R9 270X questions

[DarkSide744]

Hi everyone!

This will be a kinda all-around post, but since there is no general section and I think my GPU is the culprit, I've posted in the Video Card section.

I'm not too sure about the Sapphire R9 270X's performance, but I think my GPU is underperforming for some reason.

I'll start with my specs:

- Motherboard: gigabyte ga-970a-ud3 rev 3.0
- CPU: AMD-FX6300 OC'd to 3.9Ghz
- GPU: Sapphire R9 270X dual-x
- Memory: DDR3 1x 1600Mhz Kingston Hyper-X 4Gb, 1x 1333Mhz Kingston Hyper-X 2Gb (I'm not sure if this setup is okay)
- PSU: 500W Chieftec
 

Now onto the actual stuff:
I think the GPU has some problems. For example, Watch Dogs is lagging on higher graphical settings, and Skyrim with ENB lags like hell as well, even though when I had a HD7770, I could run it on constant 40 FPS. Am I overexpecting my specs?

Because of the bad performance, I've tried overclocking my GPU as well. Turns out, it LOST performance after overclocking. I'm not sure if this is a normal thing, I'm not smart in GPU overclocking. I've tried raising the power limit by a few %, but that did not help either.

I've did a burn-in test with furmark, and I noticed that at higher temps on around 75 C, it started undervolting itself. Is it possible that is the reason why its performance in more demanding games is bad?

Other thing: I've recently changed my CPU to the FX6300, before it was a Phenom II X4 965. I have run a heaven benchmark test on both setups, and there is a slight performance drop after the change (actually, the minimum FPS went up, but the max and the average went down). I have included a picture of both test results (the processor's Mhz is just a bug, it was actually around 3500 Mhz). What could be causing this?

I am sorry for the utter randomness of the questions, I'm new here

[l1il]

My main concern about your computer would be the power supply.

 

Chieftec's 500W GPS series were just overrated 450W. It might have run fine with your previous processor, and honestly, I don't know which is consuming more power. But having the

model of your PSU would help us dismiss or identify it as the culprit.

 

Furmark's burn-in tests will always make your GPU throttle, even more if the weather is hot. The performance lost after overclocking suggest a hot GPU.
If you had noticed artifacts or weird game bugs that you never had before, this is one sign that the GPU is faulty. Otherwise, it might only undervolt/underclock to avoid overheating.

Try to take the temp during games (GPU-z is the best way) and look at the clocks and GPU usage. If the 270x is hitting close to 100%, it is the bottleneck. Lower than 80, whether

you have v-sync enabled or something else is bottlenecking the GPU

 

For the CPU side, I know that an FX 6350 performance is somewhat close to the Phenom II on a single thread.On multithreaded tasks the 6350 tends to be faster (as I remember).

 

The RAM situation is less than ideal. Two different speed modules will clock to the lowest one, but you should be at 1333 MHz, that doesn't affect so much usually. But the module
different size might be different, as I don't know if it will act as dual channel or single channel. You want to look also if they are in the paired RAM rows on the motherboard.

[Waco]

Did your older video card run Skyrim at 40 FPS with that CPU? Unfortunately you might be seeing the lower performance in some CPU-bound situations since your old CPU is actually a decent amount faster for lightly-threaded games (and Skyrim is particularly sensitive to this).

[slick2500]

I have pretty much the same combo as you just different motherboard and the Vapor-X instead of a Dual-X, and with everything cranked up in Skyrim I get about 50 fps with a few dips down to 40ish.

 

I would also want to say that that psu is insufficient to power the gpu. Do you have any specifics on the model of the psu? The 270x requires 30A on a 12v rail.

Edited August 16, 2014 by slick2500

[Waco]

The 270x requires 30A on a 12v rail.

In reality it pulls more like 15 amps...so while his PSU is underpowered and cheap, it's not going to cause bad performance (until it explodes and kills the rig).

[slick2500]

Thats from Sapphire, they recommend a 500w psu with a minimum of 30a on the 12v rail.

 

My only other guess would be something in his build is faulty and causing performance issues. How hot is the NB and VRM heatsink? It seems as recently Gigabytes motherboards have issues with the VRMs overheating and throttling back the cpu, some have even caught on fire.

Edited August 16, 2014 by slick2500

[DarkSide744]

My PSU model is Chieftec CTG-500-80P.
I was thinking about the PSU faulty as well, and I bought a GPS-500A8, but it has only one 6 pin GPU connector, and only a 4 pin motherboard connector, when I need 2x6 for the GPU and 8 for the motherboard, so I had to stay with my old one. The older CPU requires more power though, so I'm not sure what's wrong.

As for graphical glitches, I am not experiencing any in any of the games.

The video card usually goes up to 70-75 C when under heavy load, and when I ran performance monitor and Skyrim, it had a few spikes when the GPU was on full speed, then it went back to around 50-60% average usage.

Edit: for the memory thing: I didn't put them on the same channel slots, because as far as I know, dual channel only works on the same type of RAM ( I'm not sure though)
 

Edited August 16, 2014 by DarkSide744

[l1il]

Did you install the Gigabyte power saving features while installing the motherboard CD? It looks like it is active. Also, how about Windows power saving features? Everything set to maximum performance, CPU allowed to go to 100%? I did the same mistake but with a laptop, where I reversed my settings plugged and unplugged states, and it was really sluggish.

 

The sure thing is that the RAM doesn't help. But why would you loose performance over switching CPU is beyond me.

 

Yea, the GPS series is a dud from Chieftec, the power ratings are inflated. The CTG you have should be able to deliver 33 Amps on the 12V rail compared to 30 amps maximum requirement from the 270X.

Your videocard voltages going lower seems due to power limitation instead of thermal limitation. I also know that the FX series drains a lot when overclocked.

 

Also, try to run a CPU burn-in like OCCT or Prime 95 and try to see if the CPU is throttling.

You could as well try Cinebench and try both CPU rendering and OpenGL rendering and try to compare to the rest of the net. There are a lot of reviews with the 6350 with Cinebench. You could find out the bottleneck.

[DarkSide744]

The power settings are on performance, I've disabled core parking as well.
running a Prime95, I did both small and large FFT torture tests for around 10 minutes, the highest temp was 49,1 C. (I have a coolermaster Hyper 212 EVO for cooling)

Cinebench results: CPU 446 cb
                              OpenGL 78.32 FPS

[l1il]

So, according to cbscores.com

 

The 6300 at 3.66 GHz is posting 106 and 436 for CPU result. Looks in range for what you got.

 

Could not find a cinebench 15 viable result for the 270x. They are all overclocked balls to the walls. Cinebench 11.5 has a bigger database, does not matter much.

 

The Prime 95 was not for thermal limits but to see if there was any kind of throttling (it shows on the performance tab of Task Manager)

 

My only clue would be a problem with the AMD drivers. I'd suggest reinstalling the motherboard drivers as well.

[DarkSide744]

I've just installed the newest AMD drivers, so I don't think that's the problem.

This maybe is related with a problem I had a while ago. I did a little bitcoin mining, just to see how much it can make. After a few minutes, black squares started appearing on the monitor. I'm not sure what happened after, because like I said, it was 4-5 months ago. Is it possible that something got fried on the Graphics card? If it is, then it's strange that no visible problems occur either while stress-testing or while playing.

[l1il]

Well, if the card had any damage 5 months ago, you would have noticed with your previous processor.

 

Plus, like you said, if you had blown something, the same black screen would appear or artifacts would fill-up the screen.

 

Maybe you are a little overexpecting. Best case if you feel like it is not performing as expected, look out at 270x benches and try some to compare.

 

We've been thru your whole system.