60 replies to this topic

[cSand]

Hey everyone, so I got my new PC there (another thread in here).

Long story short, it has Xeon 1231 (basically a 4770 w.o the graphics) and an r9 290 that comes with its clock set to 1040MHz (Club3d 290 Royal Ace).

Anyhow... after playing a few matches, I have found I am getting actually worse performance in this game than I was on my laptop (4700mq, 8970m - which I sold to make this desktop, lol). Now, my laptop was pretty ballin', but this PC should, in theory, smoke it.

I have tried 2 sets of drivers. Vsync on and off... various settings in the game and in the AMD CCC... nothing really seems to change it. 60fps at some parts of the game (same as my laptop) but in many areas I'm hitting about 25-45fps (under the HPG is a baaad place for me right now, lol), especially as the battle starts to get going.

Here are some screen caps from GPU-Z (the numerical values in the boxes aren't accurate, they just show where my mouse pointer was at the time, or my idle values in WIndows when I was making the screen cap)

14.4 drivers whql:


13.12 whql:


Unigine Heaven, ultra settings, 4x AA, normal tesselallation for reference :


I noticed that the 14.4 has spikes of 100% GPU usage followed by 0%... the 13.12 sits around 50% GPU usage the whole time. I'm chalking this up to just a difference in reporting or something so I assume my GPU is not being used more than about 50%. In both drivers, the clock sits between 750MHz and 900MHz the whole time... fan speed barely goes about 30% and the temps stay nice and low around 40-50 degrees - which would be great, if the card was being utilized properly

In Unigine, as you can see, usage maxed out (98-100% across the board) and the clock is sitting generally pretty close to its potential of 1040MHz. This leads me to believe that hardware wise my machine is OK. It also did relatively well on the Firestrike test from 3dmark (low 9492 score).

Turning on MSAA in the game brought my usage up to about 70-80% (and my FPS down to 15-30, haha!!) but the clocks kept generally the same.

I can say that my laptop's 8970m (roughly equivalent to a 270), with the less powerful processor, was at least being used in the 80-100% utilization range and actually getting higher average frames than this 290... which is nutty IMO.

Now it's not improbable that I have some settings in my BIOS, or CCC, or Windows that I just don't know about. Like I said though, other games and benchmarks run amazingly!

So, are there some obvious things that I should be checking here.. or any ideas I might try? (Going to put in a ticket tomorrow as well)

We have many expert fellows here so I'd love to hear some of your advice, thank you in advance

Edited by cSand, 27 September 2014 - 01:24 AM.

[FogOfW4r]

This is probably a really dumb question but just making sure, since this game is heavily CPU dependant and your CPU is generally meant for a server, I am wondering is your CPU being used to its full potential?

I have heard that there are some games where the Xeon has trouble where an i7 will perform fine.

[Flapdrol]

See if you can temporarily prevent the card from downclocking, with msi afterburner or something, see if it helps.

[ninjitsu]

Check your power settings. Several people were getting bad performance because their power settings weren't set to high performance.

[Oderint dum Metuant]

ninjitsu, on 27 September 2014 - 02:17 AM, said:

Check your power settings. Several people were getting bad performance because their power settings weren't set to high performance.

This is one to check.

FogOfW4r, on 27 September 2014 - 01:25 AM, said:

This is probably a really dumb question but just making sure, since this game is heavily CPU dependant and your CPU is generally meant for a server, I am wondering is your CPU being used to its full potential?

I have heard that there are some games where the Xeon has trouble where an i7 will perform fine.

And this is what i warned you about when choosing Xeon, albeit i doubt it's the issue but it may be some Xeon option is on in the bios, that just isn't playing well with gaming.

[ninjitsu]

FogOfW4r, on 27 September 2014 - 01:25 AM, said:

This is probably a really dumb question but just making sure, since this game is heavily CPU dependant and your CPU is generally meant for a server, I am wondering is your CPU being used to its full potential?

I have heard that there are some games where the Xeon has trouble where an i7 will perform fine.

Xeons don't process data in any different way than an i7. Exact same architecture.

[cSand]

Ah yes, my power settings are at high performance..
I think the Xeon should be powerful enough! I wasn't getting a cpu limitation with my old mobile i7 (which was only 2.4 GHz with 3.4 turbo)
I have to assume the CPU is ok, since everything else I've thrown at this PC is running just great.
Is there a program I can use, like GPU-Z, except for the CPU so I can see what i's activity is like?

Edited by cSand, 27 September 2014 - 07:18 AM.

[Lord Letto]

cSand, on 27 September 2014 - 07:15 AM, said:

Ah yes, my power settings are at high performance..
I think the Xeon should be powerful enough! I wasn't getting a cpu limitation with my old mobile i7 (which was only 2.4 GHz with 3.4 turbo)
I have to assume the CPU is ok, since everything else I've thrown at this PC is running just great.
Is there a program I can use, like GPU-Z, except for the CPU so I can see what i's activity is like?

MSI Afterburner can monitor CPU, RAM and GPU along with being able to overclock GPU and change GPU fan speed profile. can also be used to record gameplay.

Edited by Lord Letto, 27 September 2014 - 08:59 AM.

[ninjitsu]

HWmonitorpro can make some fancy graphs of usage. It comes as a trial but you get it for 30 days.

http://www.cpuid.com...ns-history.html

[cSand]

Phew... so I put on MSI Afterburner which seems to show me all the info I need.

Was suspicious that maybe I wasn't having enough power... so I ran Prime95 torture test, alongside Furmark burn-in..

everything was at 100% usage for a good 15 - 20 minutes, machine didn't bat an eye! (Temps all seemed to max out around 80 which seems pretty OK to me... I was a laptop guy though lol) I noticed that when turbo-boosting all the cores, the Intel only gets to 3.6GHz... but when using fewer cores it can turbo to 3.8GHz.. is that normal? *see my next post, was looking at the wrong gpu clock reading, lol

I can also say this, that even in UNigine Heave, and in MWO, that neither the CPU or GPU is being utilized to it's potential (not even close, mostly, though Unigine does use 1 core of the CPU quite a bit more than the rest).
The usages also seem very inconsistent, IE, jumping rapidly from low usage to high and then back again.


I'm stumped here... I just can't get MWO to use any of my resources! Guess I'll open a ticket

Edited by cSand, 27 September 2014 - 11:51 AM.

[yashmack]

ive been battling this with my system for a while
This game is just horribly optimized
FPS will vary wildly depending on which map im on
Ive used intel and AMD

[ninjitsu]

What video settings are you using in game?

Turbo boost is designed to overclock 1 or 2 cores while the rest of the cpu is idle. It's meant to help with single threaded apps. So yes, it's working as intended.

[cSand]

In the game it's maxed out on everything, motion blur is off though and vSync is on, DX11.

I can stress the GPU with Furmark or any other tool... but when I fire up the Furmark CPU stresser, or Prime 95... I have now noticed that the GPU clock and usage becomes very erratic. I don't think this is just a MWO problem anymore....

could this be that it is not getting enough power when the GPU and CPU are being utilized?

Thanks for all the help BTW

Edited by cSand, 28 September 2014 - 07:34 AM.

[FogOfW4r]

ninjitsu, on 27 September 2014 - 02:21 AM, said:

Xeons don't process data in any different way than an i7. Exact same architecture.

That is true, I must have got it mixed up with the fact that the Xeons can't overclock.

This doesn't help to explain why cSand's system is not being run to its full potential though.

cSand, on 27 September 2014 - 11:50 AM, said:

In the game it's maxed out on everything, motion blur is off though and vSync is on DX11.

I can stress the GPU with Furmark or any other tool... but when I fire up the Furmark CPU stresser, or Prime 95... I have now noticed that the GPU clock and usage becomes very erratic. I don't think this is just a MWO problem anymore....

could this be that it is not getting enough power when the GPU and CPU are being utilized?

Thanks for all the help BTW

That 750w should be just fine as long as it isn't defective.

Have you tried playing other games that would push your system?

[ninjitsu]

I'd try cutting some settings back. Also, try dx9. The game isn't optimized well, you'll see your system hardly being worked and get poor FPS.

[Summon3r]

whats the clock speed on your Xeon that could be a direct result of low performance in MWO

[cSand]

Hey guys.

It's 3.4 GHz, and turbo's to 3.6-3.8 depending on how many cores are used.

I tried underclocking the card a bit... no dice still ! Driving me nutty, lol


OK, I had another theory...

my monitor is 1680 x 1050. The 290 is made for much more strenuous resolutions.


Is it possible that my card is just overpowered, as ridiculous as that sounds?

Edited by cSand, 27 September 2014 - 03:49 PM.

[Summon3r]

cSand, on 27 September 2014 - 03:47 PM, said:

Hey guys.

It's 3.4 GHz, and turbo's to 3.6-3.8 depending on how many cores are used.

I tried underclocking the card a bit... no dice still ! Driving me nutty, lol

well that eliminates clock speed as an issue then seeing as im at 3.2 on an i5 and running max settings np

[FogOfW4r]

cSand, on 27 September 2014 - 03:47 PM, said:

Hey guys.

It's 3.4 GHz, and turbo's to 3.6-3.8 depending on how many cores are used.

I tried underclocking the card a bit... no dice still ! Driving me nutty, lol


OK, I had another theory...

my monitor is 1680 x 1050. The 290 is made for much more strenuous resolutions.


Is it possible that my card is just overpowered, as ridiculous as that sounds?

Usually something is overpowered if you are, say, emulating a really old console with a modern pc, otherwise for MWO the 290 isn't really overpowered.

Have you tested performance on similar games to MWO? Or even games where your PC would need to really work?

[990Dreams]

I use the Radeon 7770 from Gigabyte for a graphics card and it runs Medium settings pretty well. Never tried pushing high end. I got it new on E-Bay for about $100. If I were to give you any advice, it'd be to shoot for a card nicer than mine, say 1.5 gigabytes (mine has 1).

CPU runs an AMD Phenom II x4 at 3.40 GHz. Runs pretty nice.

Edited by DavidHurricane, 27 September 2014 - 04:51 PM.