Low FPS on R9 280X

[Scorpeus (PL)]

Hi guys I recently bought new rig with Intel i5 4590 and gigabyte R9 280X radeon. When I tried to launch Saints Row The Third I saw very laggy gameplay. Turned on Fraps and it shows only 25fps. I reinstalled the game, updated graphic card drivers to the newest 14.9 catalysts, but the problem still exists. On my previous Radeon 7850 I had like 30-50 fps. Anyone has an idea how to fix it?

[upcoast]

Download GPU-Z from techpowerup. click sensor tab, tick log to file box at bottom before you start up SR3. That'll give you better understanding of what's going on with temp, load, MHz, vram usage and so on.

Is your psu high enough amps on the +12v rail? Could simply be a bad card out of the box, do other games react badly also?

[Scorpeus (PL)]

In Shadow of Mordor I get 60 fps on ultra and other games work like a charm only Saints Row series works like slime :/ In SR4 it's the same and on my previous Radeon 7850 it was running great at high frame rates like 40-50fps. So it's definately not a damage in a card. Even setting game details to the lowest does not fix the issue, it's still 25fps. I tried the older drivers 14.4 but it is the same. It's probably a software issue or this particular card model issue (gigabyte 280X) or R9 series issue.

[Der Hexer]

- was the Radeon 7850 also running with the Catalyst 14.4 or 14.9?
- do you have multiple monitors connected?
- you might want to post the content of your "display.ini" file

[Scorpeus (PL)]

Yes Radeon 7850 was also running on 14.4
And here is my display.ini:

# Display options.
# This file is rewritten whenever options are changed in the menu.
# Toggle values can be true/false or 1/0. Everything else is a number.

ResolutionWidth = 1920
ResolutionHeight = 1080
RefreshRate = 60
MSAA_Level = 8
Fullscreen = true

# Which monitor should be used in fullscreen mode.
DisplayIndex = 0

# Toggle whether resolution is verified before setting.
# This can be used to run the game at any arbitrary resolution in a window.
# However this will break fullscreen mode and Alt+Enter.
VerifyResolution = true

# Toggle v-sync in fullscreen.
VSync = false

# Preset is a number between 1 and 5 for low, medium, high, ultra-high, and custom.
# Custom allows the rest of the settings below to be edited in the UI.
Preset = 5

# TextureDetailLevel toggles the use of high res textures. Currently ignored.
TextureDetailLevel = 0

# AnisoLevel is usually 0 (for trilinear filtering) or 1 through 16.
AnisoLevel = 16

# Lighting detail can be 1, 2, or 3 for low, high, and ultra-high.
LightingDetail = 2

# SSAO level can be 0, 1, 2 or 3 for off, accumulative SSAO, regular SSAO, and hi-res SSAO.
SSAO_Level = 3

# ShadowDetail is the shadow map resolution. 1024, 2048, and 4096 are default options,
# but any power of two will work.
# Zero for no shadows.
ShadowDetail = 4096

# Scene detail controls the geometric detail of the scene. 1 through 3 for low, medium, high.
# This includes LODs, view distance, and turning off certain scene elements.
SceneDetail = 3

# Reflections are 0, 1, or 2, for off, low, or high.
Reflections = 2

# MotionBlur can override motion blur off even when post process detail is up.
MotionBlur = true

# PostProcess can be 0, 1, or 2 for off, low, or high.
# HDR bloom and tone mapping, basic DoF, and motion blur all come on at low,
# God rays and diffusion depth of field come on at high.
# DDoF is incompatible with lighting details other than 3.
# If DDoF is enabled, bokeh DoF will come on automatically on DX11 level cards.
PostProcess = 2

# Toggles whether cutscenes are letter-boxed in the center monitor or
# expand to fill all monitors in Eyefinity mode.
LetterboxEyefinity = true

# Toggles whether or not the game will auto-detect input devices when plugged in.
InputDeviceAutoDetect = true

# Extremely low framerate (less than two frames a second) could be due to low video memory.
# * Resolution is the biggest factor in video memory usage.
# * Lighting detail has a major effect on memory usage.
# It effects lighting quality slightly, but turning it to low will also turn off advanced depth of field.
# * At high resolutions, anti-aliasing modes can result in high memory usage.
# * Shadows and Ambient Occlusion have a minor effect on video memory usage.

# Poor frame rate on low-end CPU’s can be aided by the following options.
# * Scene detail has the biggest effect on CPU performance and visuals. The low setting here should be a last resort.
# * Reflections can have an effect if they are turned off.
# * Shadows will improve CPU performance if turned off, but will seriously affect visuals.

# Poor frame rate on low-end GPU’s can be aided by the following options.
# * The presets are geared toward GPU performance. Using auto-detect should choose settings appropriate for your GPU.
# * Resolution and lighting detail have the biggest effect.
# * Post processing has a major effect on GPU performance when set to high.

[Der Hexer]

you can try to edit the following entrys temporarily and check if that's gaining you some FPS

MSAA_Level = 1

AnisoLevel = 4

ShadowDetail = 1024

some other candidates influencing your FPS are

SceneDetail
Reflections
PostProcess

i can understand that you want to play with the highest possible settings and your R9 280x should be able to handle it, but SR:TT (also SR2 & SR:IV) is somewhat "special", so give it a try :)

[Scorpeus (PL)]

Please read my posts carefully and see that I already wrote that changing all details to lowest does not change anything so your post is useless.

I also launched SR2 for comparison and guess what? Also I get 23-25 fps in that game, so it looks like whole series of Saints has the same issue with 280X radeon.

[Der Hexer]

i've read that, but sometimes changing/editing the "display.ini" file instead of changing the graphics options ingame is doing the trick.

are you running windows 8.x?

[Scorpeus (PL)]

I was changing in ini and in-game settings but none of them seem to work. I'm running on Windows 7 x64 Ultimate.

[Der Hexer]

some personal observations:
* running FRAPS and SR2 is influencing my FPS in a negative way
* MSI Afterburner doesn't show this behavior, but is crashing the game if i want to record a video (FRAPS is doing fine here)
* i was never running FRAPS and SR:TT (i'm using MSI Afterburner here, which doesn't crash the game)

some foreign observations:
* it's reported to me that some "monitoring" & "overclocking" tools (and also VOIP tools) are causing issues with SR:TT on some systems (e.g. EVGA precision, Razer Game Booster) - it might have to do with their overlay or the method of hooking into the system.
* changing the windows compatibility settings (visual design, desktop decorations, high DPI scaling, admin-mode) improved the behaviour of the game for some people


if there's nothing wrong with your HDD/SSD streaming the game files in, you might just be out of luck and your graphics card isn't running well with the current catalyst driver package (can you tell anything about the GPU and CPU usage while playing the game?)

[Scorpeus (PL)]

GPU and CPU usage is quite low when running any of those games. FRAPS is not making any issues like hanging game or making it run slow it didn't with any game I played. Low fps happens only in Saint Row games (SR2, SR3 and SR4) all others run as they should on such rig as mine! I updated now drivers for chipset etc. but it also didn't affect those games. The only thing is to wait for AMD to improve something in their drivers but I doubt something like that will happen :/ I even tried 14.9.2 beta drivers and they do nothing with those games. It might be an engine issue, cuz every SR is made on the same engine. On YT I see people running saints on 280X with intel processors in 60 fps. Maybe it's a Gigabyte 280X that has the issues? That would be totally weird that only one company's card has problems.

[Jooooo]

You must to know SR3 have too bad optimization.

[Der Hexer]

low CPU and GPU usage is strange. seems like they both are not fully utilized for some reason, while running the game.
does your Gigabyte R9-280x have a dual BIOS or a "switch" on its card?
you already checked the gigabyte website ig there's a BIOS update available, right?

[Der Hexer]

Originally posted by Jorchking:

You must to know SR3 have too bad optimization.

bad optimization is ONE thing, but running the game at 25 FPS - no matter what settings are used - on this rig is a totally different.
even a slower CPU and GPU is usually running the game with more FPS.

[Scorpeus (PL)]

Dual bios in gfx card? I don't know. Why even bother that if other games run perfectly as they should? Just checked the BIOS on GPU and it's up to date.

[Der Hexer]

Originally posted by Scorpeus (PL):

Dual bios in gfx card? I don't know. Why even bother that if other games run perfectly as they should?

i know that other AMD/ATI cards had a dual BIOS (e.g. HD 7950) and there's a switch on the graphics card where you can choose which BIOS to run.
as far as i know one is a standart BIOS while the other is "high performance" and is releasing a higher voltage, clock and memory setting.