Clock Rate Fluctuating In Goldsrc (HL1 Engine) Game(s) - FPS Drops

[Paft]

Bad FPS drops in TFC...

Upgraded to a MSI R9 280X GAMING 3 GB from a N470GTX-M2D12

I removed the nVidia drivers with DDU and installed the latest Catalyst Version (13.12).

I haven't tried many games yet but I can run Bioshock Inf and Metal Gear Rising MAXED well.

What's the deal here?



Idle temps and specs below:

[B]    Operating System[/B]
                Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit SP1
            [B]CPU[/B]
                Intel Core i5 760 @ 2.80GHz    23 °C
                Lynnfield 45nm Technology
               (Not overclocked yet)
            [B]RAM[/B]
                8.00GB Dual-Channel DDR3 @ 662MHz (9-9-9-24) = Default
                764MHz (9-9-9-28) = O.C
               CORSAIR XMS3 2 x 2 GB DDR3-1600 PC3-12800 CL9 Memory Kit (CMX4GX3M2A1600C9) x2
           [B] Motherboard[/B]
                Gigabyte Technology Co., Ltd. H55M-UD2H (Socket 1156)    29 °C
            [B]Graphics[/B]
                W2261 (1920x1080@60Hz)
                3072MB ATI AMD Radeon R9 200 Series (MSI)    28 °C
            [B]Storage[/B]
                2794GB Seagate ST3000DM001-1CH166 ATA Device (SATA)    26 °C
                59GB OCZ-VERTEX4 ATA Device (SSD)
                931GB SAMSUNG HD103UJ ATA Device (SATA)    21 °C
                931GB Seagate ST310005 28AS USB Device (USB (SATA))    31 °C
                149GB Western Digital WDC WD16 00BEVT-60ZCT1 USB Device (USB (SATA))    31 °C
           [B]Power[/B]
                Corsair GS600

GPU/CPU temps stay in 30s in TFC.


Bioshock stays at "1020MHz" whislt in-game, apart from when in loading screens:

TFC fluctuates:

And by FPS drops I mean it isn't even stable at 125. It will drop to as low as 60 when online with players. My 470GTX would stay rock solid at 125 most of the time.

No word from AMD yet: http://forums.amd.com/game/messageview.cfm?catid=454&threadid=165975&highlight_key=y&keyword1=cs%201.6

 

[Silent_Scone]

It's got to be drivers fella. Not sure what to suggest on such an old game. Someone else may have found a fix. Have you tried changing a few trinkets like enabling / disabling V-Sync etc?

 

[Paft]

Thanks for the response.

I have V-Sync OFF in TFC anyway because of aim. I tried it on/off within the game settings, no change.

It's a pitty because the card is now half useless to me as I still play TFC a fair amount.

 

[Silent_Scone]

Bummer. Not sure what to suggest, maybe do a driver clean-up?

EDIT: just seen you've potentially done that already

 

[Paft]

Yes, to remove the nvidia drivers I first used Revo Uninstaller, then DDU (Display Driver Uninstaller) which found leftovers and finally Display Fusion that also found stuff.

Done the same with the AMD drivers...no change.

 

[drunkenmaster]

Couple of games can be iffy with either going full 3d or triggering full 3d clocks. Running windowed can cause the problem with certain games, so if running windowed set to full screen and see if there is a difference.

Try installing msi afterburner and then using the disable powerplay option(it's called something else, upls, ulps, some combination of those letters ), which should have the same effect.

I've had a couple games decide to not play ball, for whatever reason, and not causing full 3d clocks to kick in all the time. Lotro for me does this when windowed but full screen is fine. Frustrating in that particular game because with MMO's I prefer to run windowed as there are lots of afk moments in MMO's, travelling, crafting, whatever.

I've rarely had to bother playing with specific game profiles and they aren't particularly advanced in the CCC, try installing Radeon pro and setting a profile/changing options for the game that way. I can't recall if you can set certain clock speeds for game profiles in Radeon pro, nor if you can disable powerplay.

Ideally you'd want to disable powerplay in a specific game profile, so once you close the game it's re-enabled.

 

[Paft]

Thanks for the response, drunkenmaster but I tried disabling 'ULPS' and 'Force constant voltage' before posting but it made no difference. I read about that.

I used AB to O.C my 470, so already had it installed. I had to update to beta to get the AMD options.

I run games in full-screen.

Should I play around with Radeon Pro or is that not going to make a difference?

 

[Paft]

This guy is talking poop, right?

http://forums.amd.com/game/messageview.cfm?catid=454&threadid=171117

It looks a lot like a CPU bottleneck. The card clocks down because it doesn't need full power to keep up with the processor. Look at the CPU usage of the game process when this happens for confirmation.

I was scanning the forums before I opened that thread...he's been saying that to others with the same issues.