New Rig - Runs like a cow - please help

[Plissken]

Hi Guys,

Just spent a small fortune on a new rig and it runs like a total cow. The system is used mainly for gaming (MMOs mostly RIFT) and I’m getting around 15fps in large battles. I should be getting close to 100fps on a rig like this so something is very wrong. In fact my 14 month old laptop is getting better fps figures than this. The spec is listed below. Any ideas on how I go about figuring out the problem? I thought maybe the GPU is shot or its not getting enough power from the PSU? The GTX760 looks like it’s working. Both fans spinning nicely. All power connectors in place. The i5 is pretty well cooled and doesn’t look like it’s under much stress during game play. To be honest I’m just stuck and don’t know where to go from here. Any help appreciated.

Crucial CT128M4SSD2 128GB M4 SATA III 6Gb/s MLC 2.5 Inch Internal SSD
Noctua - Heatsink + Fan CPU Cooling Kit - Dual Fan - NH-D14
Intel Core i5 4670K Quad Core Retail CPU (Socket 1150, 3.40GHz, 6MB, Haswell, 84W, Intel Graphics, BX80646I74770, 4th Generation Intel Core, Turbo Boost Technology 2.0)
Asus Gryphon Z87 Motherboard
MSI Nvidia GTX 760 2GB DDR5 TF Fan PCI-E Graphics Card
Silverstone SST-TJ08E USB3.0 PC Case
XFX Pro 650W Core Edition '80 Plus Bronze' Power Supply
TeamGroup Vulcan RED 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (TLD38G1600HC9DC01)

 

[Plissken]

Thanks for all your suggestions so far. I'm at work just now so will post some updates tonight. RIFT is the only game on the rig at the moment but as a comparison my laptop is based around an i7-3720QM with a GTX 680M and I get double the fps on the laptop. I don't think its the CPU which I will OC at some stage. It just feels like something is broken in GPU land. That PSU should give enough juice right?

 

[Plissken]

To be consistent I logged in to the same zone on both machines. Same settings. New rig gave me 30fps (not much happening graphically on screen) and the laptop gave me 59fps. I made sure that the monitor was connected to the GTX 760 (in fact I tried both ports just to be sure). I moved settings down to a low quality renderer option and it made no difference to fps at all. One thing I will try is taking the card out and running it on the onboard graphics just to see. I do think the game isnt too mutli-core compatible but in checking cpu utilization is wasn't taking much load on core 1 at all so I'm inclined to rule out the CPU as being an issue. Oddly, it really does feel like the quality I'm getting is similar to onboard graphics ...

 

[Plissken]

No - havent turned it off yet. That a contender you think?

 

[Plissken]

I think vsync is on. Will check when I get back. Again, big thanks for the help so far. More data tomorrow. Just looking at 3d mark stats the laptop should bring back a score of X2627 and the game rig should be P8435 so I'm parsing that as the game rig should rock.

 

[Plissken]

Guys - thanks so much for all your support and advice. I didn't get back from work till real late last night so only had time to run through a few tests. My findings so far.

- biggest one is that I couldnt run 3dmark. It went blue screen after the first under water video. I think it was video 2 (aztec something) and it went belly up 3 times out of 3. Something aint right as I ran the same version on the laptop to be sure and it completed and gave me a results. So I think another clean instal worth doing - have just kicked that off now.

- tried vsync inside Rift. No fps changes. Will try over-ride on the nvidia control panel.

- the laptop runs 1920 x 1080 native and the game rig is set to 1920 x 1600 native support for panel. It know it's not completely like for like but I assumed similar enough for a comparison

- igpu was set to auto and so i've made it hard set to pcie. no difference

- the card is in slot one and it's pcie gen 3 x 16. as is slot 2 (SLI)

- i'll try afterburner and see what gpu bottlenecks may come up on a fresh install. As i mentioned before it looked like the cpu was hardly under stress.


That's what I've got so far. More information when I do the new install. God, I really hope this fixes it and it's some kind of os/direct-x kind of problem. Fingers crossed and thanks again for all the help.

 

[Plissken]

latest nvidia drivers on there and its 1920 x 1200. That's the native res of the lcd monitor I have. Nearly done with install now so figures coming shortly.

 

[Plissken]

BSOD all the time now. Whole system looks completely unstable. CPU temps have gone erratic too. Just installing software makes it go 33c -> 48c. And it never finishes as it blue screens shortly after. Wish I had just bought a made up machine.

 

[Plissken]

I used Arctic Silver. The temps were fine yesterday. Idle around 30 and 40 to 48 on load. I've reset bios to default and the MB tells you which settings it's scrubbing. It was resetting some CAS9 settings? Totally confused as I've gone nowhere near OC on CPU or memory.

PC guts are all over the desk now and the GTX has been removed. Doing a fresh install with the onboard graphics to see if I can get it back to some form of stability.

 

[Plissken]

Built back up (but still not in the case). It seems stable for the moment. Did the 3dmark test and the figures came up slightly lower than comparable tests. Web example had a P score of 8435 (to my P8025), graphics 8933 (mine 8340), Physics 7237 (mine 7417) and a combined score of 7213 (mine 6921). So slightly lower but not too worrying.

I had to move the GPU to slot 2 to help with some cooling but it's gen3 x 16 so shouldnt make a difference.

Afterburner reports about 50% load on the card so it's not really being stressed out at all by the game. The CPU on the other hand is maxing so it might be time to OC. I've got 28c idle and 50c stressed at the moment so will up it once I have more confidence its not going to go puff (or mooooo).

Now I have this bizaro problem where the system sometimes wont recognise the USB mouse on boot up and you need to take it out and put it back in. Don't think I should do this for a living

Anyway will post if anything else comes up but I really wanted to say thanks for all your help. What a nice community you all are!