EVGA GTX 970 4GB SSC isn't as powerful as it should be.

[TRAVY SWOLE]

So I just upgraded my GPU so my specs are as follows:
RIG SPECS:
ASUS A88X Pro mother board
AMD A10-7850k APU at 4.10GHz
16GB Corsair Vengeance RAM
EVGA nVIDIA GeForce GTX 970 4GB DDR5 SSC
Western Digital 1TB HDD
Corsair CX600 PSU
Corsair H60 H20 CPU Cooler
Windows 10 64-bit

YES, I KNOW MY CPU IS ♥♥♥♥. However, games... especially old games (Rugby Challenge 2, Skyrim, etc...) should NOT studder during game play/game menus/cut scenes. The 970 is MUCH more powerful than the minimum or even recomended GPUs for these games. So, how come Skyrim; I can't complete max out and have a SOLID 60FPS? It'll be stable, but will still dip. Advanced Warfare will studder for a couple minutes after loading the map (go from 60FSP to 33 for a brief second), and Rugby Challenge 2.. the least demanding of all three games, and yet it'll dip during cutscenes and in the game menu. WTF?

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Originalmente postado por Kill-Cam Celebrity:

Originalmente postado por Capt.Kiwi:

I'm thinking about setting my CPU to ASUS Optimal mode in my UEFI BIOS. I've had it on there before and was safely running fine for a month, til I changed it back to default to try if it'd boost my GPU. It should be safe right? It simply boosts my CPU speed from 3.7GHz to 4.10GHz

That depends on your motherboard. Judging by the fact that it's even an option, I'm guessing you've got a decent X99 or Z97, so I'm sure it's fine. It's not a matter of 'safety,' but a matter of whether it even boots properly. For example, my Q45 motherboard will make an obnoxious beeping sound instead of posting if I press the Sapphire button on my R9 280, since that turns on a factory-OC mode.

It's a decent MOBO: ASUS A99X-PRO

[Space Coward]

Originalmente postado por Capt.Kiwi:

Originalmente postado por Kill-Cam Celebrity:

That depends on your motherboard. Judging by the fact that it's even an option, I'm guessing you've got a decent X99 or Z97, so I'm sure it's fine. It's not a matter of 'safety,' but a matter of whether it even boots properly. For example, my Q45 motherboard will make an obnoxious beeping sound instead of posting if I press the Sapphire button on my R9 280, since that turns on a factory-OC mode.

It's a decent MOBO: ASUS A99X-PRO

Judging by the name and brand, I'll go ahead and assume you've got an X99 or something. Yeah, you're probably fine. CPU's have a very low failure rate as long as you're not going with some crazy 2GHz overclock. What processor do you have again?

My guess is that your motherboard is detecting a certain processor and asking if you'd like their tested and recommended overclock. If you have the cooler for it, yes, you may want to consider it. If you're on an Intel stock cooler, I'd advise not overclocking.

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Originalmente postado por Kill-Cam Celebrity:

Originalmente postado por Capt.Kiwi:

It's a decent MOBO: ASUS A99X-PRO

Judging by the name and brand, I'll go ahead and assume you've got an X99 or something. Yeah, you're probably fine. CPU's have a very low failure rate as long as you're not going with some crazy 2GHz overclock. What processor do you have again?

My guess is that your motherboard is detecting a certain processor and asking if you'd like their tested and recommended overclock. If you have the cooler for it, yes, you may want to consider it. If you're on an Intel stock cooler, I'd advise not overclocking.

AMD Black Edition A10-7850K @3.70GHz (4.0GHz Turbo) and nope, no stock cooler here. I've got a Corsair H60 water cooler.

[Rove]

It's the A88X not A99X.

The motherboards the other guy was listing are Intel boards. The OP has a AMD APU and a AMD motherboard is thus required for it. A88X is a FM2 or FM2+ (in his case FM2+) motherboard.

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Originalmente postado por Rove:

It's the A88X not A99X.

The motherboards the other guy was listing are Intel boards. The OP has a AMD APU and a AMD motherboard is thus required for it. A88X is a FM2 or FM2+ (in his case FM2+) motherboard.

Yeah, that's the one. Sorry bout that, I put the wrong one haha. Sorry

[_I_]

that board has a good vrm config (6+2 with vrm heatsinks)
it should not be throttling as long as there is some airflow over them

[Rove]

Ya not only can you probably set the performance mode you could also likely manually overclock. Again though I really don't think your problem is the CPU.

Check that your RAM is in the right slots and stuff.

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Originalmente postado por Rove:

Ya not only can you probably set the performance mode you could also likely manually overclock. Again though I really don't think your problem is the CPU.

Check that your RAM is in the right slots and stuff.

The RAM is all correct, reading 16GB (15.9 usable). For cooling though, I've got an CORSAIR Hydro Series H60 for my CPU (with a radiator and two fans for that), a fan in the front of my case sucking cold air in and a fan on the top blowing air out directly above my RAM.

[Rove]

Sounds like more than enough cooling.

[_I_]

as long as the cpu isnt going over 62c it shouldnt be throttling
h60 isnt a very big clc, might not be enough for the overclock

top should be exhaust not intake
turn it around
put the h60 on the rear for exhaust and top fans for exhaust

front/sides should be intakes

[TRAVY SWOLE]

Originalmente postado por _I_:

as long as the cpu isnt going over 62c it shouldnt be throttling
h60 isnt a very big clc, might not be enough for the overclock

top should be exhaust not intake
turn it around
put the h60 on the rear for exhaust and top fans for exhaust

front/sides should be intakes

Again, I wrote this wrong haha. The top fan is exhaust. The two Corsair fans on my radiator are sucking air in from the back of the case and thus feeding cooler air to the H20 cooler. The fan on the top of my case is an exhaust and thus sucking air OUT. Hot air always rises so this fan is correctly placed.

[Space Coward]

Originalmente postado por Rove:

It's the A88X not A99X.

The motherboards the other guy was listing are Intel boards. The OP has a AMD APU and a AMD motherboard is thus required for it. A88X is a FM2 or FM2+ (in his case FM2+) motherboard.

♥♥♥♥, my bad. Forgot we were talking about AMD, somehow. Yeah, I'm fairly sure the board has some degree of overclocking, but I'm not entirely sure yet.

[TRAVY SWOLE]

Well, last night I restarted my PC and as soon as it got to the login screen it restarted. Luckily I was able to get into Windows after this so I went to check the HDD for errors and errors were found and it needed to reboot to fix them. I let this happen and sure enough, I got the endless blue screen of death and finally got to the Windows 10 advanced recovery options, and tried reseting the PC (failed), system restore (took too long, so did a cold restart). For some reason I'm able to get into Windows now, but reckon my HDD is failing. I'm going to probably buy a new 1TB HDD and a smaller SDD for my OS.

[Rove]

Good plan. I can recommend a set if you want. Also though this can be a virus so try installing Linux of some sort. Linux mint brought new life to my laptop when something like that happened.

For SSD 120GB is good. You already said 1TB HDD, just make sure it's at least 7200RPM and 64MB of cache also. If you can't afford a large enough SSD then a 1TB SSHD (Solid State Hybrid Drive) is another option. The 1TB SSHD from seagate right now have 8GB SSD cache and 1TB HDD built together in one unit to try and get the best of both.

Here's a link to Linux Mint:
http://www.linuxmint.com/

You may even be able to save your existing partition or backup some Data from it by booting from a LiveDVD or USB. You could maybe also re-size it if there is free space and just do a install to a new partition made of the free space. Then you can still use your PC like normal and salvage the old stuff at your leasure. This happened to me with my laptop and my recovery disc did not work. Then I got Linux Mint. Turned out the problem was it seemed to be my copy of Windows was corrupt and somehow so was my recovery disc, or it had a malware targeted to the specific copy or something. Anyways Linux still worked and so did a new copy of Windows later on. I had to get them to ship me a new one and it took literally years.

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So I've been thinking over the past few days; would reseting my PC possibly help performance?
When I first build this PC almost a year ago, I installed Windows 7 Ultimate. A few months later I upgraded to Windows 8.1 via the Microsoft download tool. A few months later, I upgraded to Windows 10. None of these upgrades were clean installs, they were upgrades. I've heard from the past that upgrading Windows upon Windows can cause several issues dealing with performance and errors. Windows 10 has a Reset This PC tool which will erase everything and install will practically install a fresh copy of Windows 10 on my PC. Should I do this?