R9 295X2 Poor performance?

[digitalsummon]

The Story
Ok, so I've had my R9 295X2 since October last year and the problem has always been this way. In most games I have some sort of fps drop for example Far Cry 4, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. and now GTA 5. I get mostly good fps, above 60, but in some areas of GTA 5(such as facing away from Simeon's garage and especially while driving) I get a fps drop. Sometimes this is not major sometimes it is but it bugs the hell out of me when I see it drop below 60 fps noticeably. I have disabled ULPS and have weird GPU load fluctuations in GPU-Z and my usage (in GTA 5 and in some other games) never goes higher than 30%. I have a screenshot below to prove this and have tried to fit as much information on the screenshot as possible.

Screenshot of MSI Afterburner, CCC and GPU-Z just after tabbing out of GTA 5.

As a side note I play at 1080p in all games and max the settings (sometimes excluding MSAA, SMAA and more. I also tend to disable V-Sync unless I get major screen-tear) in all games but GTA 5, where I have everything max (excluding MSAA) except anything in the 'advanced graphics' tab.

Specs:
Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit SP1
Intel Core i7 3770K @ 3.50GHz
8.00GB Single-Channel DDR3 @ 666MHz (9-9-9-24)
ASRock Z77 Extreme6 (CPUSocket)
HP 2311x (1920x1080@60Hz)
R9 295x2 (The program I used to get some of my specs, Speccy, doesn't notice crossfire as enabled, yet GPU-Z does. Just a small detail I'm not sure is useful.)
931GB Western Digital WDC WD10EZEX-00RKKA0 ATA Device (SATA)
Corsair CP-9020062-UK RM Series RM1000 80 Plus Gold 1000W ATX/EPS Fully Modular Power Supply Unit (I'm pretty sure this is the exact model)
Sound Blaster Z Sound Card

I'm happy to answer any questions you may have!
Thank you for any help you provide, much appreciated

 

[ZeusGamer]

You know, could be the CPU. GTA V I believe is a CPU intensive game. Try overclocking your CPU to maybe 4.5 GHz and report back to us.

On the side note, I've also heard that the game has bugs that will give you FPS drops on certain areas of the game. Rockstar is aware of this problem and they're trying to solve the issue.

 

[digitalsummon]

You know, could be the CPU. GTA V I believe is a CPU intensive game. Try overclocking your CPU to maybe 4.5 GHz and report back to us.

On the side note, I've also heard that the game has bugs that will give you FPS drops on certain areas of the game. Rockstar is aware of this problem and they're trying to solve the issue.

Thanks for the answer
As for the overclocking, my motherboard provides presets at BIOS. Do you think I should use one of those or do it manually? Also, I thought about overclocking before but I got put off since my CPU doesn't have any water coolant, just the stock fan. I was scared it was going to throttle or get damaged. Will report back though thanks again!

 

[digitalsummon]

You know, could be the CPU. GTA V I believe is a CPU intensive game. Try overclocking your CPU to maybe 4.5 GHz and report back to us.

On the side note, I've also heard that the game has bugs that will give you FPS drops on certain areas of the game. Rockstar is aware of this problem and they're trying to solve the issue.

Alright, I've set an overclock preset by my BIOS (4.4Ghz) seems to have given me a tiny boost in fps but still noticeable drops. The strange GPU load hasn't changed neither unfortunately.

 

[Kari]

AMD released new drivers just for GTA V with crossfire profiles like yesterday, 15.4 Beta drivers
http://support.amd.com/en-us/kb-articles/Pages/latest-catalyst-windows-beta.aspx

Also overclocking on the stock intel cooler isnt going to give you much more performance, you'll be tempereture limited quite quickly. At least a good aftermarket tower type cooler is needed for decent oc, water is for 'real' enthusiasts but not necessary for overclocking... In either case manuall overclocking is the way to go, those presets typically use unnecessary high voltages for any given clocks so you'll be hitting the temp wall even sooner if you're limited by cooling capacity. And the clockranges are typically really small, like 10-15% max... With manuall adjustment you can use just barely enough voltage to reach stability and not a millivolt more. It consumes more time and effort but some people actually like it.


edit heh, 4.4 is actually pretty good for a preset

 

[digitalsummon]

AMD released new drivers just for GTA V with crossfire profiles like yesterday, 15.4 Beta drivers
http://support.amd.com/en-us/kb-articles/Pages/latest-catalyst-windows-beta.aspx

Also overclocking on the stock intel cooler isnt going to give you much more performance, you'll be tempereture limited quite quickly. At least a good aftermarket tower type cooler is needed for decent oc, water is for 'real' enthusiasts but not necessary for overclocking... In either case manuall overclocking is the way to go, those presets typically use unnecessary high voltages for any given clocks so you'll be hitting the temp wall even sooner if you're limited by cooling capacity. And the clockranges are typically really small, like 10-15% max... With manuall adjustment you can use just barely enough voltage to reach stability and not a millivolt more. It consumes more time and effort but some people actually like it.


edit heh, 4.4 is actually pretty good for a preset

Thanks! I already have those new drivers, I installed them yesterday
As for the overclock it seems to be working fine its self, I'm still curious about the rampant GPU load.

 

[-Lone-]

My friend is also having stutters with his 295x2 and he's also at 1080p. I have also seen threads here where people with Nvidia GPUs like the 970 getting stutters, but for me I don't have any stutters at all and I play at 4k ultra. So the only connection/difference that I see here between me and everyone else that's having problems is I have 12GB of VRAM. There's a chance that even at 1080p, the game uses over 4GB of VRAM. For Nvidia it's not the drivers because we have the same exact versions, just different GPU with more VRAM. So if you ask me, I think it's the game requiring too much VRAM. I made a thread last night to ask people to report how much VRAM their GPU is using at different resolutions, but no one participated yet. For me, my game is using up to 6.8GB so far, that's pretty high even for 4k. So I think it's another "Shadow of Mordor" kind of thing.

 

[digitalsummon]

My friend is also having stutters with his 295x2 and he's also at 1080p. I have also seen threads here where people with Nvidia GPUs like the 970 getting stutters, but for me I don't have any stutters at all and I play at 4k ultra. So the only connection/difference that I see here between me and everyone else that's having problems is I have 12GB of VRAM. There's a chance that even at 1080p, the game uses over 4GB of VRAM. For Nvidia it's not the drivers because we have the same exact versions, just different GPU with more VRAM. So if you ask me, I think it's the game requiring too much VRAM. I made a thread last night to ask people to report how much VRAM their GPU is using at different resolutions, but no one participated yet. For me, my game is using up to 6.8GB so far, that's pretty high even for 4k. So I think it's another "Shadow of Mordor" kind of thing.

That's true, although I have 8GB of VRAM with the R9 295X2. I was fine with Shadow Of Mordor except for the same frame drops that I'm getting in pretty much every game, not only GTA 5. Also does he get frame drops? Like small ones in some places. Thanks for the help

 

[-Lone-]

The VRAM doesn't add up for GPUs, not yet anyways, your max VRAM is 4GB. The 8GB was just for advertisement, which makes it sound more appealing. And yes, he also get fps drops.

 

[digitalsummon]

The VRAM doesn't add up for GPUs, not yet anyways, your max VRAM is 4GB. The 8GB was just for advertisement, which makes it sound more appealing. And yes, he also get fps drops.

Okay thank you! Yeah that sucks about the VRAM, the game even recognizes it as 8GB which is a shame.

 

[-Lone-]

Yeah, the VRAM bar inside the game is not very accurate, it says 4.6GB for me inside the game and 6.8GB on GPU Z, which is much more accurate.

 

[-Lone-]

So that's just my theory on what causes the stutters and fps drops. I also had the 295x2 before the Titan X and I get these random fps drops in some games, I never found out why until the Titan X. Now that I'm on the Titan X, it actually says the games I used to play with the same exact settings uses up to 5GB of VRAM. As far as I know if you run out of memory, you get stutters and fps drops, so that explained my unknown fps drops in my other games. It wasn't the temperature because I checked and it was below the thermal limit before throttling, so it's not that.

 

[-Lone-]

Well, my friend said try disabling CFX, see if that helps, apparently he says it's helping him a bit.

 

[digitalsummon]

Well, my friend said try disabling CFX, see if that helps, apparently he says it's helping him a bit.

I just tried turning off crossfire but I don't have an option in CCC to do that so I just went into windows border-less. This made the fps drops way more noticeable but surprisingly not as much as I though it would. This is leading me to think crossfire isn't working at its full potential or the graphics card its self isn't which kinda links to the weird GPU usage. Does your friend also have a weird GPU usage in games? Thanks though

 

[-Lone-]

No CFX option? It should be in there. Try to force it to stop using CFX by going into 3D Application settings then click add on the left side and add GTA V's executable into CCC. It'd be something like "Grand Theft Auto: V.exe" or something or a shorter name of it. After you add that, click on GTA V in the CCC and scroll down and at the bottom there should be a CFX option, choose off and apply.

 

[digitalsummon]

No CFX option? It should be in there. Try to force it to stop using CFX by going into 3D Application settings then click add on the left side and add GTA V's executable into CCC. It'd be something like "Grand Theft Auto: V.exe" or something or a shorter name of it. After you add that, click on GTA V in the CCC and scroll down and at the bottom there should be a CFX option, choose off and apply.

So I disabled CrossfireX in 3D Application Settings. This has almost completely eliminated the stutter while driver meanwhile the fps drops remain as they were when driving and looking at some areas. Soooo, I think this means that CrossfireX didn't disable or my other GPU is deciding not to do anything.

Here is my CCC GTA5.exe setup as you told me but I've also opened up tabs in CCC so you can see what I have available as options.

 

[-Lone-]

Well, my friend just said he enabled v sync and and that was the last thing he did to fix his problems. He said his stutters are gone with CFX disabled and his settings are completely maxed including AA, so maybe try that. Also check your temperature while playing after awhile, make sure it doesn't reach to 74C or it'll throttle.

 

[digitalsummon]

Well, my friend just said he enabled v sync and and that was the last thing he did to fix his problems. He said his stutters are gone with CFX disabled and his settings are completely maxed including AA, so maybe try that. Also check your temperature while playing after awhile, make sure it doesn't reach to 74C or it'll throttle.

I've just tested further the stutter is gone with CrossfireX enabled as well as disabled. (My Vsync is enabled, I get terrible performance without it ) There is no performance difference with CrossfireX enabled to disabled. I know Crossfire is enabled because I have enabled 'Show AMD CrossfireX status icon'. My temp has never got anywhere near 75C, it likes to stick around 50C and I would say max 60C. I'm starting to think this has to do with my graphics card not working to its full potential. Thanks

 

[-Lone-]

Play for like 10min or something , set the refresh rate of GPU Z to 0.1 then after the 10 min, alt tab out to see what's your max clock and GPU load. If the clock is not over 1000MHz most of the time, then yeah, your GPU is not using its full potential, just mouse over the red bar to see its history.

 

[digitalsummon]

Play for like 10min or something , set the refresh rate of GPU Z to 0.1 then after the 10 min, alt tab out to see what's your max clock and GPU load. If the clock is not over 1000MHz most of the time, then yeah, your GPU is not using its full potential, just mouse over the red bar to see its history.

Clocks are fine, but as usual the GPU load is just spikey and going crazy. On MSI Afterburner it doesn't go over 30% ever in game as you can see in the first screenshot that I made at the beginning. On GPU-Z it spikes up and down from 0 to 30 to 90 etc etc. Screenshot below.

 

[-Lone-]

Are you still getting fps drops? What fps are you getting? I mean there's always a variation of when at a specific moment the GPU won't need to use its full load. My friend also says he gets gpu from like 0 to 30, 50, 90 and all over the place. I'll have to check mine and see what mine looks like. If you're still getting fps drops, I'm out of ideas You don't seem to have bottleneck or anything.

 

[digitalsummon]

Are you still getting fps drops? What fps are you getting? I mean there's always a variation of when at a specific moment the GPU won't need to use its full load. My friend also says he gets gpu from like 0 to 30, 50, 90 and all over the place. I'll have to check mine and see what mine looks like. If you're still getting fps drops, I'm out of ideas You don't seem to have bottleneck or anything.

Yeah still getting fps drops in areas which sucks majorly . 60 fps but constant drops in places. If possible could he monitor his usage with MSI Afterburner is while running GTA V. (while enabling unified gpu usage monitoring in its options) Mine is 30% never above as said.

I have just tested my frame rate while playing and while driving I constantly drop down to around 40-50 fps when looking in certain areas. Meanwhile obvious looking at the floor and sky I achieve 60fps but I also in a few places achieve 60fps without looking at the ground or sky.

PIC OF MY USAGE IN GTAV:

As you can see it doesn't go higher than 40%

PIC OF MY FRAMERATE IN GTAV:

Here you can see the fluctuations, this was taken while driving. It CONSTANTLY drops to 50 and sometimes down to 40. 0 FPS = Tabbed out

 

[-Lone-]

I also get drops when I look to certain places, like if I am on the mountain and look toward the entire city, I am down to 30 fps because there's so much to render. When I am moving fast like in a vehicle, I get average of 40-50. When I am walking/running I get 50-60. So those fps drops might be normal because the game is so big and have so much to display.

 

[digitalsummon]

I also get drops when I look to certain places, like if I am on the mountain and look toward the entire city, I am down to 30 fps because there's so much to render. When I am moving fast like in a vehicle, I get average of 40-50. When I am walking/running I get 50-60. So those fps drops might be normal because the game is so big and have so much to display.

I've seen a streamer with a GTX 980 have no trouble at max settings, keeping in mind he streams at 50fps. Does your friend also have these drops? By the sound of it he has fixed all of this (even with AA etc which I don't have MSAA on,) also I have these unexplained GPU usage spikes and limitations. This is also coupled with the benchmarks I have seen online, the R9 295x2 doesn't drop below 50 maxed out. I also get drops in other games for example Far Cry 4 at max (with SMAA) just like GTA 5. So I'm not sure if this is normal or not

edit I also forgot to mention how disabling crossfire does next to nothing to the fps :/