Getting low FPS on some games, shouldn't be.

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Hi. So I recently got a new rig:

Intel i5 4430 @ 3.2ghz (Haswell)
NVIDIA GTX 560Ti
8GB 1600mhz RAM
Gigabyte Z87-D3HP
500GB HDD

I've had it for about 2 weeks now. It runs a lot of games on what I would expect it to, e.g.

Saints Row The Third on Ultra at 40-60FPS
Hitman Absolution on Med/High at 45-60FPS
Minecraft on Ultra at 180FPS ;)
Borderlands 2 on Ultra (ex. NVIDIA effects) capped at 60FPS
PAYDAY: The Heist on Ultra capped at 60FPS
Garry's Mod/HL2 on Ultra capped at 60FPS


You get the picture.

However, there are 3 games that for some reason are running rather badly.

First, there's Planetside 2. On Ultra I can get 30 FPS in battles, but on Medium I still get around 35-45 and even when I go down to the lowest settings I barely get 65 FPS. I want to play PS2 at a solid sixty, and I know that I shouldn't need to run it on the lowest settings.

Second, there's ARMA 2, playing DayZ. On Ultra I get about 25 FPS. Have to turn the settings right down to Low to get a solid 60.

And finally, there's Darksiders 2. On Ultra, the game keeps have visual glitches like the animations flickering and the FPS stuttering. However, I think this might just be Darksiders 2, as it is a bad port.

EDIT: Darksiders 2 seems to be running fine now, if I have VSync enabled.

I thought these games were running unusually slow, seen as my Dad used this GPU in his PC 3 weeks ago and could run PS2 on High at 60 FPS and ARMA 2 on High with 60 FPS. He has an i7 920 in his machine with 6GB of RAM. Surely if I have 8GB of RAM and a new Haswell that should perform the same if not better than the 920, I should get higher framerates?

I've heard people talking about your CPU being "parked", and games only using one core of it, making them run slowly, but then I've also heard that "unparking" your CPU can cause it to overheat, get damaged, and/or give you a BSoD.

Is there anything I can do?

Thanks, Will.
 
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DayZ does, indeed, not run amazingly. Interested to see how the Arma 3 engine does (though it won't be running standalone DayZ) - signs seem much better than Arma 2.
 
I wouldn't think the CPU would struggle with any of those. As long as it's not throttling.

Run a bunch of benches (Unigine, Cinebench), and compare with similar system to see if you are not getting a weird bottleneck. OCCT to stress test the CPU to see if it's not overheating and throttling, although the symptoms would be different.

run afterburner and check and VRAM and stuff, but you should be OK if the GPU works fine on other machines.

Also, disable AA if you are running 4xMSAA. That kills framerate on low end GPUs. There are a bunch of effects like that that will hit a GPU hard, so so if you can disable particular effects.
 
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i can tell you now that dayz is terrible for FPS
thats roughly the same as i get, sometimes in large towns i get even less.
seen it drop down to as little as 7 FPS before lol.
 
Planetside 2 is also really badly optimized, you seem to be getting very good framerates there to be honest and I wouldn't worry about it that much.
Certainly I have seen reports of people with similar or better systems having much worse performance than that.

5. Adjust In game settings
These are all settings that put pressure on the CPU instead of the GPU.
First of all, shadows should always be on low, no matter how good your system. More on how shadows effect the FPS later.
Next, turn Particles, Effects, Flora, Ambient Occlusion, audio quality, and Fog Shadows off or lower.
These are all CPU demanding(Im pretty sure AO effects CPU and GPU). This should net you some good FPS.

6. If already running settings on High, turn them to Ultra
That’s right, you get better fps AND better stability on Ultra settings then on high, while also making it look better.
http://thelonegamers.com/complete-guide-better-planetside-2-performance/

This helped me a lot with Planetside 2 but not massively. I get around 15 fps in combat still though, thats why I don't play it anymore. Just turning shadows down will probably help you a lot there if the framerate is bothering you.
 
The reasons for low FPS is quite simply your GPU. When I had one 560ti it would pull about that, not with 2 they fly!

1Gb or 2Gb model?
 
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