[SOLVED] New Gaming PC is slower than old setup

[kartune2013]

Hello,

So I just recently decided to build a Gaming Desktop as an upgrade from my Gaming Laptop. The hardware is MUCH better than my laptop, but in some games i feel it runs slower or has frame rate skipping at times. Even though it says 50 or 60 FPS on MSI afterburner monitoring tool, it doesn't really feel like it most of the time.
Here are the hardware specs of both systems running on a 2560x1080p 32" 144hz monitor.

LAPTOP
i7-7700QM
GTX1060 6GB
16GB 2333mHz
500GB SSD

DESKTOP
i9-9900K
EVGA RTX2080TI XC Ultra Gaming 11GB
32GB 3200mHz
500GB M.2 SanDisk
MSI - MPG Z390 GAMING PLUS


Chipset, GPU, Intel, BIOS all updated. NVidia control panel i leave default and set the gpu to prefer max performance. CPU set to 100% minimum/maximum in power settings. Temperatures of CPU usually stays under 60, GPU under 80 under load.

I can play Ghost Recon Wildlands on all Ultra settings on my laptop just fine with no frame skipping.
On my Desktop, i've gone as low as high settings, and the fps would be at about 80, but it definitely does not even feel 60.

I play Anthem and Ghost Recon Wildlands with 2 other friends, one having a nice setup with 1080ti and 8700k, and the other having the same exact laptop as me. We call out our fps often and both of them are 10 - 20fps higher than me and we all have our settings maxed out. In addition, none of us are overclocking.
I wanted to use Streamlabs OBS to record the gameplay, i have configured it correctly on both systems and also compared the configurations to my friends. They both can record with only slight frame rate drops. Mine is terrible.

I've tried Geforce experience to optimize also, which usually puts everything under ultra.
All hardware is brand new.

So, what am i doing wrong?
Any help would be greatly appreciated!
Thanks!

 

[Frag Maniac]

GRW can play smoothly or with a bit of micro stutter and big hitches now and then. I find turning off Vsync and setting the screen to Borderless helps, but it will often have micro stutter and hitching if you don't wait at least a little bit for the textures of it's massive world to load after launching the game. I find the rule of thumb for me on a fast HDD is waiting until the full screen map draws in clearly with no blur. That can be as much as 30 sec on HDD, or 10 sec even on my 500GB Samsung 970 EVO NVMe. Another thing that helps, which I'll do if I see the camera hitch when it zooms in on your squad when you load a safehouse, is fast travel straight back to that same house without going to another one. If the zoom in is smooth, chances are it will play smooth.

Trust me, I have logged tons of hours in GRW. I've beaten it on Tier Level 1 Mission Replay after grinding for many weeks to get the tier points to level up to it, and more recently spent about 3 and a half months making an Extreme, No HUD, No Upgrades video guide, where I played each mission many times until I found the best tactics for those restrictions. So I know full well what the game's shortcomings are and how to workaround them. It's not so much you or your spec, it's that Ubi have been using outdated game engines for some time, and it's getting to the point where they can't handle the massive worlds they create.

Here's an example of my guide. Note this was captured on a 8700k, 1080 SC, 16GB 3200 RAM spec at 1080p (due to display restrictions) and resized to 1440p before uploading to YouTube to make use of YT's MUCH higher bitrate for 1440p videos. No matter what bitrate you use, if you upload 1080p vids to YT, it will use 1/3 to 1/4th the bitrate it uses to process 1440p vids. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CuJTYE0x0KE&list=PLHB6vX_n-5BOwb6B4izux5HjNAf0YFt00

Believe it or not, I play on just Balanced W10 power mode. My 8700k tends to immediately go to and stay at 4.4GHz after launching a game, but if you DO get better results using High Performance, I recommended doing it via Nvidia Inspector 1.9.7.8. https://www.guru3d.com/files-details/nvidia-inspector-download.html

To do this you leave W10 to Balanced, then open NI, then click the tiny green Nvidia icon on the center right edge. At the top left of the window it opens, click on the Profiles dropdown box and scroll to Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Wildlands and click on it. Now scroll down to the #5 Common category, and click on Power management. Then select Prefer maximum performance, then click Apply Changes in the upper right.

You can now leave NI closed and GRW (or any game you do this with) will automatically launch in High performance mode, then your PC will automatically revert to Balanced mode when idling after exiting the game. This of course makes your PC run cooler, quieter, and with less dust being sucked in while idling.

As far as streaming goes, you need a decent upload speed on your IPS to use high stream bitrate settings. An upload speed of at least 10-12 MB is required to use the higher 5000 - 6000 bitrates.

As for you spec compared to their's, you didn't list the PSU, a fairly crucial part. What PSU are you running?

 

[kartune2013]

GRW can play smoothly or with a bit of micro stutter and big hitches now and then. I find turning off Vsync and setting the screen to Borderless helps, but it will often have micro stutter and hitching if you don't wait at least a little bit for the textures of it's massive world to load after launching the game. I find the rule of thumb for me on a fast HDD is waiting until the full screen map draws in clearly with no blur. That can be as much as 30 sec on HDD, or 10 sec even on my 500GB Samsung 970 EVO NVMe. Another thing that helps, which I'll do if I see the camera hitch when it zooms in on your squad when you load a safehouse, is fast travel straight back to that same house without going to another one. If the zoom in is smooth, chances are it will play smooth.

Trust me, I have logged tons of hours in GRW. I've beaten it on Tier Level 1 Mission Replay after grinding for many weeks to get the tier points to level up to it, and more recently spent about 3 and a half months making an Extreme, No HUD, No Upgrades video guide, where I played each mission many times until I found the best tactics for those restrictions. So I know full well what the game's shortcomings are and how to workaround them. It's not so much you or your spec, it's that Ubi have been using outdated game engines for some time, and it's getting to the point where they can't handle the massive worlds they create.

Here's an example of my guide. Note this was captured on a 8700k, 1080 SC, 16GB 3200 RAM spec at 1080p (due to display restrictions) and resized to 1440p before uploading to YouTube to make use of YT's MUCH higher bitrate for 1440p videos. No matter what bitrate you use, if you upload 1080p vids to YT, it will use 1/3 to 1/4th the bitrate it uses to process 1440p vids. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CuJTYE0x0KE&list=PLHB6vX_n-5BOwb6B4izux5HjNAf0YFt00

Believe it or not, I play on just Balanced W10 power mode. My 8700k tends to immediately go to and stay at 4.4GHz after launching a game, but if you DO get better results using High Performance, I recommended doing it via Nvidia Inspector 1.9.7.8. https://www.guru3d.com/files-details/nvidia-inspector-download.html

To do this you leave W10 to Balanced, then open NI, then click the tiny green Nvidia icon on the center right edge. At the top left of the window it opens, click on the Profiles dropdown box and scroll to Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Wildlands and click on it. Now scroll down to the #5 Common category, and click on Power management. Then select Prefer maximum performance, then click Apply Changes in the upper right.

You can now leave NI closed and GRW (or any game you do this with) will automatically launch in High performance mode, then your PC will automatically revert to Balanced mode when idling after exiting the game. This of course makes your PC run cooler, quieter, and with less dust being sucked in while idling.

As far as streaming goes, you need a decent upload speed on your IPS to use high stream bitrate settings. An upload speed of at least 10-12 MB is required to use the higher 5000 - 6000 bitrates.

As for you spec compared to their's, you didn't list the PSU, a fairly crucial part. What PSU are you running?

Thank you for your detailed reply!
Sorry totally forgot to list the EVGA 750watt PSU.
I'm also using the 500gb 970 m.2, love it!

For GRW, I started off with borderless, geforce experience optimzed 2 settings (resolution scaling from 1.00 to 1.20, and from borderless to full screen). It helped a little.

Also, i've been finding it at random times running smoothly, games would record flawlessly (anthem / GRW).
When it starts to crap out, i restart the system for a fresh start. But a lot of times, it doesn't help.

I'm going to try your suggestion on going back to borderless, leaving the res scale at 1.2, and using NI and get back to you on the results!

Again, very much appreciated. I really hope i could get this working at it's potential. Spending this much on hardware and having it perform less than my laptop is a huge let down.

 

[Frag Maniac]

Thank you for your detailed reply!
Sorry totally forgot to list the EVGA 750watt PSU.
I'm also using the 500gb 970 m.2, love it!

For GRW, I started off with borderless, geforce experience optimzed 2 settings (resolution scaling from 1.00 to 1.20, and from borderless to full screen). It helped a little.

Also, i've been finding it at random times running smoothly, games would record flawlessly (anthem / GRW).
When it starts to crap out, i restart the system for a fresh start. But a lot of times, it doesn't help.

I'm going to try your suggestion on going back to borderless, leaving the res scale at 1.2, and using NI and get back to you on the results!

Again, very much appreciated. I really hope i could get this working at it's potential. Spending this much on hardware and having it perform less than my laptop is a huge let down.

I assume that EVGA 750w is a SuperNova given the high end spec you listed? They also make an overpriced Bronze 750w that isn't worth having.

Yeah the 970 EVO is great, but did you check temps after installing it? Mine never goes above 52c on my ASUS Prime Z370-A. I noticed your Z390 GAMING PLUS has a heatsink for the NVMe drive like mine. Just make sure if it has thermal tape like mine you pull the plastic off, and it may require a standoff before screwing it down to contact properly like mine.

I don't recommend GeForce Experince Optimizer for ANY games. Your spec should play pretty much any game maxed. At most you may need to lower one setting a bit on poorly optimized games, but a good guide is all you need for that, like the GeForce guides that show which settings use the most resources. The reason their guides are good but their optimizer not so much is the guides are written by guys that know a lot about graphics settings and the game they're writing the guide for, whereas the optimizer is just an amalgamation of user feedback. What works well for their systems may not work as well for yours.

If by restart the system you mean rebooting the PC after exiting game, that WILL refresh RAM so you have a bit more free RAM, but it only makes the texture loading problem in the game worse. It's personal preference of course, but since I use zero social media and tend to prefer privacy over convenience, I turn off ALL the W10 telemetry apps. That alone frees up a whopping 1 GB or more RAM. I also use SpyBot Anti Beacon to Immunize against any system telemetry. This means I literally never have to reboot to refresh RAM. Having unnecessary startup programs can also waste RAM, and in some cases even cause software conflicts.

GRW as I said though has the reverse reaction of freeing RAM. Literally every time you relaunch it, it goes through that slow as hell texture re-loading process again. So read through what I said above carefully again, and pay attention to what I said if you see the camera hitching when it zooms in on your squad when you load a safehouse. I have seen many people on super fast SSD drives say the game still hitches and micro stutters. This is because it's actually caused by an outdated game engine that cannot consistently stream textures fast enough to keep up with the massive game world, or super fast SSDs.

The only real difference I saw in performance with the 970 EVO was I no longer get vehicle door and engine audio missing when first taking off in them, and the full screen map never needs time to clear the blur anymore. Game world texture wise it helps a bit, but you still have to wait 10 sec or so, or fast travel back to the safehouse you're at. The clear sign you're good to go is usually when the camera zooms in on your squad smoothly when loading a safehouse. Believe it or not though, the Koani Bravo safehouse STILL takes a whopping 2:04 to load, even with one of these 3400 MB/s NVMe drives. That's how quirky this game is.

Don't forget the obvious in your haste to get it running right. Make sure each game has it's needed Dx and VS files installed.

 

[kartune2013]

Thank you for your detailed reply!
Sorry totally forgot to list the EVGA 750watt PSU.
I'm also using the 500gb 970 m.2, love it!

For GRW, I started off with borderless, geforce experience optimzed 2 settings (resolution scaling from 1.00 to 1.20, and from borderless to full screen). It helped a little.

Also, i've been finding it at random times running smoothly, games would record flawlessly (anthem / GRW).
When it starts to crap out, i restart the system for a fresh start. But a lot of times, it doesn't help.

I'm going to try your suggestion on going back to borderless, leaving the res scale at 1.2, and using NI and get back to you on the results!

Again, very much appreciated. I really hope i could get this working at it's potential. Spending this much on hardware and having it perform less than my laptop is a huge let down.

I assume that EVGA 750w is a SuperNova given the high end spec you listed? They also make an overpriced Bronze 750w that isn't worth having.

Yeah the 970 EVO is great, but did you check temps after installing it? Mine never goes above 52c on my ASUS Prime Z370-A. I noticed your Z390 GAMING PLUS has a heatsink for the NVMe drive like mine. Just make sure if it has thermal tape like mine you pull the plastic off, and it may require a standoff before screwing it down to contact properly like mine.

I don't recommend GeForce Experince Optimizer for ANY games. Your spec should play pretty much any game maxed. At most you may need to lower one setting a bit on poorly optimized games, but a good guide is all you need for that, like the GeForce guides that show which settings use the most resources. The reason their guides are good but their optimizer not so much is the guides are written by guys that know a lot about graphics settings and the game they're writing the guide for, whereas the optimizer is just an amalgamation of user feedback. What works well for their systems may not work as well for yours.

If by restart the system you mean rebooting the PC after exiting game, that WILL refresh RAM so you have a bit more free RAM, but it only makes the texture loading problem in the game worse. It's personal preference of course, but since I use zero social media and tend to prefer privacy over convenience, I turn off ALL the W10 telemetry apps. That alone frees up a whopping 1 GB or more RAM. I also use SpyBot Anti Beacon to Immunize against any system telemetry. This means I literally never have to reboot to refresh RAM. Having unnecessary startup programs can also waste RAM, and in some cases even cause software conflicts.

GRW as I said though has the reverse reaction of freeing RAM. Literally every time you relaunch it, it goes through that slow as hell texture re-loading process again. So read through what I said above carefully again, and pay attention to what I said if you see the camera hitching when it zooms in on your squad when you load a safehouse. I have seen many people on super fast SSD drives say the game still hitches and micro stutters. This is because it's actually caused by an outdated game engine that cannot consistently stream textures fast enough to keep up with the massive game world, or super fast SSDs.

The only real difference I saw in performance with the 970 EVO was I no longer get vehicle door and engine audio missing when first taking off in them, and the full screen map never needs time to clear the blur anymore. Game world texture wise it helps a bit, but you still have to wait 10 sec or so, or fast travel back to the safehouse you're at. The clear sign you're good to go is usually when the camera zooms in on your squad smoothly when loading a safehouse. Believe it or not though, the Koani Bravo safehouse STILL takes a whopping 2:04 to load, even with one of these 3400 MB/s NVMe drives. That's how quirky this game is.

Don't forget the obvious in your haste to get it running right. Make sure each game has it's needed Dx and VS files installed.

So the 970 temps are great, i also ran benchmark on it and its actually above average for that model.
I set w10 to balanced, used NI and the default was already set to preferred max.
The issues still persist, i didn't mention before, i'm using Streamlabs OBS for recording.
For my laptop, i do notice frame drops of up to 15 difference when using streamlabs obs to record.

Now for my desktop, the supposed to be beast, just having streamlabs open and not recording/streaming, will have a huge fps drop.
So even if my MSI monitoring is showing 85fps on screen, it feels like jolts from 20 - 30fps back and forth constantly.
As soon as i turn off streamlabs, the jolts stop, fps monitoring still reads close to same or about +5fps. But it actually feels smooth again.

Now, i've tried configurations on streamlabs obs to prioritize the CPU while recording, and also set the process priority to high, but windows task mgr shows streamlabs only going up to maybe 6% usage at highest, but avg 3%. Which i find a bit weird. My laptop however i can see streamlabs go up to 30%, averaging 15%.
Not sure if that's normal since the desktop is using 9900k?

I'm going to be testing out the regular OBS today.
But my curiousity still remains, using streamlabs obs with the same exact configuration as my buddy's setup (the one that is on a 1080ti / 8700k), his game and videos still are much better than mine.
My recorded videos are so bad i can't even bare to watch it without getting falling into depression lol.
The recorded output is insanely worse than my actual gameplay.

But yeah, the times that the game is running smooth with streamlabs obs on, AND recording, it's amazing. No idea why or when those times are.

Also, I am an IT Analyst at Cityhall of Montebello California, so that gives a little background of my computer knowledge. I don't know much about tweaking games, but i know how to minimize my computer's unnecessary usage (bg processes/services/etc.). So with that being said, do you have any other advice or troubleshooting steps to take?

Also, thank you again for your detailed advice and experience! I really appreciate it and am learning more about how the gaming world is, hardware and software.

 

[Frag Maniac]

Did you install Nvidia Inspector, or Nvidia Profile Inspector? The latest Nvidia Inspector is 1.9.7.8., and the default Power management setting is not Prefer maximum performance, it's "Optimal performance", which is the same as Balanced in W10.

I use ShadowPlay to capture with because the 20 min caching means no trial and error recording, no time or wear and tear filling up drive space then deleting the unused captures, and also ZERO performance impact. I've done two video guides so far on The Evil Within and GRW, and it's been a God send for saving time and being very convenient. When I have longer than 20 min segments to capture I just hit Esc at just under 20 min, wait about a min for the capture file to write after saving it, then continue playing. I do this because it will not cache well while it's writing a capture file, the video will be choppy. That works well for sp, but some mp matches can be over 20 min. I find most mp matches are under 20 min though.

That said, another alternative to OBS is DxTory, but it's not geared toward streaming. It DOES however offer Distribution Writing and dual audio channel recording. Distribution Writing allows you to designate multiple drives to write the capture file. It works sorta like RAID. Each drive writes the capture file simultaneously to a "RawCap" file. You then have to use DxTory's built-in tool called RawCap Convert to convert it into a playable avi file. The positive is it can drastically improve performance. The negative is you have to use the DxTory codec to compress, which writes a pretty large file and is not compatible with a lot of players.

This is why I prefer ShadowPlay overall. It's the fastest, most convenient, and most compatible solution, and if you use instant replay vs always on recording, there's zero performance impact too. Even in manual record mode the impact is very low because it uses the H.264 encoding hardware in your GPU, rather than software. The software you use with it in GeForce Experience is only for settings. Note that some software tools allow you to use the hardware on your GPU to compress with, but they do not have as good performance as ShadowPlay because they are 3rd party software driven, whereas ShadowPlay does it at the Nvidia driver level.

The CPU usage percentage is likely lower on your desktop BECAUSE it has a higher end CPU, which doesn't have to work as hard. Laptop CPUs are also very down clocked versions of the desktop variants.

If you still insist on using OBS, try checking out a decent setup guide on it. I found this one to be pretty good.

[video="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dpgRWhFaoys"][/video]