Is this PC performing as expected?

[The Cat Petter]

My brother bought a prebuilt HP desktop a little over a year ago. He did some upgrades to the CPU AND GPU.

 

Specs:

AMD Athlon X4 860K (with the CM cooler that came with the old FX-670K CPU)

Visiontek Radeon R9 270x 2GB

MSI MS-7906

Samsung 1x 8GB RAM 1600

Seagate Barracuda 1TB 7200RPM

 

His FPS in BF4 at 1080p ranges from 30-60 on LOW settings. Videos of people with the same CPU and GPU get much better FPS on BF4. I ran Prime95 for 10 minutes and the CPU usage stayed at 100% so I don't think that it is throttling. What could be the problem? Is the motherboard not supplying enough power to the components or something?

 

Here's the Userbenchmark that I ran: http://www.userbenchmark.com/UserRun/810353

[Mixzzz]

4 minutes ago, The Cat Petter said:

My brother bought a prebuilt HP desktop a little over a year ago. He did some upgrades to the CPU AND GPU.

 

Specs:

AMD Athlon X4 860K (with the CM cooler that came with the old FX-670K CPU)

Visiontek Radeon R9 270x 2GB

MSI MS-7906

Samsung 1x 8GB RAM 1600

Seagate Barracuda 1TB 7200RPM

 

His FPS in BF4 at 1080p ranges from 30-60 on LOW settings. Videos of people with the same CPU and GPU get much better FPS on BF4. I ran Prime95 for 10 minutes and the CPU usage stayed at 100% so I don't think that it is throttling. What could be the problem? Is the motherboard not supplying enough power to the components or something?

 

Here's the Userbenchmark that I ran: http://www.userbenchmark.com/UserRun/810353

Run Prime95/IBT/OCCT for like 10 mins and check CPU temps - I do it trough HW monitor and I use CPU-Z aswell to see if its running at the right clock speeds. If the CPU is running like it should, go get furmark and stress test the GPU, if its within reasonable temps then its not then i dunno...Maybe he didnt install the CPU cooler properly...

[DaltonM]

Just now, CUDA_Cores said:

check your VRAM usage. Is it hitting the 2GB limit on the card?

This. Turn textures down first. 

[Ryoutarou97]

What utilisation of CPU, GPU, and VRAM do you get during a game?

[xAcid9]

100% CPU usage but what about clock speed for both processor and GPU?

[Nailzy]

I've got this CPU on a rig here with me right now - it's a pain in the arse. Check your thermal margin isn't being hit. It's very much hit and miss with this GPU I've found.

[The Cat Petter]

He reinstalled the CPU and nothing changed. BTW his temps are crazy high (70s and up) but I opened the case and it doesn't seem hot. It seems like a common occurrence with the 860k.

 

Also, people with 2GB 270x's get much better fps on higher settings so...

[Mixzzz]

1 minute ago, DaltonM said:

This. Turn textures down first. 

He said that hes running it on low already...

[Nailzy]

2 minutes ago, The Cat Petter said:

He reinstalled the CPU and nothing changed. BTW his temps are crazy high (70s and up) but I opened the case and it doesn't seem hot. It seems like a common occurrence with the 860k.

 

Also, people with 2GB 270x's get much better fps on higher settings so...

70c is the thermal throttle point on this CPU. You need to get that figured out. On mine it was a case of changing the cooler out and taking control of the vcore manually and disabling all the load line calibration nonsense. It runs a budget Gigabyte mobo and was giving me grief, it's a  Gigabyte F2A68HM-HD.

[Mixzzz]

1 minute ago, The Cat Petter said:

He reinstalled the CPU and nothing changed. BTW his temps are crazy high (70s and up) but I opened the case and it doesn't seem hot. It seems like a common occurrence with the 860k.

Seems like the CPU is running too hot and throttling...Check if theres enough thermal paste and the heatsink isnt sitting on anything except CPU(sometimes RAM can cause clearance issues)

[The Cat Petter]

The CPU is installed with the paste that I use for my 8320 (my idle temp is in the 20s). The cpu and heatsink is connected properly and the fan is spinning. Also, if the CPU frequency remained constant throughout Prime95 doesn't it eliminate throttling? The CPU temp did report nearly 100C lol.

[Mixzzz]

1 minute ago, The Cat Petter said:

The CPU is installed with the paste that I use for my 8320 (my idle temp is in the 20s). The cpu and heatsink is connected properly and the fan is spinning. Also, if the CPU frequency remained constant throughout Prime95 doesn't it eliminate throttling? The CPU temp did report nearly 100C lol.

At what clock speed is it running?

[Nailzy]

The frequency won't show as changing when it throttles back on these at all, you will just see significant performance decrease....

[The Cat Petter]

Just now, Mixzzz said:

At what clock speed is it running?

Like 3.9 GHz

[Mixzzz]

Just now, Nailzy said:

The frequency won't show as changing when it throttles back on these at all, you will just see significant performance decrease....

It will?

[Mixzzz]

Just now, The Cat Petter said:

Like 3.9 GHz

Then check the gpu now...

[The Cat Petter]

1 minute ago, Nailzy said:

The frequency won't show as changing when it throttles back on these at all, you will just see significant performance decrease....

Hm...okay. I'll try swapping heatsinks and see what happens.

[Nailzy]

1 minute ago, Mixzzz said:

It will?

No it won't?! Want me to do a fraps video on the rig here to show you?

 

Edit - actually the only utility that showed throttling happening was AMD's own overdrive utility. CPU-Z and the like didn't register it at all.

[Mixzzz]

1 minute ago, Nailzy said:

No it won't?! Want me to do a fraps video on the rig here to show you?

 

Edit - actually the only utility that showed throttling happening was AMD's own overdrive utility. CPU-Z and the like didn't register it at all.

CPU-Z does register throttling on my 8320... So I dunno

[The Cat Petter]

3 minutes ago, Mixzzz said:

Then check the gpu now...

Everything seems fine for the GPU. Everything is reporting as normal (I used to have the same model)

[Mixzzz]

3 minutes ago, The Cat Petter said:

Everything seems fine for the GPU. Everything is reporting as normal (I used to have the same model)

What software did you use to test?

 

[Nailzy]

5 minutes ago, Mixzzz said:

CPU-Z does register throttling on my 8320... So I dunno

The 8320 works very differently. The 860K is basically the A10 7850K without the GPU but with all the shitty thermal throttling behavior left inside it. It's known for being a right pain when it comes to thermals, and for motherboards overvolting the hell out of it on stock. Talked about here too : http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2450573

[The Cat Petter]

Ok I finally swapped heatsinks and....

 

Nothing really changed. Temperatures are still reporting 50-60C at idle (with the case open because it's too small to house a Hyper 212 EVO) and FPS in BF4 is crap (40-80). The settings are all low BTW.

 

Is it the Visiontech 270x's fault or could it be that the motherboard isn't supply enough power to the CPU somehow?

 

 

[The Cat Petter]

I guess no one has any more ideas?

[The Cat Petter]

Sorry for triple posting but is there really nothing to be done?