My continuing FPS issues - help?

Alex Ball · Mar 1, 2012

Hey guys,

I've got two PCs at home. One downstairs for 'gaming' and one upstairs for 'gaming'.

Anyway, The upstairs one is primarily used for sim-racing. Recently (last 3 months or so?) I've noticed that I get really guff framerates in my favourite games - rFactor mainly. I switched back to 1 monitor last night (from three) to see if it was a resolution issue, but it didn't help. I get 23-26 FPS at the start of a race with 20 AI cars.

I have reinstalled windows, all drivers, done windows update and tried again, with the exact same FPS.

I just tried it on my PC downstairs, and get 200-290 fps with the same car, same track and same amount of AI.

I tried swapping the graphics cards around and the FPS didn't change - in both cases the FPS is the same.

The spec of the PCs are:

Upstairs:
i5 2500k (tried both standard clock and @ 4.2)
ASRock mobo (decent one)
16gb ram
2tb hitatchi HDD (sata3) (brand new yesterday, a 1gb seagate before that)
AMD 6970
Creative XFi PCI-E

Downstairs
i7 2600k
Gigabyte mobo
8gb ram
128SSD (system), 1.5tb seagate (games)
AMD 7970
Creative XFi PCI-E

In addition, I have recently changed the following chasing FPS:
Graphics (started with 5970, then went to 2x 6970 CF, then 2x 580 SLI, now back to single 6970)
Motherboard (when trying to get CF to work properly)
Ram (went from 4gb, to a 8gb kit now to a 16gb kit)
HDD (old 1tb was old, so replaced for new)
PSU (just incase)

So, what can I do to check what might be wrong? Anyone got any ideas? I used to get 100-120fps on the upstairs PC before I upgraded - back then it was a i7 860, 4gb ram, and a 5970. Very weird.

Cheers in advance.

-al

EIF · Mar 1, 2012

The obvious difference between the two systems is the ram, I'd try it with two free slots at 8GB. Using all ram slots can cause issues with overclocks apparently, 16GB is epic overkill for gaming anyway.

Using an i5 2500K, 8GB DDR3 and a 6870 here.

Alex Ball · Mar 1, 2012

I had 8gb (2x4) before I went to 16gb. No better.

I wonder if my CPU is fubar. I have a spare at the office so I am going to try that later.

Marcus Meyrick · Mar 1, 2012

Alex, there is a thread similar to your over on the iRacing forums.. Turns out the guys CPU fan was dead causing his mobo to throttle his CPU to stop it overheating... he replaced it and all ok.. I wonder if you have a similar issue.

Alex Ball · Mar 1, 2012

I don't think so as I've tried two coolers, the current one is a Frio - very good cooler, and my computer isn't reporting any high temps. I'll double check since the re-install though, thanks for the tip.

ProSimEU · Mar 1, 2012

I have 3x32 screens with a similar spec to you but only running a 6870. I have no issues at all in rFactor but recently had an issue where the latest driver update for the video card turned the whole system into treacle and was lucky to get 10fps. Rolled back the driver and all was well again so might be worth a bash?

Brian Clancy · Mar 1, 2012

ProSimEU said:
I have 3x32 screens with a similar spec to you but only running a 6870. I have no issues at all in rFactor but recently had an issue where the latest driver update for the video card turned the whole system into treacle and was lucky to get 10fps. Rolled back the driver and all was well again so might be worth a bash?

Good tip! Have we changed the driver recently Alex?

Alex Ball · Mar 1, 2012

I only run the latest drivers as I dont only play racing sims. I'm running the same driver downstairs and upstairs though so I can't see a reason that one PC would be affected and the other not?

I just swapped the CPU's round so the upstairs became the 2600k, and it's still ~30 frames per second.

I also swapped the ram so it was just 8gb and that also made no difference. (putting the 2500k and 16gb in the downstairs PC made no change either and the downstairs PC still gives 250-280fps in practice or 100-120 in a race.)

So, I have changed every component now, but have no idea what is wrong.

Devil_Dog · Mar 1, 2012

Hey Alex,

I'm going to say it's one of two things.

1) Driver settings need to be adjusted. Look at the power saving features and turn them off. I know at times ATI has some issues with this and the card is down clocked to save power.

2) Your PCI slot is going bad. It happens. If you have another slot available try the card in that and see what happens. You may have to RMA that motherboard.

EIF · Mar 1, 2012

I came back to pc gaming fairly recently and the only thing I miss about consoles is the hassle free plug and play aspect. Hope you get it sorted, rFactor is my prefered sim and it's still well worth playing.

Alex Ball · Mar 1, 2012

I've tried all four PCI slots, and had the same issue on a prevoius motherboard too. Drivers are now 'box fresh' as I did a full reinstall of everything inc windows last night.

Very weird.

Neil Tasker · Mar 1, 2012

all you in game settings the same on both computers i take it,

Alex Ball · Mar 1, 2012

Yep. :/

MrPix · Mar 2, 2012

One thing to try, the BIOS may have gone corrupted for the PCIe channels, or worse it's a mobo fault in this area. In case you haven't tried already... try updating the mobo BIOS and resetting the CMOS to default. It's a long shot, but my son's mobo had a chipset fault years ago and displayed similar symptoms... it turned out to be a BIOS corruption. On advice from the taiwanese support chappies, reloading the latest BIOS (which on his mobo reset the CMOS to default automatically) did the trick... then he blew the mobo up a month later by plugging a amplifies signal in to the Line in port... kids eh!

Edit: Sorry, scrap that... just saw you replaced the mobo already! Sorry... try swapping the mouse and keyboard or standing on one leg whilst singing hallelujah... seems you've swapped everything else and the song may cheer you up!

Jim Cole · Mar 2, 2012

Have you tried contacting your GPU manufacturer to see what they have to say? They have likely run into this issue and would have a fix for it I would think. If the manufacturer is in the US, I could possibly call them for you to see what they say to try.

Roadster-2 · Mar 2, 2012

Hi Alex. I know exactly how frustrating this can be. As you have tried so many things I myself would be tempted now to transfer the hard drive from the PC that's giving better fps rates over to the 'upstairs' PC. It may need re-driving etc. but could be well worth a try.
As you have wiped and re-installed the HD on the 'upstairs' PC there's obviously no data to worry about so it's also an option to image over the hard drive from the faster PC to this, so that you don't then affect the PC that's working Ok.

Alex Ball · Mar 3, 2012

Hey chaps.

I decided to break the computer for bits and just use my other one for now.

I have no idea why it wasn't working, but I tried everything.
I moved the ram from the other pc into it - no better.
I swapped the GFX over - no better.
I bought a new HDD and re-installed everything from scratch (without plugging in the old one) - no better
I removed the sound card - no better.
I swapped the CPU's over - no better.
I took it all apart and re-built it on my desk outside of a case and re-tried swapping everything over randomly - trying single stick of ram, etc - no better.

The motherboard has been replaced since I started getting FPS issues, and it made no improvement.

Very weird. I'll buy a new PC for downstairs now, as the racing rig has inherited the downstairs PC