Athlon x4 950 CPU problem, underperforming in games.

[Billyboy]

Hello people, I was having a lot of issues with my cpu perfomance over the last 9 months. My Specs are:

Athlon x4 950 

Asus Gtx 1050 2GB

8GB DDR4 2133Mhz G-Skill 

Asus Prime A320M-K MB

500gb seagate hdd

My problem is, I get really low fps in multiplayer or generally CPU heavy games. Now this system may be shitty but all I'm looking for is stable 30fps, but even in Fortnite it drops to 25fps all the time. 

-Changing resolution does nothing, so I've narrowed the problem to the cpu.

-I opened my computer last day and there was a melted grey paste in-between the heatsink and the cpu, I suppose it was the thermal paste.

-I re-applied it but it's still the same.( I couldn't see any bent pins by the way.) 

Also it doesn't start the drop frames when it gets hot, it always drops frames and stutters.In games, the fps drops occur when I'm in a wide area or when there are a lot of npcs. Also it gets worse if I'm downloading something or if I'm in discord. My question is, which component causes this problem. I don't have a lot of money right now so I don't want to replace anything that works properly. 

(By the way when playing games the cpu is around 80-85 degrees.)

Sorry for weird formating and I can try to answer any questions you have, thank you!

[GoldenLag]

Well...... The athlon x4 950 is an awful CPU........

 

Its more or less just the really slow CPU. Swap it with r3 1200 or better

[Turtle Rig]

6 minutes ago, Billyboy said:

Hello people, I was having a lot of issues with my cpu perfomance over the last 9 months. My Specs are:

Athlon x4 950 

Asus Gtx 1050 2GB

8GB DDR4 2133Mhz G-Skill 

Asus Prime A320M-K MB

500gb seagate hdd

My problem is, I get really low fps in multiplayer or generally CPU heavy games. Now this system may be shitty but all I'm looking for is stable 30fps, but even in Fortnite it drops to 25fps all the time. 

-Changing resolution does nothing, so I've narrowed the problem to the cpu.

-I opened my computer last day and there was a melted grey paste in-between the heatsink and the cpu, I suppose it was the thermal paste.

-I re-applied it but it's still the same.( I couldn't see any bent pins by the way.) 

Also it doesn't start the drop frames when it gets hot, it always drops frames and stutters.In games, the fps drops occur when I'm in a wide area or when there are a lot of npcs. Also it gets worse if I'm downloading something or if I'm in discord. My question is, which component causes this problem. I don't have a lot of money right now so I don't want to replace anything that works properly. 

(By the way when playing games the cpu is around 80-85 degrees.)

Sorry for weird formating and I can try to answer any questions you have, thank you!

That is a crummy setup no offense.  Honestly the 1050Ti bottlenecks the CPU.  When was things doing well without this issue ?  What have you changed since the time it was working and what not.

[Likwid]

@Billyboy Looks like a CPU bottleneck. You should check CPU temps, could be thermal throttling as well. Is fan spinning faster when it gets hot?

[Silentprototipe]

The CPU is killing you easily, Simply put it, Ryzen. You have the board for it. So you should really look into at least a 200GE  

[Likwid]

Also could be there is more software running in background now then that time period before

[Billyboy]

1 minute ago, Turtle Rig said:

That is a crummy setup no offense.  Honestly the 1050Ti bottlenecks the CPU.  When was things doing well without this issue ?  What have you changed since the time it was working and what not.

That's the problem, it was always like this from the start but it was a gift and I didn't complain. I've only replaced the HDD with another Seagate 500gb. By the way its a non-ti card, if it makes any difference. Thanks for the reply.

[Xkillerpn]

Simple as this that 950 is a bulldozer fx a 4 core one, the fx 8350 oc will botleneck a rx580 in some games and thats 8 cores. Upgrade to a ryzen 1200 and oc it to 3.8 or 3.9 and it will do very very good 

[Billyboy]

3 minutes ago, Likwid said:

@Billyboy Looks like a CPU bottleneck. You should check CPU temps, could be thermal throttling as well. Is fan spinning faster when it gets hot?

Hey, sometimes the fan gets faster for a second but that's it. The tempsnare at around 80 degrees when gaming. Thanks.

[Billyboy]

7 minutes ago, GoldenLag said:

Well...... The athlon x4 950 is an awful CPU........

 

Its more or less just the really slow CPU. Swap it with r3 1200 or better

I'm planning on doing that, just want to make sure it's a cpu problem. Thank you for the help

[Billyboy]

7 minutes ago, Likwid said:

Also could be there is more software running in background now then that time period before

I've disabled/uninstalled a lot of default apps and services through some scripts. Didn't change anything. When I'm playing it's just the game, steam and some other minor services

[Billyboy]

11 minutes ago, GoldenLag said:

Well...... The athlon x4 950 is an awful CPU........

 

Its more or less just the really slow CPU. Swap it with r3 1200 or better

It is bad but is it 25fps on fortnite bad? I'm asking genuinely because i really have no idea.

[Billyboy]

10 minutes ago, Silentprototipe said:

The CPU is killing you easily, Simply put it, Ryzen. You have the board for it. So you should really look into at least a 200GE  

Will probably look into a 200ge since I can't afford a r3 1200 right now. Thanks.

[Silentprototipe]

1 minute ago, Billyboy said:

Will probably look into a 200ge since I can't afford a r3 1200 right now. Thanks.

Id update your mobo first before you get rid of the Athlon you have  

[Billyboy]

2 minutes ago, Silentprototipe said:

Id update your mobo first before you get rid of the Athlon you have  

Do I need to just update to the latest version or is there one that 200ge supports? I'm clueless about this stuff. 

[Silentprototipe]

Just now, Billyboy said:

Do I need to just update to the latest version or is there one that 200ge supports? I'm clueless about this stuff. 

Latest will do

[aezakmi]

Honestly I can't believe some of the comments above, talking like this CPU is from 1998 or something like that....

 

Op your problem must be something else, that CPU paired with a 1050 is more than capable to run fortnite at 60 frames.

3 important questions now

 

1. What OS are you using?
2. Did you clean the CPU before reapplying paste or you just put more over the old one?
3. Is the CPU correctly configured in the BIOS setup?

 

[Animal901]

In hindsight, I'm disappointed in the Athlon series entirely. get a better CPU.. upgrade your ram to 16gb. Ive got an old Opteron build that the MSI motherboard bottlenecks everything though. from what Ive read it doesn't look like you have your OS on a Solid state. have you tried OC? msi afterburner? i would think you should be able to pull off something around 50 to 60 maybe even 70 fps easy. I'm typing on a I3 biostar tb85 with 8gb corsair firepro v5900 and it gets around 45 when i get the settings right. 60 or so if i look at the sky. dips down to about 33fps at times ive seen as bad as 17fps. User benchmark hates my computer. It probably wouldnt call yours poor. just tell you to get a ssd.

[Billyboy]

13 minutes ago, aezakmi said:

Honestly I can't believe some of the comments above, talking like this CPU is from 1998 or something like that....

 

Op your problem must be something else, that CPU paired with a 1050 is more than capable to run fortnite at 60 frames.

3 important questions now

 

1. What OS are you using?
2. Did you clean the CPU before reapplying paste or you just put more over the old one?
3. Is the CPU correctly configured in the BIOS setup?

 

It's Windows 10 64-bit. I tried to clean the cpu but there were still a little bit left. I don't know if the cpu is configured correctly, everything is set to default. Thanks for your help

[aisle9]

45 minutes ago, Billyboy said:

Hey, sometimes the fan gets faster for a second but that's it. The tempsnare at around 80 degrees when gaming. Thanks.

Correct me if I'm wrong team LTT, but isn't 80C on Bulldozer actually approaching the point of dangerously high?

 

Personally, I'd try and snag a used Ryzen 3 1300X or Ryzen 5 1500X. XFR still works on A320 boards, IIRC, so even if you can't overclock it manually, it should still get a boost. Your CPU is the issue, and it's only going to get worse. The Ryzen stock coolers are all much better than what comes with the 950.

[Animal901]

its probably just windows defender and one drive honestly. LOL..... That's an alright build really. its just if you wana "keep up with the jones" around here, get a ryzen. even though the temps on that thing are awful.

[Billyboy]

3 minutes ago, aisle9 said:

Correct me if I'm wrong team LTT, but isn't 80C on Bulldozer actually approaching the point of dangerously high?

 

Personally, I'd try and snag a used Ryzen 3 1300X or Ryzen 5 1500X. XFR still works on A320 boards, IIRC, so even if you can't overclock it manually, it should still get a boost. Your CPU is the issue, and it's only going to get worse. The Ryzen stock coolers are all much better than what comes with the 950.

Thanks, I honestly don't know what half of those means but I'll try to upgrade to a 200ge or if i can, a r3 1200. Thanks for your help.

[Mister Woof]

58 minutes ago, Billyboy said:

It is bad but is it 25fps on fortnite bad? I'm asking genuinely because i really have no idea.

At same mhz, new Ryzen chips are 52% faster than the bulldozer chip you have.

[aisle9]

35 minutes ago, Billyboy said:

Thanks, I honestly don't know what half of those means but I'll try to upgrade to a 200ge or if i can, a r3 1200. Thanks for your help.

Bulldozer is the family of CPUs that the 950 came from. For an easier example, all of the Intel -7000 series chips, like the i7-7700K, are from the Kaby Lake family. They're all produced in the same way. The i7-7700K is the highest performance CPU in the Kaby Lake lineup, and every single Kaby Lake CPU is derived from that. When you buy an i5-7400, what you're actually buying is a defective i7-7700K.

 

XFR is more or less just automatic overclocking on Ryzen CPUs based upon the power needed and the temperatures present. You can't go into BIOS and manually overclock a CPU on an A320 board because of limitations set by AMD, but if you run an X chip with XFR enabled, if I'm remembering this right, the CPU will overclock itself via XFR. That's why I'd go for a 1300X instead of a 1200. A 1200 is going to be locked at its stock speed on an A320 board, period. A 1300X will give you a bump in speed when it's needed.

[kingmustard]

1 hour ago, Billyboy said:

Will probably look into a 200ge since I can't afford a r3 1200 right now. Thanks.

If you did want to upgrade your AMD Athlon X4 950 (currently £47 new) for cheap, here are a few options:

 

Ryzen 3 1200, 25% faster, £80 (new)
Ryzen 3 2200G, 33% faster, £90 (new)
Ryzen 3 1300X, 35% faster, £115 (new)
Ryzen 3 Pro 2200G, 42% faster, £90 (new)
Ryzen 5 1400, 46% faster, £125 (new)
Ryzen 3 2300X, 53% faster (not yet released at retail)
Ryzen 5 2400G, 55% faster, £130 (new) with free The Division 2