High end computer with FPS issues

[Thogro]

I have a quite powerful gaming computer, and enjoy gaming at high quality as we all do. I have upgraded it since buying it by adding another graphics card.

My issue is that i am having trouble with my fps while playing games. I understand that gaming computers rarely are plug-and-play, but i'm sure what might be causing the lag.

 

Here is my setup:

Case - Cooler Master HAF 912 Plus Midi Tower

Power Supply - Silver Power SP-S850 850W PSU

Motherboard - ASUS P9X79 LE, Socket-2011

CPU - Intel® Core i7-3820 Processor (Socket-LGA2011, Quad Core, 3.6GHz, 10MB, 130W)

RAM - Crucial DDR3 BallistiX Sport 16GB KIT

Graphics Card - 2x GeForce GTX 780 3GB in SLI

 

Here are some of the games i play and how they preform:

Far Cry 4 - runs at maybe 40-50fps on medium quality, but still gives occational but frequent major lag spikes that hinders gameplay.

State of decay - Runs mostly at 60fps, but when moving around the fps frequently drops to 40-50fps, and i often experience major lag spikes down to 2fps when driving.

Crysis 2 - Runs perfectly smooth at 60 fps at ultra quality. Fantastic feeling.

Assassins creed III - Mostly smooth with occatioinal lag spikes.

Skyrim - Perfectly smooth

Planetside 2 - Mostly around 40-50fps at high quality settings.

Watchdogs - Mostly smooth at 60fps but major lag while driving and during action sequences.

 

I recently bought a new gaming laptop to have during easter. It's a MSI GE62 Apache 4k 8GB RAM edition. I mostly played State of decay. It ran the game better than my desktop computer does at the same settings. I find that wierd.

As I said, i'm not sure what to do next. I have invested quite a bit of money into my computer to try to achieve the goal of smooth 60fps. I would have thought that when i added another graphics card that i would experience a much better preformance, but it was barely noticable in my opinion.

Do any of you have any suggestions or advice of what i should try to do? Is there any information that i have left out you need to know? Thanks in advance.

[Raudi_]

I have a quite powerful gaming computer, and enjoy gaming at high quality as we all do. I have upgraded it since buying it by adding another graphics card.

My issue is that i am having trouble with my fps while playing games. I understand that gaming computers rarely are plug-and-play, but i'm sure what might be causing the lag.

-fix this pl0x-

Are you positive that you enabled SLI in the Nvidia Controll Panel?

[The DongFather]

Are you positive that you enabled SLI in the Nvidia Controll Panel?

there's no way its SLI that's the problem. 40-50fps on Far Cry 4 Medium settings? he should be getting that framerate on ultra settings with one card

[SuperPug]

Update drivers, make sure SLI is enabled...

[Thogro]

SLI is enabled.

Nvidia GeForce Experience tells me that my graphics drivers are up to date. It updates for both cards, right?

[Polyvalent]

Watch temps & clock speeds on the CPU as well as the GPU's.

 

Look at video memory usage, and make sure no viruses/programs/etc are eating up heavy amounts of system resources.

 

Have you tried a benchmarking program to test performance aswell?

 

edit: also vysnc disabled in games / nvidia control panel?  supersampling or other resource-intensive settings being forced in the panel?

 

@Thogro  make sure to follow your threads to get notified of replies

[Thogro]

To be honest i'm not sure what to be looking for with the clock speeds and memory usage.

And can you please link me to a benchmark program so i can tell you the results afterwards?

 

Edit: Temps for GPU usualy maxes at 80 C for GPU1 and 60 for GPU2. the second GPU has dual fans so it is expected

[Polyvalent]

To be honest i'm not sure what to be looking for with the clock speeds.

And can you please link me to a benchmark program so i can tell you the results afterwards?

 

look for anything under ~830 while gaming, the base clock for reference cards is in the 800's I believe.  

 

And yes, I can link you multiple ones, from which you can choose.

 

https://unigine.com/products/valley/download/

https://unigine.com/products/heaven/download/

 

I'd run these then google some 780 SLI results with the benchmark you used. 

 

 

Use this program to watch clock speeds, temps, and GPU usage (msi afterburner):

 

http://www.guru3d.com/files-details/msi-afterburner-beta-download.html

 

Look for low speeds / lower than usual GPU utilization.

[blu4]

Get MSI afterburner. Run it. Play the game for a minute or two. Quiet the game. Look at the core clock- if that core clock stays the same- e.g. pinned to 1200MHz the card is fine and it's not throttling.

[TDP_Equinox]

To be honest i'm not sure what to be looking for with the clock speeds and memory usage.

And can you please link me to a benchmark program so i can tell you the results afterwards?

 

Edit: Temps for GPU usualy maxes at 80 C for GPU1 and 60 for GPU2. the second GPU has dual fans so it is expected

Wait. The second GPU is different?

[Thogro]

Wait. The second GPU is different?

Only in manufacturer

one looks like this:

http://videocardz.com/42041/zotac-announces-geforce-gtx-780

another looks like this:

http://linustechtips.com/main/topic/30640-evga-gtx-780-sc-acx-cooler-or-2-way-sli-gtx-770-help/

 

They're both gtx 780 with 3gb memory

 

Edit: Note these were only picture expamples, not actual cards

[TDP_Equinox]

Only in manufacturer

one looks like this:

http://videocardz.com/42041/zotac-announces-geforce-gtx-780

another looks like this:

http://linustechtips.com/main/topic/30640-evga-gtx-780-sc-acx-cooler-or-2-way-sli-gtx-770-help/

 

They're both gtx 780 with 3gb memory

 

Edit: Note these were only picture expamples, not actual cards

When you take one card at a time out, does the performance increase? 

[Thogro]

When you take one card at a time out, does the performance increase? 

I haven't tried that, but that sounds odd. Afterburner tells me that both cards are used equally.

 

And i'm gonna have to continue this tomorrow. I'm sorry, i gotta be up early tomorrow. Time zones...

[TDP_Equinox]

I haven't tried that, but that sounds odd. Afterburner tells me that both cards are used equally.

 

And i'm gonna have to continue this tomorrow. I'm sorry, i gotta be up early tomorrow. Time zones...

There may be differences in the cards.

So when you continue, test it with one card and see if the performance is increased/decreased.

[Thogro]

There may be differences in the cards.

So when you continue, test it with one card and see if the performance is increased/decreased.

Will disabling SLI be enugh? or will i have to physicly unplug the cards?

[TDP_Equinox]

Will disabling SLI be enugh? or will i have to physicly unplug the cards?

I would personally remove the cards outright, just to avoid any possible problems.

[NightMiu]

I had a similar problem when I bought a second gpu, it turned out that the new card I bought was damaged, but not enough to notice when I was doing normal work on my pc. You should try to remove the second gpu and see how your system performs under stress and then switch it with the other card. If they perform just as well the problem is (probably) somewhere else.

[JefferyD90]

Im willing to say that Windows needs to be reinstalled correctly.

[Xsilent(X)]

SLI is enabled.

Nvidia GeForce Experience tells me that my graphics drivers are up to date. It updates for both cards, right?

 

roll back one driver. did you had this since the newest driver or just now?

[Thogro]

roll back one driver. did you had this since the newest driver or just now?

No, i got the second gpu because i wasn't happy with the performance i had before either. Im gonna try tjese suggestions when i get home from work today

[wizardofzak]

When you say you werent happy before do you mean that you noticed that you got bad performance with the one 780? Its probably worth benchmarking the original 780 then cross referencing it with other 780 scores. It could be that the first 780 you bought was damaged.

[Thogro]

So i have done some tests. I dowloaded both the valley and heaven benchmarks. They were all in 1080x1920 ultra setting with x8 anti-aliasing and no vsync. Here are the results:

 

The first GPU:
Valley - 36,4 fps, score 1522 (i suspect vsync might have been on for this one)

Heaven - 64,3 fps, score 1618

 

The second GPU:

Valley - 36,0 fps, score 1508

Heaven - 66,9 fps, score 1686

 

Both GPUs in SLI:

Valley - 85,0 fps, score 3556

Heaven - 109,7 fps, score 2764

 

I ran around a little bit in Far Cry 4 while watching MSI Afterburner. It showed the core clock to max and stabilize at about 900-1100 MHz; for both GPUs seperatly and together. It also showed memory usage to stabilize at about 1100-1330 MB. The memory clock was constant at 3005 MHz. I don't really know what the memory clock part tells me. The game seemed to perform almost the same on both cards and in SLI, but the benchmarks showed great increase when using both cards.

I don't think one of my cards is broken.

 

What do you think?

[wizardofzak]

When researching online i found: https://forums.geforce.com/default/topic/795198/sli/gtx-780-sli-far-cry-4-disappointing-performance-/didnt read it all but if you type "gtx 780 sli far cry 4 perfomance" there is other stuff there, seems the game has crippling sli issues