Radeon R9 270 not performing well?

[dustball]

Previously i was able to run 200 FPS in league of legends, about 40-60 in World of Warcraft, I have checked all the drivers for updates and everything is okay, not sure what the problem may be, In league i'm now getting around 80 FPS and occasional little lag spikes
My set up:
Mobo- M5A97 R2.0 Asus
Ram- 2x8gb DDR3 Ripjaw X series Gskill 2133
PSU- Corsair TX650W
GPU- Radeon R9 270 Sapphire Tech
CPU-8320 3.6ghz Vishera 8 core

Any possibly suggestions would be great!

 

[Kitt Sue]

Have you done any recent driver updates?

Take a quick peek in task manager to see if something unusual is eating up system resources.

Use MSI Afterburner and enable on-screen display to check GPU temperature, GPU usage, and CPU usage.

 

[dustball]

Have you done any recent driver updates?

Take a quick peek in task manager to see if something unusual is eating up system resources.

Use MSI Afterburner and enable on-screen display to check GPU temperature, GPU usage, and CPU usage.

All the drivers have recently been updated, yes

 

[Kitt Sue]

Have you done any recent driver updates?

Take a quick peek in task manager to see if something unusual is eating up system resources.

Use MSI Afterburner and enable on-screen display to check GPU temperature, GPU usage, and CPU usage.

All the drivers have recently been updated, yes

Did you update the driver right before you experienced the frame drops, or were driver updates something you did after you experienced the problem?

 

[dustball]

Have you done any recent driver updates?

Take a quick peek in task manager to see if something unusual is eating up system resources.

Use MSI Afterburner and enable on-screen display to check GPU temperature, GPU usage, and CPU usage.

All the drivers have recently been updated, yes

Did you update the driver right before you experienced the frame drops, or were driver updates something you did after you experienced the problem?

I've had the drivers updated since i very first had the GPU, and things seemed to be working fine, could it potentially be my PSU? I some what seemed to notice this when i installed my Hyper 212 Evo heatsink

 

[Kitt Sue]

It's unlikely to be the PSU. You'd probably be experiencing system shutdowns. However if it happened after installing the Hyper 212, it sounds like it may be a throttling issue. Possibly it's not making proper contact. It might have too much or not enough thermal compound, or perhaps the CPU was not properly cleaned of its old thermal paste.

Try remounting the CPU cooler. Take it off, and use a Q-Tip or piece of gauze (I would not recommend paper towel since it can leave fibers behind) with 99% isopropyl alcohol to clean all the thermal paste off of the CPU and heatsink contact point. Then apply a small amount of thermal paste (you can buy new tubes for like $5), like the size of a grain of rice or a pea, right on the middle of the CPU. Then mount of the CPU cooler.

I would also recommend taking out and reinstalling your RAM, as sometimes fiddling around with computer components causes the RAM to need reseating.

Here's how to properly install thermal paste (except like I said, I don't recommend paper towel or toilet paper):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q2p6Hk4IfqI

 

[dustball]

It's unlikely to be the PSU. You'd probably be experiencing system shutdowns. However if it happened after installing the Hyper 212, it sounds like it may be a throttling issue. Possibly it's not making proper contact. It might have too much or not enough thermal compound, or perhaps the CPU was not properly cleaned of its old thermal paste.

Try remounting the CPU cooler. Take it off, and use a Q-Tip or piece of gauze (I would not recommend paper towel since it can leave fibers behind) with 99% isopropyl alcohol to clean all the thermal paste off of the CPU and heatsink contact point. Then apply a small amount of thermal paste (you can buy new tubes for like $5), like the size of a grain of rice or a pea, right on the middle of the CPU. Then mount of the CPU cooler.

I would also recommend taking out and reinstalling your RAM, as sometimes fiddling around with computer components causes the RAM to need reseating.

Here's how to properly install thermal paste (except like I said, I don't recommend paper towel or toilet paper):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q2p6Hk4IfqI

I will try it tomorrow and get right back to you on that, i should be able to run fluently 60+ FPS in most games with my set up, correct? and when i replaced my thermal paste reinstalling the new CPU, i did in fact clean off with rubbing alcohol, all of the old, for future reference, how can lack of contact affect GPU performance? also, may that be why my core temps are reading at 16-20 degrees celsius idle?

 

[Kitt Sue]

I will try it tomorrow and get right back to you on that, i should be able to run fluently 60+ FPS in most games with my set up, correct? and when i replaced my thermal paste reinstalling the new CPU, i did in fact clean off with rubbing alcohol, all of the old, for future reference, how can lack of contact affect GPU performance? also, may that be why my core temps are reading at 16-20 degrees celsius idle?

FX CPUs don't have proper temperature monitors, so it's always sketchy. They are generally closer to accurate at load but never give accurate idle temps. Idle temp is realistically most likely mid 30s. Ambient temp is around 20-25C, and the CPU cannot possibly be lower than the air temp that's blowing at it... also it's generating some heat even at idle, so probably the 30s.

But that's not the big issue here.. as long as it stays under 62C under load (although this varies too depending on which program you use to monitor) it should be fine.

Just monitor the CPU's clock speed to see if it is throttling. Since monitoring temps on AMD CPUs is tricky, have CPU-z running while you play a game in windowed mode. When the fps drops, check to see if the clock speed on the CPU is holding at its normal clock speed or if it dropped significantly.

The CPU temp doesn't affect the GPU performance per say... the GPU requires data from the CPU to do its job. The CPU needs to tell your video card what to draw... so if the CPU can't give it the data fast enough, the GPU renders less frames. And when the CPU overheats, it throttles causing it to process slower. So that is how it affects your performance in games.