AMD R9 280x - Low Frame Rate [Help]

[Lil_SaBx]

So, last week a friend of mine bought a new gpu for his computer and He let me the one he was using before: Sapphire AMD R9 280X Vapor-x 3gb GDDR5. He was able to play several games on MID/HIGH graphs on a 1080p configuration with no problem at all, getting a frame rate around the 30/60 fps.

 

The problem appears when We installed It on my computer. After booting on secure mode We proceed to uninstall the drivers of the previous gpu I was using (using DDU). So We turned off the PC, mounted the R9 280X and boot it again, then we installed the last drivers for the graph: Adrenalin 18.12.1 (Nov, 22,2018). There was no problem at all until the momment We decided to give it a try on Battlefield 1.

 

I am no capable of playing the game on low settings (in 720p) with a stable framerate, always dropping and lagging. I am not expecting to play with 120fps, due It is a kinda old gpu, but having those issues in low settings is not what I expected from the R9 280X. I also tried other games like Fortnite or Dragon Ball FighterZ and It is not giving the results It should give. It is no problem of the gpu because last week I tested It on my friend's computer and It was OK, having a stable framerate on MID/HIGH settings.

I also checked the bottleneck that could cause with the other devices of my PC, having a 4% (https://thebottlenecker.com/calculator?d=2b7-4d-1-64-64-5bce1f13&m=697d).

 

I am not any expert on the gpu field, so I am asking this from the point of view of a person with 0 knowledge about the way of configurating the gpu, stress-test, msi-afterburner...

 

Thanks in advance guys!

 

 

These are my PC specifications:

Operating System: Windows 10 Pro 64-bit

Processor: AMD Athlon(tm) X4 950 Quad Core Processor (4 CPUs) ~3.5GHz

Memory: 16384MB RAM

Card name: AMD Radeon R9 200 Series

Display Memory: 10698 MB
Dedicated Memory: 3052 MB
Shared Memory: 7646 MB
Current Mode: 1366 x 768 (32 bit) (60Hz)

[samcool55]

I think the driver didn't install properly.

Uninstall the one you have with DDU (google is your friend)

Disable windows auto-installing driver crap (afaik you can do that with ddu)

Reinstall the latest driver from the AMD website (baiscally the one you already tried installing)

[Lil_SaBx]

Just now, samcool55 said:

I think the driver didn't install properly.

Uninstall the one you have with DDU (google is your friend)

Disable windows auto-installing driver crap (afaik you can do that with ddu)

Reinstall the latest driver from the AMD website (baiscally the one you already tried installing)

I will give It another try, but I already did It twice and doesn't seem to work. Gonna keep loooking

[samcool55]

Just now, Lil_SaBx said:

I will give It another try, but I already did It twice and doesn't seem to work. Gonna keep loooking

Did you do it with DDU?

Windows installs drivers on its own, if you install them manually and windows installs a different version, it basically becomes messed up and could break everything.

[Lil_SaBx]

Just now, samcool55 said:

Did you do it with DDU?

Windows installs drivers on its own, if you install them manually and windows installs a different version, it basically becomes messed up and could break everything.

Yeah, I used the "Clean and reboot" option, and I also tried to reboot on safe mode and then uninstalling the drivers, but It does not work either

[-rascal-]

What CPU is your friend using?

Phenom II X4 950 isn't very powerful compared to newer CPUs -- especially if running at stock 3.5 GHz.

Since BF3 on wards (at least as far as I know), multiplayer will use as much CPU cores/threads as available.

 

You are also playing on a lower resolution (versus 1920x1080 or higher), so it is more CPU dependent as well.

[.Apex.]

@Lil_SaBx

I think you should test your GPU with a synthetic benchmark like Heaven Benchmark: https://benchmark.unigine.com/heaven to completely take the bottleneck out of the equation because i think your CPU is way too weak for 2018

 

I have an R9-280, so i can help you with the scoring to see if everything matches.

[aezakmi]

30 minutes ago, Lil_SaBx said:

we installed the last drivers for the graph: Adrenalin 18.12.1 (Nov, 22,2018)

those drivers are fucking hideous for a card like that, my sister also has a 280 and new drivers SUCK, they're made for 4XX and newer cards, not for 2XX series, her pc had the exact same problem as yours.

 

install the last version of catalyst drivers, it's the only way you'll be able to have some decent framerates with a 280

 

edit: you should also get rid of windick 10, I mean you have an athlon 950, why would you make it suffer like this? 7 is your friend, also compatible with catalyst so it's a win/win situation.

[narrdarr]

lower res and lower graphics will also be more cpu bound. try turning up some of the eye candy to get some of the load on to the gpu. 

[Lil_SaBx]

36 minutes ago, -rascal- said:

What CPU is your friend using?

Phenom II X4 950 isn't very powerful compared to newer CPUs -- especially if running at stock 3.5 GHz.

Since BF3 on wards (at least as far as I know), multiplayer will use as much CPU cores/threads as available.

 

You are also playing on a lower resolution (versus 1920x1080 or higher), so it is more CPU dependent as well.

Apparently He has a FX 8350.

31 minutes ago, syn2112 said:

@Lil_SaBx

I think you should test your GPU with a synthetic benchmark like Heaven Benchmark: https://benchmark.unigine.com/heaven to completely take the bottleneck out of the equation because i think your CPU is way too weak for 2018

 

I have an R9-280, so i can help you with the scoring to see if everything matches.

Okey, I am downloading It right now and gonna test for a while to discard the bottleneck stuff. DO i have to use a specific configuration or options in that program?

 

36 minutes ago, aezakmi said:

those drivers are fucking hideous for a card like that, my sister also has a 280 and new drivers SUCK, they're made for 4XX and newer cards, not for 2XX series, her pc had the exact same problem as yours.

 

install the last version of catalyst drivers, it's the only way you'll be able to have some decent framerates with a 280

 

edit: you should also get rid of windick 10, I mean you have an athlon 950, why would you make it suffer like this? 7 is your friend, also compatible with catalyst so it's a win/win situation.

Gonna try the Catalyst drivers and see if they improve the performance. Also I could try the W7 matter, but I bought the PC with W10. Is it possible to come back to a previous Windows version without problem?

[Madgemade]

Not sure why the latest drivers would cause trouble? Almost all last catalyst versions are not supported by BF1 so that probably won't work the game refuses to open unless it has a version later than late 2016 when the game came out.

 

I'm using a 7990 atm, which is two 7970 in crossfire. The 7970 and the R9 280X are the same GPU (280X slightly upgraded). The 7990 can run BF1 on ultra settings 1080p no problem. I am running 4K with medium settings 80% scale and getting 50-60 fps.

 

A 280X should be fine for medium to high at 1080p. It sounds like your problem is drivers but make sure your PSU is good. I was having massive stutter lag problems when I got this card but after swapping out my PSU for a higher power model the problems disappeared.

[Lil_SaBx]

1 minute ago, Madgemade said:

Not sure why the latest drivers would cause trouble? Almost all last catalyst versions are not supported by BF1 so that probably won't work the game refuses to open unless it has a version later than last 2016 when the game came out.

 

I'm using a 7990 atm, which is two 7970 in crossfire. The 7970 and the R9 280X are the same GPU (280X slightly upgraded). These two can run BF1 on ultra settings 1080p no problem. I am running 4K with medium settings 80% scale and getting 50-60 fps.

 

A 280X should be fine for medium to high at 1080p. It sounds like your problem is drivers but make sure your PSU is good. I was having massive stutter lag problems when I got this card but after swapping out my PSU for a higher power model the problems disappeared.

I just bought a 620W PSU so in case I didnt mess up during the instalation It wont be the matter of the problem. What do you recommend me to do? Reinstall the same drivers? 

 

Doing a clean reinstallation of the os could fix the problem?

[Madgemade]

1 minute ago, Lil_SaBx said:

I just bought a 620W PSU

From who? Is it a known good brand? Theres a load of junk scam PSUs out there that say they are 600,700,750 etc but are just a 300W with extra cables.

[Lil_SaBx]

6 minutes ago, Madgemade said:

From who? Is it a known good brand? Theres a load of junk scam PSUs out there that say they are 600,700,750 etc but are just a 300W with extra cables.

This is the one that I bought: https://www.amazon.es/gp/product/B076D1WYM9/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o03_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

[Lil_SaBx]

1 hour ago, syn2112 said:

@Lil_SaBx

I think you should test your GPU with a synthetic benchmark like Heaven Benchmark: https://benchmark.unigine.com/heaven to completely take the bottleneck out of the equation because i think your CPU is way too weak for 2018

 

I have an R9-280, so i can help you with the scoring to see if everything matches.

Okay so I tried the benchmark and got the next result:

What do u think?

Unigine Heaven Benchmark 4.0

FPS:	118.0
Score:	2973
Min FPS:	9.4
Max FPS:	205.0

System

Platform:	Windows NT 6.2 (build 9200) 64bit
CPU model:	AMD Athlon(tm) X4 950 Quad Core Processor (3493MHz) x4
GPU model:	AMD Radeon R9 200 Series 25.20.14011.9004 (3072MB) x1

Settings

Render:	Direct3D11
Mode:	1366x768 fullscreen
Preset	Custom
Quality	High
Tessellation:	Disabled

[Madgemade]

Never heard of that brand before but it looks genuine. I would try reinstalling then if you are still getting problems. I assumed you had an nvidia card before and that's why you used DDU. If you had AMD before then best to reinstall because in my experience DDU doesn't work well with AMD drivers, I've had trouble with settings not getting removed and such.

[aezakmi]

2 minutes ago, Lil_SaBx said:

This is the one that I bought: https://www.amazon.es/gp/product/B076D1WYM9/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o03_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

for some reason looks really old, never heard of that brand to be honest.

 

about downgrading: everything should work normally, 7 is way lighter than 10 and will work better with your hardware, just install all of the mobo drivers first and be sure to put your hard drive in AHCI mode before installing it.

 

 

[Lil_SaBx]

1 minute ago, Madgemade said:

Never heard of that brand before but it looks genuine. I would try reinstalling then if you are still getting problems. I assumed you had an nvidia card before and that's why you used DDU. If you had AMD before then best to reinstall because in my experience DDU doesn't work well with AMD drivers, I've had trouble with settings not getting removed and such.

Actually I had and AMD, so could be the problem. Gonna keep looking, thanks mate

[Madgemade]

9 minutes ago, Lil_SaBx said:

Actually I had and AMD, so could be the problem. Gonna keep looking, thanks mate

Just for future reference, if you have an AMD card and you get a new AMD card then don't use DDU. Just take out the old card, put in the new one and you're good to go. I did this today with AMD, took out R9 290 put in 7990. You get a low res screen when you boot up but then the driver in loaded automatically as AMD drivers are already installed, then reboot and you're finished. No need to reinstall anything, only causes problems. Same is true for Nvidia. DDU is for swapping between brands and cleaning faulty drivers but like I said it's not working for the latest AMD drivers in my experience, Still works for old Catalyst drivers though.

[-rascal-]

25 minutes ago, Lil_SaBx said:

Okay so I tried the benchmark and got the next result:

What do u think?

Unigine Heaven Benchmark 4.0

FPS:	118.0
Score:	2973
Min FPS:	9.4
Max FPS:	205.0

System

Platform:	Windows NT 6.2 (build 9200) 64bit
CPU model:	AMD Athlon(tm) X4 950 Quad Core Processor (3493MHz) x4
GPU model:	AMD Radeon R9 200 Series 25.20.14011.9004 (3072MB) x1

Settings

Render:	Direct3D11
Mode:	1366x768 fullscreen
Preset	Custom
Quality	High
Tessellation:	Disabled

 

Is it possible to re-run the Unigine Heaven test using 1920x1080 resolution using the Ultra preset or something?

This is so we can compare it to R9-280X review results.

 

I no longer have a Vapor-X HD 7970 GHz Edition  (same card as your 280X Vapor-X...but sold it to a friend ~2 years ago) ....

BUT I still have my Vapor-X HD 7950 (aka R8-280), and an ASUS ROG Platinum Matrix R9-280X.

I can run some testing on those tonight, and compare the results to yours.

 

 

The more recent Windows 10 drivers should still work with the 7900 series, R9-200 and R9-300 series.

As long as the card is supported by the driver, it should be fine.

The drivers I use for my R9-Fury works on my ASUS R9-280X ... so should work for your 280X, too.

[.Apex.]

30 minutes ago, Lil_SaBx said:

Okay so I tried the benchmark and got the next result:

What do u think?

Unigine Heaven Benchmark 4.0

FPS:	118.0
Score:	2973
Min FPS:	9.4
Max FPS:	205.0

System

Platform:	Windows NT 6.2 (build 9200) 64bit
CPU model:	AMD Athlon(tm) X4 950 Quad Core Processor (3493MHz) x4
GPU model:	AMD Radeon R9 200 Series 25.20.14011.9004 (3072MB) x1

Settings

Render:	Direct3D11
Mode:	1366x768 fullscreen
Preset	Custom
Quality	High
Tessellation:	Disabled

sorry for the late reply, but you need to set the preset to "Extreme" the whole point is to put all the load on the GPU so there won't be any bottlenecks skewing the results

[Lil_SaBx]

1 minute ago, syn2112 said:

sorry for the late reply, but you need to set the preset to "Extreme" the whole point is to put all the load on the GPU so there won't be any bottlenecks skewing the results

 

11 minutes ago, -rascal- said:

 

Is it possible to re-run the Unigine Heaven test using 1920x1080 resolution using the Ultra preset or something?

This is so we can compare it to R9-280X review results.

 

I no longer have a Vapor-X HD 7970 GHz Edition  (same card as your 280X Vapor-X...but sold it to a friend ~2 years ago) ....

BUT I still have my Vapor-X HD 7950 (aka R8-280), and an ASUS ROG Platinum Matrix R9-280X.

I can run some testing on those tonight, and compare the results to yours.

 

 

The more recent Windows 10 drivers should still work with the 7900 series, R9-200 and R9-300 series.

As long as the card is supported by the driver, it should be fine.

The drivers I use for my R9-Fury works on my ASUS R9-280X ... so should work for your 280X, too.

Okey gonna test It right now.

 

Have to say that after reinstalling with older drivers It works waaay better, at least 60 frames in Low settings. Gonna keep looking, I appreciate your help guys. Thanks

[.Apex.]

5 minutes ago, Lil_SaBx said:

Have to say that after reinstalling with older drivers It works waaay better, at least 60 frames in Low settings. Gonna keep looking, I appreciate your help guys. Thanks

that's strange, i have new drivers and i've never had an issue

[-rascal-]

On 12/4/2018 at 2:28 PM, Lil_SaBx said:

 

Okey gonna test It right now.

 

Have to say that after reinstalling with older drivers It works waaay better, at least 60 frames in Low settings. Gonna keep looking, I appreciate your help guys. Thanks

 

Okay, I was able to get a few tests runs in with Unigine Heaven with my R9-280X ... hopefully they are the same settings you used...

I was able to dig up some old drivers that I had installed ... driver version 17.7 (e.g. July 2017).

 

KEEP IN MIND, I am using a 6-core 12-thread i7-6800K overclocked to 4.0 GHz.

From what I know, the CPU will have some effect on benchmarks such as Unigine Valley and Unigine Heaven.

 

The ASUS ROG Matrix Platinum is also factory overclocked with 1100 MHz on the GPU Core, and 1600 MHz (6400 MHz Effective) on the Memory. Depending on which version Vapor-X 280X you have, GPU Core is 950 MHz and boosting up to 1000 MHz, with 1500 MHz (6000 MHz) on the Memory.

 

I have the latest 18.12.1.1 drivers downloaded; will install those, and do another few runs --- after work.

Give me a full list of the settings you are using, so I can match them.

 

First run settings:

• Preset -- Custom
• API -- DX11
• Quality -- High
• Tessellation -- Disabled
• Stereo 3D -- Disabled
• Multi-monitor -- Disabled
• Anti-aliasing -- 2x
• Full Screen -- Yes
• Resolution -- 1024x768

 

Second run settings:

• Preset -- Custom
• API -- DX11
• Quality -- High
• Tessellation -- Disabled
• Stereo 3D -- Disabled
• Multi-monitor -- Disabled
• Anti-aliasing -- OFF
• Full Screen -- Yes
• Resolution -- 1024x768

[Lil_SaBx]

1 hour ago, -rascal- said:

 

Okay, I was able to get a few tests runs in with Unigine Heaven with my R9-280X ... hopefully they are the same settings you used...

I was able to dig up some old drivers that I had installed ... driver version 17.7 (e.g. July 2017).

 

First run settings:

• Preset -- Custom
• API -- DX11
• Quality -- High
• Tessellation -- Disabled
• Stereo 3D -- Disabled
• Multi-monitor -- Disabled
• Anti-aliasing -- 2x
• Full Screen -- Yes
• Resolution -- 1024x768

 

 

Second run settings:

• Preset -- Custom
• API -- DX11
• Quality -- High
• Tessellation -- Disabled
• Stereo 3D -- Disabled
• Multi-monitor -- Disabled
• Anti-aliasing -- OFF
• Full Screen -- Yes
• Resolution -- 1024x768

 

I did some testing with the same settings you used, and I got the following:

FPS:	101.3
Score:	2552
Min FPS:	9.4
Max FPS:	164.0

On the first one.

FPS:	104.1
Score:	2622
Min FPS:	24.9
Max FPS:	165.0

On the second one.

 

There is a huge difference between yours and mine ones, do u think It can be because of the CPU?