New Sapphire RX 480 8gb Nitro+ Cant Run anything

[Solid-Sn8ke]

So my thread title is more or less the truth because today I just got my new PC parts in the mail. I upgraded from a Sapphire R9 290 Tri-X OC 4gb to the new Sapphire RX 480 Nitro+ 8gb. I also upgraded to 2x8gb (16gb) Corsair Vengeance Ram and another HDD. But those are besides the point because the new GPU seems to be performing pretty horribly from what ive seen other people pushing theirs at on places like Youtube. For example, I reinstalled Fallout 4 and tried to play that on Ultra settings because ive seen multiple benchmark videos and gameplays of people using this exact same card and getting anywhere from 90-110 FPS. Im getting like 20 FPS. Its running worse than my R9 290 in most aspects and Im feeling a little duped here. Im sure I probably just did something wrong when I installed it today, but help would be greatly appreciated because I just dont understand how it can be doing this bad. The only thing I can think of is that my CPU may be bottlenecking my GPU but im not entirely sure. Im pretty good at installing parts but im not well versed when it comes to stuff like that. Anyway, here are my specs.

Mobo: Asus AMD Sabertooth 990FX
CPU: AMD FX 8370
Ram: 2x8gb Corsair Vengeance
GPU: Sapphire Rx 480 Nitro+ 8gb
PSU: Corsair 750m
And then my HDD's

By the way I forgot to mention that im running windows 8.1 for the record.

 

[audie-tron25]

You can check to see if the CPU is bottlenecking it by checking Task Manager while playing. If it is maxing out, it's your CPU holding it back. The FPS sounds a bit low for this but check anyway.

Have your re-installed drivers just in case?

 

[stuartturner34]

If you're getting worse performance than your R9 290x with the same CPU, it's not a bottleneck issue. If you haven't updated your drivers, do so. Otherwise, I would recommend you get something like MSI Afterburner so you can keep an eye on your GPU usage during gameplay.

 

[Solid-Sn8ke]

I also dont know if it matters but for some reason this PC has given me fits every time a new Radeon update comes along. The R9 290 never wanted to update the Display Drivers and would frequently tell me that the install failed because that was the one thing that never updated in the radeon package on Windows 8.1. I had to install the same update like 5 times to finally make it download and install the new display driver portion of the update. It tried the same thing with the Rx480 but I was successful on the 2nd try, or at least it told me it successfully installed everything. I dont know if this could be causing problems. I really hope its as simple as my CPU bottlenecking my GPU but I find it strange that an 8 core, 4+ ghz processor could be bottlenecking that much. I know its a little old by now but damn. When I get home in a few hours, Ill try to uninstall all my drivers again with DDU this time and reinstall them again, and Ill check to make sure my CPU is up to date on any drivers as well. I tell ya, this crap really stresses me out.

 

[stuartturner34]

Don't bother with CPU drivers, they aren't a real thing you update.
Like I said, the CPU bottleneck wouldn't result in reduced performance, but rather stagnant performance. If it were at bottleneck, your RX 480 would perform the same as your R9 290X. It definitely sounds like a driver issue. Uninstall your drivers and reinstall them from the disc that came in the RX 480 box. Test it out, and keep track of its performance. After that, install the newest non-beta drivers from AMD Crimson and test it again.

 

[amtseung]

The RX480 power limit problem rears its ugly head again. Since AMD's driver-based fix for the whole PCIe power draw fiasco was to place an artificial cap on the power limit, you'll have to max out the power limit and temp limit sliders in wattman to kind of "unlock" it back to factory, and even then, it may not work.

Depending on the games you're playing, I wouldn't be surprised if your FX was bottlenecking your RX480. It's horribly inefficient despite its high clock speeds and high power draw (scheduler just plain old sucks, as does the module system architecture). I ditched my overclocked 8320 for my current i5, and performance shot way up all across the board.

 

[Tommy_52]

Have you tried downloading up to date drivers?