I bought an AMD 6800XT that runs worse than my GTX 1080. Am I going nuts?

[Jeppes]

Try running the game 4K if you want to see if gpu runs normal. Running 720p just moves the bottleneck to cpu even with slow gpu:s.

[SeanTwig]

1 hour ago, Xkillerpn said:

Gpu clocks seem low and the power is also low, Normally my 6800xt runs close to 2600mhz and 270w

 

This is why I think it's getting throttled by something.  It's waiting for something to do half the time.

1 hour ago, Xkillerpn said:

Run Heaven benqmark and monitor the clocks of the gpu, just run heaven in window mode at 1080p, its just something on a loop.

I ran it in 1080p, although shouldn't I run in my native 1440p?  Or did you just want that to compare to your card?  Either way, it seems to run how it should.  

 

FPS: 221

Score: 5568

Min: 32.6 (lows tend to happen at the start of the benchmark)

Max: 433.6

 

Ran it on Ultra with windowed mode as well as tesselation set to normal (Dx11). I don't know what "Radeon Boost" is (I looked through Catalyst), but I did turn off FreeSync in case that screws with anything.

As for temps etc, CPU got to 80C with only the first core getting to 93% maximum usage (again, seemed to be when I clicked start). All other CPU cores sit at around 20% maximum with the exception of 2 cores getting to 40 and 50% respectively.

EDIT: Ran it again with same settings, this time with AA at 8X (previously I left it at default which was off)

 

GPU seemed to perform as what I think it should.  266W max and I think it got to 2272Mhz clock (this is the 'effective' clock in HWiNFO).  I'm pretty sure Doom: Eternal gets to 272W which is the maximum set (I haven't touched any voltage so it's just factory).

 

This sort of clears my previous theory that Ac: O was having problems because it was running Dx11 and not Vulkan.  However Heaven seems to run just fine (unless I should be getting a lot more frames than what I did).

Edited March 11, 2021 by SeanTwig
Update

[SeanTwig]

21 minutes ago, Jeppes said:

Try running the game 4K if you want to see if gpu runs normal. Running 720p just moves the bottleneck to cpu even with slow gpu:s.

I tried running Ac: O at 200% render scale at 1440p and saw absolutely no change in fps or CPU usage.  That's what's getting me confused.  Theoretically if it's just a matter of hardware unable to keep up, I should get much slower fps in high res and much higher at something like 720p with 50% render scale.

[Jeppes]

23 minutes ago, SeanTwig said:

I tried running Ac: O at 200% render scale at 1440p and saw absolutely no change in fps or CPU usage.  That's what's getting me confused.  Theoretically if it's just a matter of hardware unable to keep up, I should get much slower fps in high res and much higher at something like 720p with 50% render scale.

No. It shows you have a cpu bottleneck. Look at gpu usage.

[SeanTwig]

1 minute ago, Jeppes said:

No. It shows you have a cpu bottleneck. Look at gpu usage.

Yea I get what you're saying, however why does my CPU not 'flatline' at 100% on any core?  Unless things have changed in the last 10 years, I thought that's how you determined easily if your CPU was the bottleneck.  This seems too strange to me.  Considering like I posted in the OP, it runs Doom at well over 200fps on ultra nightmare settings 1440p

[dizmo]

11 hours ago, SeanTwig said:

That's what I thought when Skyrim came out in 2011 with only dual core support.  I was like, surely not.  In 2011, almost everyone who was gaming had at LEAST a 4 core, with most also having 8 threads.  Iirc, AMD had the FX series 8 cores out then.

I think you'd be surprised. You might see that as how it was because you're part of the enthusiast community, but I bet the percentages were a lot lower than you think. For example, even now almost half of gamers are running 4 core systems. In 2011 I bet the lions share of people were running 2 core systems, not to mention what the lowest common denominator would have been.

 

EDIT: Curiosity got the better of me, as it often does, and I checked. Hard to see exact numbers, but here's a post from 2011:

https://www.neowin.net/forum/topic/983036-latest-steam-hardware-software-survey-february-2011/

 

As you can see, 4 core CPUs are only 26ish% of the user base, with dual core taking up most. Almost 20% still have single core machines.

[Mister Woof]

7 hours ago, SeanTwig said:

This is a screen shot after walking around this little town.  Settings are all high except fog, volumetric clouds, and shadows which are set to low, low, and medium respectively.

https://imgur.com/a/7Qhd9R2 (Hope the text is clear enough. Not sure what the resolution max is on Imgur)

 

The core usage stats as well as the CPU and GPU power are maximum during the test session.  The rest were real time when screen was taken.  The fact that none of my cores are getting to even 90% is the thing that's strange to me.  I know that the temp for CPU is a little high, but I'm sure the limit for thermals is like 100C. I do intend to get a better cooler at some point (this will be decided on when I decide on whether I need to replace my CPU or not).

 

Let me know if I need to change any of the metrics.  Also I tried to look for the RAM allocation you were talking about @Xkillerpn, however i couldn't find anything.  If it makes a difference, I have both running at 1066.7 with my 8Gb one in Bank 1/Channel A and my 16Gb in Bank 3/Channel B

Your GPU is 96% utilized, this is indicative of appropriate usage in that type of game. I don't see a problem here?

 

IIRC the "effective clock" is an average, not current clock. 

[Action_Johnson]

Reformat and re install.

 

it’s not a RAM or CPU problem, otherwise you would of had beef with the 1080 as well....

[-rascal-]

7 hours ago, SeanTwig said:

I tried running Ac: O at 200% render scale at 1440p and saw absolutely no change in fps or CPU usage.  That's what's getting me confused.  Theoretically if it's just a matter of hardware unable to keep up, I should get much slower fps in high res and much higher at something like 720p with 50% render scale.

 

6 hours ago, SeanTwig said:

Yea I get what you're saying, however why does my CPU not 'flatline' at 100% on any core?  Unless things have changed in the last 10 years, I thought that's how you determined easily if your CPU was the bottleneck.  This seems too strange to me.  Considering like I posted in the OP, it runs Doom at well over 200fps on ultra nightmare settings 1440p

 

AC: Odyssey is a console-ported game, so it is not well optimized to make use of all available CPU / GPU power.

Your CPU Core usage proves that; only a couple of cores are at 70%+ usage, while the others are under 40%.

You *should* get lower FPS at higher resolution, GIVEN, that the game is coded to work not ported using janky methods...like AC: Odyssey.

The bottleneck is not the system, but in the inefficiency of the game code / engine itself.

This is why DOOM performs so much better.

 

CPU Cores don't just "flatline" 100% anymore.

We have more CPU Cores and Threads, and the Operating System is able to work with those extra resrouces.

 

For an example, let's say AC: Odyssey only uses 2-cores. YouTube uses up another 2-cores.

Your i7-8700 is a 6-core / 12-thread CPU.

While AC: Odyssey and YouTube is running, the the tasks are frequently moved around from one core to another, however the OS deems the most efficient.

At one moment, Core #1 and #2 are used to run AC, and Core #4 and #5 for YouTube.

10 seconds later, Core #4 and #6 is running AC, and Core #2 and #5 is running YouTube.

 

Even if you have 4 of 6 cores running at 100%, Task Manager will only show an overall CPU usage of  ~67%.

If the game is coded to have that ability, and the OS can recognize it, using the example above, that 2-cores that is needed for AC: Odyssey can be spread evenly across all of your 6-cores. Each of your 6-cores can be at 33% usage each. You would then never see 100% CPU usage, and none of the cores pegged at 80%+.

[Mister Woof]

Even if you have a 16 core CPU, having chrome/youtube/etc running will still impact gaming performance in some way.

 

 

[Mister Woof]

I know it's not apples to apples but, here's AC Odyssey for me:

 

8700k w/4x8 3200/CL16/RTX 3080 +10% power limit, +75mhz core, +400mhz memory

 

1440p, Ultra settings

 

At 5ghz core, 4.7ghz cache

 

At 4.3ghz core, 4.0ghz cache (to simulate the typical operating range of an i7-8700 non-k)

 

 

I know you have slower memory and a different GPU, but I do not believe it is CPU bottleneck. There's no gain here from the overclockability of a K chip, and despite being almost 4 years old, this chip still manages very well.

 

The OC gave me a slightly better frametime, but either chip was able to nearly max out the GPU.

 

The 6800XT is a bit more powerful in Anvil games however, so its possible I'm not seeing the CPU limitation on the 3080. But that doesn't take away from the fact you should have seen some huge gains going from a GTX 1080 to the 6800XT, if a 3080 is maxed out on a 4.3ghz 8700.

[SeanTwig]

18 hours ago, Jeppes said:

Doom runs well on any cpu. And yes, you thought it wrong.

This is not a helpful comment.  If you cannot have a sensible discussion without going into condescension, then you are going to just get ignored

[SeanTwig]

12 hours ago, -rascal- said:

This is why DOOM performs so much better.

Doom performs better, but when I have the framerate uncapped and play a YT video, the video lags and I get frame drops in Doom.  If I cap the framerate to say 144, then both the vid and Doom runs fine.  It's almost as if it can't prioritise frames?

12 hours ago, Mister Woof said:

Even if you have a 16 core CPU, having chrome/youtube/etc running will still impact gaming performance in some way.

 

Same goes for this, I get that it will have some performance impact, as it has to still render those images of the video, and it has to render that in amongst rendering the frames for the game.  So it's like it has to que the frames.  But then, why did it not happen with the 1080?  I used to play games and watch YT vids that were running at 1440p/60 and they just impacted game fps slightly.  Which I'm happy to compromise on games that I am not needing those extra 50fps in something that already gets over 300 ya know?

 

11 hours ago, Mister Woof said:

I know you have slower memory and a different GPU, but I do not believe it is CPU bottleneck. There's no gain here from the overclockability of a K chip, and despite being almost 4 years old, this chip still manages very well.

I appreciate you taking the time to compare that for me mate.  Mighty fine of you.
I'm kind of at a point where I am going to reinstall windows, and if that doesn't miraculously fix things somehow, I am going to start with some good ram.  16Gb of some fast ram.  That way, if the ram fixes it, I don't have to fork out another $1000 for a CPU and Mobo after having just spent $1700 on a GPU.  I see a lot of people just saying "upgrade your CPU 4Head", but if it were their own money they wouldn't just be throwing money at things till it fixes.  Maybe that's just old fashioned of me though lol

[SeanTwig]

Ok update.  I just reinstalled windows fresh.  I spent the last 5 hours reconfiguring and downloading clients and installing drivers from fresh.  And now I hate my life more than I did before.  After all that ball ache, I still have the exact same issues.

 

I'm very close to just giving up and playing league or some shit for the rest of my days

[Jeppes]

6 hours ago, SeanTwig said:

This is not a helpful comment.  If you cannot have a sensible discussion without going into condescension, then you are going to just get ignored

It is perfectly fine to be wrong. Doom is easy to run and wont run into cpu limit as soon as some other games you mentioned. Dont ask for help if you think you know better and cant take the advice given.

[SeanTwig]

1 minute ago, Jeppes said:

It is perfectly fine to be wrong. Doom is easy to run and wont run into cpu limit as soon as some other games you mentioned. Dont ask for help if you think you know better and cant take the advice given.

I have no problem taking advice bud.  My problem is that it doesn't help me by just telling me to buy the fastest CPU/RAM/MOBO that money can buy.  Hell, if I have $15k to spend, you really think I wouldn't just go to the store and buy the best of the best just coz I know it'll give me better performance?

 

I have a limit on the money that I can spend on an upgrade, therefore, I don't want to just buy faster xyz just because someone said to because Doom doesn't limit CPU.  I have tested multiple titles.  Some run fine, some run like ass.  But all of them have some sort of weird issue.  All I'm trying to do is figure out where the bottleneck of my system is before I spend a large some of money.

 

Hopefully that makes sense

[Stockholmes]

Judging from your specs I think your RAM might be bottlenecking you by a huge margin. Is it running in dual channel mode? Either way, that configuration of 24GB is not optimal at all. I wouldn't be surprised if that's the cause of your problems.

 

E: You could try running with only 16 GB and see if that gives you better fps?

[SeanTwig]

4 minutes ago, Stockholmes said:

Judging from your specs I think your RAM might be bottlenecking you by a huge margin. Is it running in dual channel mode? Either way, that configuration of 24GB is not optimal at all. I wouldn't be surprised if that's the cause of your problems.

Yea I have a feeling this might be a start.  Going by what @Mister Woof tested.  His system is pretty similar to mine, only major difference was the ram speeds.  I'm going tomorrow morning to get some decent RAM, I'm just now going through a tonne of old LTT vids to find out what I should be looking for when buying RAM, other than fast speeds.  I think my Mobo supports up to 4000Mhz but I'm not sure about what my CPU supports.  I'm thinking 3200Mhz should be plenty

4 minutes ago, Stockholmes said:

E: You could try running with only 16 GB and see if that gives you better fps?

Hmm, that's an interesting idea.  Is there a particular slot to put it in?  I know that there is a difference between the slots and you should put them in every other slot, but are there faster slots like for PCIe? 

 

[Stockholmes]

Just now, SeanTwig said:

Yea I have a feeling this might be a start.  Going by what @Mister Woof tested.  His system is pretty similar to mine, only major difference was the ram speeds.  I'm going tomorrow morning to get some decent RAM, I'm just now going through a tonne of old LTT vids to find out what I should be looking for when buying RAM, other than fast speeds.  I think my Mobo supports up to 4000Mhz but I'm not sure about what my CPU supports.  I'm thinking 3200Mhz should be plenty

I think 3200MHz would be great. Just look for lower latency, something like CL16 or lower preferably. And don't mix & match, only use the same kind of RAM, ie. 8+8GB or 16GB+16GB.

[SeanTwig]

Just now, Stockholmes said:

I think 3200MHz would be great. Just look for lower latency, something like CL16 or lower preferably. And don't mix & match, only use the same kind of RAM, ie. 8+8GB or 16GB+16GB.

Thanks, I might look for that.  I think that spending $100 on RAM is fine, coz if it solves my issues, then that's great, but if it does nothing, then I will at least have decent RAM for when/if I DO solve my issue lmao.

 

I have leave booked for April that I normally have to wait all year to take, and I'm gonna be super bummed if I can't play a single game haha

[Jeppes]

3 minutes ago, SeanTwig said:

I have no problem taking advice bud.  My problem is that it doesn't help me by just telling me to buy the fastest CPU/RAM/MOBO that money can buy.  Hell, if I have $15k to spend, you really think I wouldn't just go to the store and buy the best of the best just coz I know it'll give me better performance?

 

I have a limit on the money that I can spend on an upgrade, therefore, I don't want to just buy faster xyz just because someone said to because Doom doesn't limit CPU.  I have tested multiple titles.  Some run fine, some run like ass.  But all of them have some sort of weird issue.  All I'm trying to do is figure out where the bottleneck of my system is before I spend a large some of money.

 

Hopefully that makes sense

All you have to do is watch a couple of cpu reviews to gain some basic information about which games are cpu limited. And cpu limits can be on one-core perf or all-core perf. Slow ram will make you hit cpu-limits much faster. And its not all about the MHz, timings make a difference too.

Gamers nexus test with 10400 2666MHz shows the difference can be up to 20%.

 

[Mister Woof]

What motherboard do you have

[SeanTwig]

7 minutes ago, Jeppes said:

Slow ram will make you hit cpu-limits much faster. And its not all about the MHz, timings make a difference too.

Gamers nexus test with 10400 2666MHz shows the difference can be up to 20%.

Thanks, I'll check this out.  That's the thing that I am having a hard time understanding.  I have always done lots of research when it comes to GPU and CPU but RAM I am only now learning about timings etc.  It seems I have a lot of reading to do lol.

 

5 minutes ago, Mister Woof said:

What motherboard do you have

Gigabyte Z370M

[Mister Woof]

10 minutes ago, SeanTwig said:

Thanks, I'll check this out.  That's the thing that I am having a hard time understanding.  I have always done lots of research when it comes to GPU and CPU but RAM I am only now learning about timings etc.  It seems I have a lot of reading to do lol.

 

Gigabyte Z370M

Grab a 16gb kit 2x8 of 3600 cl16, should work and price difference isn't huge. And if you do decide to upgrade your cpu soon, you can reuse that in any intel/amd build and it will work well.

 

Non K chips are only locked out on memory speed on non z boards. You have a z board, so you can memory OC.

 

It will he down to the specific quality of your chips IMC, but 3600 is reasonable.

[Stockholmes]

25 minutes ago, SeanTwig said:

Yea I have a feeling this might be a start.  Going by what @Mister Woof tested.  His system is pretty similar to mine, only major difference was the ram speeds.  I'm going tomorrow morning to get some decent RAM, I'm just now going through a tonne of old LTT vids to find out what I should be looking for when buying RAM, other than fast speeds.  I think my Mobo supports up to 4000Mhz but I'm not sure about what my CPU supports.  I'm thinking 3200Mhz should be plenty

Hmm, that's an interesting idea.  Is there a particular slot to put it in?  I know that there is a difference between the slots and you should put them in every other slot, but are there faster slots like for PCIe? 

 

You should put them one slot apart from each other, starting from the 2nd position from the CPU. So on slots 2 and 4.