fx4170 bottleneck on crossfire

[wtrose1]

So during the holiday shopping sales I picked up another 7870 and am now running a crossfire setup. The problem I am having is that I noticed a jump in benchmarks but I am still having a hard time with some games. My fps will drop down below 30 fps at times on ultra or high settings on games like farcry 3, metro 2033, saints row 3. I will list my information below but from reviews and test I have seen I should not be dropping like that. I realize that a (x16,x4) is not ideal but from test I should only experience a slight drop. Do you think the 4170 is holding me back?

Fx 4170 OC to 4.5Ghz water cooled
Radeon 7870 crossfire with 12.10 catalyst running x16,x4
Gygabyte GA-970A-UD3 motherboard
Corsair 850
G.skill 16gb 1600 ram.
64GB ssd for OS
1TB hardrive

 

[Anonaru]

So during the holiday shopping sales I picked up another 7870 and am now running a crossfire setup. The problem I am having is that I noticed a jump in benchmarks but I am still having a hard time with some games. My fps will drop down below 30 fps at times on ultra or high settings on games like farcry 3, metro 2033, saints row 3. I will list my information below but from reviews and test I have seen I should not be dropping like that. I realize that a (x16,x4) is not ideal but from test I should only experience a slight drop. Do you think the 4170 is holding me back?

Fx 4170 OC to 4.5Ghz water cooled
Radeon 7870 crossfire with 12.10 catalyst running x16,x4
Gygabyte GA-970A-UD3 motherboard
Corsair 850
G.skill 16gb 1600 ram.
64GB ssd for OS
1TB hardrive

If you're gaming at 1080p, then I can assure you that, not only is 2 7870s is utterly excessive, but yes your CPU is indeed bottlenecking you.

Instead of a 7870 I would have suggested you grabbing a 6300 and running it at 4.8GHz (Easy on a water loop), especially since you're running on the 970A chipset.

The 41XX chips aren't {very} good for gaming, and definitly aren't going to do the trick in an xfire configuration. The 970 chipset is going to gimp an xfire / sli config as well.

 

[wtrose1]

I am about upgrading to the 8350

 

[Anonaru]

I am about upgrading to the 8350

8350 is nice, but I still maintain that the 6300, with its ease of OC and therefore higher single / lightly threaded potential is a better buy for somebody who is gaming. This makes the 6300 a really nice sweet spot for gamers on a budget.

If you have ample cooling, a powerful PSU, and a good board, and a fatter wallet, then an 8350 is definitly the superior part. Whatever you need

 

[DevinR]

the 4170 is perfectly capable of handleing these ames in crossfire with a 990fx series board

the 970 is running one of your slots in 4x which puts your crossfire at 4x, thats where your bottle neck is

 

[wtrose1]

I was thinking about the GA-99FXA-UD3 DOES ANYONE recommend anything else?

 

[Mandrake4565]

I think Anonaru will, see his Signature.

 

[Anonaru]

I was thinking about the GA-99FXA-UD3 DOES ANYONE recommend anything else?

I like that part, but there's boards that offer a much easier OC'ing experience.. There was another thread we were in where Mandrake suggested such a part

The 990FXA is a very solid board, if you work around some of its problems (Poor LLC), you can get just as high of an OC as people on the more expensive parts .. I don't suggest aiming for anything past 4.7 or 4.8 on this board without significant OC know-how =x

the 4170 is perfectly capable of handleing these ames in crossfire with a 990fx series board
the 970 is running one of your slots in 4x which puts your crossfire at 4x, thats where your bottle neck is

Sadly I strongly disagree. Yes, this would be a bottleneck on the most demanding titles, but no, it shouldn't be substantial (Or even noticeable in most cases) The CPU he has, like most of the 2-module BD parts, are well-known as being insufficient for any demanding titles or multiple GPU setups.. SLI / x-fire is useless unless you're gaming on a multiple monitor setup, and gaming at 1080p or lower puts more load on the CPU. Any CPU reliant title is going to have problems on the Zambezi 41xx parts, of that I can guarantee. Snagging a 6300 is inexpensive, runs cooler, and OCs better than its big brother part, offering you a potential for higher lightly-threaded performance (Most of your games). An 8320 or 8350 isn't going to hurt ya either

 

[DevinR]

in my personal experiance this processor has been fine.. although like you said the 6300 piledriver is much better, and is the best cpu my mobo supports, so ill probably be upgrading my mobo as well

 

[Anonaru]

in my personal experience this processor has been fine.. although like you said the 6300 piledriver is much better, and is the best cpu my mobo supports, so ill probably be upgrading my mobo as well

Aye. There's plenty of properly coded games that wouldn't be hurt by a 4170 (Or even much older Deneb parts), of that I'm sure. Its when you run into CPU dependent games where you have a problem. Have you played Rift on that build? CPU-dependent titles have been the problem as of late, so many people are getting undesirable FPS lag issues on these titles-- A 4170 doesn't game any better than a Deneb or Thuban (And probably worse) part, got to be careful in this regard, especially when it comes to games that are actually boggled down by a weaker CPU

 

[wtrose1]

Ok so I will get my 8350 first I will post my benchmarks and avg fps to document the difference. Then I will change out the motherboard and do the same

 

[trents]

Ok so I will get my 8350 first I will post my benchmarks and avg fps to document the difference. Then I will change out the motherboard and do the same

Don't count on getting much if any overclock on the 8350 until you get the better board. And I hope you aren't disappointed at that with the gigabyte board you reference. People are finding that the Asus Crosshair and Sabertooth boards are really the only ones that seem to stand up to heavy overclocking of the 8 core BD and PD CPUs.

 

[Mandrake4565]

Don't count on getting much if any overclock on the 8350 until you get the better board. And I hope you aren't disappointed at that with the gigabyte board you reference. People are finding that the Asus Crosshair and Sabertooth boards are really the only ones that seem to stand up to heavy overclocking of the 8 core BD and PD CPUs.

+1 Though I am able to get my 8350 to 4.9+ on my M5A99x evo. Link

 

[Aldakoopa]

My GPU is still the bottleneck in my system, but that's only running a single card. Other than that, the 41xx are great for single-gpu gaming!

 

[wtrose1]

so i ended up spending a little bit more money and i got some new stuff. All the new equipment is

fx-8350
Asus 990fx Sabortooth R2.0
a new H-100 cooler
I also got the CM Storm Trooper cause the 431 Elite could not support the H-100 in Push/pull

 

[Anonaru]

+1 Though I am able to get my 8350 to 4.9+ on my M5A99x evo. Link

This a la 990XA-UD3 by Gigabyte.

Requires more effort and knowhow, but has the horsepower required.

 

[RGone]

You should like those parts and pieces for the FX-8350. The H-100 in push-pull should be able to support a 4.5Ghz speed for 24/7 use. More than 4.5Ghz is just too much of load on those inexpensive CLCL coolers. 4.3 to 4.5Ghz should be the most productive speed range anyway.

How to put up Sig at OCF.

New Shortcut method for putting a Signature with your system information following your every post so people can know what is in the case that they are trying to assist with. You can use something like what is shown in my signature as a good template of needed information Thank you.

 

[wtrose1]

I am very happy with the setup but a little frustrated with the Windows experience index. I know its a POS but I think I should do better then a 6.0 for graphics and 5.9 hard drive.

990fx Asus sabortooth
Fx-8350
Corsair tx-850
G.skill 1600hz RAM 16 GB
60GB SSD
1TB BACKUP
H-100 PUSH/PULL
CM STORM TROOPER CASE

 

[RGone]

The WEI:
Your computer is rated with an overall score, called the base score, and with subscores for each of five individual hardware components: processor, memory, graphics, gaming graphics, and primary hard disk. The base score is determined from the lowest of the five subscores, because your computer's performance is limited by its slowest or least-powerful hardware component.

The base score and subscores express the level of performance you can expect not only from Windows itself, but from the programs that you run on it. That said, a base score of 1.0 doesn't mean that you have a bad computer or that you shouldn't use Windows. It means that Windows will run with basic functionality and that common business programs, such as those in the Microsoft Office system, will perform acceptably. A higher score represents a computer that's capable of higher performance and of running programs that demand more system resources.

So for a score in reality, WEI likely sucketh large. I never even run it since I know it is a joke in many respects.

U don't show your video card so hard to say about it's influence on graphics score. WEI may be running more on the platter drive than the SSD. Pull the platter drive and see if your hard drive score goes up.

 

[ssjwizard]

Windows disk score benchmarks any drive with a swap file on it. Graphics score should be way higher, I blame your drivers OR WEI being stupid. I score 7.4ish on a single 460 and 7.9 with SLI on. Each of those GPUs are as fast as my SLI is so...