Poor gaming performance with new gaming PC

[jordyf1]

Hi people of Tom's Hardware,

I have recently purchased a custom built gaming PC, with the intent of playing many new games on higher settings, however it seems this is not the case. Considering I spent in around £850 on my PC, I can't seem to play games on a setting that beats (or even matches) that of my PS4. For example, Dragon Age Inquisition, The Crew, FarCry 4 etc all seem to look and rum much better on my PS4 than I can do on my PC, frame rates are much higher also. I've already tried a few things, made sure of latest drivers, removed previous drivers etc.... I also get really bad stuttering whilst playing games on my PC.

It seems like the biggest problem is Anti Aliasing, which in none of the games I can have anywhere near high otherwise I get horrific stuttering and like 10 fps. Any advice would be great.

I bought the system from Overclockers UK - All components brand new.

Specs:
AMD FX-8350 @ 4.0GHz
Gigabyte Geforce GTX 770 2gb
8GB 1600 Ram
SuperFlower 550w Gold PSU
MSI 970A-G43 Motherboard
Windows 7

 

[Blooker]

The components give no obvious clue on what could be the problem as they all seem to fit in an system that would never normally get such performance issues and after all the stuttering to 10 FPS, so I think it's worth it finding out what, or which component causes this because it's the most likely something is the bottleneck, and if it's the hardware after all... I suspect something like an faulty component out of the factory.

1. HDD/SSD: which model and brand, if it's an HDD then make sure you do an ''health scan'' and S.M.A.R.T scan to easily oversee if there's significant defect of the disk out-of-factory (I had this once, and if something can drain down performance big time it's the HDD) like with HDD sentinel (google) or a random tool that can both check SMART status and health rate of the disk.
If it's an SSD then go for SSD health checker; example ''SSD Life'' (google it)

2. RAM; also an component that is prone to defects out of factory even when brand-new. Search for an memory integrity or RAM scanner.
3. Make sure that you don't by accident run the Windows default graphics drivers, in some cases it won't correctly update automaticly off basic or default videocard drivers. for the GTX 770, get this one: 64 bit windows; http://www.geforce.com/drivers/results/80913 or 32bit: http://www.geforce.com/drivers/results/80912

4: Check the power management of your PC from windows control panel; for a gaming PC make sure some things are turned off: ''PCI, Link State Power Management.. ''Processor power management: Maximum state 100%, minimum state 100%.

And also the Nvidia control panel, but after getting that updated driver. Make sure it's set to use ''application settings aka Let the application decide'', then select at main setting menu for it to not take the 3D settings, but ''Let the application decide'' overall.

What you can do except for all that is run some benchmarks tools, multi bench or graphicscard benching tool/component-specific to possibly see the problematic component if it's hardware-related, search on the internet for referention values on the components' usual performance or use the benching tool's average or usual results on users with same hardware configurations.

Also the PSU is not rare to be faulty out of factory and if you are one that received an malfunction or ''bad'' unit it could deliver too low power for all components to function correctly and might downclock things for overheating. I personally don't know much about testing that, but wait for someone else to possibly explain or search for methods.

Secondly: make sure DirectX is up-to date, google for ''dxwebsetup''. Have an proper virusscanner; malware can cause performance havoc. Make sure that the games you run are whitelisted on Windows firewall if you run it. (if the lagging games are online mostly).
Go to Windows > run, and type ''msconfig'' then go to Boot > advanced options, and set Number of processors to your processor's core amount: AMD FX-8350, ''8'' as setting.

Las thing to check is your system's cooling and temperature, in the system casing probably. If for some reason one or multiple components, or your full system is overheating, components such as graphics card or CPU can clock itself down to prevent further, resulting in less speed = reduced performance.
Use like an software temp monitor and eventually see inside the casing; remove dust.

All possible solution steps are not ideal in sequence I typed them, but hope it helps after all!

 

[RCFProd]

Have you updated your graphics drivers? If you did an upgrade to Win 8.1 might be game changing aswell.

 

[Blooker]

Have you updated your graphics drivers?

How is it neccesary to repeat that?

 

[TheMagicalWallaby]

Your motherboard can't handle that CPU as it doesn't have proper VRM cooling. This is causing your CPU to throttle and slow down, causing performance to fall.

If you want to validate this, just run something like Intle burn test or prime 95 and watch for failures.


If yo don't mind doing something, run prime 95 and MSI kombustor at the same time and watch the GPU usage with MSI Afterburner. There might be another issue because caused by the one I just mentioned.

If you would like me to recommend some new motherboards, let me know a price and I'll see what I can do. You can also try to install heatsinks yourself and see if that works.

 

[Zaathion]

Your motherboard can't handle that CPU as it doesn't have proper VRM cooling. This is causing your CPU to throttle and slow down, causing performance to fall.

If you want to validate this, just run something like Intle burn test or prime 95 and watch for failures.


If yo don't mind doing something, run prime 95 and MSI kombustor at the same time and watch the GPU usage with MSI Afterburner. There might be another issue because caused by the one I just mentioned.

If you would like me to recommend some new motherboards, let me know a price and I'll see what I can do. You can also try to install heatsinks yourself and see if that works.

You're wrong. I run this motherboard and 8350 and have no problems.

 

[RCFProd]

Your motherboard can't handle that CPU as it doesn't have proper VRM cooling. This is causing your CPU to throttle and slow down, causing performance to fall.

If you want to validate this, just run something like Intle burn test or prime 95 and watch for failures.


If yo don't mind doing something, run prime 95 and MSI kombustor at the same time and watch the GPU usage with MSI Afterburner. There might be another issue because caused by the one I just mentioned.

If you would like me to recommend some new motherboards, let me know a price and I'll see what I can do. You can also try to install heatsinks yourself and see if that works.

You're wrong. I run this motherboard and 8350 and have no problems.

Lucky you, plenty have this issue and causes a significiant performance drop when playing games like Battlefield 4. Quite an issue.

 

[TheMagicalWallaby]

Your motherboard can't handle that CPU as it doesn't have proper VRM cooling. This is causing your CPU to throttle and slow down, causing performance to fall.

If you want to validate this, just run something like Intle burn test or prime 95 and watch for failures.


If yo don't mind doing something, run prime 95 and MSI kombustor at the same time and watch the GPU usage with MSI Afterburner. There might be another issue because caused by the one I just mentioned.

If you would like me to recommend some new motherboards, let me know a price and I'll see what I can do. You can also try to install heatsinks yourself and see if that works.

You're wrong. I run this motherboard and 8350 and have no problems.

You might not have noticed it.