Problems with R9 380

[Maihess]

So, I'm running an FX-6300 with an MSI R9 380, through a MSI 970 Gaming M/B

I've been having intermittent issues for a while now, black screens where, if what I've reading is true because the graphics card cuts out.

My question is....is there a fix? I've recently tried going back to the Catalyst Drivers the card shipped with, it did auto-update to the Radeon Crimson suite, but kept the Catalyst Driver version (15.11)

I'm also wondering if there is a bottleneck because my FX-6300 can't keep up with the card.

For those of you who are gonna say "Dude, should've gotten an i5"....I'm wondering the same thing.

Ultimately, my current PC was an experiment to see where the AMD platform is at, albeit a potentially expensive one. If I do decide to switch back to Intel and get an i5, should I go back to an nVidia card as well?

[John Doe]

Αναρτήθηκε αρχικά από upcoast:

Ps, ram timings are important on amd P II and FX they always have been but intel cpus not so much.

I'd like you to show me a case where RAM timings are / were really important enough to justify a significant performance difference in any game, the platform rather be AMD or Intel.

[LizTheKid]

Αναρτήθηκε αρχικά από Wicker_M4n:

And in my opinion you should go for an RX 470 or 480 and preferably a Sapphire one, they are the highest quality (smaller chance to catch a faulty card again). Geforce cards are not likely to perform as well in DX12 and Vulkan games as Radeon cards, not to mention they are more expensive.

I've got a Sapphire RX480 8gb and I'm not convinced it's all that great to be honest. I've been reading this thread looking for ideas as to whether it's my CPU (AMD fx6300+) causing a bottle neck, or if there's issues with the GPU (irregular FPS spikes). Having upgraded from a R9 270, I'm really not seeing the performance increases I'd expect and I'm actually quite dissapointed with it.

I'm yet to work out if this is driver support issues, the fact that AMD cards struggle with in-game overlays, plus numerous other possibilities.

If the OP can RMA his existing card and get a replacement *free*, I'd do that first, before forking out yet more money on a 1st gen polaris card that very's questionable in it's reliability and performance.

[_I_]

its the cpu

rx 480 is alot stronger than r9 270

if you are not seeing any performance gain, the cpu is limiting it

[LizTheKid]

Αναρτήθηκε αρχικά από _I_:

its the cpu

rx 480 is alot stronger than r9 270

if you are not seeing any performance gain, the cpu is limiting it

Yes, see initially I thought so too but now I'm not so sure.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but you'd expect to see (if the CPU IS the cause of a bottleneck) for CPU utilisation to be nearing 100%. However, In some games I'll experience dips in FPS down to 5-10, yet CPU usage remains a constant 30% ish.

I don't think it's the CPU, more likely poor driver support relating to the GPU.

Any suggestions welcome.

[Maihess]

@Wicker_M4n

I couldn't tell you what kind of memory is in it, what ever MSI run presumably. I was curious about the RX 480/470, but the negative press I've been seeing, combined with what have read about R9 380s (after I bought it of course lol), has put me off. Simple truth, I never had these kinds of intermittent issues when I had an nVidia card....my last three cards were all nVidia (550ti, 650ti, 750ti). In term of what I read, apparently this card has issues when switching from a low load to a high load (that is what I read, you never can tell with the Net lol). I honestly don't know, it is an intermittent fault. I can go a week without a problem, then as happened yesterday have it happen 5 times in an hour. Going on a massive tangent, I know this will sound strange, but I have been wondering if there is some weird problem with lag spikes through my e2200 Killer NIC, combined with the internet access here in Australia being atrocious for the most part. Like I said, I'm probably reading into it, but I can't rule anything out. What usually happens is big framerate drop, screen freezes, goes black, then monitor thinks that it's no longer connected. I'm wondering if lag spikes are contributing to the problem. I have no idea, but I've had PCs crash in the past from network issues.

@LizTheKid

I'm wondering about bottlenecks between my FX-6300 and my 380 too. I basically upgraded to this spec (fresh build - started completely from scratch) from a A10-7700 APU with a 750Ti. The main reason for the upgrade was for Cities: Skylines. I did notice an improvement in games like Diablo 3, but admittedly not as much as I would have hoped. In WOW, where I'm getting the bulk of the issues at the moment, hence me wondering about the lag spikes contributing to the problem, performance isn't as consistent as I would have hoped given how relatively old the game actually is, graphics improvements over the years aside. In CSL, initially the problems seemed to stem from overclocking my system. After restoring my bios to defaults it was happening much less, but often enough to be annoying. At the very least CSL doesn't seem to respond well on an overclocked system, definitely not mine, or when I do it ( I generally am pretty modest when I try, I don't try for 4.5Ghz+ or anything). That aside, in CSL at 1920x1080 medium texture/detail, shadows low, AA and AF off, I'm lucky to get 25fps zoomed right in on a busy part of a city that I've built. Supersampling the graphics through a resolution mod to 150% produces some strange results....lower fps fully zoomed out to medium zoom, slightly better fps zoomed in. This makes me wonder about my CPU....CSL is a CPU heavy game, I get that. But it does make me wonder about a CPU - GPU bottleneck. Finding simple information about bottlenecks are hard to find, most people are adamant that they don't really matter, my theory is that they're playing games that you're just as likely to see on a console as you would on a PC, like Call of Duty or League of Legends (I know LOL is only on PC). Games like that are a completely different story to something like CSL, where bottlenecks I can only assume become far more relevant. If I had my time over I would have looked more seriously at an FX-8350 or something similar. I would also consider being more selective with my PSU. While for the most part my Cougar STX 650W gets the job done, maybe I should have done more research into a PSU. It was around 90AUD, maybe I should have spent an extra 30 bucks on something better, I don't know.

@LizTheKid.

Ignore my previous comment, your comment came through while I was writing the comment equivalent of War and Peace by Tolstoy lol

I have wondered about driver issues. I was advised to update to the 16.7.2 drivers, which I would have thought were beta drivers, anyways....it is what it is.

At the risk of bringing this back to PSUs, a lot of this topic has been centred around that....lots of thoughts and opinions etc lol

I was told, bare minimum for a R9 380 is a 550W PSU. I won't go into brands etc. I can only assume that the RX480 would have similar power requirements.

What are you running?

[LizTheKid]

Haha got to love a bit of War and Peace!!

My specs are as follows:

Corsair 650W PSU (Can't remember the exact model)
MSI 970 AM3+ Gaming Mobo
16gb Corsair Vengeance 1600mhz RAM
AMD FX6300+ CPU
Saphire RX480 8GB GPU

I think the minimum for the RX480 is a 500w rated PSU, although I believe it's supposed to be more efficient than previous generations (i.e your R9 380).

You mention Cities Skylines - I may be wrong, but I'm sure I read somewhere that it relied on single thread tech (or was it Cities XL?... I forget now). It doesn't surprise me that you're having issues with that game (particularly as your city grows) as the FX6300 is much better at mutithread applications and multi tasking. Intel have a much better performance margain over AMD when it comes to single thread performance.

Like yourself I've tried Overclocking, in fact just earlier on today I was running my CPU at 4.3ghz. The noise was deafening though, so I've reverted back to stock clock speeds. The only reason I OC'd was to test to see if there was any difference with these FPS spikes or indeed any FPS gain, but no, nothing fixed and nothing gained.

Which leads me right back to my original assumption - Poor driver support for this GPU.

Going to try a few more performance tests this evening just for the sake of it and to rule out CPU bottlenecking entirely.

Oh and just for completness - I reinstalled Win10 a couple of weeks back, so all this is tried and tested on a clean machine, fresh install of drivers et al.

Should have bought an Xbone.

[_I_]

Αναρτήθηκε αρχικά από LizTheKid:

Αναρτήθηκε αρχικά από _I_:

its the cpu

rx 480 is alot stronger than r9 270

if you are not seeing any performance gain, the cpu is limiting it

Yes, see initially I thought so too but now I'm not so sure.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but you'd expect to see (if the CPU IS the cause of a bottleneck) for CPU utilisation to be nearing 100%. However, In some games I'll experience dips in FPS down to 5-10, yet CPU usage remains a constant 30% ish.

I don't think it's the CPU, more likely poor driver support relating to the GPU.

Any suggestions welcome.

that depends on the game
source games only need 2 cores, will be maxed at 33% of fx6 or 25% of fx8
if the game only uses 4 cores thats 66% of fx6 or 50% of fx8

and most games are dependant on a single core, even when they can use more cores/threads
and you can never tell by watching core usage because windows likes to balance core loads across all cores/threads

[LizTheKid]

Αναρτήθηκε αρχικά από _I_:

that depends on the game

Yep - It seems you're totally correct.

Just been monitoring BF4 using CPUID HWMonitor. GPU is basically idle, while the CPU is 90%+ over all 6 cores.

Other games (Dirty Bomb I'm looking at you) it seems to just be poorly optimised/bad driver support/something else as everything's having a chill while the game looks like it's having a stroke.

Looks like if I want a solid 60fps it may be time for a new CPU. FX8370E here I come.. or do I just wait and go intel... urgh... more money.

@Maugan - it may be worth you downloading CPUID HWMonitor from http://www.cpuid.com/softwares/hwmonitor.html to see what your systems doing. I've got 2 monitors so I've been running my games on one whilst having this open in the other - you can monitor pretty much all the important hardware stats which may help point you in the direction of where the problem lies.

[LizTheKid]

Αναρτήθηκε αρχικά από Wicker_M4n:

You'll be better with Intel. Those FX processors are basically the same, the only marginal difference is the number of the cores.

Thats the obvious route - not sure I can justify2.5x the cost though for something in the region of 10fps.

I do a lot of Picture and video editing and the extra cores of the FX processors should help with that too (or so I'm led too believe).