Question My system underperformed extremely - where is the problem?

Mar 6, 2019
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Hi all,

I set up a new system with the following equipment:

AMD FX-8350
8 GB RAM Kingston KVR 16N11/8
Radeon RX 570 4 GB
Biostar A9600+V3 Micro ATX
My socket is an AM3+

My system underperformed greatly. My results in Passmark 9.0 are:

PassMark Rating: 1956,9
CPU Mark 4078,9
2D Graphics Mark: 359,5
3D Graphics Mark: 5887,3
Memory Mark 966,4
Disk Mark 1477,9

CPU temperature was max. about 55°C. That is ok.

Does anyone have an idea? I am at a loss with it :/
 

PC Tailor

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You don't have to check CPU support. If the MB didn't support the CPU - you wouldn't even POST, let alone boot up and just have poor performance.

With performance decreases, first port of call is checking that you have all the latest drivers installed (and for your GPU, removing any old drivers).

You can also check the temperatures of your CPU and GPU under load to see if you are encountering thermal throttling, the FX8350 has a much lower thermal throttle threshold.

Equally checking the % loads of your GPU and your CPU cores to see if anything is peaking under load. Throttling can refer to both the component hitting max usage or the component hitting a temperature where it has to lower its power to compensate.

Might be worth running this just to see if anything obvious jumps out: Benchmark Test
 
Mar 6, 2019
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PC Tailor

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Is your system under performing in actual applications? Not just benchmarks?

You have high background CPU usage, so first it would be checking what background processes you have running.

Also your SSD is very slow, make sure you've wired it up to a SATA 3 slot.
 
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TJ Hooker

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You don't have to check CPU support. If the MB didn't support the CPU - you wouldn't even POST, let alone boot up and just have poor performance.
Even if the CPU was BIOS-compatible, it is somewhat common for cheap AM3+ boards to not fully support 125W chips due to low quality VRMs not being able to provide enough power.

The CPU was only running at ~2GHz on average during that benchmark. Likely either the CPU is overheating or the VRMs are. Install AMD Overdrive and report the lowest value reported for Thermal Margin over the course of running the benchmark.
 
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Mar 6, 2019
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I first had the problem before I actually upgraded my system. I changed my power supply, RAM and graphics and then the problem occurred.

My power supply is a Seasonic Focus Gold with 450w.

In games like World of Tanks I have usually 85fps and then suddenly dropped to 30-40fps for 2-4 seconds. This happens every time when I play. It happens every 5 or 10 minutes.

The MB supports only SATA II, not SATA III - damn shit, but not the reason for all problems. The mainboard is cheap, but due to the existence of the problems before the change, it cannot be the reason.

Could the RAM be the problem? I'll try Memtest next and will report the answers (and consider the other tips). I bought it 2nd hand.

View: https://youtu.be/srkcxYpH0BQ

Here you can see a short video I made in Office. Everything lags and this was before the upgrade too.


Thanks a lot so far!
 
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TJ Hooker

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As I said earlier, your CPU is operating at half the frequency it should be under load. That doesn't sound like a RAM problem.

Many utilities don't report temperature properly for older AMD CPUs. That's why I said to use AMD Overdrive and look at thermal margin. You can also try using something like HWiNFO64 to look at VRM temperatures, although not all motherboards will report those.

What was your previous graphics card? What case do you have?
 
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Mar 6, 2019
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What was your previous graphics card? What case do you have?

My previous graphics card was a Geforce GTX 460 with an i5 760.
My case is a Mini-Case, but I removed the side wall and I additionally replaced the boxed cooler with a better one (CPU is about 46°C now - very good, but I will check it with OverDrive in the next step).
 

TJ Hooker

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You mentioned you first had the problem before updating your system, was that back when you still had the i5 or did you already have the 8350 when you first noticed issues? Did you have any issues when you first changed to the 8350?

Did you do a clean install of Windows when you changed to the 8350? When you got the RX 570 did you do a complete uninstall of graphics drivers using DDU before installing AMD drivers?
 
Mar 6, 2019
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Yes, I did a clean install when I changed to the 8350 and new MB. I formatted my main hard drive.

When I installed my graphics card, I didn't use DDU, but I think this is obsolete now after formatting and installing everything new, isn't it?


I changed RAM and as you said, this is not the problem. Problems occured as usual.

I did a new benchmark and got sure that nothing else was updating or downloading. It looks a little bit better now, except the CPU. The SSD is wired with SATA 6gbit cable to a SATA II slot. My 10 years old HDD performed well, also my GPU is great.

UserBenchmarks: Game 55%, Desk 48%, Work 38%
CPU: AMD FX-8350 - 54.4%
GPU: AMD RX 570 - 66.4%
SSD: Crucial MX100 256GB - 48.3%
HDD: Samsung Spinpoint F3 1TB - 73.1%
RAM: Kingston 9905471-030.A00LF 1x8GB - 31.6%
MBD: Biostar A960D+V3

Lowest thermal margin was at 24,8°C. Average value during the test was between 30°C and 45°C. Everything seems to be ok.

The CPU core temperature was at about 46°C at max.

Is it possible that the hard drive is the bottleneck?
 
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TJ Hooker

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Yeah, if you did a full reinstall of Windows no need to use DDU after that.

It looks like your CPU was running much faster this time, just under 4 GHz. And that thermal margin is good. Both tests you've run have reported high background CPU usage though, you may want to look at task manager and try to figure out if you have any rogue applications eating up your CPU usage.