Just some general questions about

[z34type]

I can't seem to max out my fps I should be running a steady 60fps with my crossfire setup or am I wrong? Even little games like Minecraft I get away with at least 30fps-40fps max on it. Even on DayZ Standalone I get horrible fps about 19fps-30fps. Every other graphic intensive games the average is about 15fps-38fps. Even messing with a few graphics settings here and there I can't get the frames I need. I'm not sure if my ram, cpu, gpu, power supply or motherboard could relate to the low frames.

I mean I have the latest drivers from AMD, I even disabled the ULPS so my secondary gpu will not go on power saving mode. Will list my hardware below. I know I don't have an high end setup,but I should be getting more fps as I've seen people on youtube with similar setup running games like nothing. I only overclocked my Gpu but not the cpu. Not sure if my cpu is bottlenecking.

Hardware:
AMD FX-6300 Vischera Hexa Core Processor 3.50ghz
Corsair XMS3 8gb DDR3 Ram 1333mhz
MSI 970A-G43 Motherboard
Crossfired Asus Direct CU II Radeon HD 7850 2gb GDDR5
Thermaltake TR2 Bronze 700 Watts PSU
Seagate 7200rpm 1.5tb
Antec Kuhler H20 650 Liquid Cooling

Software:
Microsoft Windows 8.1 Pro 64-Bit


Now I know memory speed is 1333mhz will upgrading to a 1600mhz make any difference in gaming? I also know that crossfire setup is not the best, I just don't get how other people manage to get more fps with crossfire. So if anyone can give their 2 cents about this let me know. What am I doing wrong?

 

[DominionSeraph]

Try running a benchmark instead of going by horribly written games.

 

[z34type]

Try running a benchmark instead of going by horribly written games.

I haved used 3DMARK Firestrike and I score just below the high end pc category around 6398 was running pretty smoothly in the beginning between 48-58fps but with screen tearing at some occasions,but then when the combination test in the last benchmark test I was running between 8-10fps. Its pretty bad. I overclocked my gpu to 1050mhz which is the highest I can o'c using AMD Catalyst . At the beginning of the benchmark it just crashed

My mobo has different PCI-E speeds x16 and the other is x4 but was told some people have issues with getting the full speed of the secondary gpu and I've heard that x16 and x4 is perfectly fine. Its really controversial so I don't know who to believe.

 

[nsafreak]

I haved used 3DMARK Firestrike and I score just below the high end pc category around 6398 was running pretty smoothly in the beginning between 48-58fps but with screen tearing at some occasions,but then when the combination test in the last benchmark test I was running between 8-10fps. Its pretty bad. I overclocked my gpu to 1050mhz which is the highest I can o'c using AMD Catalyst . At the beginning of the benchmark it just crashed

My mobo has different PCI-E speeds x16 and the other is x4 but was told some people have issues with getting the full speed of the secondary gpu and I've heard that x16 and x4 is perfectly fine. Its really controversial so I don't know who to believe.

That's quite likely what's throwing the system off. See if setting both slots to x8 helps at all.

 

[z34type]

That's quite likely what's throwing the system off. See if setting both slots to x8 helps at all.

How do I do change the speeds of the slots? I didn't see any options for me to change on the BIOS. I have the MSI 970A-G43 mobo which is a pretty entry level mobo. I didn't know you can change the speeds on the pci-e slots. I just heard you will have to buy certain mobo's that have preset speeds on pci-e slots.

 

[mfenn]

How do I do change the speeds of the slots? I didn't see any options for me to change on the BIOS. I have the MSI 970A-G43 mobo which is a pretty entry level mobo. I didn't know you can change the speeds on the pci-e slots. I just heard you will have to buy certain mobo's that have preset speeds on pci-e slots.

The MSI 970A-G43 is only capable of x16/x4 (same for nearly all AMD 970 boards, the ASUS 970 Extreme4 is the only x8/x8 970 board I've seen).

Overall I think your issues are more fundamental design issues:

- Fairly weak CPU playing CPU-intensive games. To mitigate, try overclocking
- SLI/Crossfire on lower-midrange cards has never been super smooth because the cards don't have enough headroom to keep minimum framerates acceptably high. If you hit a couple hard frames, AFR will ensure that you crash back down to single-GPU minimum framerates. Not too much you can do here other than try to get more out of your cards by OC'ing, or selling them and buying a single better card.

 

[z34type]

The MSI 970A-G43 is only capable of x16/x4 (same for nearly all AMD 970 boards, the ASUS 970 Extreme4 is the only x8/x8 970 board I've seen).

Overall I think your issues are more fundamental design issues:

- Fairly weak CPU playing CPU-intensive games. To mitigate, try overclocking
- SLI/Crossfire on lower-midrange cards has never been super smooth because the cards don't have enough headroom to keep minimum framerates acceptably high. If you hit a couple hard frames, AFR will ensure that you crash back down to single-GPU minimum framerates. Not too much you can do here other than try to get more out of your cards by OC'ing, or selling them and buying a single better card.

I'll probably just sell the cards and get myself a GTX 980 as its only 500+ at Amazon. Its just so weird how I pass more than requirements needed for DayZ Standalone according to game debate that my specs can run that game at ultra settings,but I don't. Just before replying to this I was getting a shitty 9fps when hitting huge towns on that game. Max Frames I got was 38fps but drops heavily and fast by simply just moving the mouse.

 

[Yuriman]

Minecraft doesn't take advantage of Crossfire. Even a single 7850 should be capable of delivering hundreds of frames per second though.

In the case of DayZ, you're likely CPU bound. With AMD CPUs you have terrible per-thread performance but you get a ton of cores, and as I understand, it isn't a well threaded game. Running Crossfire adds some more CPU overhead, and AMD's GPU drivers have a bit more overhead than NV's on top of that.

Try resetting everything back to default in your bios, and perhaps uninstall your display drivers before (re)installing the latest ones. Don't change anything in the driver control panel, and see how it runs.

After that, try running with just one videocard and see if your performance improves. If so, you'll probably be better served by a CPU upgrade.

 

[mfenn]

Minecraft doesn't take advantage of Crossfire. Even a single 7850 should be capable of delivering hundreds of frames per second though.

In the case of DayZ, you're likely CPU bound. With AMD CPUs you have terrible per-thread performance but you get a ton of cores, and as I understand, it isn't a well threaded game. Running Crossfire adds some more CPU overhead, and AMD's GPU drivers have a bit more overhead than NV's on top of that.

Try resetting everything back to default in your bios, and perhaps uninstall your display drivers before (re)installing the latest ones. Don't change anything in the driver control panel, and see how it runs.

After that, try running with just one videocard and see if your performance improves. If so, you'll probably be better served by a CPU upgrade.

:thumbsup::thumbsup: to this. Don't go off and spend $500 on a GTX 980 just to find out that you were CPU-bottlenecked. In your situation, it's quite possible that a $250 mobo + CPU and $250 GPU would give you a better overall upgrade.

 

[z34type]

Minecraft doesn't take advantage of Crossfire. Even a single 7850 should be capable of delivering hundreds of frames per second though.

In the case of DayZ, you're likely CPU bound. With AMD CPUs you have terrible per-thread performance but you get a ton of cores, and as I understand, it isn't a well threaded game. Running Crossfire adds some more CPU overhead, and AMD's GPU drivers have a bit more overhead than NV's on top of that.

Try resetting everything back to default in your bios, and perhaps uninstall your display drivers before (re)installing the latest ones. Don't change anything in the driver control panel, and see how it runs.

After that, try running with just one videocard and see if your performance improves. If so, you'll probably be better served by a CPU upgrade.

Now that you mentioned it. I don't play Minecraft,but my nephew does sometime on my PC rig when he comes over, he will complain how shitty it is and laggy sometimes its due to the server connection,but 99% of the time its always a very low fps.
I ran single and everything set to default on CCC,but I'm not getting hundred of frames like you mentioned and turning over to crossfire does not make any difference in fps.

Its quite strange how my 12 year old nephews cheaper pc at his home outperforms my pc in Minecraft. He's only running a AMD A6-3500 APU with single PNY GTX 460 Enthusiast Edition 1gb of GDDR5 Video ram and 8gb of ram. He runs a constant 60fps only dropping to 58fps even with Chivalry Medieval warfare always a steady 60fps. I happened to build his pc as well. I ran both single and crossfire setup with no improvement in fps with the same games on my rig. I started to think that both of my cards were broken. Maybe a faulty crossfire bridge cable?

I will try resetting the bios to default to see if that helps then testing with single and crossfire. As far as installing new drivers from AMD. I've always had the habit of doing a clean uninstall of the previous drivers and installing the new drivers. I always do a reboot too.

 

[z34type]

:thumbsup::thumbsup: to this. Don't go off and spend $500 on a GTX 980 just to find out that you were CPU-bottlenecked. In your situation, it's quite possible that a $250 mobo + CPU and $250 GPU would give you a better overall upgrade.

I wish I had the budget for intel processors,but I kinda want to stick with AMD. I am not fan boy I like both cpu's,but just I believe AMD CPU's has overall good performance for the buck. Sometimes on par with Intel that cost twice as much. I might just stick with my old mobo and get a FX 8350 and end up picking up a GTX 980 to prepare for " The Evil Within " I heard that game requires a beefy cpu and graphics to run at its full potential.

Or like you said that 500 can go on a nice mobo and cpu,but are you saying I should stick with my gpu?

 

[Yuriman]

AMD and Intel give you pretty similar performance per dollar right now - an i3 costs about the same as an FX-6300 and is a pretty comparable chip, winning in some metrics and losing in others. The FX is already bought and paid for though, and it's not a bad processor by any means. It's just weaker for your particular uses, from the sounds of it, but would be a better CPU than an i3 if you played things like Battlefield (highly threaded) or did a lot of video encoding.

Honestly though, it sounds like it's not performing as it should. A fresh installation of Windows might not be a bad idea if all else fails, before you spend money.

I'd be happy to do some side-by-side benchmarks in the games that we have in common, if you'd like, since I have a (single) 7850 as well. I put a 7850 in my wife's Haswell i3 computer, so I also have the option of running on that, or of putting both cards in my PC for a short while to do some crossfire benchmarks.

 

[mfenn]

I wish I had the budget for intel processors,but I kinda want to stick with AMD. I am not fan boy I like both cpu's,but just I believe AMD CPU's has overall good performance for the buck. Sometimes on par with Intel that cost twice as much. I might just stick with my old mobo and get a FX 8350 and end up picking up a GTX 980 to prepare for " The Evil Within " I heard that game requires a beefy cpu and graphics to run at its full potential.

Or like you said that 500 can go on a nice mobo and cpu,but are you saying I should stick with my gpu?

If you have $500 to drop on a GPU, you certainly have the budget for an Intel CPU. My recommendation is that you upgrade both your CPU and GPU. The CPU because it is weak for CPU intensive games, and the GPU because Crossfire on two lower-midrange cards is a recipe for disaster, as you've discovered.

I would not recommend an FX-8350, it is completely outclassed by similarly-priced Intel CPUs. Right now, AMD can only compete on price, and even there, Intel equivalents are better for gaming.

For example:

i5 4440 $176 AP
MSI B85M Gaming $80 AR
HIS R9 280X 3GB $230 AR
Total: $486

 

[z34type]

AMD and Intel give you pretty similar performance per dollar right now - an i3 costs about the same as an FX-6300 and is a pretty comparable chip, winning in some metrics and losing in others. The FX is already bought and paid for though, and it's not a bad processor by any means. It's just weaker for your particular uses, from the sounds of it, but would be a better CPU than an i3 if you played things like Battlefield (highly threaded) or did a lot of video encoding.

Honestly though, it sounds like it's not performing as it should. A fresh installation of Windows might not be a bad idea if all else fails, before you spend money.

I'd be happy to do some side-by-side benchmarks in the games that we have in common, if you'd like, since I have a (single) 7850 as well. I put a 7850 in my wife's Haswell i3 computer, so I also have the option of running on that, or of putting both cards in my PC for a short while to do some crossfire benchmarks.

I ran Crysis and Crysis 3 on both my rig and my nephew's rig. I have severe tearing on my screen and slow downs both games. I can't get full screen to work on my end as well. I have a 27" AOC IPS LED Monitor. On my nephew's rig he gets about 24-30fps but its very smooth, no tearing, no lag or stuttering. I get about the same fps as him,but mine is extremely choppy, slow and not playable at all. I did this on both single and xfire setup. I have a much more expensive setup than him which is very sad lol!

Yeah man sounds good, let me know what kind of numbers you get. What benchmark software will you be running so I can compare? I'm about to record a few things and link it over here. I am picking up my nephews rig and will record through my camera not through fraps. I'll probably just upload it through YouTube to show you guys what I mean.

EDIT: Is there a right way to hook up the HDMI cable to a xfire gpu? Do I put it on the top or second card?

 

[z34type]

If you have $500 to drop on a GPU, you certainly have the budget for an Intel CPU. My recommendation is that you upgrade both your CPU and GPU. The CPU because it is weak for CPU intensive games, and the GPU because Crossfire on two lower-midrange cards is a recipe for disaster, as you've discovered.

I would not recommend an FX-8350, it is completely outclassed by similarly-priced Intel CPUs. Right now, AMD can only compete on price, and even there, Intel equivalents are better for gaming.

For example:

i5 4440 $176 AP
MSI B85M Gaming $80 AR
HIS R9 280X 3GB $230 AR
Total: $486

Your right man I wasn't thinking. So convert to Intel now or die? lol
Oh man that is cheap so am I expecting a lot more performance with that setup than the one I have?
I'll see what I can do about my issues first with my rig and to see if there's anything I'm doing wrong again. It doesn't hurt to check and save myself a whole deal of money.
There is obviously something wrong with my setup.

 

[Yuriman]

Seems a bit odd, tearing usually happens (at least visibly) when framerate is very high and can be helped with vsync. I'd like to see a video, if your camera can capture it effectively.

There shouldn't be a wrong card for Crossfire, and these issues are unlikely caused by anything but CPU, GPU or software. Possibly something running in the background? Have you checked task manager? Could also be throttling, either videocard or CPU. Check temperatures and/or get rid of any overclocks?

I have a copies of Crysis 3 and Minecraft, and can download DayZ, though I don't know which version to download, there are a ton in the Playw withSIX mods menu. Suggest some others you're having problems with? Set up some scenarios (e.g. pick spots in games) or find some servers and I'll try to get an apples-to-apples comparison.

 

[z34type]

Seems a bit odd, tearing usually happens (at least visibly) when framerate is very high and can be helped with vsync. I'd like to see a video, if your camera can capture it effectively.

There shouldn't be a wrong card for Crossfire, and these issues are unlikely caused by anything but CPU, GPU or software. Possibly something running in the background? Have you checked task manager? Could also be throttling, either videocard or CPU. Check temperatures and/or get rid of any overclocks?

I have a copies of Crysis 3 and Minecraft, and can download DayZ, though I don't know which version to download, there are a ton in the Playw withSIX mods menu. Suggest some others you're having problems with? Set up some scenarios (e.g. pick spots in games) or find some servers and I'll try to get an apples-to-apples comparison.

I have Minecraft and DayZ all fully updated. My nephew put some mods for Minecraft to make it run better with or without it. His pc can run it better. DayZ is from Steam so it has all the patched up updates and everything. I do not have DayZ installed on my nephew's pc so I can't tell you how it runs on his,but for sure I know it will run significantly better from what I've been seeing with other games overall.

Like I said my ram is 1333mhz,but why am I only getting 667mhz? Oh by the way how do I reset my bios? Do I just set it to default? Or Do i have to take out the cmos battery out? It still has the latest bios update from MSI which I flashed months ago when I first purchased the mobo.

I've applied a custom 3D Application from CCC for Crysis when v-sync on and triple buffering as well. With it being on or off does not make any difference.

 

[sandorski]

That's really odd performance. My current system in sig and my former system that my Bro now uses(Phenom 2 1055T/Radeon 7750) both get better performance in Minecraft than what you are claiming.

Maybe it's the RAM, but it might be something else amiss on the Software side.

 

[XavierMace]

Keep in mind that Minecraft is entirely dependent of Java. Make sure it's up to date, make sure you are running the 64 bit version, and make sure you are letting it use enough memory.

 

[z34type]

That's really odd performance. My current system in sig and my former system that my Bro now uses(Phenom 2 1055T/Radeon 7750) both get better performance in Minecraft than what you are claiming.

Maybe it's the RAM, but it might be something else amiss on the Software side.

I just did a clean install of Windows 8.1 Pro 64-Bit literally 2 months ago coming from Windows 8 Pro 64-Bit. It didn't make any difference updating to 8.1.

 

[z34type]

Keep in mind that Minecraft is entirely dependent of Java. Make sure it's up to date, make sure you are running the 64 bit version, and make sure you are letting it use enough memory.

Where do I get the latest 64-Bit Java? I got my java 64-bit from Cnet which is an old one. The one from the website doesn't let me download the 64-bit version.

 

[z34type]

So this is a comparison between my rig and my nephews rig. Here is the link to the video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ifwDrTTj5rM I forgot to mention on the video that we both ran 1440x900. On my nephew's monitor that's his maximum resolution so I downscale my resolution to match his comparison. FPS was even worst when mine is set to 1920x1080

Update: So after recording this video. I decided to troubleshoot and found out what's causing my games to have a dramatic drop in fps and the games unplayable scenarios due to the slow downs, chopping and screen tearing.
On Bios the setting is set to MSI 1 second OC and wasn't set on standard. After putting it to standard. Crysis 1 was very playable set to very high settings and was pretty smooth. I still get the occasional 18fps drops from 30. When I look up the sky I get 55fps,but dramatically drops down back to 28-30fps when running around looking forward. At this point on its very playable. I still don't have the full knowledge of how v-sync works and triple buffering on CCC. I know it has something to do with reducing or eliminating screen tearing,but how does that correspond to my monitor refresh rate? I have a 27" AOC IPS LED D2757 I think the max refresh rate on this is 60hz. And what trips me out is. I disable v-sync and triple buffering on my nephews rig on his nvidia card. He was able to get a whopping 30 fps increase on Crysis 1. Were talking about an old GTX 460 with 1gb GDDR5 of video ram! Now he is constant with 55-60fps even sometimes getting over 60fps which is so bullshi** while I'm still behind below 30fps.

Here is a pic of his fps, I know its not a video,but I just didn't want to upload anymore on Youtube takes too long.

Update: So after being bored all night. I decided to show you some DayZ videos running just below 24fps. I used Dxtory for recording and fraps to show the fps overlays. My nephew doesn't have sony vegas so recording from fraps or dxtory on his pc will just take too long to upload on YouTube. But this recording is straight from my rig to show you guys how just crappy my fps is on DayZ Standalone.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AIweutaE0Xc&feature=youtu.be

 

[monkeydelmagico]

EDIT: Is there a right way to hook up the HDMI cable to a xfire gpu? Do I put it on the top or second card?

If you have a DVI cable handy try it. I've had bad luck with an HDMI cable and 7850 in the past.

 

[monkeydelmagico]

When I look up the sky I get 55fps,but dramatically drops down back to 28-30fps when running around looking forward. At this point on its very playable. I still don't have the full knowledge of how v-sync works and triple buffering on CCC. I know it has something to do with reducing or eliminating screen tearing,but how does that correspond to my monitor refresh rate? I have a 27" AOC IPS LED D2757 I think the max refresh rate on this is 60hz. And what trips me out is. I disable v-sync and triple buffering on my nephews rig on his nvidia card.

It's unlikely that you will be able to set crysis at very high detail with a GTX 460 and use vsync. Especially not with triple buffer. If you want vsync on try decreasing the graphic detail levels to medium. When you have vsync on and overwhelm the GPU capacity it will drop from 60fps down to 30 or even 15 all at once. It's the GPU trying to match the screen at 60mhz.

Also, as a general rule I don't use CCC for game settings and definitely not for Crysis or Minecraft. Disable CCC and use the in game video detail settings.

 

[Yuriman]

In Crysis, I notice you're running 8x anti-aliasing, which is probably not realistic with any setup. Turn that down and you should see dramatic improvements in framerate. I don't even consider it to be part of "maxing" a game out, as anti-aliasing set high enough can bring most any card to its knees.

Do you have 8xAA enabled in DayZ as well? From your video, it looks like the game is "hitching". Turning up AA can cause the game to exceed the amount of memory your video cards have, resulting in them hitting your much slower system memory to store data. Another possibility is that you are exceeding the amount of system memory you have, and that in turn is hitting your hard drive to store data. You can see your total system memory used in task manager.