Solved I7 3770K Bottlenecking?

[Adam23]

Hey guys hope all is well and would like to ask for some input on a problem I'm facing :|.

I've recently built a rig for somebody and he is having issues (performance wise) in bf3, mohw ect
He is currently using Windows 8, he had the same issue on Windows 7, spent loads of money trying to eliminate this issue, including spending another £350 on a 120hz monitor, also compared with Hyperthreading on and off, personally I can't see it being a i7.

His gpu usage does not stay above 75% usage on both cards, even tried overclocking his I7 to 4.8GHZ, so do you think the beast of a i7 he has can really bottleneck is gpu cards, specs are below:

i7 3770k @ 4.8 ghz
Asrock z77 Extreme6 Motherboard
8gb Corsair Vengeance @ 1600mhz
2 AMD 7950's in crossfire
Antec watercooler
Corsair TX850w
OCZ SSD 128gb (windows 8 64x)
Western Digital 2tb green drive storage.
5 120mm case fans.

 

[Erick Aguilar]

Uhm, so he is getting low FPS, tearing...what?
Try taking one of the 7950's out and run the game with just one.

 

[Wishmaster]

If its lag and stutter due to server lag, no amount of twaeking or hardware upgrades will fix it.

@ 75% GPU use, the cards aren't working full load to do the job. So Im not sure that its a issue with the cards. Unless on the driver side and properly working Crossifre support for BF3.
The i7 should have no issues keeping up on its end.

I would tend to agree that disabling crossfire temporarily and running just one card will help identify if its a hardware/driver issue.

 

[bobafetthotmail]

Meh, theoretically that i7 cannot bottleneck a GPU.
You could try disabling core parking. That did show some effects in the past to me. In short: unused CPU cores are put to sleep by Win7, this saves power, but since CPU load comes in spikes, sleeping cores waste time to go online again, so you have a non-maxed CPU graph (as the load isn't so heavy), and yet getting slowdowns. this seems to affect GPUs as well as it's the CPU that feeds them raw stuff to process.

I also agree with Eric, maybe one of the cards is having issues, and being in crossfire the good one dials itself down to run the same as the crappier one. Make sure drivers are uptodate.

spent loads of money trying to eliminate this issue, including spending another £350 on a 120hz monitor

ehm, how is a better monitor going to help GPU?

 

[kbrady1979]

Several people are having problems running multiple AMD cards in Crossfire.......examples are extremely low FPS, crazy glitching/stuttering and some flat out won't play. Try one card with the newest AMD driver and see how that works. The 3770K likely has nothing to do with it.

 

[Adam23]

thanks for all your replies , he is getting very low fps, why he got the monitor i dont know, he has tried the latest driver and the beta one its still the same, he even asked if it could be psu related but surely the 850w Corsair should be up too the job.

That suggestion about windows 7 disabling inactive cores? does that work in windows 8 aswell? and if so how would one go by disabling that feature? he said the issue he is really getting annoyed with is he will be playing at around 90 average fps peaking to 120ish and the fps will dip to about 47 making the game really choppy and feeling like 20fps, then will shoot back up is this common? he has disabled.one card for the time being lets just hope AMD release a driver soon.

Thanks again guys really appreciate the input

 

[smarteyeball]

With the CPU @ 4.8ghz - there is zero bottleneck. Psu is fine too.

AMD has always had a bit of a 'history' with drivers and the Frostbite engine. Particularly dual/multi GPU. I assume he has all the CAP profiles installed as well?

The 120hz monitor could be causing some issues (obviously it's harder to maintain a steady 120fps than 60fps) - disable vsync to see if has an impact.

Disabling inactive cores/core parking does absolutely nothing. (I've tested) The issue does not lie there.


Has he installed a 3rd party AV in Win 8 at all?

 

[Adam23]

Hey bud, he was getting the issue before he got the 120hz monitor, for what I believe he tried a 90 and 120fps lock, the 120fps lock seemed to improve the "microstutter and frame rate drop" but not alot, he did tell me that some times when he turned his pc on with crossfire enabled his pc would fail to start, would just lock on the welcome black screen.

Could this just really be bad coding in games for crossfire and sli? or could it just be a driver issue? the cards work flawlesly when on there own.

He dont have a anti virus installed.

thanks bud for the input

 

[Erick Aguilar]

Drops to 47FPS and feels like 20. That's a rather silly experience.
Disable Vsync, use a fps limiter. Your eyes cannot perceive past 60fps, so I really don't see what is the deal with people wanting a million hz monitor. You will never notice a difference whatsoever.

You are saying that the trouble goes away when he uses only one card correct?
Personally I thought one 7950 was overkill for such low end games, two is ridiculous, specially if you expected those sort of games to take advantage of crossfire, and on top of that crossfire can be tricky, as it is commonly tied with jerkiness when not set up correctly, and when the software cannot even take advantage of it. Why else do you think you are only getting 75% usage?

 

[smarteyeball]

Drops to 47FPS and feels like 20. That's a rather silly experience.

Hence the reason help is being requested.

Your eyes cannot perceive past 60fps, so I really don't see what is the deal with people wanting a million hz monitor. You will never notice a difference whatsoever.

Much debatable personal opinion. Either way it has no bearing on the issue.

You are saying that the trouble goes away when he uses only one card correct?

Minimized - not eradicated.

Personally I thought one 7950 was overkill for such low end games, two is ridiculous

BF3 is not 'low end'. To max out BF3 you need multi cards. (Particularly since he went and bought a 120hz monitor )

Why else do you think you are only getting 75% usage?

Drivers play a huge part in that.

he did tell me that some times when he turned his pc on with crossfire enabled his pc would fail to start, would just lock on the welcome black screen.

That's not a great sign.

Does his games/PC ever lock up?

 

[Adam23]

ive tried telling the customer similar to what your saying, originally i told him to go with a single card setup, now he has just rang me saying he is thinking of getting rid of the 7950's and getting a gtx 680, and i agree about the 60hz monitor statement you said above well i cant see no difference in 60 and 120hz.

thanks mate

 

[Adam23]

hey smartey, his system only seemed to hang on a certain driver (s) with crossfire enabled matey, has for the lock ups i dont think this has been experienced as of yet.

cheers bud

 

[Solarstarshines]

hey smartey, his system only seemed to hang on a certain driver (s) with crossfire enabled matey, has for the lock ups i dont think this has been experienced as of yet.

cheers bud

If the system is locking up on the splash screen that isn't the video card it is a memory issue or something hardware related not GPU

If it was a GPU issue you would have heard a loop noise then distortion and possible restart so it isn't the GPU

Im thinking if he has massive fram drops and micro stuttering is due to drivers or even yet have it overclocked to high sometimes overclocking a piece of hardware to high has reverse effects

He can try a single gpu if that isn't the problem test the PCI slots with another card for testing sake it could be a bad pci -e interface port

when i first got my 7970's i had lag micro stttering you name it but in the end it worked it self out drivers and tweeking

 

[Adam23]

Hey Solar, he was using my 480's why i went on holiday and had no issue at all, he tried each card individually incase of a fault gpu and it ran smooth, its just weird, thats why i thought could it really be a driver issue.

thanks bud for your help

 

[Erick Aguilar]

Much debatable personal opinion. Either way it has no bearing on the issue.


BF3 is not 'low end'. To max out BF3 you need multi cards. (Particularly since he went and bought a 120hz monitor )

Uh no.. you cannot debate how your organs functions, eyes cannot parceive past 60hz. Period.

And you really don't need multi cards to max out BF3... at all.

 

[Solarstarshines]

Hey Solar, he was using my 480's why i went on holiday and had no issue at all, he tried each card individually incase of a fault gpu and it ran smooth, its just weird, thats why i thought could it really be a driver issue.

thanks bud for your help

What kind of board is he using ? and sounds like he might have an onboard killing his joy or even yet you have intel graphics enabled ?

I mean all GPU's should work the same but something might be hendering him in the bios

look at all the video settings

 

[Adam23]

solar hes using a z77 extreme6 asrock board mate

 

[Solarstarshines]

those come with 3.0 slots too

wierd well there is nothing else to say about it then the 7950's just didn't treat him right

 

[Adam23]

gonna mark has solved thanks again for all your help, very kind of you

 

[Pedroc1999]

sorry to bump this thread but have you considered running gpu benchmarks and comparing with other dual 7950s to see if they match or are more or less the same