Best solution to my FPS bottleneck...

AshB1989

AshB1989

AshB1989

Associate
Joined
11 Aug 2015
Posts
480
Here is my current system:

Mobo - AB350M Gaming 3
CPU - Ryzen 5 1600
GPU - 1070ti
Memory - Team Group Night Hawk RGB 16GB (2x8GB) DDR4 PC4-24000C16 3000MHz
Not sure if it's relevant, but have stock fan.


I play a game called Rust which is notorious hard on the CPU, which I assume is the cause of my bottleneck.

Other players report of getting over 100fps with a 1060 gpu, where I get on average between 40-50fps. I am considering upgrading to the Ryzen 7 3700 CPU to improve my fps and resolve the bottleneck, but I wanted to get your advice before I did so.

Any suggestions/advice is highly appreciated.
 
Last edited:
Which monitor do you have, and which monitors do your friends have? i.e. Resolution.

Try aiming a fan at the motherboard VRMs to see if performance improves at all. The board could be throttling CPU. It should be an AB350M Gaming 3, btw.
 
Danny75 said:
Which monitor do you have, and which monitors do your friends have? i.e. Resolution.

Try aiming a fan at the motherboard VRMs to see if performance improves at all. The board could be throttling CPU. It should be an AB350M Gaming 3, btw.
Click to expand...

Firstly, thank you.

I don't know what the VRMs are mate - sorry. Would too much heat cause the mobo to do this or are other settings to blame?
 
You're welcome.

Some boards with poor VRM cooling are known to throttle 6 core chips like 1600 or 2600. Could be something else but have to start troubleshooting somewhere, especially if you're thinking of adding an 8-core chip to the same motherboard. You'll find the VRMs on the top and top-left of the board. The AB350M Gaming 3 has a reputation for bad VRM cooling. Which doesn't mean it happens to all of them, will depend on which CPU, how good the case cooling is etc. VRMs are marked in green:

HGzvfgx.png


They're actually not the black square boxes (chokes) but the flatter things just above, and further to the left, respectively. The ones at the top are exposed, no heatsink. The ones to the left are underneath the little heatsink with the red/grey stripe. Unfortunately that heatsink doesn't do much from what I remember.

As for the monitor resolution, it's a simple thing but I've seen it happen that people talk about their graphics cards and how much fps they are getting, and forget to say what resolution they are playing at.

If the CPU stock cooler is full of dust then that could also be making the CPU throttle. Not that we've confirmed the CPU is indeed throttling, yet.
 
Last edited:
So I have just been watching the CPU usage during the gameplay and it's actually pretty low (30-40%). Interestingly, I'm using around 70-80% memory during this time.

I changed my settings from the highest to the lowest, which had zero impact on my FPS.

I'm playing on native resolution, which I believe is 1920x1080. Not sure if it matters, but I have a 144hz monitor.

I'm looking at the temps via HWMonitor and it's sat at around 50 degrees. Would the VRM show up on this?
 
Haven't used HWMonitor in a while. I'm used to HWiNFO64 now, where I know it should show up.

Re: monitor. Alright so fairly safe to assume your mates aren't playing at 720p to get higher frames. So that's dealt with (course there's always graphics settings).

Graphics settings: you changed from max to low and had zero impact on frames. That's a strange one. You don't have some fps cap somewhere do you? Vsync or something.

Memory: Rust is notorious for using plenty.
 
Here's an idea, run a Cinebench R20 benchmark. CPU usage should go right to 100% very quickly, and remain there till the test is completed.
 
I am not sure if I'm allowed to post these here, so apologies if not!

This is the first image from your suggested program. I'm not sure if it has any relevance, but here it is - https://gyazo.com/dedd1165c1be2802a18b9404a03c18cc

https://gyazo.com/87ebaaa566452386b6f0bbf22a90d814

https://gyazo.com/bda010df6ef7c077931fef4392ab8ee3

https://gyazo.com/0a16e94ef8d9c091870858ac8b8ae432

Hopefully this are helpful in someway.

Cinebench did indeed push it 100%. Here are the results - https://gyazo.com/9c3155a13e80d1039bde70627c639493

Thank you so much for your help.
 
No worries. :)

Everything seems fine, to my eyes. Maybe someone else with hands-on experience of Ryzen (I won't have any till a week or two when I build) could spot something that's off, I don't know. But the temps look fine, the speed the CPU got to during the benchmark was ok, etc.

Here's the thing, if the CPU usage is only about 40% playing Rust, then getting a CPU with more cores won't help all that much. Sure, the 3700X is faster but not 50 fps faster. So, you know, I wouldn't buy anything till you can figure out what's going on.
 
AshB1989 said:
So I have just been watching the CPU usage during the gameplay and it's actually pretty low (30-40%). Interestingly, I'm using around 70-80% memory during this time.

I changed my settings from the highest to the lowest, which had zero impact on my FPS.
Click to expand...

Changing settings had zero impact? Really?

Your GPU bottlenecked and from a quick review of YouTuve 'Rust GTX 1060' videos, they average about 60FPS at 1080p on high settings so you should be comfortably above that. I do wonder, can you check your monitor is set to 144hz in Windows display settings? Can you also check that Vsync is disabled in your Nvidia control panel.

Finally, can you install MSI Afterburner and enable the overlay to see if your GPU is at 100%?
 
Finners said:
In a couple of those screen shots your RAM speed is only 1065mhz so that us 2130Mhz so looks like its set to the default 2133Mhz.

Go into your BIOS and enable the xmp profile for that RAM set.
Click to expand...

Good spot. :)

In the first screenshot he posted, in the box higher up to where you see 1064.6Mhz, it states memory is 1499MHz (AKA 3000MHz double data rate). I mixed them up and thought 1064.6 was the JEDEC and 1499 the actual memory speed but you are right and HWINFO confirms it is 1064.6.

That should help a bit/a lot.
 
Memory change doesn't look to have stuck. Have you ever flashed the BIOS to a more updated version? If you haven't, would look into that as memory compatibility/tuning can often improve.

Disable Vsync in games as well.

Run some benchmarks of Unigine Valley and/or Heaven. And we'll compare your score to other 1070Tis. Extreme 1080p preset.
 
Gigabyte b350 has the better side of VRMs for B450 boards , 4 VRM set up with 1 hi Mosfet + 2 Low (1x 4C10N 2x 4C06N) , MSI, ASUS and ASRock used same 4 vrm set up, also 1Hi+2Low but lessor quality VRM. Heatsinks were hit and miss. Gigabytes B350 require major airflow for 150amps where as MSI/Asus it was a NO GO. 200amps is a NO GO regardless of airflow across the Heatsink !!!!!

shows how well MSI did with B450 over B350/X370

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet...IVNyMatydkpFA/htmlview?sle=true#gid=639584818

as mentioned above, chokes can be hit of miss to VRM design. though in case of MSI Carbon over Toma it does show the changes in VRM design even though mosfets remain the same - just different wiring
 
orbitalwalsh said:
Gigabyte b350 has the better side of VRMs for B450 boards , 4 VRM set up with 1 hi Mosfet + 2 Low (1x 4C10N 2x 4C06N) , MSI, ASUS and ASRock used same 4 vrm set up, also 1Hi+2Low but lessor quality VRM. Heatsinks were hit and miss. Gigabytes B350 require major airflow for 150amps where as MSI/Asus it was a NO GO. 200amps is a NO GO regardless of airflow across the Heatsink !!!!!
Click to expand...

It's still a low phase count board which is why I specifically mentioned VRM cooling (heatsink quality/lack of enough airflow). Not that the VRMs aren't decent. The less phases, the more important a decent heatsink is. The more phases, the less important (and yet they tend to have better ones than the lower phase count boards). Also, because he was thinking of adding an 8-core so I reckon it was a good idea to check how hot the VRMs were getting.

Nice thread here with feedback on the AB350, AB350M and Tomahawk B350: https://forums.overclockers.co.uk/threads/what-are-your-ryzen-vrm-temperatures.18773894/

In any case, as mentioned, not everyone reported VRM temperature issues with this board, and it certainly doesn't seem to be an issue with his board going by the tests and sensor data.

Wonder how much setting the RAM to higher speed will help, if the board can make it stick.
 
AshB1989 said:
Morning lads.

I went into BIOS and changed the memory settings to profile 1 (whatever that means) as opposed to default. It doesn't appear to have changed anything though.

https://gyazo.com/87184949c2a492746b5fc9eb4f30de05

This is after the changes:

https://gyazo.com/ad23a68fc8079b4618fd07f66c01682b


Virtual Sync (in 3D settings) was turned to automatic, so turned that off. Display is currently set to 144hz too.
Click to expand...

Assuming you saved the changes before you exited the BIOS, did it take a long time to boot after? Thinking it may have tried to train the memory and failed so reset to default.

As mentioned above if your on an early BIOS for that board it will be worth updating. Ryzen was notorious for being fussy with RAM in the early days.

Just remember to right down your current settings, especially boot order and any fan profiles you have set up as it will all be reset to default.
 
So I noticed it took a while to boot when I changed the RAM settings, which would suggest you're correct.

I checked my current BIOS software and it was F3 (the initial software), so I tried to update it but got an error message saying it's not compatible. Is there any software I can download that'll automatically update it to the current version without doing it individually via the Gigabyte website? I read it can be quite sketchy flashing the BIOS, so I'm apprehensive about updating it to F50 from F3!
 
AshB1989 said:
Here is my current system:

Mobo - AB350M Gaming 3
CPU - Ryzen 5 1600
GPU - 1070ti
Memory - Team Group Night Hawk RGB 16GB (2x8GB) DDR4 PC4-24000C16 3000MHz
Not sure if it's relevant, but have stock fan.


I play a game called Rust which is notorious hard on the CPU, which I assume is the cause of my bottleneck.

Other players report of getting over 100fps with a 1060 gpu, where I get on average between 40-50fps. I am considering upgrading to the Ryzen 7 3700 CPU to improve my fps and resolve the bottleneck, but I wanted to get your advice before I did so.

Any suggestions/advice is highly appreciated.
Click to expand...

A ryzen 5 3600 would be a nice little upgrade to your system and would also give you better ram compatibility. If you wanted to push the boat out you could also get some 3600/cl16 ram to go with it.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom