Low Performance with GTX 580

[Earl of Madness]

I"ve been doing some testing with my rig and i'm proud of my rig here are the specs

i7-3930k @ Stock (will overclock after new burn in is done)
32GB of 1866 DDR3 RAM
Asus Rampage IV
Nvidia GTX 580 3GB (plan to upgrade soon)

Anyway after doing some tests with some of my favorite games i'm noticing some pretty sad FPS paticularly in Skyrim, Crysis, Crysis 2, and Even League of Legends. I turn Vsync on to prevent screen tearing and my monitor is OC to 65hz, I do have triple buffering enabled though.

i see benchmarks of the 580 doing very well at maxing if not close to maxing out each of these games my frames end up terrible. On Crysis i get between 25 and 45 fps unless i'm in a very dull very small area. The same thing happens in Crysis 2 but i can't even get to my projected 65 fps i only get 50 max in Crysis 2 in full screen mode.

Lastly in skyrim i only get 25-40 fps when the game is maxed out and when mods are installed paticularly texture mods my framerate drops even lower.

In League of Legends and Dota 2 i rarely get above 60 usually its stable in the 40-55 fps, not terrible but still not ideal.

Obviously it depends on the situation however other games i play get 60+ granted they are older like Bioshock, Bioshock 2, the Portal Series and Many Inde Games.

I don't understand why the games are not living up to the performance i looked up when i was doing research on my 580 I expected to be getting 40-60 frames in all of those games and in league of legends and dota 2 100+ fps.

Is something wrong with my card? do i absolutely need to OC my CPU because i know my CPU can hit 4.2 pretty easily and pretty stable.

All my CPU cores are unparked and i tried to optimize skyrim's multi-threading as much as i pssibly coulld in the .ini files. However nothing helps, the FPS still isn't very good.

Before I upgrade to 780 or so i want to figure out if there are other problems with my rig. Thank you guys so much.

[Bad 💀 Motha]

VSync can be your problem if you are not already getting 60+ FPS.
Have you tried lowering some settings? Some can tax the FPS quite a bit with very little real world visual differences. Such as MSAA or SSAO. Or if u have any Anti-Aliasing applied, try lowering that.

What GPU drivers do u have installed?

Double check NVIDIA Control Panel as well.
Such as these settings.

Anisotropic Filtering and Anti-Aliasing on Application Preferred
FXAA = OFF (use the in-game setting if it has one)
Max Pre-Rendered Frames = 1 (is usually the best)
Threaded Optimization = ON
Vertical Sync = Application Preferred -or- Disabled (or try Adaptive)

[Earl of Madness]

Lowering Settings Does help a little bit however it isn't usually a very big FPS increase. The frames still stay in that range unless i really lower the resolution. Also for some reason i get better FPS in some games when i play in Windowed Mode at 1080p as opposed to full screen 1080p I do not understand that.

I will play with the other settings you mentioned however from the research i'm doing i hear that the Nvidia Vsync is actually better than many applications Vsync. That may be wrong though. All i know is that if i don't have some sort of Vsync Enabled especially the Nvidia one i get some very bad screen tearing in games.

I'll do more tests with Vsync to see which settings work best for me.

Again i'm just very interested in why my GTX 580 3GB performs so poorly in these games where supposidly people get 40-60 fps where i suffer 10-25% loss in frames in most situations when games are fully maxed out.

I'll also try playing with antialiasing as well though.

I have the latest non-beta drivers installed though i'm updating to the bet drivers as we speak.

Thanks for your advice.

[banzaigtv]

Your bad performance in those games is a mystery. I'm running a previous-generation quad-core CPU and a GTX 660 (similar performance, but with more vRAM) and I can max out Skyrim and get 60 fps with no problems and 55-60 fps with mods installed. Crysis performs way better on very high settings on my rig. I'm running the 326.01 driver. Have you tried that one?

[Soylent_Merchant]

Are you having cooling problems? Cuz at those specs you should be doing great

[Bad 💀 Motha]

Did u recently redo your system or something?

Did u run any benches and monitor your CPU/GPU temps? Could be a heat problem and then performance lacking because of that.

Only others thing I can think off is you not having certain needed drivers installed, such as motherboard/sata chipset drivers. Or a buggy NVIDIA GPU driver. Try 314.22 WHQL or 326.41 BETA. Ones like 320 (even though it is WHQL) are terrible.

[Earl of Madness]

I did recently move my Rig to a smaller Case however there is now a direct fan blowing onto the graphics card. I moved from an Elysium to a HAF XB (I go to more LAN parties now so the smaller case helps a lot). My temps went up a little but i didn't expect them to go up by much. My CPU runs at 45 C degrees Idle (I have a Corsair H100) and my GPU runs at 40 C degrees Idle. My room is currently a bit hot (75-80 degrees F) because it is summer and i recently reapplied arctic silver 5 trying to get the best thermal results.

I always thought to myself that those temps were a bit warm but my room is also a bit on the warm side probably degrees because it is summer time and i'm running my rig at the same time.

I think i might not have installed thermal paste correctly if that is the case. I somehow can't install that stuff correctly to save my life no matter the method. I use line-method, X-method, and pea-method.

I try to apply as little as possible when i do this as well. I have the most updated Drivers btw. I will retest with the BETA driver.

I do plan on doing a custom water loop when i get the funds, probably when i get a new case since i'm doing a second build pretty soon. A build Specifically for LANs. I might also pick up some Coollaboratories Ultra because i hear Coollaboratories Ultra and Pro are really good TIMS with no burn in period.

[Soylent_Merchant]

Originally posted by crownedfalcon00:

I did recently move my Rig to a smaller Case however there is now a direct fan blowing onto the graphics card. I moved from an Elysium to a HAF XB (I go to more LAN parties now so the smaller case helps a lot). My temps went up a little but i didn't expect them to go up by much. My CPU runs at 45 C degrees Idle (I have a Corsair H100) and my GPU runs at 40 C degrees Idle. My room is currently a bit hot (75-80 degrees F) because it is summer and i recently reapplied arctic silver 5 trying to get the best thermal results.

I always thought to myself that those temps were a bit warm but my room is also a bit on the warm side probably degrees because it is summer time and i'm running my rig at the same time.

I think i might not have installed thermal paste correctly if that is the case. I somehow can't install that stuff correctly to save my life no matter the method. I use line-method, X-method, and pea-method.

I try to apply as little as possible when i do this as well. I have the most updated Drivers btw. I will retest with the BETA driver.

I do plan on doing a custom water loop when i get the funds, probably when i get a new case since i'm doing a second build pretty soon. A build Specifically for LANs. I might also pick up some Coollaboratories Ultra because i hear Coollaboratories Ultra and Pro are really good TIMS with no burn in period.

Well at those temps you should still be okay, how about checking if everything is plugged in right, Download the latest drivers , and maybe run a benchmark to compare to online ones to see if yours are lower by a significant margin

[Earl of Madness]

well I did a Unigen Heaven Test and did a comparison and they were about the same overall 45 fps average. mine might have been a bit higher with my 3GB VRAM buffer but thats about it. My temps are looking a bit better too now that its the evening. i'll do some more testing with the setting recomendations given above. Hopefully soon i'll be able to afford the upgrades to my current rig and do away with these issues with more water cooling and better thermal paste and GPU. Thanks again everyone. if you know anything more about this issue i'd gladly appreciate it. I'll get back to you when i perform more tests. Also the Beta Drivers may be helping out with the frames because the unigen benchmark comared just fine and worked out great. Granted the fan got blowing a bit but that isn't out of the ordinary for this tiny chassis.

[Bad 💀 Motha]

Idle temps are really of no concern, it's what they are under loads, especially for long periods.

Run Prime95 (for CPU) and FurMark (for GPU) burn-in tests and see what your max CPU/GPU temps are. Unless you're hitting above 85*C or so on either the CPU or GPU, I wouldn't worry. They shouldn't run slower due to throttling unless u going over 90*C or so.

[Earl of Madness]

That makes sense and i'll definately try that. I'll do load tests i think i'll be fine for my load tests because my CPU OC tests worked out fine. I'll need to test my GPU though Unigine Heaven worked fine though and i didn't reach over 70% fan speed which means my card wasn't reaching its thermal threshold from the fan settings I set. I did disable Vsync in the programs and i'm using Nvidia's now and i'm getting much better FPS. I don't know what it is about their Vsynch that is so bad and why Nvidia's works so much better. (Even though Tearing is noticable its far less than without the sync) I just usually turn on Vsync because i always get bad tearing without. Perhaps using the applicans vs the Nvidia one is very picky and depends on the application. Crysis 2 i get 38-70 FPS far better and far more acceptable.

[Bad 💀 Motha]

Well in alot of games, especially console ports, the VSync is usually bugged and/or has a huge performance hit for whatever reasons. Mostly coding bugs/issues I suppose. That and maybe not improving the game code any for when porting to PC/Mac.

Overall best bet is disable VSync in-game, then if u need it try forcing it via NVIDIA CP. Enabled forces it ON 100%; Adaptive allows the VSync to auto ON/OFF during gameplay, based on FPS; and then Adaptive (Half Refresh) is more for games that have a 30 FPS cap, like L.A.Noire for example. Or if you are trying to Sync on a 24-30Hz screen, like some HDTVs.

[ZeekAncient]

FIrst you mentioned that you have an OC on your display of 65 mhz? Why? 60 should be fine and the terrible screen tearing you are getting could be attributed to that. Also, while your frames do seem a little low, they are not that far off of what they should be for a GTX 580. That card is almost 3 years old and for what you listed for Crysis and Crysis 2(dx 11 and high res text) maxed seems right. Only your Skyrim results seems low, but with all the mods you put on seems right. The 580 was a great card but by no means compares with the the new generations like the 780 or titan....Im coming from a 570 2.5 gb to a 780 EVGA SC w ACX cooler that I OC'd pretty good and it is seriously night and day...

Anyways for the setup you have with a 3930K(OC that sucker) and 32gb of ram, your system is screaming for a much better GPU....

[Earl of Madness]

Thats why i'm Planning on Upgrading my GPU soon enough. Also I will be OCing my CPU after i move. I have done a rough OC and got to 4.2 quite easily without CPU throttling and with 75-80C under full load intel Stress Test, before the burn in of my thermal paste. 4.4 and 4.5 are a bit more difficult without CPU throttling. Hopefully OCing the CPU solves my skyrim Issues.

[Bad 💀 Motha]

I would run a few tests; firstly run the game with stock CPU speed.
Then re-try with a good stable OC, like you said 4.2 was fairly stable, ok try that.
That way you can see by comparison how much difference the OC is actually helping with performance. It may only help some, it's not going to magically run the game at a much higher FPS. And in fact it may not even help the FPS, but rather just smooth out the loading and the overall AI parts of the game.

At least this way u'll have some good comparisons just for the CPU, with no changes to GPU or it's clocks. And then should u upgrade GPUs, u can then do comparisons there. As your OC may hold more value when coupled with a better GPU.

[Earl of Madness]

Just found a program that fixes all my crysis problems. Screen Tearing and Vsync. D3Doverrider. I love this program and i think i'll use it to help optimize my games from now on. This is fantastic. Crysis 2 doesn't drop below approxamately 35 frames and regularly stays between 40-50 frams (don't know why vsych doesn't let crysis run higher than 50 in full screen mode) either way i'm not complaining and thankfully all issues are mitigated. Again thank you all for your help! (plane just cuz)

Also I really only expect the OC to help with skyrim because Skyrim is actually a decently CPU intensive game, most paticularly in large areas or towns (I get my lowest fps in places with tons of actors and AI) because of all the Scripts and AI going on at the same time and with all my mods i've actually run into script overload. Which is said to be fixed by allowing skyrim to multi-thread and OCing your processor, both of which I can do.