Graphics Card Problems.

[TeranceThePick]

Hey everyone, having some really annoying weird problems with my new graphics card.
I Bought myself a new hd7950 just the other day, installed it yesterday.
HOWEVER, in battlefield 3 no matter what settings i'm on, it wont achieve a stable 60FPS.

At ultra settings (what it should be able to run with no problems), I gets 60 fps in buildings but it drops to around 30 in the open with vehicles and such.

It does this with every setting, even at low it drops to 35-40 in the open.
I've noticed that the graphics card usage never gets to 99%.
On ultra settings the GPU usage peaks at around 75.
On low settings the GPU stays at around 20-30 usage, i have no idea why it would be doing this.
When i stress test the GPU with Kombustor the GPU usage stays at 99% percent with no problems.

Here are my PC specs:

MSI HD R7950
Gigabyte GA-970-DS3 Mobo
AMD FX-8350 CPU
8GB 1600Mhz Ram
1TB Sea gate HDD

Things i'm sure it isn't:

-CPU bottlenecking, The CPU usage never goes above 65% on Ultra.
-Overheating, The GPU never goes above 73 and the CPU never above 55

Thanks for the help everyone.

 

[Jaydip]

Looks like a CPU bottlenecking situation to me.Do you gain fps when you oc your cpu keeping everything else fixed?

 

[TeranceThePick]

I forgot to say i am running the latest drivers, Catalyst 13.4. So it's not that, i've tried reinstalling them as well.

 

[Greenlepricon]

I have a 8320@4Ghz and I don't hit the bottleneck that hard. I can still get close to 60fps at 1440p

 

[Jimzz]

As said overclock the CPU some and see if it gets better.

 

[Face2Face]

Is this is the only game where you are seeing bad performance? Have you installed MSI afterburner and messed with the Power limit percentage? Are you overclocking? Your 8350 is perfectly fine for this game, it's not bottlenecking.

 

[tweakboy]

Dont OC and see how the card runs. Then you can OC. gl

 

[Durvelle27]

Have you tried any other games and what's your res


Have you also tried AMD CCC 13.8 Beta

 

[TeranceThePick]

Is this is the only game where you are seeing bad performance? Have you installed MSI afterburner and messed with the Power limit percentage? Are you overclocking? Your 8350 is perfectly fine for this game, it's not bottlenecking.

I have tried it both with and without an MSI afterburner overclock, it doesn't seem to make a difference.
And yes, this is the only game in which i am experiencing these issues.
For example, if i play bioshock infinite on ultra with v-sync disabled then the GPU usage stays between 96 and 100, which is where it should be.

 

[TeranceThePick]

Have you tried any other games and what's your res


Have you also tried AMD CCC 13.8 Beta

I'm guessing res is short for resolution? I play at 1920 x 1080, which is easily within the cards ability.
And no, i haven't tried the 13.8 beta, would it be a good idea to try it?

 

[Durvelle27]

I'm guessing res is short for resolution? I play at 1600 x 1080, which is easily within the cards ability.
And no, i haven't tried the 13.8 beta, would it be a good idea to try it?

Yes that res is pretty low so the HD 7950 shouldn't have a problem maxing BF3. Have you tried OC'ing

 

[TeranceThePick]

Yes that res is pretty low so the HD 7950 shouldn't have a problem maxing BF3. Have you tried OC'ing

I've tried overclocking the GPU with afterburner, it makes no difference.
I have no idea where to even start with CPU overclocking, i'm sure it's not a bottleneck though.

 

[Face2Face]

For the heck of it try raising your power limit to 20% in MSI Afterburner and see if it makes an improvement.

 

[TeranceThePick]

For the heck of it try raising your power limit to 20% in MSI Afterburner and see if it makes an improvement.

For the heck of it :biggrin:

tried it, didn't make a difference. :|

 

[KingFatty]

You say CPU usage never goes above 65%. But can you see what usage looks like for each core? Maybe you are stuck at 99% for one or more cores, but your monitoring tool just shows 65% as an average with unused cores?

Another issue is you may be suffering from CPU throttling. The motherboard has power delivery VRMs that get hot when your CPU sucks a lot of juice. Some motherboards notice that VRM heat, and then punish the CPU by forcing the CPU to reduce it's frequency. So it's sneaky but that results in the VRM temps going down because the CPU pulls less current. Maybe your monitoring software is not showing you the CPU throttling that is happening, just being dumb and saying yep 65% boss all is good, without noticing the throttling that holds back your FPS?

Anyway, another test would be to drop your graphics to ridiculously low levels, like 1024x768, to see if the performance is still stuck at the same level. That would suggest CPU bottleneck.

I think it's pretty magical that you can't cause the frames to be at a slower rate even though you increase the graphical details? Doesn't that sort of defy logic for video cards?

 

[toyota]

yeah how much cpu usage has nothing to do with a game being cpu limited or not. you have 8 cores and not every game is made to utilize all parts of the cpu. you could be using 25% of that cpu in a game that uses 2 threads and be completely cpu limited.

 

[TeranceThePick]

You say CPU usage never goes above 65%. But can you see what usage looks like for each core? Maybe you are stuck at 99% for one or more cores, but your monitoring tool just shows 65% as an average with unused cores?

Another issue is you may be suffering from CPU throttling. The motherboard has power delivery VRMs that get hot when your CPU sucks a lot of juice. Some motherboards notice that VRM heat, and then punish the CPU by forcing the CPU to reduce it's frequency. So it's sneaky but that results in the VRM temps going down because the CPU pulls less current. Maybe your monitoring software is not showing you the CPU throttling that is happening, just being dumb and saying yep 65% boss all is good, without noticing the throttling that holds back your FPS?

Anyway, another test would be to drop your graphics to ridiculously low levels, like 1024x768, to see if the performance is still stuck at the same level. That would suggest CPU bottleneck.

I think it's pretty magical that you can't cause the frames to be at a slower rate even though you increase the graphical details? Doesn't that sort of defy logic for video cards?

OK, that sounded like a logical idea, but i had a look and none of my cpu cores are going about 75%, so it's not that.
Hmm, i have no idea how to check if my cpu is being throttled or not....

 

[Dankk]

I have an FX-8350 and I can run BF3 flawlessly on High settings at well over 60fps. OP's problem is not his CPU.

 

[TeranceThePick]

yeah how much cpu usage has nothing to do with a game being cpu limited or not. you have 8 cores and not every game is made to utilize all parts of the cpu. you could be using 25% of that cpu in a game that uses 2 threads and be completely cpu limited.

OK fair enough, but a FX-8350 is more than enough to handle a 7950, so i really doubt it's bottle-necking much at all, unless the CPU is faulty.it works fine in every other games, so i don't think it is.

 

[tweakboy]

the HT still works.. I see all 8 loading at times no matter what app or game.

 

[Face2Face]

Have you tried re-installing the game? Have you tried using another set of drivers?

 

[TeranceThePick]

Have you tried re-installing the game? Have you tried using another set of drivers?

I was thinking i might have to re-install the game, although that would be a massive pain, it would be another 15GB of downloading at my amazing internet speed of 0.5mbp/s

I am trying different drivers at the moment.
The 13.8 beta made no difference.
I am currently downloading the driver that MSI have on their website for this card, i doubt it will make a difference though......

 

[TeranceThePick]

I was thinking i might have to re-install the game, although that would be a massive pain, it would be another 15GB of downloading at my amazing internet speed of 0.5mbp/s

I am trying different drivers at the moment.
The 13.8 beta made no difference.
I am currently downloading the driver that MSI have on their website for this card, i doubt it will make a difference though......

OK the driver on the MSI website was even worse......
It made all the sand blue and the FPS down to under 30
It was a really old driver though, so no surprise. I have no idea what to do now, i guess a fresh install of BF3 is the only thing left to try.....

 

[Dankk]

OK the driver on the MSI website was even worse......
It made all the sand blue and the FPS down to under 30
It was a really old driver though, so no surprise. I have no idea what to do now, i guess a fresh install of BF3 is the only thing left to try.....

A re-install is unnecessary. Rather, try doing a "Repair Install" on BF3 if you haven't already. Right-click on the game in origin and select the Repair option.

 

[TeranceThePick]

A re-install is unnecessary. Rather, try doing a "Repair Install" on BF3 if you haven't already. Right-click on the game in origin and select the Repair option.

Hmm, i will give it a go tomorrow probably, thanks for the suggestion.