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GTX 680 Dirt 3 performance

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19 Jul 2009
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East Yorkshire, U.K.
I've always had the Global profile set to Prefer Maximum Performance, even when I had my GTX 580, as it was annoying to see the card running at low clocks when playing older games such as Psychonauts with v-sync enabled for example.

Yes, these games still ran smoothly at 60 fps but I'd rather have the extra overhead available to guarantee that the game will run smooth. With Adaptive Performance I even saw my GTX 680 drop down to 700 MHz on the core while playing Skyrim... and that was at 1920x1200, Ultra settings and 8xAA/16xAF/FXAA with the HD texture pack installed!!!
 
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OP
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2 Apr 2012
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132
Wrongly or rightly, if the OP paired his 680 up with an i5 he'd get what he wants :p

I dont think it's my 8120. All the bencmarks for the 8120 get AT LEAST 60FPS with a worse GPU. Im getting barely 50 when it's running with a 680. So something else is going on here.

Not to mention mines OC'd
 
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Total frames: 7729
Average FPS: 70
Minimum FPS: 44

Thats with ultra pre-sets 4xaa no v-sync. Honestly dont know whats causing this. At the beginning of the benchmarks when you see all the cars on the line waiting to go even then my FPS sits at 55. Thats when the cars aren't even moving!

Ouch! That does sound really low. A single GTX 680 and a 3.5 year old quad-core i7-920 @ 3.6 GHz scored much higher than that from memory. I think the minimum was in the 70-80 fps range and that was DX11 Ultra settings, 1920x1200 and 8xQCSAA.
 
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18 Sep 2009
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Dormanstown.
I dont think it's my 8120. All the bencmarks for the 8120 get AT LEAST 60FPS with a worse GPU. Im getting barely 50 when it's running with a 680. So something else is going on here.

Not to mention mines OC'd

Put your PC completely to stock.
Download and install the Bulldozer Patch for Windows 7 to "fix" its scheduling then try.

If that fails, reformat, fresh install with Nvidia drivers and try Dirt 3.
If that fails, get rid of the crappy FX8 :p
 
Soldato
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6 Feb 2010
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14,591
Total frames: 7729
Average FPS: 70
Minimum FPS: 44

Thats with ultra pre-sets 4xaa no v-sync. Honestly dont know whats causing this. At the beginning of the benchmarks when you see all the cars on the line waiting to go even then my FPS sits at 55. Thats when the cars aren't even moving!
You want to ignore what I say...fine, but do yourself a favor...either:
a) use something like MSI Afterburner to display GPU usage while you bench (I'm willing to bet it is NOWHERE close to 100%)
b) overclock your CPU to see if frame rate improves on the same bench

...both will confirm if your 8120 is holding back your GTX680 or not. And I don't know what's so difficult...when you lower all the graphic settings and still pretty much get the same frame rate, it's clearly points that the CPU is the bottleneck easy enough...

And for your reference, i3 2100 is roughly on par with the Phenom II X4 980 (3.7GHz) for gaming (faster in games that use less than 4 cores), and both of them are faster than Bulldozer at 3.6GHz (around as fast as Phenom II at 3.2~3.3GHz) on gaming.
 
Last edited:
Soldato
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My 680 is out of my case at the moment, but I confirm that it eats Dirt3 for breakfast. Even my 7850 plays it on Ultra without any issues.
 
Soldato
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This chart shows the difference between the FX-8150 and an I3. Maybe guys are correct in the CPU holding back the 680?

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/434?vs=143

I know full well an I3 will bottleneck a 680.
Wrong i3 :p

But as you can see in the WOW results (which is pretty much a one thread game), the the 8150 at 3.6GHz is only on par with even the i3 540 at just 3.06GHz...that's how bad IPC and per core performance the Bulldozer is.
 
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OP
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2 Apr 2012
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132
You want to ignore what I say...fine, but do yourself a favor...either:
a) use something like MSI Afterburner to display GPU usage while you bench (I'm willing to bet it is NOWHERE close to 100%)
b) overclock your CPU to see if frame rate improves on the same bench

...both will confirm if your 8120 is holding back your GTX680 or not. And I don't know what's so difficult...when you lower all the graphic settings and still pretty much get the same frame rate, it's clearly points that the CPU is the bottleneck easy enough...

And for your reference, i3 2100 is roughly on par with the Phenom II X4 980 (3.7GHz) for gaming (faster in games that use less than 4 cores), and both of them are faster than Bulldozer at 3.6GHz (around as fast as Phenom II at 3.2~3.3GHz) on gaming.

Right i installed afterburner and the 680 sits at 60% load give or take 3-4% here or there. That was with 4xaa 1080p ultra presets.
 
Caporegime
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Dormanstown.
Right i installed afterburner and the 680 sits at 60% load give or take 3-4% here or there. That was with 4xaa 1080p ultra presets.

Ouch, that's bottlenecked.
I'm shocked.
I know the FX series are really poor for gaming, but never figured it'd be that bad in Dirt 3.
Always makes me laugh when people say you'll never notice a difference between an fx8150 and i5 2500k in gaming :p
 
Soldato
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6 Feb 2010
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Ouch, that's bottlenecked.
I'm shocked.
I know the FX series are really poor for gaming, but never figured it'd be that bad in Dirt 3.
Always makes me laugh when people say you'll never notice a difference between an fx8150 and i5 2500k in gaming :p
And there's a poor guy over another topic went crossfire 7970 on his 8150...and to rub more salt on the wound, his motherboard's 2nd PCI-E x16 is only x4 lane...
 
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OP
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2 Apr 2012
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4ghz Made 0 difference. After doing some research it seems that games that only use 2-3-4 cores do not perform well on BD at all. But games that take advantage of all cores IE: BF3, crysis 2 perform very well. That would explain my crysis results being 70fps+

Looking at task manager dirt 3 only ever loads up 3 cores and even then the CPU load sits at 30%

Also because of bulldozers architecture being 2 cores per module i think the fact DIRT is using both cores of one module and one core in another is introducing latency.

Just my 2cent.
 
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15 Sep 2010
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Well if other games are fine then I wouldn't worry about it too much, after all, your fps are still very acceptable for dirt 3. Maybe it's time you considered an intel chip, i5's aren't really very expensive considering the punch they pack and a 1155 socket mobo can be picked up for well under a ton.
 
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