[SOLVED] Where is my build being bottlenecked?

[benjaminwade14]

I upgraded my computer in 2017. I have been having performance issues ever since. From what I understand, I should be able to handle every game at 1080p no issues at high/ultra settings. I can barely handle rb6 siege on med/low (game crashes on high/ultra) and dirt3 on low. Are my parts not strong enough? If I upgrade, what should I upgrade? This is my build:

MOBO- GIGABYTE GA-AB350-Gaming 3 AMD RYZEN AM4 B350 RGB Fusion Smart Fan 5 HDMI1.4 M.2 SATA 6Gbps USB 3.1 Type-A ATX DDR4 Motherboard
RAM - Crucial Ballistix Sport 16GB Kit (8GBx2) 2400 MT/s UDIMM DDR4-2400 (BLS2K8G4D240FSA)
CPU - AMD Ryzen 5 1600 Processor with Wraith Spire Cooler (YD1600BBAEBOX)
GPU - GIGABYTE Radeon RX 580 DirectX 12 GV-RX580GAMING-8GD 8GB 256-Bit GDDR5 PCI Express 3.0 x16 ATX Video Card
PSU -Antec EarthWatts EA-650 GREEN 650W ATX12V v2.4 SLI Ready CrossFire Certified 80 PLUS BRONZE Certified Active PFC Power Supply - Intel Haswell Fully Compatible
Hard Drive - SAMSUNG Spinpoint F3 ST1000DM005/HD103SJ 1TB 7200 RPM 32MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive Bare Drive

PSA - Just bought an SSD with the hopes that it will speed things up. I bought the Intel SSD 660p Series (1.0TB M.2 80mm PCIe 3.0 x 4 3D2 QLC) 2 2281" (978350) 1TB

I'm open to all and any suggestions. Please help!

 

[clarkjd]

First gen Ryzen CPUs notoriously like and perform better with fast (>3000MHz) ram. I would suggest that your performance problems lie in this area.

 

[benjaminwade14]

First gen Ryzen CPUs notoriously like and perform better with fast (>3000MHz) ram. I would suggest that your performance problems lie in this area.

Would you recommend upgrading my CPU? or is there a fix? If you think thats the only issue, I wouldn't hesitate to upgrade my CPU. I just don't want to pour all of my money into troubleshooting when I could easily just build a new system.

or should I just get faster ram?

 

[Darth Sicaedus]

First gen Ryzen CPUs notoriously like and perform better with fast (>3000MHz) ram. I would suggest that your performance problems lie in this area.

I've heard that as well. I've heard that Ryzen is fairly picky when it comes to RAM compatibility, but has good performance gains with RAM on the faster side of things. Intel CPUs see far less benefit from faster RAM.

 

[benjaminwade14]

I've heard that as well. I've heard that Ryzen is fairly picky when it comes to RAM compatibility, but has good performance gains with RAM on the faster side of things. Intel CPUs see far less benefit from faster RAM.

So, would you recommend new Ram or better CPU?

 

[cryoburner]

I can barely handle rb6 siege on med/low (game crashes on high/ultra) and dirt3 on low.

While the DDR4 2400 memory may limit performance somewhat in CPU-limited scenarios, I don't see that being the cause of a game crashing on high settings. When you "upgraded" to this hardware, did you completely reinstall Windows? Also, have you checked temperatures of your CPU and GPU while gaming, to make sure something isn't overheating? And what kind of frame rates are you getting? Even with the somewhat slower memory, I would think you should be able to run those games with high settings at 60+ frames per second most of the time.

 

[benjaminwade14]

While the DDR4 2400 memory may limit performance somewhat in CPU-limited scenarios, I don't see that being the cause of a game crashing on high settings. When you "upgraded" to this hardware, did you completely reinstall Windows? Also, have you checked temperatures of your CPU and GPU while gaming, to make sure something isn't overheating? And what kind of frame rates are you getting? Even with the somewhat slower memory, I would think you should be able to run those games with high settings at 60+ frames per second most of the time.

The frame rates were high when I first got the parts with no issues. About 2 weeks later, I started having the issues. In rb6, it would always crash if an explosion happened or if a wall was broken. Not sure if it has to do with the sounds or the physics. Now that I have it on low, it doesn't crash. Dirt, i'm barely hitting 60fps on low/med, but it would never crash. I have tested all of the temperatures and they are fine. I also tried overloading my pc with a program, I forget what it's called, but there was no temperature spikes or crashes when I overloaded my pc.
Every game I own has to be played on low/med. It's extremely discouraging when I put so much money into upgrading.

 

[benjaminwade14]

The frame rates were high when I first got the parts with no issues. About 2 weeks later, I started having the issues. In rb6, it would always crash if an explosion happened or if a wall was broken. Not sure if it has to do with the sounds or the physics. Now that I have it on low, it doesn't crash. Dirt, i'm barely hitting 60fps on low/med, but it would never crash. I have tested all of the temperatures and they are fine. I also tried overloading my pc with a program, I forget what it's called, but there was no temperature spikes or crashes when I overloaded my pc.
Every game I own has to be played on low/med. It's extremely discouraging when I put so much money into upgrading.

Oh, and no. I did not completely reinstall windows. It lost my information and won't let me. i'm using windows 10, but in the bottom right corner, it is telling me to "activate windows 10." Should I downgrade back down to windows 7 to see if it fixes anything?

 

[Darth Sicaedus]

While the DDR4 2400 memory may limit performance somewhat in CPU-limited scenarios, I don't see that being the cause of a game crashing on high settings. When you "upgraded" to this hardware, did you completely reinstall Windows? Also, have you checked temperatures of your CPU and GPU while gaming, to make sure something isn't overheating? And what kind of frame rates are you getting? Even with the somewhat slower memory, I would think you should be able to run those games with high settings at 60+ frames per second most of the time.

I agree, it is unlikely you would have such poor performance from RAM speeds alone, but I could be wrong. I am simply agreeing with clarkjd since I have also heard that from some AMD friends. I am an Intel guy though, so I don't have any first hand experience with Ryzen. I do know troubleshooting though and there are a lot of software related things that you should do before throwing money at the problem.

 

[Darth Sicaedus]

Oh, and no. I did not completely reinstall windows. It lost my information and won't let me. i'm using windows 10, but in the bottom right corner, it is telling me to "activate windows 10." Should I downgrade back down to windows 7 to see if it fixes anything?

How did you get Windows 10 in the first place? Did you do the free upgrade from Windows 7 when it was offered?

 

[benjaminwade14]

How did you get Windows 10 in the first place? Did you do the free upgrade from Windows 7 when it was offered?

Yes, I did it for free when it was offered. I upgraded after the offer was over so I could not get it again.

 

[Darth Sicaedus]

It has always been a let down to me, that they tied that license upgrade in with the Mobo. You may have to go back to Windows 7 to see if that helps. I am not sure how attached to the way you have things setup right now, but wiping and loading a fresh install of Win7 may be the quickest way to determine if the issue is software related. I have all of my data in the cloud, so if I have a problem that seems like it will be a pain to troubleshoot, I just wipe and start fresh. How do you have these games installed? Steam or through another service?

 

[indsup]

Windows should be linked to your account not your motherboard like before unless you had the oem version. That is definitely motherboard bound. Like everyone else i would recommend a fresh install of Windows. If you go through the registration process does it automatically go to register and fail with the windows 7 key? Once you upgrade to 10 you can't go back to 7 with the same key. They shut down that option more than a year ago.

 

[cryoburner]

You should reinstall Windows when doing major upgrades, like a CPU and motherboard. You can reinstall Windows 10, downloading the installer from Microsoft if you don't already have it on hand, and just skip activation, and Windows would still run unactivated, as you have it now. As far as I know, aside from the nag message and some missing customization features, Windows 10 should still be fully functional when left unactivated.

Of course, if you decide to reinstall Windows, make sure anything important on the drive is backed up first.

 

[benjaminwade14]

I will clean wipe my PC on monday when my SSD comes in. I have clean wiped it when the issues first started thinking it was a software/driver issue. Obviously it didn't fix it and I kind of quit troubleshooting at that. I figured it was a malfunctioning part. Since I have some old parts and new parts mixed, i didn't want to begin playing with it. I kind of broke down recently.

I haven't tried keeping everything on windows 7 though. I will do that on monday with the new SSD. Hopefully I won't have any issues, but from my previous experience of clean wiping my computer, it didn't change anything.

 

[benjaminwade14]

It has always been a let down to me, that they tied that license upgrade in with the Mobo. You may have to go back to Windows 7 to see if that helps. I am not sure how attached to the way you have things setup right now, but wiping and loading a fresh install of Win7 may be the quickest way to determine if the issue is software related. I have all of my data in the cloud, so if I have a problem that seems like it will be a pain to troubleshoot, I just wipe and start fresh. How do you have these games installed? Steam or through another service?

I have most of my games through steam. Recently i've been mixing my games. Uplay, Origin, Steam, epic, etc. Rb6 is on uplay, dirt is on steam.

 

[benjaminwade14]

Windows should be linked to your account not your motherboard like before unless you had the oem version. That is definitely motherboard bound. Like everyone else i would recommend a fresh install of Windows. If you go through the registration process does it automatically go to register and fail with the windows 7 key? Once you upgrade to 10 you can't go back to 7 with the same key. They shut down that option more than a year ago.

I attached it to my account but when I sign in, it isn't showing up anywhere. When I do my clean wipe of my pc, i'll try the windows 7 key. If that doesn't work, ill be calling microsoft because I paid money for that OS. haha.

 

[benjaminwade14]

You should reinstall Windows when doing major upgrades, like a CPU and motherboard. You can reinstall Windows 10, downloading the installer from Microsoft if you don't already have it on hand, and just skip activation, and Windows would still run unactivated, as you have it now. As far as I know, aside from the nag message and some missing customization features, Windows 10 should still be fully functional when left unactivated.

Of course, if you decide to reinstall Windows, make sure anything important on the drive is backed up first.

Yeah, the only thing missing now is that I can't change my background and other dumb things. I dont really care about them. Everything else seems to be fully functional. And I did reinstall windows when I upgraded. I also reinstalled it a few weeks after I installed the parts due to this issues that I have been having.

 

[Darth Sicaedus]

I have most of my games through steam. Recently i've been mixing my games. Uplay, Origin, Steam, epic, etc. Rb6 is on uplay, dirt is on steam.

How big is that SSD you purchased vs the size of your gaming library? I imagine the SSD won't be nearly big enough to store very many games. My plan probably wasn't the best anyway. Are you planning on making that SSD your boot drive?

 

[benjaminwade14]

How big is that SSD you purchased vs the size of your gaming library? I imagine the SSD won't be nearly big enough to store very many games. My plan probably wasn't the best anyway. Are you planning on making that SSD your boot drive?

I only take up about 600gb total. I planned on putting everything on the new SSD. It's a 1TB.

 

[Darth Sicaedus]

I only take up about 600gb total. I planned on putting everything on the new SSD. It's a 1TB.

I would probably recommend installing everything from scratch. Huge pain the butt and you might not be able to install every game from scratch in a single month. I know the pain all too well. I just had to do fresh setups for my new work laptop and on my home desktop for the massive amount of upgrades I just did to it. I installed 9 of my games and it made me go over my data limit with my ISP by 100GB. I really hope this works out for you. Having a gaming computer that doesn't game worth a crap is super disappointing.

 

[benjaminwade14]

I would probably recommend installing everything from scratch. Huge pain the butt and you might not be able to install every game from scratch in a single month. I know the pain all too well. I just had to do fresh setups for my new work laptop and on my home desktop for the massive amount of upgrades I just did to it. I installed 9 of my games and it made me go over my data limit with my ISP by 100GB. I really hope this works out for you. Having a gaming computer that doesn't game worth a crap is super disappointing.

Thanks! I'll give it a shot on monday! I hope it works! If not, I'm sure I'll throw another thread out there asking for help haha.