HDD causing low FPS *Project TrasHP*

[nootnoot1277]

*WARNING THIS PC IS PURELY A PROJECT DO NOT SUGGEST "UPGRADE TO A NEW PLATFORM" YOU ARE WASTING YOUR TIME AND MINE*

Mk G'day guys sorry for the long back story but its somewhat important.
i recently started a project i call the "TrasHP". The TrasHP was originally a HP of some form i found beaten in and not posting at the local transfer station. I took it home messed around with the Ram and got it posting with its i3 540 and 4gb of ram. afterwards i found an old dead mobo also at the same place with an i5 750 that shockingly posted despite being very faded along with 10gb of mismatch ram. After that all it needed was a GPU, so i turned to Gumtree and got a $20 (AUD) HD 6870 ref model and used it in pair with the old 475w Dell PSU originally out of my main rig. Now that's all well n good and the PC runs like a champ with the 6870 overclocked 950mhz on core and 1150mhz on memory BUT there's a problem, i'm getting FPS lower than i should in some games for instance GTA V, Spintires and CSGO especially which ive seen seperate benchmarks on youtube of both the 6870 and the i5 750 in CSGO and in both tests they were capable of keeping a playable and quite nice fps but with my pairing they struggle to keep 60fps without stutter. As for GTA V well my other project pc which had a Q6600@2.9GHZ/GTX550ti combo it ran GTA V rather well along with Spin Tires. Now specifically in GTA V the CPU usage is basically always at 99%-100% load which ok yeah its an old CPU that makes sense BUT i5 750 is a stronger CHIP than the Q6600 no question about it so it should run better and it doesn't seem like its an ordinary CPU bottleneck as changing settings to try and put load on the GPU (to test for bottlenecks) does nothing to effect the FPS so my thought is HDD. Now for a HDD i took the first HDD i saw on my shelf which was a WD Green 2TB which i do not deny is a shit drive, WD Green's always have been but i thought bugger it that should do its only temporary and the system is decently responsive in ordinary tasks but i feel like that's whats causing the high CPU usage in games some how, maybes it's me mis-remembering but I'm sure i read a few years back that slow drives can cause higher CPU usage some how.
So after all that, any idea's?
Cheers Guys

[GoldenLag]

you are running into the Ram limitations.

 

4GB isnt enough and the system Pagefiles to the HDD which then slows the system down.

[nootnoot1277]

10 minutes ago, GoldenLag said:

you are running into the Ram limitations.

 

4GB isnt enough and the system Pagefiles to the HDD which then slows the system down.

im not that stupid obviously 4gb wouldnt be enough but im not running 4gb... i suggest re-reading my post.

[GoldenLag]

7 minutes ago, nootnoot1277 said:

im not running 4gb... i suggest re-reading my post.

oh, cuck missed that line. 

 

might still be a CPU bottleneck. where do you encounter the Low FPS? if it is when the world is loading anything then you might run into an HDD bottleneck, but it is quite rare to do so. 

 

keep an eye on HDD usage to see if it goes high in terms of response time and if it is busy. other than that i can only suggest looking at CPU benchmarks to confirm the numbers you are seeing. 

 

(sorry i dont have the time right now to look up CPU benchmarks)

[nootnoot1277]

19 minutes ago, GoldenLag said:

oh, cuck missed that line. 

 

might still be a CPU bottleneck. where do you encounter the Low FPS? if it is when the world is loading anything then you might run into an HDD bottleneck, but it is quite rare to do so. 

 

keep an eye on HDD usage to see if it goes high in terms of response time and if it is busy. other than that i can only suggest looking at CPU benchmarks to confirm the numbers you are seeing. 

 

(sorry i dont have the time right now to look up CPU benchmarks)

Actually yes it is when the worlds loading because i forgot. In GTA and only in gta so far, the world doesnt load fast enough sometimes, like really low res textures or none at all. I just sont see how the Q6600 was running it better and how my i5 750 is peforming so poorly conpared to others

 

[nootnoot1277]

19 minutes ago, GoldenLag said:

oh, cuck missed that line. 

 

might still be a CPU bottleneck. where do you encounter the Low FPS? if it is when the world is loading anything then you might run into an HDD bottleneck, but it is quite rare to do so. 

 

keep an eye on HDD usage to see if it goes high in terms of response time and if it is busy. other than that i can only suggest looking at CPU benchmarks to confirm the numbers you are seeing. 

 

(sorry i dont have the time right now to look up CPU benchmarks)

Actually yes it is when the worlds loading because i forgot. In GTA and only in gta so far, the world doesnt load fast enough sometimes, like really low res textures or none at all. I just sont see how the Q6600 was running it better and how my i5 750 is peforming so poorly conpared to others

 

[Spotty]

1 hour ago, nootnoot1277 said:

Now specifically in GTA V the CPU usage is basically always at 99%-100% load which ok yeah its an old CPU that makes sense BUT i5 750 is a stronger CHIP than the Q6600 no question about it so it should run better and it doesn't seem like its an ordinary CPU bottleneck as changing settings to try and put load on the GPU (to test for bottlenecks) does nothing to effect the FPS so my thought is HDD.

No idea how you made the jump from "My CPU is at 100% all the time and still performs badly when I increase the settings" to "must be my HDD"... What you've described sounds like a CPU limitation.

Check the temperatures on the CPU as it might be thermal throttling if the cooler isn't mounted properly or the fan isn't working.

What settings are you using? Resolution? What FPS are you getting?

Can you post the .txt results of the GTA V built in benchmark. Should be located in your documents > rockstar games > GTA V > benchmarks folder.

[nootnoot1277]

12 minutes ago, Spotty said:

No idea how you made the jump from "My CPU is at 100% all the time and still performs badly when I increase the settings" to "must be my HDD"... What you've described sounds like a CPU limitation.

Check the temperatures on the CPU as it might be thermal throttling if the cooler isn't mounted properly or the fan isn't working.

What settings are you using? Resolution? What FPS are you getting?

Can you post the .txt results of the GTA V built in benchmark. Should be located in your documents > rockstar games > GTA V > benchmarks folder.

Does anyone on this site actually read posts fully? I thought i made it quite clear how i made that jump to HDD issues.

I use MSI afterburner CPU temps are higher than id like but within throttling restrictions besides i built this thing from scrap it doesnt even have a side panel do you really believe im not gonna notice a fan failure? Sorry i sound like a dick i know that but i am tired of being talked down to on these sorta sites. I know what im doing im simply asking if anyone has had experiences with slower drives affecting FPS which i remember reading about years ago along with slow HDD's causing slow loading textures. Yes CPU usage is very high which is understandable its an OLD CPU but it is younger and more powerful than the Q6600 that is outpeforming it along with all the i5 750 benchmarks ive seen in the exact same game.

As for settings like i said quite clearly settings do not effect the FPS like it would in a normal bottleneck where higher gpu intensive settings would normally equal higher FPS. The res is 1080p however that doesnt matter the GPU is not being utilized which yes it is a legacy driver card but that should not be the problem here as i have seen the same card running the game fine in benchmarks. ALL OF THIS is how i got to HDD issues but i didnt want to make my post any longer thus the reason why i didnt go into every single detail.

[Spotty]

1 minute ago, nootnoot1277 said:

As for settings like i said quite clearly settings do not effect the FPS like it would in a normal bottleneck where higher gpu intensive settings would normally equal higher FPS.

What?
If your CPU is limiting performance increasing the graphical settings won't make your FPS go higher - you'd still be limited to whatever FPS your CPU is capable of handling.

If your CPU is limited to 45FPS in the game, and your GPU is capable of doing 100FPS at low settings, your game will run at 45FPS because it is limited by the CPU.
If you increase the graphical quality settings to High, your GPU might only be able to do 60FPS, however the game will still only run at 45FPS because it's still limited by the CPU.

The only reason people recommend increasing the settings when you are experiencing a CPU bottleneck is because you're going to be stuck at that lower FPS anyway so you may as well crank the graphical settings up so it at least looks good. With a CPU bottleneck you won't get a higher FPS if you increase the settings, only the same or lower FPS.

From what you've described it sounds exactly like you are experiencing a CPU bottleneck.
 

7 minutes ago, nootnoot1277 said:

I use MSI afterburner CPU temps are higher than id like but within throttling restrictions

What temperatures is the CPU reaching? You can use MSI Afterburner to check the clock speed of the CPU to check if it's running at its normal clock speed or if it is throttling. I mentioned this as this might explain why it is performing worse than your Q6600 system if it is thermal throttling. Which cooler are you using with the i5 750?

Your Q6600 is overclocked, what about the i5 750? Is that overclocked as well?