Higher spec PC has worse FPS?

DragonQ

DragonQ

DragonQ

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Joined
13 Jun 2009
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I have two desktop PCs that are used for gaming. PC 1 has:

Xeon X5650 @ 4 GHz
AMD R9 270
6 GB RAM
Windows 8.1

PC 2 has:

i5-2500K @ 4 GHz
GTX 770
8 GB RAM
Windows 7

When playing the same game on each of them with identical graphics settings, PC 1 can play at a smooth 60 fps. PC 2 cannot; it drops down to 20-30 fps when things get busy. Both have the latest motherboard chipset drivers, GPU drivers, and BIOSs, yet the stronger PC seems to have FPS issues.

Any ideas where to look for finding the problem?
 
Well your not cpu bound on any game with those CPUs
Have you tried a fresh install of Windows to rule out software.
That's where I would start.
 
as others have said PC 1 has 6 cores and 12 threads where PC 2 has 4 cores and 4 threads.

what ress are you gaming at and what games are you playing?
 
Both are running 1080p @ 60 Hz. The games we are playing should not be improved by having more than 4 CPU cores: Dungeon Defenders, DOTA 2, L4D2, The Witcher 3. Also, CPU usage and GPU usage are not maxed out when we see the FPS drops.

I am thinking of trying a fresh install of Windows but want to see if there's something less drastic we can try first.
 
If you own both the PCs and you have them next to each other then just swap the GPUs around and see if that changes anything so you can rule them out. Will take a few mins to swap them around run DDU and install the drivers.

edit:damn wazza beat me to it
 
Tried a complete clean install of the drivers and also turned off some Windows power saving stuff. It seems to have helped a little: FPS now drops to 30-40ish in heavy scenes.

Still nowhere near what it should be though.
 
Some useful info would be to find out what the load is on cpu and gpu, before, during and after the drop in fps.

Also maybe worth trying to disable desktop composition in win 7 to see if that makes any difference (which will disable aero and some visual stuff, not sure if 8.1 has this).
 
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Did a clean install of Windows 7 last night and thought that the issue was solved. However, it was a false alarm. Playing the same map we saw issues with last night produced the same low FPS. Also, on maps where the FPS seemed steady at 60, alt-tabbing in and out saw a massive slowdown that took 10-20 seconds to recover from.

Running out of ideas...even if we swap the GPUs, I'm not sure what to do with the information we gain from that.

Scurburg said:
Some useful info would be to find out what the load is on cpu and gpu, before, during and after the drop in fps.

Also maybe worth trying to disable desktop composition in win 7 to see if that makes any difference (which will disable aero and some visual stuff, not sure if 8.1 has this).
Click to expand...

During the period of slowdown, GPU usage is around 30%. CPU usage is 40-50%. On PC 1, CPU usage is at 10% during heavy scenes but obviously it has 12 cores instead of 4 so that's expected.
 
DragonQ said:
Did a clean install of Windows 7 last night and thought that the issue was solved. However, it was a false alarm. Playing the same map we saw issues with last night produced the same low FPS. Also, on maps where the FPS seemed steady at 60, alt-tabbing in and out saw a massive slowdown that took 10-20 seconds to recover from.

Running out of ideas...even if we swap the GPUs, I'm not sure what to do with the information we gain from that.



During the period of slowdown, GPU usage is around 30%. CPU usage is 40-50%. On PC 1, CPU usage is at 10% during heavy scenes but obviously it has 12 cores instead of 4 so that's expected.
Click to expand...

The idea behind swapping GPU's will stem down to a faulty GPU or Bad drivers.

Ill ask the next question i aint seen asked. Can we have a photo of both setups with temp readings from ur gpu on load and cpu. I wana know if its thermal throttling you at heavy load.
 
I think I have identified the issue. CPU-Z shows the CPU multiplier languishing between 13-20x whereas it should be 40x. RealTemp shows core temperatures of 95+ degrees, however the air coming out of the PC is room temperature, not hot in the slightest.

Faulty motherboard temperature sensor? Anything I can do about that? I'm gonna try reseating the CPU heatsink later...I'd be amazed if this is the issue though since it was built by OcUK over 3 years ago and has always been a bit slower than I'd expect (in the year or so I've seen it in action).
 
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DragonQ said:
I think I have identified the issue...
Faulty motherboard temperature sensor? Anything I can do about that? I'm gonna try reseating the CPU heatsink later...I'd be amazed if this is the issue though since it was built by OcUK over 3 years ago and has always been a bit slower than I'd expect (in the year or so I've seen it in action).
Click to expand...

The thermal compound may need replacing. That said, you may have cooked your CPU.
 
The CPU has been at stock clocks for most of its life. I only overclocked it recently in an attempt to improve its performance. I just whacked it to 4 GHz with +0.05 V and disabled turbo. The BIOS also shows CPU core temperature as being 85 C when idle.

I've never needed to replace thermal compound before (except when swapping out CPUs or heatsinks obviously). This system was actually built by OcUK and it has supposedly always been this poor in performance terms, so I'd be disappointed if they've mounted the heatsink badly.
 
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