Screen Lag and FPS drops - R9 380

[EoinG21]

I bought an R9 380 the other day, It's brand new and shouldn't be giving me much issues. While playing americas army proving grounds I could get silky smooth gameplay locked at 90 fps for sometime but after a little while screen lag develops and I begin to see my fps dropping. I monitored and wrote down the times at which is began. I also have screenshots from msi afterburner of my gpu usage and temp.

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B8D3HsVovbkTOU1STGZ3WjlrQ2M
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B8D3HsVovbkTVUJmbGFxdUFBSHM
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B8D3HsVovbkTczJlLUhoRlU4UUE
This last screenshot shows where the screen lag and fps drops felt the worst.

My Specs:
i5 4460
R9 380
H81-M plus
8GB ddr3
500w evga bronze psu

 

[Matthew Keeton]

Well 60c seems relatively okay for temperatures while gaming but I think we should also focus on the CPU usage and temps just to make sure, what case fans do you have installed front? Back? It might be possible that your CPU may be causing the fps drops.

 

[EoinG21]

There is a fan at the front and one at the back. The CPU temps are fine and so does the usage while under load. I only placed the R9 380 GPU into my pc yesterday. Before that I had a GTX 750ti and had no issues. What do you make of the GPU Usages in links I've provided ? Are they normal or not ? I'm also seeing people on this forum with issues in regards to i5 4460 and R9 380 together.

 

[Matthew Keeton]

Did you update the crimson drivers for the 380 to 15.11.x-beta? If you did then this could be a pretty bad problem.

 

[Matthew Keeton]

It could also be that crimson drivers are either not fully updated on your pc or even possibly power saver mode is on there are many variables that could possibly cause the 380 to freak out.

 

[EoinG21]

I have driver 16.6.2. I have power plan set to high performance. To be honest I think its a problem with the GPU itself because the games will run fine for 10-20 mins then the frame rates drop and the screen lag sets in. The GPU should be performing very well and unfortunately its giving me nothing but trouble.

 

[Matthew Keeton]

You'd most likely be correct it seems the r9 series is still having problems at the moment and it still might be sometime till amd amd address this. Until then I just recommend going for something from nvidia I have 960 4gb and its pretty darn good but I recommend going for a 970 for the same performance but to save power.

 

[EoinG21]

I've seemed to have solved the issues that I've been experiencing. First off I disabled any programs that would interfere with CPU Usage. Then in the BIOS under power plan I enabled performance. Under AI Tweaker if I remember correctly I disabled EPU Power Saving. Lastly I downloaded the latest drivers. The GPU usage graph is more than likely playing up due to the fact Americas Army Proving Grounds tends to be more CPU dependant but I could be wrong, there could be various reasons but I'm sick of looking for a definite one. I've yet to really stress test the GPU be I will soon. Thanks for your help anyway.