How to make games play good?

[Kevin11]

Specs: i7 6700k, 16gb 2400 ddr4 ram, sabertooth z170 S, GTX 660, SSD boot and HDD backup

so i was using an amd fx 6350 and cheap mobo with the same gtx 660 and I could play SC2 in max settings just fine, FPS would drop but everything performed properly. now I can't even play SC2, I upgraded my psu cpu mobo and ram but kept gtx 660 and case. i have installed chipset drivers, chipset manager, audio drivers, gpu drivers, motherboard drivers and rapid storage drivers. none of them helped the gameplay. what do i try now? how to fix??

 

edt: sc2 loads, but the sound is garbled and the fps stays between 15 and 45 regardless of how many units are out or anything, whereas before i would have 60fps at the start of games with my old cpu and mobo

[Zyndo]

This might be a pain in the ass, but try uninstalling and reinstalling the game? could be some sort of mishap between hardware swaps. I don't really know what could cause such issues other than bad drivers or bad hardware. are you experiencing any other issues in any other games or applications? A gtx 660 isn't exactly a powerhouse card these days, but it shouldn't struggle with SC II.

 

Where is your audio coming from? is it your GPU? motherboard? sound card?

[Kevin11]

Just now, Zyndo said:

This might be a pain in the ass, but try uninstalling and reinstalling the game? could be some sort of mishap between hardware swaps. I don't really know what could cause such issues other than bad drivers or bad hardware. are you experiencing any other issues in any other games or applications? A gtx 660 isn't exactly a powerhouse card these days, but it shouldn't struggle with SC II

it happens for the other much less intensive game too, but it happens rarely so it's definitely not just sc2, the temps never get hot whereas with high fps sc2 the gpu would get pretty hot, now it's not even trying

[Zyndo]

Just now, Kevin11 said:

it happens for the other much less intensive game too, but it happens rarely so it's definitely not just sc2, the temps never get hot whereas with high fps sc2 the gpu would get pretty hot, now it's not even trying

Where is your audio coming from? is it your GPU? motherboard? sound card?

[Kevin11]

13 hours ago, Zyndo said:

Where is your audio coming from? is it your GPU? motherboard? sound card?

It comes from my monitor through an HDMI cord plugged into the gtx 660

 

my monitor and hdmi set up is the same from before, as-well so nothing has changed there, the gtx 660 has no problem with 2 monitors and sc2 in max settings

[Zyndo]

13 hours ago, Kevin11 said:

It comes from my monitor through an HDMI cord plugged into the gtx 660

Okay. I'm not really all that good at diagnosing problems or anything, but I have an idea. give me a minute to confirm and i'll get back to you.

 

Okay never mind. I thought maybe the 660 was old enough that it was running a PCIe 2.0 speed rather than 3.0 like your motherboard is. whilst that shouldn't really affect anything at all I thought perhaps it may cause an issue.

 

Well the only thing I can think of is that its a driver issue. Keep in mind that your GPU has more than 1 driver that requires it to run. if you have Geforce Experience it should download all applicable drivers when they come out (or suggest for you to do that) but if you download them manually its possible you may miss some.

 

Again, it could also be some weird glitch that formed when you swapped hardware. If you're not running a fresh install of the game (fresh since you changed your hardware) then you may want to try a reinstall of your games. your motherboards may access your drives slightly differently or something that could be throwing things off, especially considering you've jumped generations AND company boundaries. I don't really know enough about troubleshooting to say anything for sure, and this is a bit of a random guess, but that is where I would put my money.

 

Sorry i can't be of much help (if any at all). I just thought I would try an answer since very few people area awake right now to help you out.

[Kevin11]

1 minute ago, Zyndo said:

Okay never mind. I thought maybe the 660 was old enough that it was running a PCIe 2.0 speed rather than 3.0 like your motherboard is. whilst that shouldn't really affect anything at all I thought perhaps it may cause an issue.

 

Well the only thing I can think of is that its a driver issue. Keep in mind that your GPU has more than 1 driver that requires it to run. if you have Geforce Experience it should download all applicable drivers when they come out (or suggest for you to do that) but if you download them manually its possible you may miss some.

 

Again, it could also be some weird glitch that formed when you swapped hardware. If you're not running a fresh install of the game (fresh since you changed your hardware) then you may want to try a reinstall of your games. your motherboards may access your drives slightly differently or something that could be throwing things off, especially considering you've jumped generations AND company boundaries. I don't really know enough about troubleshooting to say anything for sure, and this is a bit of a random guess, but that is where I would put my money.

 

Sorry i can't be of much help (if any at all). I just thought I would try an answer since very few people area awake right now to help you out.

you may yet be my savior, didn't have xperience  installing now, we'll see. oh and it's two fresh hard drives, ssd boot and hdd back, both fresh windows and everything

[Zyndo]

4 minutes ago, Kevin11 said:

you may yet be my savior, didn't have xperience  installing now, we'll see. oh and it's two fresh hard drives, ssd boot and hdd back, both fresh windows and everything

this may be a goofy suggestion, but have you turned your computer off and then back on again? sometimes driver updates or game updates or whatever updates happen that change something (even if you don't think its relevant) can be buggy or glitchy until a restart.

 

I'm gonna go to bed now, but best of luck with your computer and let me know how it goes. perhaps by the time I wake up someone more knowledgeable with troubleshooting can come by an be your savior =)

[incarnate]

Did you reinstall Windows after the upgrade? There could be some conflicts if you didn't.

[Kevin11]

12 hours ago, incarnate said:

Did you reinstall Windows after the upgrade? There could be some conflicts if you didn't.

yup a few times actually as i had to deal with secureboot and was troubleshooting

 

12 hours ago, Zyndo said:

this may be a goofy suggestion, but have you turned your computer off and then back on again? sometimes driver updates or game updates or whatever updates happen that change something (even if you don't think its relevant) can be buggy or glitchy until a restart.

 

I'm gonna go to bed now, but best of luck with your computer and let me know how it goes. perhaps by the time I wake up someone more knowledgeable with troubleshooting can come by an be your savior =)

didn't work

 

I seem to be making progress, switched my profile from normal to optimal in bios and now it's ocing at 7% and I lowered the settings down to medium, seems to have almost entirely taken away the garbled sound and it's given me more fps. It seems like the gpu is only at half strength or something? but idk why that would cause the garbled noise

 

other people seem to have been having the same problem since 2008 http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/249604-28-strange-problem-distorted-sound-playing-games

 

So after doing some research it appears to be a somewhat common problem with no real solution that I could find. The sound distortion seems to be related to the fps I am getting, if I drop setting to medium and have full 60 fps then the garbled sound almost completely goes away, but it seems to lower my fps just by happening which makes higher settings completely impossible to play, any way around this?

 

10 hours ago, Kevin11 said:

So after doing some research it appears to be a somewhat common problem with no real solution that I could find. The sound distortion seems to be related to the fps I am getting, if I drop setting to medium and have full 60 fps then the garbled sound almost completely goes away, but it seems to lower my fps just by happening which makes higher settings completely impossible to play, any way around this?

confirmed. even in medium settings, i played a very long game and as the armies started to get very large and the fps started to drop, instantly the sound started getting garbled, and got worse as the fps dropped lower

[Zyndo]

is your GPU plugged into your upper-most x16 slot on your motherboard? and if you go into your motherboard PCIe settings can you confirm that the port you have your GPU plugged into is running at PCIe Gen3 speeds? there are options that allow you to change the slot bandwidth or maybe its setting itself up that way, but POTENTIALLY not having enough bandwidth could be an issue for when things start getting hairy.

 

Again, I don't really know much about troubleshooting... but if your slot is running at PCIe gen 1 speeds that is essentially like running PCIe gen 3.0 x4 speeds. Nvidia doesn't allow their GPU's to run at anything below 8x for some reason. maybe this is that reason? perhaps its causing conflicts? i don't know.

[Kevin11]

58 minutes ago, Zyndo said:

is your GPU plugged into your upper-most x16 slot on your motherboard? and if you go into your motherboard PCIe settings can you confirm that the port you have your GPU plugged into is running at PCIe Gen3 speeds? there are options that allow you to change the slot bandwidth or maybe its setting itself up that way, but POTENTIALLY not having enough bandwidth could be an issue for when things start getting hairy.

 

Again, I don't really know much about troubleshooting... but if your slot is running at PCIe gen 1 speeds that is essentially like running PCIe gen 3.0 x4 speeds. Nvidia doesn't allow their GPU's to run at anything below 8x for some reason. maybe this is that reason? perhaps its causing conflicts? i don't know.

idk how to check this, but yes it is in the top pcie slot an a sabertooth z170 mobo which is a high quality $200 motherboard

after doing some more testing, I deleted the nvidia sound drivers, lost sound from my monitor so I plugged in headphones into the motherboard in the back, and this fixed the sound problem but not the gpu problem. So what I've learned is that the garbled sound is coming from the GPU when frame rates start to drop, but the thing is this never used to happen with the old motherboard and I am getting way less FPS than I used to, how do I check if it's the pcie speeds?

[Zyndo]

i forget where it is... lemme go check my BIOS (i have an Asus Z170-A, so we'll have similar BIOS layouts) and i'll get back to you in a bit.

[Kevin11]

1 minute ago, Zyndo said:

i forget where it is... lemme go check my BIOS (i have an Asus Z170-A, so we'll have similar BIOS layouts) and i'll get back to you in a bit.

GPU-Z tells me it is using bus interface PCI-E 3.0x16 @ x16 1.1 so this is good right? shouldn't be causing an issue?

[Zyndo]

1 minute ago, Kevin11 said:

GPU-Z tells me it is using bus interface PCI-E 3.0x16 @ x16 1.1 so this is good right? shouldn't be causing an issue?

ah yes. then you're running at proper speeds. it was a long shot anyway but i don't know what the problem could be otherwise. the only conclusion i can come to is there is something wrong with the motherboard since everything was working fine before you switched motherboards and your CPU is significantly more powerful than your old one so that can't be causing issues. Same with your RAM.

 

Are you maybe also running stuff off of your iGPU? (the GPU located inside your CPU) Sometimes in very rare cases having your 'on board graphics' enabled at the same time as your dedicated graphics card can cause weird issues.

[Kevin11]

3 minutes ago, Zyndo said:

ah yes. then you're running at proper speeds. it was a long shot anyway but i don't know what the problem could be otherwise. the only conclusion i can come to is there is something wrong with the motherboard since everything was working fine before you switched motherboards and your CPU is significantly more powerful than your old one so that can't be causing issues. Same with your RAM.

 

Are you maybe also running stuff off of your iGPU? (the GPU located inside your CPU) Sometimes in very rare cases having your 'on board graphics' enabled at the same time as your dedicated graphics card can cause weird issues.

idk how to check that lol, something I've noticed is my gpu fan speed doesn't go above 50% even if the load hits 90%, could this be the cause?

[Zyndo]

20 minutes ago, Kevin11 said:

idk how to check that lol, something I've noticed is my gpu fan speed doesn't go above 50% even if the load hits 90%, could this be the cause?

unlikely. your fan speed will only get really high if temperatures get really high (unless you set up your own custom fan profile for it). Also, temperatures don't really affect performance unless its getting so hot that its damaging components.

 

go into your bios, and select the "load optimized defaults" option. save and exit the BIOS and see if that helps you run better. that should disable the iGPU if it somehow got itself activated at some point. (its also going to change any of your other settings you may have set up, although this will be a good thing in case you changed something that is causing this issue).

 

Also, your IGPU can turn itself on for some motherboards if you plug a monitor into your motherboard instead of your graphics card. make sure your monitor is plugged into your graphics card

[Kevin11]

3 minutes ago, Zyndo said:

go into your bios, and select the "load optimized defaults" option. save and exit the BIOS and see if that helps you run better. that should disable the iGPU if it somehow got itself activated at some point. (its also going to change any of your other settings you may have set up, although this will be a good thing in case you changed something that is causing this issue).

 

Also, your IGPU can turn itself on for some motherboards if you plug a monitor into your motherboard instead of your graphics card. make sure your monitor is plugged into your graphics card

both monitors are plugged into mobo as they were with my old setup, running at the same settings and everything. I set my bios profile to optimized yesterday and it then overclocked my cpu to 7% in response which I'm hoping won't void the warranty lol, it may have slightly helped but any increase in performance from the switch was very negligible 

[Zyndo]

11 minutes ago, Kevin11 said:

both monitors are plugged into mobo as they were with my old setup, running at the same settings and everything. I set my bios profile to optimized yesterday and it then overclocked my cpu to 7% in response which I'm hoping won't void the warranty lol, it may have slightly helped but any increase in performance from the switch was very negligible 

I would like you to repeat that for confirmation. Your monitors are plugged into your motherboard?

[Kevin11]

Just now, Zyndo said:

I would like you to repeat that for confirmation. Your monitors are plugged into your motherboard?

lol oops no I mean the gpu, both monitors plugged into the GTX 660 same as before, and I had been using the 2 monitor set up for some time before upgrading with absolutely no issues, so I doubt the dual monitor display has any relevance to the problem

[Zyndo]

Just now, Kevin11 said:

lol oops no I mean the gpu, both monitors plugged into the GTX 660 same as before, and I had been using the 2 monitor set up for some time before upgrading with absolutely no issues, so I doubt the dual monitor display has any relevance to the problem

lolol. you had me worried for a minute there.

 

Well, you could always try enabling your iGPU, and putting one of those monitors (whichever one you don't game on) onto your motherboard in order to alleviate some of the work done by your GPU. since you say it seems to be affected by performance, making your GPU have less work to do by powering only 1 monitor instead of two may be the difference you need in order for it to operate normally.

 

Kind of a band-aid solution, but I don't know how to actually fix your problem =(

[Kevin11]

Just now, Zyndo said:

lolol. you had me worried for a minute there.

 

Well, you could always try enabling your iGPU, and putting one of those monitors (whichever one you don't game on) onto your motherboard in order to alleviate some of the work done by your GPU. since you say it seems to be affected by performance, making your GPU have less work to do by powering only 1 monitor instead of two may be the difference you need in order for it to operate normally.

 

Kind of a band-aid solution, but I don't know how to actually fix your problem =(

Yeah I realized I could do that if I had to, but I'd rather diagnose the actual problem so I don't upgrade my gpu later and have the same problem lol, if it's a cpu or motherboard problem I want to find out as fast as possible to make the return as easy as possible, reading through other forums of people with similar problems one thing that stood out to me is taking out a ram stick, then taking out the other ram stick, then swapping the ram sticks in their slots to try to determine if its a ram slot issue or a ram issue, so I may try that tomorrow or something. someone else suggested cleaning the gpu where it connects into the mobo as small amounts of dust can have a dramatic effect on performance, so I'll probably try that tomorrow, too. Thank you for all your time in trying to help me  it is highly appreciated

[Zyndo]

7 minutes ago, Kevin11 said:

Yeah I realized I could do that if I had to, but I'd rather diagnose the actual problem so I don't upgrade my gpu later and have the same problem lol, if it's a cpu or motherboard problem I want to find out as fast as possible to make the return as easy as possible, reading through other forums of people with similar problems one thing that stood out to me is taking out a ram stick, then taking out the other ram stick, then swapping the ram sticks in their slots to try to determine if its a ram slot issue or a ram issue, so I may try that tomorrow or something. someone else suggested cleaning the gpu where it connects into the mobo as small amounts of dust can have a dramatic effect on performance, so I'll probably try that tomorrow, too. Thank you for all your time in trying to help me  it is highly appreciated

those are both good ideas. I would also recommend re-seating all of your components (that is, pulling them out and then reinstalling them) just in case you have a slightly loose connection somewhere. I would also recommend switching your HDMI cables in case one of them is slightly damaged or something, that could DEFINITELY impact your audio quality (probably not the fps though), other than that my money would be on some sort of motherboard glitch/bug that you should contact Asus about if you can.