My rig is not performing like it should

[Chad1954]

I built my rig about two years ago (2012) and while I've never had super, awesome, amazing framerate, it seems like my rig cant handle most new games and stay at or above 30 fps consistently. The most recent example being Dragon Age Inquisition were it hovers just at or above 30 fps in the most basic areas but drops to as low 12 fps in the city areas.

I've done some testing and it seems like my gpu (HD 7850) isn't the problem because on low settings I still get bad frames but only use 50% of the gpu. NOTE: Changing the graphic settings on ANY game doesn't seem to make a significant difference, still getting poor FPS.

I think I might have a cpu (FX 4170 4.2ghz) problem because most of the cores are either maxing out or hovering at 80-90%. But my cpu is decent and there's no reason it should be bottlenecking my performance. NOTE: my CPU is never over heating but it has overheated in the past when the old CPU fan died, kept crashing my computer on bootup until I got a new CPU fan.

The thing I'm wondering about is that everywhere I'm looking says I shouldn't have a problem getting good frames if I turn the graphics down... but no matter how much I turn the graphics down or scale the resolution down (sometimes 25%, 8 bit style) I cannot get consistently good frames.

What is going on? I know I should be able to get consistent 60 fps if I turn settings down but I can never achieve it.

Full rig description bellow:

Motherboard: Gigabyte 990FXA-UD3
CPU: AMD FX 4170 4 core clocked at 4.2ghz (no overclocking)
GPU: AMD Radeon HD 7850 2gb
RAM: 16gb of 1866 RAM
PSU: 750 watts
Hard drive: 1TB slow
OS: Windows 7 64bit

No water cooling, 3rd party Cooler Master 120mm CPU fan

 

[filippi]

As far as gaming is concerned, you have a kinda old bad IPC dual core cpu (2 FPU). So yes your cpu is the problem here.

 

[Chad1954]

As far as gaming is concerned, you have a kinda old bad IPC dual core cpu (2 FPU). So yes your cpu is the problem here.

My CPU is a 4 core clocked 4.2GHz not OC:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E168...

This was a brand new, just released 2012 CPU when I got it.

 

[Ragez234]

Have you tried a bios update and/or chipset update. The CPU is bottle-necking your GPU if your CPU is hitting 90% load before your GPU is. I would agree that your CPU should not be bottle-necking though.

 

[Chad1954]

Have you tried a bios update and/or chipset update. The CPU is bottle-necking your GPU if your CPU is hitting 90% load before your GPU is. I would agree that your CPU should not be bottle-necking though.

Haven't tried that yet, I'll see if that fixes it.

 

[Ragez234]

If it still persists, the best bang for your buck might be to just upgrade to say a FX-6300 with Piledriver, runs a lot cooler.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819113286

Or try overclocking your CPU a little bit to stop some of the bottle necking, just watch out for heat issues.

 

[Chad1954]

If it still persists, the best bang for your buck might be to just upgrade to say a FX-6300 with Piledriver, runs a lot cooler.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819113286

Or try overclocking your CPU a little bit to stop some of the bottle necking, just watch out for heat issues.

Still a little early to say, but I think I'm seeing an improvement. The cores are not maxing out in-game anymore, but they are still pretty high (anywhere from 70-98%) and my fps still isn't that great with only 50% of the GPU being used. I don't know what the problem is, the only thing I can think of is that the CPU is messed up somehow either from the very beginning or after the first CPU fan died and my computer crashed from overheat a few times until I figured the problem out. There's no reason all four core should be running that high with such low settings... Welp, I was looking to upgrade anyways.

 

[smeezekitty]

Its your CPU. Its a old faildozer and not even a high end one.
I think on the same board you can upgrade to a FX-6300 or 6350 which would help.

 

[filippi]

As far as gaming is concerned, you have a kinda old bad IPC dual core cpu (2 FPU). So yes your cpu is the problem here.

My CPU is a 4 core clocked 4.2GHz not OC:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E168...

This was a brand new, just released 2012 CPU when I got it.

Your cpu has 2 modules. Each module has 2 cores? Not exactly. Each module has 2x128bit FMAC units, 2xMMX units and 2xALU clusters. Not 2x cores.

As vmN said once, a core is more than just the ALU cluster. The ALU cluster is a part (and very important part) of a core. Take a car, put a engine in the front and in the end, do you now have two cars? No.(I love this analogy.)

As far as gaming is concerned, one amd module roughly equals one intel core.

 

[Chad1954]

As far as gaming is concerned, you have a kinda old bad IPC dual core cpu (2 FPU). So yes your cpu is the problem here.

My CPU is a 4 core clocked 4.2GHz not OC:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E168...

This was a brand new, just released 2012 CPU when I got it.

Your cpu has 2 modules. Each module has 2 cores? Not exactly. Each module has 2x128bit FMAC units, 2xMMX units and 2xALU clusters. Not 2x cores.

As vmN said once, a core is more than just the ALU cluster. The ALU cluster is a part (and very important part) of a core. Take a car, put a engine in the front and in the end, do you now have two cars? No.(I love this analogy.)

As far as gaming is concerned, one amd module roughly equals one intel core.

That actually makes a lot of sense... all this time and it was my CPU holding my PC back... looks like I need to do some shopping.

 

[Chad1954]

Thank you guys for the info.

 

[filippi]

Any time mate 😀