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

[SeanTwig]

Ok I need to ask something.  For a long time I have thought that data processing goes in this order:

 

HDD/SSD stores data > CPU uses the RAM speed to pull the data VIA the Mobo to process things like vertices calculations in a 3D space > that information gets sent to the GPU, again using the RAM speed VIA the Mobo > GPU calculates planes for the vertices, and adds textures and effects > that then gets sent to your monitor at a certain rate per second.  The rate per second depends on a chain of command if you will that starts with CPU.  If the CPU can't output enough data for the GPU to use, the GPU sits idle and "re-renders" the same frame while it waits for more from the CPU (CPU bottleneck).  If you have a fast CPU and RAM for data transfer TO the GPU, but the GPU is slow, you end up getting frame drops where the GPU cannot keep up (GPU bottleneck).

 

Somehow I think I have some things sort of right and some things very wrong.  I would be very appreciative of anyone who could correct me here

[SeanTwig]

1 minute ago, Stockholmes said:

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

I do believe that's where I have them slotted, also having the 16Gb one in slot 2 iirc

[rand_althor_cometh]

Dude ram speeds won't make up this difference. What you're talking about is huge. You may need to RMA your GPU. But try it on a different fresh install system first, if you can.

 

However, my best bet is that your power supply cannot keep up as you have a power hungry CPU and GPU.

[Grabhanem]

6 minutes ago, rand_althor_cometh said:

Dude ram speeds won't make up this difference. What you're talking about is huge. You may need to RMA your GPU. But try it on a different fresh install system first, if you can.

 

However, my best bet is that your power supply cannot keep up as you have a power hungry CPU and GPU.

GPUs don't do that. If the PSU wasn't keeping up, it would just crash.

[rand_althor_cometh]

2 minutes ago, Grabhanem said:

GPUs don't do that. If the PSU wasn't keeping up, it would just crash.

That's assuming your PSU is working fine. It may be unstable but not delivering low enough power to crash.

[NattyKathy]

3 hours ago, rand_althor_cometh said:

That's assuming your PSU is working fine. It may be unstable but not delivering low enough power to crash.

GPUs don't base their clocks or usage on the quality of the power supply; they draw as much wattage as their Power Limit will allow. If the 12v rail is on-spec and stable, no problem. If it's too low or unstable, the voltage regulation on the card will work harder to compensate. If the card voltage regulators are successful in stabilizing the internal voltages the card will operate normally. If they can't compensate and the low-voltage rail internally feeding the core becomes unstable, the core crashes. I have seen situations where a GPU is right on the edge of crashing and it will stutter, hang and self-recover, do weird slow-motion stuff, very acute and noticeable things. Never seen a situation where it just runs slower but consistently when power quality is an issue.

[Lord Bloobus]

You said you're getting frame laggs on games when playing youtube? This can happen with screens not running at the same FPS when a game is fullscreened. Only fix I've found is trying other browsers till you find one that doesn't degrade either experience.

Also I haven't read everything in this thread but with a 8700k you're not CPU limited at 1440p. I would compare other game benchmarks rather than what you're trying to assume should run way better since it's unoptimized for PC since ubisoft is lazy, and idk about destiny. Doom would be a way better benchmark, or Borderlands 3 even.

[rand_althor_cometh]

3 hours ago, Natty Ice said:

GPUs don't base their clocks or usage on the quality of the power supply; they draw as much wattage as their Power Limit will allow. If the 12v rail is on-spec and stable, no problem. If it's too low or unstable, the voltage regulation on the card will work harder to compensate. If the card voltage regulators are successful in stabilizing the internal voltages the card will operate normally. If they can't compensate and the low-voltage rail internally feeding the core becomes unstable, the core crashes. I have seen situations where a GPU is right on the edge of crashing and it will stutter, hang and self-recover, do weird slow-motion stuff, very acute and noticeable things. Never seen a situation where it just runs slower but consistently when power quality is an issue.

Once again you are all assuming that it’s the gpu directly and not that higher power draw and resulting possible issues aren’t causing something with say, his ram. Or whatever. Thank you for the detailed comment, I’m sure it’s helpful to some.

[SeanTwig]

8 hours ago, rand_althor_cometh said:

However, my best bet is that your power supply cannot keep up as you have a power hungry CPU and GPU.

Is an 850W 80+ gold really too little?  I feel like that's enough considering the recommended for the 6800 xt was like 700W so I went bigger just to be safe.  The PSU is also only like 3 months old, and was working fine with my GTX 1080.  Also, I have not seen any crashes at all.  The other thing is, in games like Doom and SotTR I can easily get my GPU to 286W after OC'ing it through Radeon software (just default OC).  Clock got to 2,395Mhz.

 

As for the CPU, it maxed at 76W and clocked to 4.4 - 4.6Ghz maximum with minimum of 4.2Ghz.

5 hours ago, Lord Bloobus said:

You said you're getting frame laggs on games when playing youtube? This can happen with screens not running at the same FPS when a game is fullscreened. Only fix I've found is trying other browsers till you find one that doesn't degrade either experience.

I read this was a limitation with Nvidia GPU's.  It tries to cap your framerate at multiples of whatever the lowest is.  For example if you are playing a game that can get to 300fps, but watching something at 60fps, it will try to cap the game at 120fps.  This only ever seemed to happen if you could not force full screen mode in game i.e: Hades.  I did quite a bit of testing with this when I was using my GTX 1080.

 

6 hours ago, Natty Ice said:

GPUs don't base their clocks or usage on the quality of the power supply; they draw as much wattage as their Power Limit will allow. If the 12v rail is on-spec and stable, no problem. If it's too low or unstable, the voltage regulation on the card will work harder to compensate.

What would be a normal Power Limit?  And where do I find this in HWiNFO?  I have a metric for GPU PPT Limit and that is at 288W.  The max wattage I recorded while benchmarking was 286W.  Surely that means that it's not struggling for power?  I do have room to OC more as I am only sitting around 70C max, however I didn't want to adjust voltages just yet, until I can pinpoint where this issue is coming from.

 

Is there a way to check whether my RAM is the limiting factor?  I calculated my RAM speed and I have 2133Mhz C16.  The RAM I have ordered as of 15 mins ago was 3000Mhz C15, so I am hoping that will make a measurable difference.  Either way, I did need to upgrade RAM, and this should last me a few years at least.

 

Also, I just wanted to thank everyone here for trying to help me diagnose this issue.  It's been eating at me (I had nightmares last night about CPU speeds limiting my potential to escape a monster. Don't ask lol).

[SeanTwig]

Is there a way for me to bench a game while monitoring with HWiNFO64, and then save a log file of some sort and paste it here for someone more knowledgeable that myself to look through?  Surely this program is screaming the problem at me in my face, but I can't seem to translate that coz my knowledge is limited this deep.

[SeanTwig]

UPDATE:  I changed out my RAM for 2 x 8Gb Corsair Vengeance sticks.  Turned on XMP and I'm getting 2333Mhz.  Framerate went up to around 80-90fprs in AC: O.

 

Had a long chat to the guy at the PC store and he said that the 9900K is a good upgrade, that I can save from changing the Mobo, AND they still have a few in stock.  I'm gonna save up and change that out hopefully in the next 2 weeks.

 

I will update if I find anything else.

[BTGbullseye]

1 hour ago, SeanTwig said:

UPDATE:  I changed out my RAM for 2 x 8Gb Corsair Vengeance sticks.  Turned on XMP and I'm getting 2333Mhz.  Framerate went up to around 80-90fprs in AC: O.

 

Had a long chat to the guy at the PC store and he said that the 9900K is a good upgrade, that I can save from changing the Mobo, AND they still have a few in stock.  I'm gonna save up and change that out hopefully in the next 2 weeks.

 

I will update if I find anything else.

Yeah, that means you were running in single-channel mode before. That does make a HUGE difference in performance, even when not CPU limited. The 9900K should allow you to get higher XMP speeds, (up to a 5% increase if going to 3600) unless you only bought 2333 speed RAM.

[SeanTwig]

37 minutes ago, BTGbullseye said:

Yeah, that means you were running in single-channel mode before. That does make a HUGE difference in performance, even when not CPU limited. The 9900K should allow you to get higher XMP speeds, (up to a 5% increase if going to 3600) unless you only bought 2333 speed RAM.

I think I was running dual before, but the speeds were just really low.  2133 with I think C17 or maybe even 18 can't remember.

 

I bought 3000Mhz C15.  The only thing I can think of is that I need more threads for certain games.  Like SotTR runs really really well.  But Ac: O, while getting a 5% increase or so, still runs pretty badly.  I get around 70fps average and it still dips to the 30s in any sort of half populated town.  I just hope I can get hold of the 9900K before they run out of stock at my local.  Otherwise it's a long wait for the 5600X lol

[BTGbullseye]

22 hours ago, SeanTwig said:

I think I was running dual before, but the speeds were just really low.  2133 with I think C17 or maybe even 18 can't remember.

 

I bought 3000Mhz C15.

You wouldn't be getting that much of a performance bump from just that speed increase. You would from moving to dual channel in addition to the speed increase.

22 hours ago, SeanTwig said:

The only thing I can think of is that I need more threads for certain games.  Like SotTR runs really really well.  But Ac: O, while getting a 5% increase or so, still runs pretty badly.  I get around 70fps average and it still dips to the 30s in any sort of half populated town.

I don't know how well optimized AC:O is, but AC:V is getting your "high" framerates at minimum on my 5700XT, so it's a good bet that it's being CPU limited in some way.

22 hours ago, SeanTwig said:

I just hope I can get hold of the 9900K before they run out of stock at my local.  Otherwise it's a long wait for the 5600X lol

Either way, do not use a stock cooler for them! It's not enough cooling! Triple heat pipe minimum for the 5600X (4 if running it with maxed PBO limits) and 6 heatpipes minimum for the 9900K if you're not overclocking it. (AIO minimum if overclocking)

[SeanTwig]

On 3/14/2021 at 6:47 PM, BTGbullseye said:

Either way, do not use a stock cooler for them! It's not enough cooling! Triple heat pipe minimum for the 5600X (4 if running it with maxed PBO limits) and 6 heatpipes minimum for the 9900K if you're not overclocking it. (AIO minimum if overclocking)

I bought the 9900K with an H100i AIO. 

 

Just spent the last few hours trying to OC it and I am getting BSoD's like crazy. I tried doing it from the BIOS but for some reason gigabytes BIOS is really buggy. Some thing it allows me to change, some it doesn't bring down a drop down. I have to hit enter on the auto option and then hit down arrow like 5 times until it reaches the one I need. All the while, the option doesn't display anything other than auto lmao. A guessing game. 

 

Tried doing it through XTU and that wasn't any better. Was crashing at 4.7 bclk with 1.3v. I ran a test and my CPU gets to Max 60C and it just crashes. 

 

It keeps throttling with Current/EDP and Power Limit. Tried turning up the IccMax to like 200A and it just crashes lmao. 

 

I've given up and turned it to default. This pc business is driving me to become a console peasant 

[Mister Woof]

31 minutes ago, SeanTwig said:

I bought the 9900K with an H100i AIO. 

 

Just spent the last few hours trying to OC it and I am getting BSoD's like crazy. I tried doing it from the BIOS but for some reason gigabytes BIOS is really buggy. Some thing it allows me to change, some it doesn't bring down a drop down. I have to hit enter on the auto option and then hit down arrow like 5 times until it reaches the one I need. All the while, the option doesn't display anything other than auto lmao. A guessing game. 

 

Tried doing it through XTU and that wasn't any better. Was crashing at 4.7 bclk with 1.3v. I ran a test and my CPU gets to Max 60C and it just crashes. 

 

It keeps throttling with Current/EDP and Power Limit. Tried turning up the IccMax to like 200A and it just crashes lmao. 

 

I've given up and turned it to default. This pc business is driving me to become a console peasant 

haha well overclocking is in iterative process. I just upgraded from the 8700k myself to a 10900k -spent the last two days dialing in the right OC settings. 

AC:OD performance didn't really improve, but it was never really CPU limited in my experience anyway.

 

I think your old system, even if it was in dual channel, was suffering from the use of flex mode. Your "after" results from the new RAM probably reflects that change, more so than the speed change.

 

Regarding the 9900k, you could probably get 4.9-5.0ghz, but you'll need to spend some time tweaking it and there's of course no guarantees.

 

Even at stock settings though, you should still have a great experience.

 

 

[HPCmonkey]

On 3/9/2021 at 3:53 AM, Mister Woof said:

1. Use DDU - Follow the instructions for new video card installation. It's especially important when swapping between teams.

 

2. I haven't personally run RAM in mixed capacity like that, but it should offer flex mode and give you dual channel up to 8gb per channel - but it's possible at 2133 you'll be experiencing performance issues in cpu intensive games because of that speed. I also don't know how well flex mode works in practice. XMP is in BIOS, it will default to JDEC spec until you tell it go faster. What speed was it supposed to be? 2133 wasn't the fastest DDR4 when the 8700 launched.

 

3. What are your cpu frequency while gaming? It should be 4.3ghz, if it isn't throttling. The 8700/k is typically faster still than almost all of Ryzen 3000 at gaming, and unless it's throttling, should give you significant gains when moving from a GTX 1080 to a 6800xt. 

 

4. It may be your memory holding you back.

This right here. Do the DDU uninstall. JTC has a phenomenal video tutorial on running DDU to wipe out all the old graphics drivers. Clear out both nvidia and amd drivers, then install from scratch for a clean slate.
If you're willing to spend nearly $2K AU buying a 6800XT, then pull the trigger and buy a properly matched kit of ram compatible with your motherboard. It's amazing the odd problems mismatched memory, even different skus from the same family, will cause when you push it. I solved a boot looping PC once just buy swapping out memory. All of it was fine, but it was mismatched like in your BIO. The parts I removed are running happily in donated systems now.

[SeanTwig]

7 hours ago, Mister Woof said:

Regarding the 9900k, you could probably get 4.9-5.0ghz, but you'll need to spend some time tweaking it and there's of course no guarantees.

 

Even at stock settings though, you should still have a great experience.

My experience with anything PC related is never a great one.  I seem to spend more time on forums and how-to's than actually playing games.  I reckon the only thing that I have more time in might be looking for and tweaking Skyrim mods lmao.

 

As far as OC'ing goes, I am reading through and watching vids as we speak, however I feel like everyone just says "increase clock speeds incrementally until you get a crash, then increase your voltage incrementally".  This I understand, however, the BIOS menu's and XTU is not very helpful in explaining WHAT each of these settings does.  I keep getting power limit's which I assume has something to do with it not getting enough power (and then crashing).  I tried turning the setting for IccMax (which someone on a forum suggested to remove the limit for EDP/Current, and tried to run a benchmark and it crashed almost immediately lmao.  If you (or anyone on this thread) has any video or reading based sources for me to properly learn, I would be ever grateful!

 

I was thinking, could the limit on power delivery be from my Mobo or PSU?  Is there a way for me to check?  Mobo: Gigabyte Z370M D3H | PSU: Gigabyte P850GM

I haven't seen any warning for Mobo VRM throttling, so I just assumed it was capable and I'm getting crashes from some other setting I have enabled/disabled

[Action_Johnson]

I've never seen results from an OC that made me think "that seems totally worth it"

[Bombastinator]

*reads the headline* 

thats two separate questions.

[Mister Woof]

29 minutes ago, SeanTwig said:

My experience with anything PC related is never a great one.  I seem to spend more time on forums and how-to's than actually playing games.  I reckon the only thing that I have more time in might be looking for and tweaking Skyrim mods lmao.

 

As far as OC'ing goes, I am reading through and watching vids as we speak, however I feel like everyone just says "increase clock speeds incrementally until you get a crash, then increase your voltage incrementally".  This I understand, however, the BIOS menu's and XTU is not very helpful in explaining WHAT each of these settings does.  I keep getting power limit's which I assume has something to do with it not getting enough power (and then crashing).  I tried turning the setting for IccMax (which someone on a forum suggested to remove the limit for EDP/Current, and tried to run a benchmark and it crashed almost immediately lmao.  If you (or anyone on this thread) has any video or reading based sources for me to properly learn, I would be ever grateful!

 

I was thinking, could the limit on power delivery be from my Mobo or PSU?  Is there a way for me to check?  Mobo: Gigabyte Z370M D3H | PSU: Gigabyte P850GM

I haven't seen any warning for Mobo VRM throttling, so I just assumed it was capable and I'm getting crashes from some other setting I have enabled/disabled

That motherboard isn't going to be great at overclocking; were I you I'd set the 9900k to defeault, get your RAM in a good spot, and then just enjoy your experience.

 

It probably will be fine at stock levels. Keep in mind, these boards were designed with a 6 core at most in mind. The 9900k came later.

[SeanTwig]

16 minutes ago, Action_Johnson said:

I've never seen results from an OC that made me think "that seems totally worth it"

1 minute ago, Mister Woof said:

That motherboard isn't going to be great at overclocking; were I you I'd set the 9900k to defeault, get your RAM in a good spot, and then just enjoy your experience.

Yea this is giving me a headache.  I might just call it a win and accept that Overclocking is something I will try when I have a bit more knowledge.  Everything is so daunting and nobody has an explanation for absolute newbies (that I have found in my 4hr or so search).

 

12 minutes ago, Bombastinator said:

*reads the headline* 

thats two separate questions.

Lmao, well if you read the rest of the thread you'll see that the latter question answers itself haha

[Bombastinator]

3 minutes ago, SeanTwig said:

Yea this is giving me a headache.  I might just call it a win and accept that Overclocking is something I will try when I have a bit more knowledge.  Everything is so daunting and nobody has an explanation for absolute newbies (that I have found in my 4hr or so search).

 

Lmao, well if you read the rest of the thread you'll see that the latter question answers itself haha

The bright side is a 9900k is plenty fast stock. You’re still beating a 3700k which is all that is needed to beat a console, so you’re not going to have any problems running anything from your CPU for a long time.  While you COULD overclock you don’t need to.  Maybe leave it for a few years and worry about it when it actually could be considered important. 

[SeanTwig]

6 minutes ago, Bombastinator said:

The bright side is a 9900k is plenty fast stock. You’re still beating a 3700k which is all that is needed to beat a console, so you’re not going to have any problems running anything from your CPU for a long time.  While you COULD overclock you don’t need to.  Maybe leave it for a few years and worry about it when it actually could be considered important. 

The only thing that's a bit annoying, is that I can't seem to get my CPU to ever get above 60C during Cinebench15.  I have so much room to increase performance.  Even if only a little.  Just seems like such a waste, buying a K CPU and leaving it at stock.  Lordy I wish I was better at this sort of thing

[Mister Woof]

12 minutes ago, SeanTwig said:

The only thing that's a bit annoying, is that I can't seem to get my CPU to ever get above 60C during Cinebench15.  I have so much room to increase performance.  Even if only a little.  Just seems like such a waste, buying a K CPU and leaving it at stock.  Lordy I wish I was better at this sort of thing

You can still overclock on that motherboard, the power delivery will just get really hot under CPU load.

 

I think you could get away with it if you can get it stable in lighter loads, say A64 stress vs. P95 or something.

 

Throw some positive airflow over those VRMs, and you should be okay. 

 

Even if your VRMs get really hot/unstable in those synthetic workloads, the reality is that for most gaming applications, even heavy ones, it won't get close to as hot as that.

 

You should be able to just remove the power limits (set the turbo power limits to their maximum number) and let it go at 4.7ghz all-core which is the stock performance level. It will hang out there most of the time, and even if it would power limit or VRM thermal throttle in a synthetic load, it should still be perfectly fine in a game scenario. It should maintain 4.7ghz.