps, thanks for the advice.

Unfortunately switching components is all that is really left. You did a good job ruling out software issues, so really only hardware remains.

Most benchmarks and stress tests will just run the components at the max of their capabilities. They aren't made to make sure that those capabilities are actually fully functional, they just run at the max of what they have available. Sometimes the drivers or driver programs will alert you if there is a hardware problem, but that is more of an exception than a rule.

I suppose you could use AMD's software to attempt to "overclock" the Radeon graphics up to what they are supposed to be, but if it is already reporting that it is trying to set the proper speeds then that would just be another indication of a hardware failure and it doesn't really rule out either the APU or the motherboard.

 

[Nako1991]

Okey thank you justin i think i will just take it to some service and let them figure it out. thank you all for the good advice