New System - Serious Underperformance

[Envee]

Hey guys,

So I've decided to build a new machine for gaming. I've always been a supporter of the Intel/nVidia setup. I'm no fanboy; its just reliable and has proven to perform well time and time again.

This time around however, I decided to go AMD/nVidia and the results are far from what I would have expected. To start, here is my current hardware list:

AMD FX-6100 (OC'd @ 4.0GHz)
nVidia GTX 560 (stock)
G.Skill DDR3 @ 1600MHz 9-9-9-24
Gigabyte 990FXA-UD3
OCZ Vertex 4 128GB SSD
700W OCZ PSU

It seems that no matter what I do, I just cant seem to get the performance out of this setup that I was expecting. In fact, I think my old Q6600 OC'd with a GTX 275 running 4GB DDR2 would have out performed this new build which is sad.

If I run a 3DMark 11 Performance benchmark, I got a really low score ... 3770 or something close to that. I can run games like BF3 on Ultra and see frame rates around 45 but I get only what I can describe as sudden "jumps" which I have not been able to resolve by changing my graphic settings. Yet if I load up a game like the Diablo 3 Beta, I am getting in the range of 8-12 FPS and the game is literally unplayable. It makes no sense.

Mind you, I am completely new to the AMD scene so there's a good chance I'm doing something wrong. I am looking for any kind of advice or I don't know... help. (side note: I just read that AMD cpu's starting since the Phenom days, cannot report CPU temps correctly? what a joke.)

At this point I'm rather concerned because I hate the thought of having to buy a new motherboard and cpu just to make the switch back to Intel leaving me out the $360 i spent on the FX-6100 and mobo plus whatever I would need to spend on the i7 and new mobo. Ugh, I should have gone with the i7 right from the beginning.

Are there any logs or reports I could upload? I would very much appreciate someone's help in getting this system running better than I've managed.

Thanks!
-Brendon

 

[trents]

Do you have the latest bios installed for your motherboard? This has been a common problem with some of the 8xx chipset series motherboards that were not originally made for FX but I'm not sure if that has been a problem with 9xx chipset boards.

Something is wrong. The FX 6100 will do better than that. What are you cooling the CPU with? Did you turn off Cool N Quiet, C1E, C6 and Turbo (misnomer since not all the cores accelerate, only some of them). Go into Windows Control Panel Power Options and configure it to High Performance. that should take care of all the "green" energy saving, down-throttling stuff.

 

[RGone]

I would "most" certainly do as 'trents' suggests.

An added thought to what I see with your ram settings and what the SPD says should be happening with the ram. Ram erroring on the textures will cause low video performance.


http://www.overclockers.com/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=109222&stc=1&d=1335669723

 

[Envee]

@trents
To be specific, I am running the GA-990FXA-UD3 (rev. 1.1) with the latest F6 BIOS which Gigabyte released on April 2nd, 2012. I am cooling it with the H60 by Corsair.

Yes, I made sure to disable everything you mentioned before applying any changes to the BIOS. Windows power profile is also set to High Performance as you recommended.

@RGone
I will make those changes and see what effect it has tomorrow and post back the results. I set the timings according to the specs put out by the manufacturer. I had assumed it was wisest to ignore the timings table CPU-Z was presenting.

 

[trents]

Are you sure this isn't a video card or video card driver problem instead of a CPU problem?

 

[RGone]

I had assumed it was wisest to ignore the timings table CPU-Z was presenting. = Unless Gskil is verbally or setting forth new spec/settings for the ram...the info that CPU-z is readig is what is actually programmed into the ram by the manufacturer as 'the' specs of the ram.

 

[gnusounduave]

For a frame of reference, AMD 6100 OC'd to 4244mhz and I got 3120 3D marks.

 

[Envee]

@trents
I wouldn't rule anything out at this point. My drivers are up to date though I really have no clue how I would go about determining if the video card is defective. Any recommendations?

@gnusounduave
Hmm. Our builds appear to be fairly similar (aside from the video card). How does your system behave when you are playing games? BF3 in particular if you have it. What I really need are more reference points. Do you know of any good sources where I can compare similar systems? I would really like to see how an i5 or i7 coupled with a GTX 560 compares to the same setup only with an FX series AMD processor. I'm beginning to think there is no real issue here other then the FX-6100's plain lack of performance with single threaded applications.

 

[mjw21a]

^^^ I know I'm running BF3 no worries on Ultra, my HD6870 should be very close performance wise to your GTX560......

 

[gnusounduave]

I play BF3 on the Xbox however I will be playing Diablo 3 come launch day so I will, at least, be able to give you some input on that when it comes out. I will say that when I played the demo, during the open beta weekend, I didn't notice any low frame rates at all. Now I didn't have fraps open or anything else that would give me my frame rate so all I can go off of is what i experienced rather than hard numbers. I know that's not saying much so take that with a grain of salt.

I also play Dirt 3 on this rig and it's been fan-flippin-tastic. I notice one strange issue with graphics while playing but I think that may be more of an ATI driver issue than anything else. For example if i'm running flat out and say i go off the road and hit a tree, the graphics, for a split second, get all funky but quickly return to normal. It's more of a "did you see that" type of thing.

 

[mjw21a]

So, have you got this working ok yet mate?

 

[BeepBeep2]

Do you have a 560 or 560 Ti or 560 Ti 448?
Your CPU is the limiting factor in 3DMark11 IMO. Your score should be around 4.5K if you have the normal 560 and a 2500K at same clocks. If your Q6600 was at 3.8 GHz or above too, you have to realize that your new CPU is slower in single threads that the current overclock.

As far as Diablo 3 getting ~10 fps, that needs some more investigating.

 

[mjw21a]

I'd be betting on some kind of fault dude. That scores too far off what others are getting with a similar spec.

 

[Envee]

@BeepBeep
I have the stock 560. Yes, I had my Q6600 oc'd to 3.8GHz.

@mjw21a
I seem to have resolved my D3 issues. I now get a steady 50-55fps when running around. Combat and the like causes a dip to around 35 fps. The "jumping" as described in an earlier post seems to have dissipated while playing BF3 but happens in D3 almost to the extent of what I was previously experiencing in BF3. There must be some faulty hardware but how do I find what's wrong. Prime95 came back okay. No issues. I will run a memtest when I get home. What if the issue is with my motherboard?

@thread
I have bumped up my CPU clock to 4.2 GHz, fixed my RAM timings to what CPU-Z was showing me, upped my NB voltage to 1.15v, dram voltage to 1.55v, and CPU voltage. Now here's the weird thing, I wanted to up the cpu voltage to 1.4v. When I updated the settings in my bios, CPU-Z reported the voltage under what I had set. It was showing 1.37 or something like that. I had to increase the voltage by 0.125 in order to get CPU-Z to report 1.4v. In the bios it shows as 1.437 or something like that (after increasing it).

I can't get you exact numbers as I'm at work right now but I think that's pretty close.

 

[Envee]

@thread
Forgot to mention, I also overclock my gpu to 900MHz and memory to 2100MHz just before I play a game. Seems to have helped coupled with the other changes.

All in all, I have things running fairly okay now (except for the weird CPU voltage issue) but I just have this feeling there is a faulty piece of hardware that's going to end up biting me in the *** later on.

 

[mjw21a]

So, does it handle a 12 hour run of IntelBurnTest and Prime95 no worries? Those are what I use to test CPU and RAM stabillity.... Testing the video requires other apps though.... Well, I use BF3 for that mainly

If the game falls over then my video is overclocked too much.

EDIT: I missed your previous post. I've found running main system RAM faster and having 8GB or more really seems to benefit BF3 performance when everything's set to ultra. I'd have to say BF3 is the only game I've ever played that hits over 8GB useage during game play. It's nuts.

 

[Envee]

I was at work and suddenly it came to me... "load line calibration". I didn't remember seeing or adjusting any LLC settings. Sure enough I checked and Gigabyte decided to move the setting in the BIOS. With that said, I've managed to clean up the vdroop I was experiencing. I get tighter voltages now and eliminated the discrepancy I was seeing between CPU-Z and my BIOS settings.

EDIT: Do you guys think it would be worthwhile trying to return this FX-6100 to NCIX (Canadaland version) and pick up the 8120 or even the 8150?

EDIT 2: Has anyone looked into disabling a few cores? If I were to disable 2 of the 6 cores do you think I would have more headroom for over-clocking it even further?

 

[mjw21a]

I've not tried really. Depends on whether you'd see any difference. To be truthful you'd probably get a bigger, and cheaper performance boost getting a Phenom X6 if you can get your hands on one. I had one and gave it to a mate, on average it was faster than my current setup altough my 8120 does somehow feel faster in general use. Thats most likely just down to running 16GB of RAM at 2080mhz rather than 8gb at 1333 though.

 

[EGutierrez91]

I also play Dirt 3 on this rig and it's been fan-flippin-tastic. I notice one strange issue with graphics while playing but I think that may be more of an ATI driver issue than anything else. For example if i'm running flat out and say i go off the road and hit a tree, the graphics, for a split second, get all funky but quickly return to normal. It's more of a "did you see that" type of thing.

That's actually part of the game. I thought it was an issue with my gfx card when I poked around the interwebs it turns out Codemasters intended for that to happen. Something to do with it looking like what would happen to an actual camera...

 

[mjw21a]

Wow, interesting.... Way for the coders to throw people off..... Ah well, mess with our heads I say, the jokes on us