Widescreen Gaming Forum

Hi guys and girls,

I'm currently running an i7 870 (Oc'd @ 3.52ghz) (1156 chipset) with 8gb of Ram, 6990 + 6970 in trifire.
I can get most things running at full settings and gaming at 6256 x 1152. I do think that my CPU is causing a bottleneck though. e.g. playing Arkham City I'm only getting 50% GPU utilisation.

Does anyone have any suggestion on ways to ease this problem without upgrading my CPU or alternatively... if I did have to upgrade, what chip would be best?

Sadly money is a barrier so I dont want to go up to a new 3930k chip... although that would be nice.

I've also taken a look at 2500k and 2600k chips... these are newer but I wonder if they are much different in performance compared to my i7 870.

Please note that my i7 870 is on the 1156 chipset so I think that this is generation one i7.

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i7 3770k, P8Z77v Pro, 16gb Ram,2x Samsung 840 SSD RAID 0 + 4.5tb storage, 7970 Oc'd + 7950 in crossfire, 3x SP2309w monitors + 1 acer monitor, Asus D2X Xonar, Creative T40 Speakers plus satalite speakers + audio transducer

Hi, what drivers are you using and have you got the latest CAP releases?

When you say 50% is that 50% across both cards, or a single card running at 100% and the 2nd at 0%?
Have you tried monitoring your CPU load also, does this cap out at 100%?

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| Gigabyte X79S-UP5-WiFi Skt2011 | i7 4820k @4.4GHz Watercooled (Ivy Bridge-E) | Corsair Vengence 32GB @2133MHz 11-11-11-27 2T Quad-Channel (8x4GB) | AMD R9-Fury-X 4GB @1140/505MHz + EKWB Watercooled | 256GB Crucial MX200 SSD | 8x 1TB Samsung F3 SATA-II | Corsair 850W TX PSU | 3x Dell S2209W 22"wide TFT's (5760x1080res) | Logitech Z-5400 5.1ch speakers | Win7 Ultimate x64 |

Batman Arkham City has 50% utilisation on each GPU. My CPU usage does spike highly though. All I get at the moment while playing this is between 10 and 20 fps on max settings. Looking at the forums though I know this game has problems with Direct X 11 at the moment though.... I dont know if a new CPU will boost performance in these games or not though? E.g. Crysis 2 only uses 2 GPU's no matter what I do but I think that's down to the game. Also I know the i7 870 is a little old now so not sure if an 2500 or 2600 chip would make much if any difference.

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i7 3770k, P8Z77v Pro, 16gb Ram,2x Samsung 840 SSD RAID 0 + 4.5tb storage, 7970 Oc'd + 7950 in crossfire, 3x SP2309w monitors + 1 acer monitor, Asus D2X Xonar, Creative T40 Speakers plus satalite speakers + audio transducer

It might be worth noting that my RAM is running in single channel mode. Unfortunately 1156 chipsets only allow single channel when running 1600mhz ram. The below link goes directly to the manual for my motherboard.

http://support.asus.com/download/download_item_mkt.aspx?slanguage=en-us&model=P7P55D-E+PRO

On page 2-11 it states "Due to Intel Spec definition X.M.P DIMMS and DDR3-1600 are supported for one DIMM per channel only"

Would this make a massive impact on performance? If so how can I get around it? when I try to run this memory in dual channel it detects 8gb but in windows it says that only 4gb is usable.

I imagine that my other alternative is to get 1333mhz and run this in Dual channel but would this make much difference considering the drop in speed?

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i7 3770k, P8Z77v Pro, 16gb Ram,2x Samsung 840 SSD RAID 0 + 4.5tb storage, 7970 Oc'd + 7950 in crossfire, 3x SP2309w monitors + 1 acer monitor, Asus D2X Xonar, Creative T40 Speakers plus satalite speakers + audio transducer

NOTE - conversation is also taking place on other forums to maximise expertise involved. Many thanks to all

http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/forum2.php?config=tomshardwareuk.inc&cat=15&post=337771&page=1&p=1&sondage=0&owntopic=1&trash=&trash_post=&print=0&numreponse=0"e_only=0&new=0&nojs=0#t2519031

http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=18356231&highlight=cpu+bottleneck

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i7 3770k, P8Z77v Pro, 16gb Ram,2x Samsung 840 SSD RAID 0 + 4.5tb storage, 7970 Oc'd + 7950 in crossfire, 3x SP2309w monitors + 1 acer monitor, Asus D2X Xonar, Creative T40 Speakers plus satalite speakers + audio transducer

Just to keep this forum up to date it is currently believed on Toms Hardware that the single channel issue could be whats causing the lower than expected performance? What do people on here think?

Will 1333mhz ram be worth investing in? Is it better for me to change motherboard / CPU?

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i7 3770k, P8Z77v Pro, 16gb Ram,2x Samsung 840 SSD RAID 0 + 4.5tb storage, 7970 Oc'd + 7950 in crossfire, 3x SP2309w monitors + 1 acer monitor, Asus D2X Xonar, Creative T40 Speakers plus satalite speakers + audio transducer

morning guys,

Ok, I've tried getting the ram to work in dual channel again and managed to get it working if I up the voltage to 1.65v. I did have to press the mem ok button to start with but hopefully this was a one off due to the change of config.

So... in short I now have 8GB of Ram in Dual Channel mode.

Sadly this made no difference to my gaming speeds and therefore my orginal question.

I've re-run a test on Arkham City and all three GPU's are using 50%. My CPU doesn't seem to be at 100% either though. Is this a CPU bottleneck or something else (AKA bad programming) causing the game not to use all available resource.

I'm currently running 11.12 and Cap 2 I think.

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i7 3770k, P8Z77v Pro, 16gb Ram,2x Samsung 840 SSD RAID 0 + 4.5tb storage, 7970 Oc'd + 7950 in crossfire, 3x SP2309w monitors + 1 acer monitor, Asus D2X Xonar, Creative T40 Speakers plus satalite speakers + audio transducer

Just re-done my test with Arkham City both with and without crossfire enabled. I get the same FPS in both tests. So the addition of the 6970 does pretty much nothing. Any ideas?

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i7 3770k, P8Z77v Pro, 16gb Ram,2x Samsung 840 SSD RAID 0 + 4.5tb storage, 7970 Oc'd + 7950 in crossfire, 3x SP2309w monitors + 1 acer monitor, Asus D2X Xonar, Creative T40 Speakers plus satalite speakers + audio transducer

To clarify this a bit more, Battlefield 3, ultra settings at 6256 x 1152... 40 fps. I'm happy with that. But Arkham City, Metro 2033 and Crysis 2 at max settings get around 15 fps.

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i7 3770k, P8Z77v Pro, 16gb Ram,2x Samsung 840 SSD RAID 0 + 4.5tb storage, 7970 Oc'd + 7950 in crossfire, 3x SP2309w monitors + 1 acer monitor, Asus D2X Xonar, Creative T40 Speakers plus satalite speakers + audio transducer

That shows once more that TriFire isnt that much supportet -.-

So you've asked in ArkhamCity if other people have the same problem?

Maybe its because AMD cards have some Problems with Physx?

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We gonna send it to outa space!