Need advice on OC'ing and low fps in games

[Warwolf3000]

I need some advice with OC'ing CPU and GPU. Also need some help to troubleshoot low FPS in almost all games, despite some well spec'd hardware.

Setup:
-Windows 7 64-bit

-Western Digital Blue WD10EZEX 1TB 7200 RPM 64MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s

-LG Black 12X Blu-ray Combo Drive SATA Model UH12NS29

-AMD FX-8350 Black Edition Vishera 8-Core 4.2GHz Socket AM3+ 125W FD8350FRHKBOX

-MSI 990FXA-GD80 V2 AM3+ AMD 990FX + SB950 6 x SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX AMD Motherboard

-G.SKILL Sniper Series 16GB (2 x 8GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 2133 (PC3 17000) Desktop Memory Model F3-2133C10D-16GSR

-Cooler Master Silent Pro Gold - 1200W Power Supply with 80 PLUS Gold Certification and Semi-Modular Cables

-Cooler Master HAF X

-2x MSI Radeon R9 290 GAMING 4GB 512-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 3.0 x16 HDCP Ready CrossFireX Support Video Card

FPS will jump between 0 and 60+ several times a second durring gameplay... games most played: Minecraft (MODs), GTA 5, COD: Advanced Warfare, FF:XIV, and SW Battlefront II. FPS averages around 20 fps, changing settings to low does bump FPS up, but whats the point of having $3000+ worth of hardware if I cant do 60 fps at 1080?

 

[richi3d10]

Are you up to date with the latest Omega drivers? Only the omega drivers work properly for crossfire.

Are your games running in fullscreen, or borderless window mode?

There shouldn't be any need to OC those cards to get the performance you're looking for, you can by all means do it. But I'd try to get them running stable at stock first. Also, have you given any thought to cooling the GPUs if you do overclock, those 290's run real hot!

 

[Warwolf3000]

Are you up to date with the latest Omega drivers? Only the omega drivers work properly for crossfire.

Are your games running in fullscreen, or borderless window mode?

There shouldn't be any need to OC those cards to get the performance you're looking for, you can by all means do it. But I'd try to get them running stable at stock first. Also, have you given any thought to cooling the GPUs if you do overclock, those 290's run real hot!

I've run games in all modes, full, borderless and windowed, it acts the same... had the same issue with my previous GPU's... Yeah, I'm not sure i want to OC the GPUs, but they run cool enough for me... BTW, CPU is water cooled and even at 100% use for hours, it never gets very hot, very happy with Heatkiller!!!!!!!!!!

 

[richi3d10]

Have you tried installing your video card drivers and then installing the latest omega drivers?

The cards run fine at stock, but get very hot when you start overclocking (especially in crossfire config).

Your CPU cooler looks very good indeed, but no real benefit in game for over clocking your CPU.

One more thought, are you running MSI Afterburner software? Sometimes that can do funky things to AMD GPU's.

 

[Warwolf3000]

I'm gonna run through drivers and removing afterburner tonight...

 

[Warwolf3000]

So, I tried omega drivers, they did help, 30-60fps gta v. I also removed afterburner... Also, decided to try the beta drivers as they have optimization for gta v, same results... Still, with scene changes I get dropped frames and lag, so I'm gonna try some OC and see if I can get rid of some bottlenecking... Any advice besides patience with OC?

 

[Warwolf3000]

I just updated my bios to 13.5... Was getting 50-60 fps on gta v... During in-game benchmarking, after the tanker explosion, the whole computer crashed, forcing a reboot... Cpu was maxed out at 100% during explosion...

 

[Warwolf3000]

I'm not sure, but I think it's my processor or mobo causing my issues... Running prime95 for just a few mins causes core 6 to fail, then a little while later core 5 fails, then the computer reboots... BTW this is at default, no OC...

 

[richi3d10]

While in game, check your CPU load, you can use cpu-z to do this. If your CPU is hitting 100% load then you know where the bottle neck is.
If you don't have dual monitors there is an android app called remote system monitor that let's you view all your PC stats wirelessly on your phone or tablet.

 

[richi3d10]

Also, in the bios, try enabling the stock overclock to 4.3ghz. I'm running that at the moment with an R9 280x crossfire and never experiencing more than 60% CPU load in The Witcher 3, Skyrim or Crysis 3.