What am I doing wrong?

[Quorvis]

Just signed up today so be gentle :-)

Here I am having spent a vast sum on components for my PC, I took great care in picking my components ensuring I could keep up with any game coming out this year I'm looking to upgrade my CPU of course but I really should be getting better performance out of my games than I currently do so what am I doing wrong?

I have gone so far as reinstalling Windows 7 and clearing my SSD drive, I have put the most taxing games on the SSD rather than the HDD to make the most use of the faster read/write speeds. But I still have severe drops is frame rates when playing games like Metro Last Light, Crysis 3, Watchdogs (and yes I know watchdogs is dog poop on the PC so I expected issues but desperately wanted the game), and Thief at times where there are many things happening on the screen at once the frame rates can drop to 20/30fps.

When games like BF4 and Titanfall are working at Ultra/Max settings perfectly I expected all games to work perfectly but they aren't and this concerns me. It seems to me to be physx that is slowing things right down but why would it be slowing down from 120fps average to 20fps.

Could I please ask if anyone can look at my system specs and see if they see an issue with anything I have installed.

System specs are:

CPU - i5 2500k

Motherboard - AsRock z77 extreme 4

RAM - Corsair Vengeance Pro 8gb 1833mhz

Video Card - Asus Direct CU II GTX 770

CPU cooler - Corsair H100i

PSU - Corsair RM 850

SSD - Samsung 254gb (running on 6gb transfer)

HDD - Western Digital 1tb (running on 3gb transfer)

OS - Windows 7 Home Edition

No overheating and no overclocking on any component.

Am I expecting too much?

Should I upgrade my CPU? (I've had it for a few years and was thinking I should upgrade rather than overclock it as I'm not confident it would survive an overclock being so old)

Do you see anything that could be causing compatibility issues?

Would upgrading to windows 8.1 help?

Any help would be nice

[Jade]

There are people still running 2500k/2600ks. Your CPU is fine. Also age doesn't really effect the overclockability of the chip.

[Rorgash]

physx is broken as shit in many games

[Archangel1994]

PhysX might be running from CPU which can dramatically slow you down. Make sure it runs on your GPU or turn it off.

[Adolphen]

It actually could be the PhysX driver. It is a known issue, that when installing Metro:LL from Steam, that it installs an older PhysX driver that makes framerates go to poopville, USA. Check which version you have installed from the nvidia control panel. it should be 9.13.1220, as that is the latest one.

[Quorvis]

There are people still running 2500k/2600ks. Your CPU is fine. Also age doesn't really effect the overclockability of the chip.

Won't it shorten the life of the already short life left of the CPU? Just worried I'll blow it up as I haven't much experience of overclocking.

[Adolphen]

Won't it shorten the life of the already short life left of the CPU? Just worried I'll blow it up as I haven't much experience of overclocking.

 

Is it a hand-me-down CPU? It will marginally shorten the lifespan, but that really depends on how hard you're pushing it and how cool you can keep it

[Quorvis]

PhysX might be running from CPU which can dramatically slow you down. Make sure it runs on your GPU or turn it off.

It was originally running from the CPU and some months back I changed it and it seemed to make little/no difference to frame rates on any of my games.

It actually could be the PhysX driver. It is a known issue, that when installing Metro:LL from Steam, that it installs an older PhysX driver that makes framerates go to poopville, USA. Check which version you have installed from the nvidia control panel. it should be 9.13.1220, as that is the latest one.

I use nVidia Experince which keeps the drivers up to date. Shouldn't be a problem but I'll double check the drivers when I'm next on thanks.

[Adolphen]

It was originally running from the CPU and some months back I changed it and it seemed to make little/no difference to frame rates on any of my games.

I use nVidia Experince which keeps the drivers up to date. Shouldn't be a problem but I'll double check the drivers when I'm next on thanks.

 

Experience doesn't check for specific, individual drivers that can be changed, unfortunately. Here's a link for the physX one.

[Quorvis]

Is it a hand-me-down CPU? It will marginally shorten the lifespan, but that really depends on how hard you're pushing it and how cool you can keep it

It is the only thing that hasn't changed in the system for more than 2 years. I have an H100i for cooling but it doesn't seem as good as I'd hoped at keeping it cool I use a set of SP120s with it.

[Quorvis]

Experience doesn't check for specific, individual drivers that can be changed, unfortunately. Here's a link for the physX one.

Thanks I'll check that out and get back to you.

[juretrn]

SSD won't improve your FPS. At least not by much. I'd check for GPU / CPU thermal throttling and get the newest drivers.

[Adolphen]

It is the only thing that hasn't changed in the system for more than 2 years. I have an H100i for cooling but it doesn't seem as good as I'd hoped at keeping it cool I use a set of SP120s with it.

 

Eh, the cpu really shouldn't be giving you any trouble. What temps are you running at? I'm no expert on water systems, but it might be worth cleaning and reapplying newer thermal paste. I'm sure one of the fine gentlemen of the forums can assist you more with troubleshooting if you think it's something else

[Quorvis]

Eh, the cpu really shouldn't be giving you any trouble. What temps are you running at? I'm no expert on water systems, but it might be worth cleaning and reapplying newer thermal paste. I'm sure one of the fine gentlemen of the forums can assist you more with troubleshooting if you think it's something else

Yeah bought some MX4 and isopropanol alcohol cleaned and applied the better paste it made a slight difference but not much temps were up at 90°c but not being a regular overclocker I used the auto overclock on the AsRock bios and throttled it back to 4.0ghz rather than 4.7 and temps stayed the same.

[dafunkiedood]

That system is solid. If you're looking to upgrade your graphics card in the future by buying another (so dual gpu's) you may need a powersupply bump.

[Adolphen]

Yeah bought some MX4 and isopropanol alcohol cleaned and applied the better paste it made a slight difference but not much temps were up at 90°c but not being a regular overclocker I used the auto overclock on the AsRock bios and throttled it back to 4.0ghz rather than 4.7 and temps stayed the same.

 

90°C is yikesville IMO! Someone help this man out with his water system issue!

[dege13]

90 degrees under load or idle? Seen lots of people saying 85 is where you want it when under full load for some time.

[Quorvis]

90 degrees under load or idle? Seen lots of people saying 85 is where you want it when under full load for some time.

 

90 degrees under 100% load

[Quorvis]

That system is solid. If you're looking to upgrade your graphics card in the future by buying another (so dual gpu's) you may need a powersupply bump.

 

It's interesting you say that I was going to go higher for dual graphics but then after 850w the price goes up fairly sharpish in the UK and I didn't have the money at the time but I'm not planning on doing dual I want to switch to the GTX 780ti or head to the GTX 800 series when they announce if it will be much better than the 700 series. I'm more than happy with it for the moment.

[Quorvis]

90°C is yikesville IMO! Someone help this man out with his water system issue!

 

I'm not sure there's much anyone can do as it's a self-contained unit I might have to head towards custom cooling but I don't want to do that until I have the system perfect which it just isn't right now.

[Adolphen]

I'm not sure there's much anyone can do as it's a self-contained unit I might have to head towards custom cooling but I don't want to do that until I have the system perfect which it just isn't right now.

 

Yeah, I totaly understand. Maybe there's something wrong with the radiator. I have a couple friends with h100i's and even after OC'ing, both have their cpus sitting between  60-70 at 100%. If you have a friend with one, it may be worth trying a air cpu cooler just to see what temps you're running at. What do your temps look like on avg.?

[Quorvis]

Experience doesn't check for specific, individual drivers that can be changed, unfortunately. Here's a link for the physX one.

 

As it goes I downloaded the PhysX drivers and I'm now getting between 80-120 fps with spikes of 200fps in areas of low demand cheers for the fix. It's working for all the games which is fantastic. I won't rely on experience to keep the PhysX drivers updated any more.

 

The over heating with the CPU whilst overclocking I think is most likely to do with the setup more than a cooling issue even though the H100i is working not as well as I'd hoped I think I've probably not got enough knowledge about overclocking as I'd like and it might be me that's causing the issue.

Any help in finding helpful overclocking advice would be great.

[Quorvis]

Over 15 years of experience of building gaming rigs for friends and family and I didn't think to check the drivers! Haha the one thing I always say to people is if it isn't working right check the drivers and what do I do? 

 

Oh well we live and learn.

 

Thanks for the help guys.

[Quorvis]

Yeah, I totaly understand. Maybe there's something wrong with the radiator. I have a couple friends with h100i's and even after OC'ing, both have their cpus sitting between  60-70 at 100%. If you have a friend with one, it may be worth trying a air cpu cooler just to see what temps you're running at. What do your temps look like on avg.?

Temps are usually around 28-35 average even while gaming it's just when I overclock it's running so high.