Need help! 770 SLI very low benchmark scores... Where is the bottleneck?

Board: MSI Z87 XPOWER
Bios: Version 1.0
VGA: EVGA 770 Classified SLI
PSU: Corsair AX1200i
CPU: i7-4770K
MEM: Corsair Dominator Platinum 2133 4x4GB
HDD: Samsung 840 Pro 512GB SSD
HDD: WD Black 3TB
COOLER: Corsair H110 Water Cooler
OS: Windows 8 64bit Professional

Both the GPU is on a default clock speed.

Things I also notice


During benchmark or gaming, GPU2 is 15c hotter (Well its the main GPU where the Monitor is connected)

I experience some glitches during gaming, like in Far Cry 3 the NPC movement goes retarded SOMETIMES (for example when they try to do something, their animation gets glitched and its like they are moving back and forth ultra fast) - have only played the game for 30mins but I could see this happen to NPCs.

Also in Crysis 2 and Assassin's Creed 3, sometimes the graphics goes retarded like in AC3 the walls and the characters gets rumbled up while in Crysis 2 the graphics gets some artifact - The problem gets solve if I restart the game. It happens sometimes.

Well I just disabled SLI and tried another benchmark on each card (moving my monitor cable to each GPU)

Each card averages around 980 Score at Heaven. Ultra Quality and Extreme Tessel at 1080p 8xAA. And I think this is kinda low? Because I saw other people have around 1300 iirc.

Right now while Heaven is still at the background

GPU2 TOP
Graphics 405 MHz
Memory 324 MHz
Temp 45c

GPU1 BOTTOM (Testing this GPU)
Graphics 1306 MHz
Memory 3505 MHz
Temp 72c

When I tested GPU2 TOP the results are similar except I think GPU1 is around 38c




Please help me out, what should I do?

I'm thinking maybe my motherboard is bottlenecking my GPUs? I have OC Genie ON at 4.2Ghz. Using both GPU on the native x16 slots (base on the manual).

Please help.

Try switching cards in the slots and then retest - lets see if it is the motherboard or one of the cards.

You did compare to Win 8 benchmarks?

dudleycpa said:

Try switching cards in the slots and then retest - lets see if it is the motherboard or one of the cards.

You did compare to Win 8 benchmarks?

Click to expand...

Someone told me its because I have NVidia experience installed? Is it true that I take too much performance hit from this software?

A guy told me to reinstall the Driver and only leave the Driver and Phyx softwares, and uncheck the rest.

deathspank said:

Someone told me its because I have NVidia experience installed? Is it true that I take too much performance hit from this software?

A guy told me to reinstall the Driver and only leave the Driver and Phyx softwares, and uncheck the rest.

Click to expand...

Driver's are up to date? We are comparing driver vs the same driver?

You can try that first - and then we'll start with "hardware" diagnostics?

I read up real quick like on your motherboard. Since it is designed to 4-way SLI it shouldn't be "behind" any score (all things being equal).

Hope this helps!

Let us know what happened to scores with nvidia experience uninstalled. Kind of curious. Wouldn't think it would cause any preformance issues since all it does is keeps profiles for game settings for your current setup and let you know when driver updates are available. Haven't really looked around for benchmarks on the card so don't know what is suppose to be the norm but are the ones you're looking at at stock or oc'd? Could be the difference right there.

Where are you comparing scores from to know they're "low"?

Ok guys, I installed 326.41 and my Heaven score increased by around 400, from 1400 to around 1750-1800.

I tried to uninstall GFE, by installing the driver manually, unchecked everything except PhyX and GPU Driver and ticked clean install as well, but I still have GFE after the restart...

So right now I still have GFE but now running the 326.41 beta driver.

But I think my scores are still low.

If you guys look around the net, Heaven at the same settings Ultra,Extreme, 1080px8AA; people are getting an avg of 1500 for 780 (stock), 1300 770 (stock) and 2300 770 SLI (stock).

Right now my 770 SLI Classified is like 400 points away from average...

Try running Heaven with the HWBot wrapper. It has standardized settings.

ATMINSIDE said:

Try running Heaven with the HWBot wrapper. It has standardized settings.

Click to expand...

What is HWBot? And can I have a download link of the latest version?

deathspank said:

What is HWBot? And can I have a download link of the latest version?

Click to expand...

Linky

Have a look. Is your "hardware" still hot? Temperature difference wise?

dudleycpa said:

Linky

Have a look. Is your "hardware" still hot? Temperature difference wise?

Click to expand...

I think the temps at Idle (just downloading BF3 to my system from origin) is good, my GPU1(bottom) is at 30c and GPU2(top) is at 35c and my CPU is at 32c right now. I'm using OC Genie at 4.2Ghz.

Just thinking about what I just said, maybe the OC Genie is doing something with my GPU? Because as far as I know it also tries to change the GPU V and GT Ratio as I've just checked it from the manual...

deathspank said:

I think the temps at Idle (just downloading BF3 to my system from origin) is good, my GPU1(bottom) is at 30c and GPU2(top) is at 35c and my CPU is at 32c right now. I'm using OC Genie at 4.2Ghz.

Just thinking about what I just said, maybe the OC Genie is doing something with my GPU? Because as far as I know it also tries to change the GPU V and GT Ratio as I've just checked it from the manual...

Click to expand...

That would explain it! You're OC Genie - "kicking in a high loads" the motherboard settings are changed.

dudleycpa said:

That would explain it! You're OC Genie - "kicking in a high loads" the motherboard settings are changed.

Click to expand...

So the best thing to do here is to disable OC Genie and manually OC my rig?

Do you have any good OC guide? for both CPU and GPU?

Thanks heaps man.

Yes sir/ma'am/roger roger.

I would start by putting everything at stock settings. Then decide if you want to O/C the CPU first, or the GPU first.

It isn't possible to O/C both at once - not in the beginning. Heck - even the more "senior" members here have trouble doing both.

dudleycpa said:

Yes sir/ma'am/roger roger.

I would start by putting everything at stock settings. Then decide if you want to O/C the CPU first, or the GPU first.

It isn't possible to O/C both at once - not in the beginning. Heck - even the more "senior" members here have trouble doing both.

Click to expand...

Alright I'll disable OC Genie right now and try Heaven again.

Wow this is very frustrating, so i shut dow. My pc and turned off OC genie... Now my pc boots straight to windows login...

I even tried to use the direct2bios msi software but the bios is just a black screen...

What should i do?

Start with a walkthrough of how your motherboard works. Bios UEFI whatever you want to call it.

I remember looking yesterday at a couple review site. Please let me know how we can help.

dudleycpa said:

Start with a walkthrough of how your motherboard works. Bios UEFI whatever you want to call it.

I remember looking yesterday at a couple review site. Please let me know how we can help.

Click to expand...

From the msi forum they told ne to clear the cmos

Now i cleared cmos and my pc is still the same... What the hell is going on...

Btw there are new beta drivers out that are suppose to fix some issues with sli. 326.80 I believe.