Underperforming/low fps on a mid-range PC, please help!

[d4untlesss]

Build:
CPU- i5 6600k @ stock
CPU cooler- Cooler Master Hyper t4
Motherboard- Asus H110M-K
RAM- Kingston 8gb 2133mhz
GPU- MSI gtx 1060 3gb 3GT OC
Storage- Seagate Barracuda 1TB 7200rpm
PSU- Aerocool 600w 80+ Bronze

Hi,
So I recently build this PC for around £650 (roughly 800$) and when I first put it together, everything was great! (I will address the motherboard that doesn't support overclocking later). I was getting awesome framerates in games and had no problems whatsoever.

However, for a few months now my framerates have gone up and down. Today I benchmarked one operations round of BF1, Fao Fortress on Ultra, and got a 61 fps average(which is fine) but a few drops into the 30s and even 20s. I also tested Star Wars Battlefront (highest settings), and while playing single player skirmish, It hardly ever dropped from 75 fps. I played CS:GO as well (lowest settings), but I didn't benchmark it, I just played and peeked at the fps now and then. I saw it usually around 160 fps in deathmatch and 220 in offline with bots. For Ghost Recon Wildlands, I ran the benchmark on the medium preset and got 67 fps average. When I jumped in to campaign I saw a regular 47fps. Finally, I also ran MSI Afterburner and saw frequent drops in GPU usage in BF1 to around 60/70%. Normal?

Now, about that motherboard. I was originally going to go with an i5 6500 or 6600 locked processor, but I saw the 6600k drop in price a bit, so I decided to pull the trigger. I had already bought this motherboard, and I wasn't too bothered about overclocking. Side note- would getting a z170/z270 and overclocking help my framerates much? One more thing worth mentioning- I bought my CPU second-hand at CEX.

Does anyone know what the potential problem is? If you do please help me out. Sorry If the thread is a bit long, I wanted to give as much detail as possible. Thanks!

 

[Carnaxus]

Buying a second-hand CPU sounds like the most likely cause. Have you run any CPU tests, like Prime95?

 

[d4untlesss]

Hey, thanks for the reply. I ran Prime95 and that was fine, temps all under control. I also tested GTA V, and got good framerates(?). Around 70/80 normally and in the benchmark where it hits the gas truck, the frames dropped to around 50. Maybe it just depends on the game

 

[James Mason]

If you updated your nvidia driver recently, role it back, and also use the following to remove the current one completely:

If you have graphics or driver issues, one of the most common fixes is a clean uninstall and removal of your graphics drivers.

To uninstall your drivers, first download and run Display Driver Uninstaller, and follow it's recommendations of booting into safe mode and ect.
(This is a direct download link so you don't grab the wrong version)
http://www.guru3d.com/files-get/display-driver-uninstaller-download,20.html

You'll download a compressed file called "[Guru3D.com]-DDU.zip"
Right click and choose extract.
Go into the folder and run the DDU v##.##.exe
This will extract more files to this folder.
Run Display Driver Uninstaller.exe
Choose Yes when it asks you to boot into SafeMode.
After you've rebooted into safe mode.
When DDU comes up, if it hasn't selected your GPU manufacturer (Nvidia/AMD/Intel) then choose it from the drop down list
Press the Clean and Restart option
If a window comes up asking to disable the Windows automatic installation of display drivers click yes.

After (or before removing the old drivers, just put the new ones on the desktop or somewhere handy) rebooting back into Windows, manually download the latest drivers from Nvidia or AMD, don't use auto detect, choose you GPU model and OS from the drop down lists.
Nvidia: http://www.nvidia.com/Download/index.aspx?lang=en-us
AMD: http://support.amd.com/en-us/download
Intel: http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/support/detect.html

 

[d4untlesss]

Thanks for the reply. To me that looks intimidating... Will give it a go though

 

[James Mason]

Thanks for the reply. To me that looks intimidating... Will give it a go though

It's actually not, i just clearly explained every single step.

 

[Carnaxus]

With modern components, even if they're not the ungodly top-of-the-line ones, the reboot times should be short enough that it'll only take you about five minutes total. The steps look long and complex, but in truth the programs are literally point-and-click.

 

[d4untlesss]

Ok, thank you. I will try this and tell you if it change anything.

 

[d4untlesss]

If you updated your nvidia driver recently, role it back, and also use the following to remove the current one completely:

If you have graphics or driver issues, one of the most common fixes is a clean uninstall and removal of your graphics drivers.

To uninstall your drivers, first download and run Display Driver Uninstaller, and follow it's recommendations of booting into safe mode and ect.
(This is a direct download link so you don't grab the wrong version)
http://www.guru3d.com/files-get/display-driver-uninstaller-download,20.html

You'll download a compressed file called "[Guru3D.com]-DDU.zip"
Right click and choose extract.
Go into the folder and run the DDU v##.##.exe
This will extract more files to this folder.
Run Display Driver Uninstaller.exe
Choose Yes when it asks you to boot into SafeMode.
After you've rebooted into safe mode.
When DDU comes up, if it hasn't selected your GPU manufacturer (Nvidia/AMD/Intel) then choose it from the drop down list
Press the Clean and Restart option
If a window comes up asking to disable the Windows automatic installation of display drivers click yes.

After (or before removing the old drivers, just put the new ones on the desktop or somewhere handy) rebooting back into Windows, manually download the latest drivers from Nvidia or AMD, don't use auto detect, choose you GPU model and OS from the drop down lists.
Nvidia: http://www.nvidia.com/Download/index.aspx?lang=en-us
AMD: http://support.amd.com/en-us/download
Intel: http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/support/detect.html

Hey again, thanks for the help, much appreciated. I ran benchmarks again, and (sadly) no change. In BF1 deathmatch, avg of 55 fps and regular drops into the 30s and 40s. Star Wars battlefront still ran fine, and the GTA V benchmark was really weird. The fps was roughly the same, but it was taking ages to load the map, so I could see through the world and building textures took a while to load as well.

From the start, I had a bad feeling about my CPU so I'm thinking that it's my second-hand 6600k that's causing the problems. Thanks again

 

[Carnaxus]

It could also be your SSD/HDD, since you're having loading issues. Pull up an administrator command prompt and run chkdisk /f /r.

 

[d4untlesss]

It could also be your SSD/HDD, since you're having loading issues. Pull up an administrator command prompt and run chkdisk /f /r.

Hey man, thanks but I ran a check and it said "no issues were found", so my hdd's obviously ok. With the loading thing, it was the first time it had happened and I think that it won't happen again.

 

[Carnaxus]

Well that's good. Running chkdisk would also have fixed minor issues with the drive if it found any it could fix, for reference.

So everything is indeed pointing to a bad CPU. See if there's a local computer store that's willing to test an identical brand-new CPU in your machine.

 

[d4untlesss]

Well that's good. Running chkdisk would also have fixed minor issues with the drive if it found any it could fix, for reference.

So everything is indeed pointing to a bad CPU. See if there's a local computer store that's willing to test an identical brand-new CPU in your machine.

Okay- here's an update. I tested bf1 again, but this time low settings, and got a terrible average of 50. On LOW SETTINGS. I also was running MSI Afterburner, and CPU usage was pegged at 100%, but the GPU usage didn't surpass 30%! I think this means by CPU is bottlenecking my GPU? I understand that Battlefield is a very CPU-intensive game, but my performance is just unacceptable. Additionally, Battlefield 4 ran great with my PC, since I was getting an average of around 90-100 fps, never dropped below 80. Finally, despite the rubbish performance in bf1, ALL other games ran well over 60fps, with the exception of Ghost Recon Wildlands. To fix the issue with bf1, I will probably buy a new CPU, but I'm not made of money so I want to be sure that a CPU upgrade to something like an r5 1600 will resolve this issue, as it's only battlefield causing the problems.
Any further help is appreciated, thanks!

 

[Carnaxus]

That does indeed sound like your CPU is bottlenecking your GPU. If possible, test your GPU in a rig with a more powerful CPU and see if BF1 runs better.

 

[d4untlesss]

That does indeed sound like your CPU is bottlenecking your GPU. If possible, test your GPU in a rig with a more powerful CPU and see if BF1 runs better.

Yeah, I was thinking of the same thing, but I just thought it was weird that only BF1 was performing badly. Surely if BF1 was bad, BF4 would be too? I do know people with better CPUs, so I will try and test my GPU in their system. I'll let you know of the outcome.