Low performance with rx 480 8gb

[MADMINK]

When I purchased Ovewatch back in 2016, the game gave me 95-100 fps with the settings maxed out (including SMAA, Local reflections, and Ambient Occlusion). For the past few months, the GPU temperature has risen from the previous 76 C average to 85 C!  Also the frame rate has dropped to 85- 115 fps after lowering the graphics significantly. My fps increases when I set the graphics to more demanding settings. Here are my current settings// effects low, SMAA medium, ambient occlusion off, Tscopic filtering 16X, lighting High, shadows medium, Local reflections off, refraction quality low, fog off, model quality high// '''Video settings 120hz 1920x1080 vsync off, reduced buffering enabled, triple buffering disabled, fps max to 300"" 

 

My windows and AMD Adrenaline addition are updated to latest versions. 

I have noticed that my GPU is running around 100% load @ 1230s MHz and 2000mhz memory while the CPU is at 90-100%load.

 

System Specs: RX 480 8GB reference cooling (closed) 

i5 6th gen CPU

8GB DDR4 RAM Single Channel

The well ventilated case is adequately cooled with 2 frontal fans and a single rear fan.

600w 80plus High Power brand PSU

1TB WD Blue HDD

Windows 10 

 

Note: I have never over or underclocked my GPU or CPU and I do not wish to. However, I increased my fan target speed (AMD adrenaline) to 2700 rpm and left the temp at Automatic.

 

Any help would be greatly appreciated

 

[cj09beira]

there are a few things that pop to mind, one is that there is too much dust and so your card is termal throttling to keep itself cool, the other is that you might be cpu limited, which is usually the case when you see large frame drops 

[WereCat]

16 minutes ago, MADMINK said:

My fps increases when I set the graphics to more demanding settings.

8GB DDR4 RAM Single Channel

 

 

Get another stick of RAM to run dual channel.

Your CPU is starving for bandwidth at high FPS. Thats why you see increase in performance when you put more demand on the GPU.

[MADMINK]

How much of an improvement would getting 8gb more of RAM yield? My pc never uses all if my Memory. I turned off superfetch which used 100 percent if my drive yet this enigma persists.

 

I don't have much money to dish out right now.

[Spudbilly]

31 minutes ago, cj09beira said:

there are a few things that pop to mind, one is that there is too much dust and so your card is termal throttling to keep itself cool, the other is that you might be cpu limited, which is usually the case when you see large frame drops 

Yeah...make sure it is cleaned out of dust first.

[MADMINK]

5 minutes ago, Spudbilly said:

Yeah...make sure it is cleaned out of dust first.

How do I clean it out? Do I use a can-o-air and blow into it? My gpu is a closed gpu like the Nvidia reference gpus 

[cj09beira]

1 minute ago, MADMINK said:

How do I clean it out? Do I use a can-o-air and blow into it? My gpu is a closed gpu like the Nvidia reference gpus 

vacuum, wife's hairdryer, mouth air you gave a lot of options

[WereCat]

13 minutes ago, MADMINK said:

How much of an improvement would getting 8gb more of RAM yield? My pc never uses all if my Memory. I turned off superfetch which used 100 percent if my drive yet this enigma persists.

 

I don't have much money to dish out right now.

The problem is not the 8GB, the problem is the single channel. You are getting only half of the available bandwidth

[MADMINK]

3 minutes ago, WereCat said:

The problem is not the 8GB, the problem is the single channel. You are getting only half of the available bandwidth

Can you simplify dual channel vs single channel for me? I typed single channel since I have 1x 8gb hyper x RAM installed. Is this a bottleneck?

[WereCat]

17 minutes ago, MADMINK said:

Can you simplify dual channel vs single channel for me? I typed single channel since I have 1x 8gb hyper x RAM installed. Is this a bottleneck?

DDR4 2133MHz single channel has around 17000MB/s bandwidth.

Dual channel is 17000x2=34000MB/s.

 

If you aim to play at 100FPS+ which is a CPU demanding task, you need to run dual channel as your CPU is being fed by the RAM. Once the RAM does not have enough bandwidth, the CPU cant work more because its starving for the memory bandwidth.

Since you got a 8th gen i5 which is a 6-core CPU, you are most definitely are starved for a RAM bandwidth.

 

EDIT:

Shit, I read that you got 8th gen i5, not 6th gen.

Well then, that changes things a bit.

 

You may not be as much held back with a single stick then. Adding another stick would most definitely still help just by not as much.

[MADMINK]

6 minutes ago, WereCat said:

DDR4 2133MHz single channel has around 17000MB/s bandwidth.

Dual channel is 17000x2=34000MB/s.

 

If you aim to play at 100FPS+ which is a CPU demanding task, you need to run dual channel as your CPU is being fed by the RAM. Once the RAM does not have enough bandwidth, the CPU cant work more because its starving for the memory bandwidth.

Since you got a 8th gen i5 which is a 6-core CPU, you are most definitely are starved for a RAM bandwidth.

 

EDIT:

Shit, I read that you got 8th gen i5, not 6th gen.

Well then, that changes things a bit.

 

You may not be as much held back with a single stick then. Adding another stick would most definitely still help just by not as much.

Thanks for your help. I'll consider purchasing another stick later.

[Taf the Ghost]

What Driver install are you on? Overwatch gets updated and so do AMD drivers. It could be issues with a recent update & your install, though if you have a reference-style card, you probably just need to clean it, firstly. (It also could be the rest of the air flow in your system.) 

 

Might need to do the thermal paste or check the mounting of the heatsink. I'd check little things first. Case fan maybe has died?

[MADMINK]

4 minutes ago, MADMINK said:

Thanks for your help. I'll consider purchasing another stick later.

By the way, can I mix different brands? I can't find a single  8gb hyper x RAM stick. There is a corsair stick at a good price that has the same specs.

[MADMINK]

3 minutes ago, Taf the Ghost said:

What Driver install are you on? Overwatch gets updated and so do AMD drivers. It could be issues with a recent update & your install, though if you have a reference-style card, you probably just need to clean it, firstly. (It also could be the rest of the air flow in your system.) 

 

Might need to do the thermal paste or check the mounting of the heatsink. I'd check little things first. Case fan maybe has died?

All of my case fans are operating fine and my gpu is quite young and used moderately. Opening a GPU is nerve-wracking for me, so I don't think I'll do that. 

My driver is AMD adrenaline 18.7.1, but I'm installing 18.5.1 (recommended)

[Taf the Ghost]

9 minutes ago, MADMINK said:

By the way, can I mix different brands? I can't find a single  8gb hyper x RAM stick. There is a corsair stick at a good price that has the same specs.

You'll normally be stuck with the least performing RAM's specs, but otherwise it's rarely ever a problem. You're more likely to have a dead slot without knowing it than mismatched memory causing problems.

[Spudbilly]

4 hours ago, MADMINK said:

All of my case fans are operating fine and my gpu is quite young and used moderately. Opening a GPU is nerve-wracking for me, so I don't think I'll do that. 

My driver is AMD adrenaline 18.7.1, but I'm installing 18.5.1 (recommended)

Just take a can of compressed air and hold the fan still so that it does not spin and blast air into it from every direction you can. Also, the plastic shroud of the gpu should be quite easy to remove without taking the heatsink off etc...There are some good guides to doing it on you tube. Check it out.