R9 280X Performance issue

[tpeter3]

Hi

 

I have recently upgraded my GPU to an MSI R9 280X.

I experience great performance in a lot of games, and not-so-great in a few others.

The main problem is low GPU usage (40-60%) with low FPS, and stuttering. My CPU is not working hard either.

The temps are fine on both the CPU and GPU, no throttling occurs.

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The games affected:

Far Cry 3, The Crew, Watch Dogs       --->low FPS, low usage

Prince of Persia 2008                           --->constant 60 FPS with bad frametimes, serious stutter

Interestingly they are all Ubisoft games.

There is also Sleeping Dogs which runs fine but at certain points of the map, FPS, and GPU usage drops,

but I assume it has something to do with optimization.

However lots of other games run fine (Battlefield 4, Titanfall, Call of Duty Black Ops 2, Borderlands, etc)

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My PC specs:

MSI R9 280X OC

AMD FX 8350 at 4Ghz

ASUS M5A99FX PRO R2.0

8 GB of DDR3 1866 Mhz in dual channel mode

Crucial MX100 256 GB for boot drive

WD Green 2TB for files and games

Corsair CX750

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Is there a way to make them run better, increase FPS, decrease stutter? Any help appreciated.

 

 

[Badger906]

watchdogs and Farcry are both cpu intensive games. basically your cpu is the bottleneck. the gpu isn't working is hard because the cpu can't keep up.

[SuperPug]

I kinda knew you're CPU was gonna be an FX before i even scrolled down. So yeah, its a CPU issue.

[lovingGamer]

I kinda knew you're CPU was gonna be an FX before i even scrolled down. So yeah, its a CPU issue.

so he is simply bottleneckd?

 

My CPU is I3 4130 will same thing happen to me?

[Faceman]

so he is simply bottleneckd?

 

My CPU is I3 4130 will same thing happen to me?

Nope, an i3 is a stronger processor than an FX8 in games.

[SuperPug]

Nope, an i3 is a stronger processor than an FX8 in games.

 

Depends but probably...

[sgloux3470]

Download the latest driver and save it to your desktop.

Download Display Driver Uninstaller and follow the directions to clean out the old drivers and install the new ones.  When it asks to boot into safe mode, say yes.

 

Some games will have low usage like Arma 3 or MMO's, but Far Cry 3 should run completely fine on a 280x and an 8350.  If this doesn't resolve the issue we can try other things, but 9/10 times this will fix it.

[Faceman]

Depends but probably...

According to the reviews and benchmarks I have seen, 90% of games are doing better with an i3 than an FX8.  The exceptions are: Multiplayer BF4, Dragon Age Inquisition, Shadow of Mordor, and Far Cry 4.  In those games where the FX8 is doing better, it is not by a large margin.

[tpeter3]

Thank you for the fast answers.

I have played the games again with monitoring my CPU usage. While having the same issues, the core usages were like this:

The Crew: max 65% on one or two cores, 30-50% on the others

Far Cry 3: max 80% on one core, 30-60% on the others

Watch Dogs: max 70% on one core, 20-50% on the others.

Are you sure that it's a CPU bottleneck? I think the CPU should be running harder, if that is the bottleneck. Am I wrong?

Is it possible that Ubisoft just didn't bother optimizing their games for AMD?

Any ideas about Prince of Persia? With my previous GPU (GTX 650 TI 2GB), on the same settings, with the same CPU I didn't have any issues. (not really a demanding game)

I am also going to try sgloux3470's method and see if it helps.

[tpeter3]

The driver reinstall did not help. By the way my FPS in these games is not terrbily low(35-50), it is playable, but I just want to get the most of the performance of the 280X, and my CPU is far from 100% when the GPU usage starts to drop. (the CPU load is spread among all the cores). Also in The Crew, my CPU should perform pretty well according to this and this. And even an FX 6300 stock can run it fine as shown here. And I wonder what is causing the Prince of Persia stuttering. I think there might be something else behind the problems.

[tpeter3]

Any ideas?

[Faceman]

The driver reinstall did not help. By the way my FPS in these games is not terrbily low(35-50), it is playable, but I just want to get the most of the performance of the 280X, and my CPU is far from 100% when the GPU usage starts to drop. (the CPU load is spread among all the cores). Also in The Crew, my CPU should perform pretty well according to this and

. And even an FX 6300 stock can run it fine as shown

. And I wonder what is causing the Prince of Persia stuttering. I think there might be something else behind the problems.

Not all games can utilize 6 threads, in fact, the vast majority, I'm talking 99% of games are going to only utilize 4 threads.  Anything more than 4 theads, it doesn't improve performance.  So, just because your CPU usage isn't at 100%, doesn't mean there is not a CPU bottleneck happening.  Your load isn't truly being spread across all cores.  I am assuming you are using task manager to check, its not the best. There is a program that breaks down CPU usage depending on the application being used, I forget the name.  Maybe someone can chime in with the name.   Most games are only going to be as fast as your first core.  Most games have one main thread, and many trash threads, if that main thread is not fast enough, the gameplay will suffer.  This is why weak FX cores are no bueno for gaming.  An i3 outperforms FX CPUs in the majority of games because of the strong cores, and because games don't really benefit from more than 4 threads.

 

 

In the meantime, you need to overclock your CPU as high as you can comfortably take it, and save up money for an i3, but preferably an i5.  This will eliminate the bottleneck, and give you much higher minimum FPS for a more fluid gameplay.

[tpeter3]

Well, I was using MSI Afterburner to monitor the usages, I can see all the core usages with that. I know games don't utilize all cores, but I wasn't maxing out even a single core.

In a random moment, this is what I've got (Far Cry 3, Amanaki town, full of NPCs and high CPU load): FPS: 44.1, GPU: 68%, 72C, CPU1:58%, CPU2:41%, CPU3:44%, CPU4:42%, CPU5:47%, CPU6%31%, CPU7:34%, CPU8:78%, RAM:3580 MB, Pagefile: 6161 MB

How can I upload a screenshot by the way?

The Crew should also run perfectly fine on 8 core FX CPUs, there are a lot of benchmarks, and

proving that.

I also dont know why Prince of Persia runs like crap, but I know my CPU has nothing to do with that. (That bothers me a lot, since with my old GPU, there were no issues.)

Overclocking (to 4.5GHz) also did not help, and I'm not going to buy a new CPU in a while.

Can you think of any reason besides CPU bottleneck? I have heard of MSI 280X cards with buggy BIOS, can it cause issues similar to this? I'm on Windows 8.1 64bit, can it cause the problem?

[tpeter3]

I have figured out that Prince of Persia was really bottlenecked by the CPU which is strange considering that I don't remember any stutter when I was using my old GPU running on the same settings, with the same CPU, it was running with smooth 60 FPS. But I still don't know what is going on with the other games. After a bit of thinking, I decided to test Far Cry 3 on different number of CPU cores. What I saw:

- Running it on 2 cores   -> low FPS, 90-100% on both cores

- Running it on 4 cores   -> a bit higher FPS, lower CPU usage

- Running on all 8 cores  -> significantly higher FPS, low CPU usage

My thinking is this: 

- If it maxed out 2 cores, it can use each core for ~100% (they were even on the same module, sharing the same chunk of L2 cache)

- If running it on 8 cores instead of 4 gave me a performance boost, then the game can take advantage of more than 4 cores

- The game should be able to utilize all 8 cores for up to ~100%, but it isn't doing that

My thinking might be wrong. It might be a CPU bottleneck, I can't deny that Intel is just better, but AMD is what I have right now and I want to know if anything else can solve the problem besides CPU upgrade. I have just bought a new GPU for a lot of money (that's a lot for me), so I don't really have any money to spend at the moment. Also the FX is giving me pretty good performance in video editing, multitasking. I have a good motherboard with a ton of features for the AMD, for example 4 RAM slots which I will need if I ever want to upgrade the memory. Buying an I3 or an I5 would not really be a big upgrade overall (though it might give me some extra frames in certain games), as they are not as good in video editing (an I5 might be about as good). The real upgrade would be going for an I7, and buying a decent motherboard for it, but it would be 400-450 dollars which is way too much for me, and I don't want to spend like 300 dollars for an I5 combo which is not that big of a jump to be worth it. By the way I hear from all over the internet that the FX is fine for gaming, and I really don't think that it's a hardware issue rather than software. That is why I hope I can solve the problem without changing CPU. If you have any ideas (other than buying an Intel CPU), please help me.