My radeon hd 6670 is bottlenecked. Anything i can do without buying a new cpu?

[Vesku]

Not sure who told you there wasn't much difference between DDR3 and GDDR5 6670 when you were making your purchasing decision. Regardless, as has been said by several posters: the behavior you are describing is not what should be expected from your current setup (DDR3 and single channel noted).

It does sound like the least painful way forward is a fresh windows install, if you have an unused hard drive lying around it's worth a shot. Even an old clunker of a drive, just to see how the graphics perform with a fresh windows install.

 

[birthdaymonkey]

uhh, i dont know if i wanna do that.... I dont have any cd's to backup my files and ive got over 300gigs of used space...

If you value your data, you should invest in a backup hard drive anyway. Eventually you'll thank yourself.

 

[Jdm13oiZz]

Not sure who told you there wasn't much difference between DDR3 and GDDR5 6670 when you were making your purchasing decision. Regardless, as has been said by several posters: the behavior you are describing is not what should be expected from your current setup (DDR3 and single channel noted).

It does sound like the least painful way forward is a fresh windows install, if you have an unused hard drive lying around it's worth a shot. Even an old clunker of a drive, just to see how the graphics perform with a fresh windows install.

i dont think i can even do that, cause the HP came with windows 7 preinstalled... i dont have a windows 7 disc.

 

[KompuKare]

Look, you don't want to re-install and while you may have to go down that route, you should first make sure that you don't have CPU spikes as I and several others have already said.

Process Explorer or DPC Latency Checker. Just because you used msconfig to stop all startup process does not mean your install is fine. The latency checker is more about finding out if any hardware devices have poor drivers which are causing your machine to stutter. And if you find that something is causing that CPU spike, you then try to eliminate it by disabling stuff in device manager and/or the BIOS. Basically if you get a spike which goes away when you disable say onboard audio or the USB controller (careful if you don't have a PS/2 keyboard) etc. then you can investigate if there's a newer driver for that device (or even an older driver because sometimes bugs get introduced).

 

[Jdm13oiZz]

well, i checked process explorer and the only ones i really see go up are skype, avast and audiodb.

those arent using too much of my cpu though... only like 1-2%

 

[sm625]

All antivirus programs do much more to your system than the 1-2% cpu use they report. They do heavy file I/O. I would completely remove that program and see if it helps. If it does then you may want to look for an av that plays nicer with your setup.

 

[stylez777]

I'm too lazy to go back through the thread but didn't someone already mention he had a 200w PSU?? Could be a cause.

It is beating a dead horse though, when things are FUBAR and you think you did everything you could pretty much it time to step back and say "F it!" reboot time!

Since you have an HP machine and you don't even have a real copy of windows form them probably just some system restore crap they hand out you are in a pickle.

 

[Jdm13oiZz]

I'm too lazy to go back through the thread but didn't someone already mention he had a 200w PSU?? Could be a cause.

It is beating a dead horse though, when things are FUBAR and you think you did everything you could pretty much it time to step back and say "F it!" reboot time!

Since you have an HP machine and you don't even have a real copy of windows form them probably just some system restore crap they hand out you are in a pickle.

someone asked me if i was still using my stock psu and well nope, im using a corsair cx430 (430w psu)..

also, turns out for gta 4 when i installed patch 7 my fps finally started changing when i changed the settings around...

now i can get away with 25-35 with textures on high, shadows on high and everything else on medium and the sliders set to like 15. i wish i could get atleast 35-45 on these settings though... :/ i hope if i were to get dual channel ram or buy a quad core id get near this..

and 40-70fps if i set everything on low..

 

[birthdaymonkey]

someone asked me if i was still using my stock psu and well nope, im using a corsair cx430 (430w psu)..

also, turns out for gta 4 when i installed patch 7 my fps finally started changing when i changed the settings around...

now i can get away with 25-35 with textures on high, shadows on high and everything else on medium and the sliders set to like 15. i wish i could get atleast 35-45 on these settings though... :/ i hope if i were to get dual channel ram or buy a quad core id get near this..

and 40-70fps if i set everything on low..

This suggests to me that your issue is the GPU. Generally, graphical features, especially shadow and textures, depend on the video card, not the CPU. I really don't think dual channel RAM or a quad core CPU is going to matter with a 6670 DDR3.

It's a budget graphics card. It's not going to run any modern game well on high settings at 16x9.

 

[Jdm13oiZz]

This suggests to me that your issue is the GPU. Generally, graphical features, especially shadow and textures, depend on the video card, not the CPU. I really don't think dual channel RAM or a quad core CPU is going to matter with a 6670 DDR3.

It's a budget graphics card. It's not going to run any modern game well on high settings at 16x9.

true, i had budget in mind when i bought it lol.. i was trying to buy a new psu and gpu for under 100 dollars

i still just dont understand why other games are stuttering, and the fps wont change no matter what settings... its wierd how only gta 4 stopped doing this...

 

[KingFatty]

Apologies if this has already been covered in the thread, but have you tried some benchmarking tools? Maybe you can create a reproducible environment to confirm/deny whether the CPU or GPU is limiting the behavior?

An example comes to mind: set up a dual-monitor arrangement. On the second monitor, run task manager to show your CPU load over time, and also run GPU-Z to show the GPU load over time.

Then, on the first monitor, run a reproducible benchmark such as 3DMark or Unigine Heaven or etc. etc., and preferably you find one that can stress the CPU as well as the GPU.

Then, run that benchmark at a very low resolution. Watch the charts to see how your CPU and GPU are loaded throughout. Then, increase the resolution and repeat.

Maybe a pattern will emerge, where you see the GPU maxing out at 100% consistently when you aren't limiting to very low resolutions?

Summary: use a reproducible environment, instead of random games, to tease out a pattern and obtain factual information, instead of random anectdotal game scenarios.

 

[Jdm13oiZz]

Apologies if this has already been covered in the thread, but have you tried some benchmarking tools? Maybe you can create a reproducible environment to confirm/deny whether the CPU or GPU is limiting the behavior?

An example comes to mind: set up a dual-monitor arrangement. On the second monitor, run task manager to show your CPU load over time, and also run GPU-Z to show the GPU load over time.

Then, on the first monitor, run a reproducible benchmark such as 3DMark or Unigine Heaven or etc. etc., and preferably you find one that can stress the CPU as well as the GPU.

Then, run that benchmark at a very low resolution. Watch the charts to see how your CPU and GPU are loaded throughout. Then, increase the resolution and repeat.

Maybe a pattern will emerge, where you see the GPU maxing out at 100% consistently when you aren't limiting to very low resolutions?

Summary: use a reproducible environment, instead of random games, to tease out a pattern and obtain factual information, instead of random anectdotal game scenarios.

yeah, i did do a few benchmarks for the gpu and cpu but it was to see the heat. gpu runs at like 50c or so and cpu runs at around 40c.

also, i noticed as i was playing gta 4 if i set the resolution down to like 800x600 or 1280x720 i lose fps. (about 5-10fps..)

 

[Stuka87]

Download and run this app, it will record the CPU usage that you see.

http://www.addictivetips.com/window...-cpu-load-for-advanced-system-administrators/

Launch it and go play one of the games that slows down for a while (15 mins or so). Then go back and report what you see. If you truly are CPU bound, we will see the majority of your CPU usage in the 90% area. But my guess is that you are GPU bound (6670 is not that fast) and that your CPU usage wont be that high.

This ocourse assume you dont have weird CPU spikes happening.

 

[KingFatty]

yeah, i did do a few benchmarks for the gpu and cpu but it was to see the heat. gpu runs at like 50c or so and cpu runs at around 40c.

also, i noticed as i was playing gta 4 if i set the resolution down to like 800x600 or 1280x720 i lose fps. (about 5-10fps..)

It's a good opportunity to really learn about what is happening with your system, how the GPU usage is looking over time, and how the CPU usage is looking over time. You could even see this using a single display, by running the monitoring utilities in the background then running the game.

But then again, the cold hard facts might not be agreeable to a pre-formed conclusion. In fact, they may lead to reconsideration as to whether the title of this thread carries some bias/sensationalism that lacks a factual basis...

 

[blckgrffn]

There is so much advice in this thread that you either a)haven't taken or b)find a way not to follow that it's hard to spend much time offering further assistance.

I'll be back once you have gone to dual channel ram and done a fresh 7 install. I am sure your case has a COA, all you need is media. If you know how to burn a DVD, you probably just need to ask around here. Or look on the internet.