PC Under Performing - Why?

[HDudeness]

Specifications: http://puu.sh/gjUil/60d0351197.png

(CPU has been properly overclocked to 5.0 GHz; motherboard is the MSI 970 GAMING; if I am missing a certain spec, let me know.)

 

Title may or may not be misleading; couldn't think of a better one.

 

Anyway, I've taken dozens of different system tests and came up with the same conclusion: there is no way my system is running to its full potential at all.

 

Examples:

http://puu.sh/gjT8F/c8bc7856fc.png

http://puu.sh/gjTfC/7fe6a00806.png

http://puu.sh/gjT9Y/82aa335e2f.png

http://puu.sh/gjTaY/bd1502823d.png

 

You may or may not have already assumed that from those images things aren't looking too good performance wise. I have done this Passmark test three times as of March 2nd, 2015 and got around the same score. These scores must be wrong because, for example, my Geforce GTX 970 scored about 8000 points under the default Geforce GTX 980 they scored; WHAT?! You can see through the pictures, but what sealed the deal that something is not right is the fact that my RAM scored so ridiculously low compared to other 1600 MHz 8GB RAM sticks. (Mine scored about 900 while others of around my range scored in the 2000 range.)

 

Beyond generic system tests and benchmarks, I noticed this system draw back in gaming. Starting with a simple game, League of Legends, I found that in a normal game my FPS would range from 10 (big team fights) to 90 (sitting at base right at the start of the game) at maximum settings, 1920x1080, and anti-aliasing turned on. Knowing the power of my NVIDIA 970 and AMD-FX 8350, I thought there was no way this was possible but I went ahead and tested something. I turned all the settings to the lowest, turned off anti-aliasing, and kept the 1080p resoultion. Results? 10 FPS in large team battles and 90 at stand still scenes. I also went the other way and used the NVIDIA DSR feature and ticked the resolution to standard 4K and got the same results of 90 FPS at a stand still and 10 in large team fights. I played on an iMac with an i7 4770k and Geforce GTX 780m graphics and easily got 150+ FPS throughout any given game. Going from a notebook card to a desktop card I expected anything but this. Going onto a few AAA titles, Assassin's Creed Unity, (I know it runs on a poor engine, that is not the point.) I put everything to maximum settings with 4x MFAA at 1080 on ACU, average about 45 FPS in a busy scene in the streets, average 30 FPS while running through busy streets. Trying the same test that I did before on LoL, I went ahead and turned the settings down to the lowest possible at 1080 with no anti-aliasing, reset the game, went back in and got the same results as I did on maximum settings with 4x MFAA. Obviously, something isn't right mostly because of this League of Legends issue. (I have tested other games as well, but I didn't want to give you a wall of text. If anyone needs any more examples, trust me, I have more.)

 

My main question is this: does anybody have any ideas on what I could do to get this fixed properly? Is it a motherboard setting, driver problem, OS issue, or something totally different? I've searched all across the web for answers and found none relating to my issue. (Obviously)

[Hatsune Miku 「 」]

1. your cpu is bottlenecking your gpu.

[SImoHayha]

snip

I think its bottle-necking......AMD doesn't have very strong cores.

[HmmR]

1. your cpu is bottlenecking your gpu.

 

 

my dad has the same setup and bottlenecking is there but no so much his bench marks were wayyy wayyyy wayyyy better

 

i think its something to with thermal throttling

better heat sinks and good cooler will help and keep the system clean

 

(i dont know which case or cooler u have so im not sure this is the cause )

[HDudeness]

my dad has the same setup and bottlenecking is there but no so much his bench marks were wayyy wayyyy wayyyy better

 

i think its something to with thermal throttling

better heat sinks and good cooler will help and keep the system clean

 

(i dont know which case or cooler u have so im not sure this is the cause )

NZXT H440 is the case, Corsair H100i is the cooler. I think I'm in good hands when it comes to the system staying cool.

[HmmR]

NZXT H440 is the case, Corsair H100i is the cooler. I think I'm in good hands when it comes to the system staying cool.

the case and cooler is good 

so idk why my dads desktop runs better

i recommend u upgrade your cpu to a intel cpu like i5 ot i7

[ThE_MarD]

Heyyo,

1. your cpu is bottlenecking your gpu.

Yes and no... Yes on single-threaded games (I am unsure if LoL is single or multi-threaded... that's gonna be a Google search someone else will have to do I'm lazy right meow lol) and No on games that are properly multi-threaded.

That and his OC is 5GHz which is plenty.

Next? Your RAM... 1600MHz? Hmm, make sure your XMP is setup properly on it. On my system? The performance difference I was getting on the stock values my mobo would detect of 1333MHz vs the XMP of either 1866MHz or 2133MHz made a big difference. Then again? That's what my memory was clocked to. I'd recommend double checking your BIOS over those settings.

Third? Temperatures. Use a program like MSI Afterburner to monitor utilization and the temperatures of your GPU and CPU during gameplay to see if you're getting thermal throttling. I recommend MSI Afterburner cause you can setup On-Screen Display to show you utilization and temperatures.

here's an example:

http://i.imgur.com/LSJ7q90.jpg

As you can see? World of Tanks is SEVERELY CPU limited. My PC isn't running hot on any component, my RAM utilization isn't full but I have a single thread on my CPU at high loads and the rest at medium or idle... That's why I'm saying in LoL if it's single-threaded? That AMD CPU will struggle. AMD CPUs do well in multi-threaded games when compared to Intel CPUs.. but they just don't have the instructions per cycle abilities of an Intel CPU per single thread, thus in games like WoT and maybe LoL? Even an Intel i3 will blast past an AMD FX-8350...

What are all the games you're playing at the moment btw? Are you getting poor performance across the board or just LoL?

[HDudeness]

What are all the games you're playing at the moment btw? Are you getting poor performance across the board or just LoL?

I have tried Assassin's Creed Unity and Black Flag, Max Payne 3 which I get 45 FPS at maximum settings at 1080 with 4x MXAA which still doesn't seem right, Borderlands 2 which I get around that 45 FPS mark on a busy scene at maximum settings... The list can go on but in all these games decreasing the settings makes no difference on the FPS rating at all, especially in League of Legends.

[HDudeness]

Third? Temperatures. Use a program like MSI Afterburner to monitor utilization and the temperatures of your GPU and CPU during gameplay to see if you're getting thermal throttling. I recommend MSI Afterburner cause you can setup On-Screen Display to show you utilization and temperatures.

Just got the MSI Afterburner and while playing Assassin's Creed Unity I just now took a stroll through the city, got into a few fights, and ran a couple cut scenes and averaged my power % to be about 75% and the fan speed to be 51% throughout. Temperatures for about half an hour of this steadied at about 53 C. However, still managed to only get about an average of 26 FPS. Thoughts?

 

http://puu.sh/gk1r4/2c9c4a5b0e.jpg

 

CPU temperatures stayed steady at about 45 C during the run also. Playing ACU with MSI Afterburner running it says the load is at about 95% too.

 

I'll get back to you when I go through the RAM settings you mentioned before and see if things improve.

 

EDIT: Alright so basically I went back into the BIOS and realized my voltages on my CPU were ridiculously low (defaulted at .9V) so I racked them up to 1.38V and rested the OC to 4.8GHz. Also, my RAM timings were all screwed up so I used XMP to fix those; they look pretty good now. I'll update when I go through a couple hours of this.

 

EDIT: No difference; as a matter of fact my Passmark score went down about 100 points. System score totaled out to be 1386 on Passmark.

[HDudeness]

Next? Your RAM... 1600MHz? Hmm, make sure your XMP is setup properly on it. On my system? The performance difference I was getting on the stock values my mobo would detect of 1333MHz vs the XMP of either 1866MHz or 2133MHz made a big difference. Then again? That's what my memory was clocked to. I'd recommend double checking your BIOS over those settings.

In my BIOS my numbers came out to this in terms of RAM. Any changes I should make?

 

http://puu.sh/gk2CI/d1f34a239f.jpg

 

http://puu.sh/gk2BC/7b186e2e26.jpg

[HDudeness]

Welp, turns out there's a switch on my motherboard called "slow mode" that was ticked on accident and I just turned it off... You can figure out the rest. Got 300 FPS in League now. Bye lol

[ThE_MarD]

Heyyo,

Glad you figured it out!

Slow mode? What? That's gotta be one of the most silly features I've ever heard of hahaha... But I guess some people are quick to get Butt hurt if they have to reset their bios..

Another silly feature I've seen on motherboard is dedicated switches for disabling PCI-E slots.. I'm pretty sure if there's no device in the slot it gets disabled.. but maybe I'm wrong. Stillustration silly as heck.