RADEON R9 390X low FPS issue

bountyspiter · February 2016

PC configuration:
Mobo: Asrock Socket AM3+ Fatal1ty 990FX Killer/3.1 GLan Audio Raid
CPU: AMD FX 8370 4.0 GHz Eight Core Socket AM3+ 125W
RAM: Kingston 16GB HyperX Fury DDR3L Non ECC CL11 1866MH
GPU: ATI Radeon R9 390X Nitro w/BP 8GB DDR5 PCI-E DVI HDMI Triple-DP
PSU: Corsair Power Supply 850W ATX 24 pin CX 850M

Problem:
Extremely low FPS with this machine. No matter what video settings I use, the FPS is 25-40 in PvE zones (depending on what's happening around, people, fights, etc) and 10-25 in Cyrodiil (again depending on the action).

Had everything checked by technician. GPU, CPU, windows updates, drivers, everything. There is nothing wrong with any and all my hardware or software. Everything is working perfectly (playing Fallout 4 in ultra high and the machine doesn't even begin to sweat, benchmarked "Middle earth: Shaddow of Mordor" at 97 average FPS). And yet ESO is giving me this unaturaly low FPS issue, which from what I hear is a problem with alot (if not all) users of the RADEON R9 390X GPU.

I've been through alot of trouble this last week to conclude with certainty that the problem begins and ends within ZoS. Something is messed up when it comes down to running this game with this particular GPU series. Costumers can't improve it by simply changing video options in the game. And they shouldn't to be honest. This kind of PC configuration should be playing this game in ultra high settings with at least 80-90 FPS. This problem needs to be adressed by Zenimax. Any ZoS employ reading this (cause I know you love to read the forums

) should take steps into fixing this issue. Optimize the game to play as it should with this monster GPU.

RinaldoGandolphi · February 2016

Its not your GPU its the CPU. I have an AMD FX 8350 but its OC in the 4.5-4.6Ghz range and its the same story with Crossfire 280X.

I had an Intel i5-4690k that i OC to 4.3ghz and got exactly 2 FPS more with it then i got with my Fx so i shopped it back because 2 FPS isn't worth 350 dollars.

This game does the majority of its work on a single thread. Regardless of what CPU you have, this is going to hold things back. AMD and Intel made CPU's with multiple cores because parallelization is the future of computing, but i guess AMD and Intel made multi-core CPU's so no one would use the extra cores.....

monitor your CPU usage while playing ESO, then load up Crysis 3 or Ryse Son of Rome and see the difference in performance being that Crytek will use as many CPU cores as you can throw at it. Battlefield 4 and Battlefield Hardline are both online games that will use all cores you can throw at it to good effect. ESO appears to use 1 core heavily and then tosses out very veyr light workloads to a few other cores....its the crux of the issue sadly. Im hoping the coming 64 bit client changes this behavior.

LostScot · February 2016

RinaldoGandolphi wrote: »

Its not your GPU its the CPU. I have an AMD FX 8350 but its OC in the 4.5-4.6Ghz range and its the same story with Crossfire 280X.

I have an AMD FX-6350 CPU and a single Radeon R9 380 GPU, typical performance with the game's settings on the 'High' preset at 1920x1080 (windowed fullscreen) result in 60-100fps. There's a different performance issue that I deal with - fps dropping down to 10 and staying there for a few seconds before returning to normal, but overall I'd expect your performance with a better CPU and GPU to be greater than mine overall.

Please appreciate I'm not entirely disputing your statement that it's the CPU, anyone monitoring system utilisation will have seen occasions when a single core spikes to 100% utilisation while playing ESO and performance plummets when that happens. I just think there's more to it, because here I am with a CPU of the same family but with fewer cores than yourself and the original poster, yet my in-game performance appears to exceed that which both of you can achieve.

One point of difference I've noticed is that for many, ESO appears to do most of its work on a single core. For myself when playing ESO I see 3 out of my 6 cores at 50% utilisation, with the ESO client being responsible for that utilisation. I'm running Windows 7 service pack 1 with the platform update so I know it's not down to the kernel optimisations that were ushered in with Windows 8 and improved upon for Windows 10.

bountyspiter · February 2016

@RinaldoGandolphi I know what you mean about multithreading. When ESO is running, 1/8 cores is at 70-80%, 1 more is at 30-40% and the rest 6 are slacking at 10-20%. None is inactive, and none is at 100%. But, this is the issue with the game in general. Doesn't explain why older CPUs with GPUs of much lower expectations are running at 70-100 FPS (my 9 years old PC is playing in medium settings with more FPS for christ sake... plus i got friends with lesser PC configs that are running ESO perfectly). It's not the CPU in question here because all CPUs react the same cause ZOS said so^^. It's the GPU that is not responding apropriately to a game that theoraticaly should not exceed 40-50% of this GPUs abilitys (in everything ultra high this is). So bottomline is, when you have a PC that plays Fallout 4, Witcher 3 and other highly demanding games in ultra high without even starting to sweat, well then the facts kinda lead you to the conclusion that it's the games fault for this bad performance.

So I would ask once again any ZOS employ that lurks around in the forums and is reading this post to take the necessery steps into adressing this issue. This is a ZOS problem overall.

RinaldoGandolphi · February 2016

@LostScot

I get good performance, i hit anywhere between 60-100+ FPS with Vsync off. My issue is with multi-gpu scaling. The CPU Utilization could be better, but if your using Crossfire or SLI you won't reach that 80-90% scaling you would expect from optimized titles. It just so happens to be in my case i can get 50+ FPS on 1 GPU and using an aolder AFR technique gives me another 10 to keep me aroound 60 with Vsync on, but its still terrible scaling.

I get good frames, the game is just poorly optimized.

RinaldoGandolphi · February 2016

bountyspiter wrote: »

@RinaldoGandolphi I know what you mean about multithreading. When ESO is running, 1/8 cores is at 70-80%, 1 more is at 30-40% and the rest 6 are slacking at 10-20%. None is inactive, and none is at 100%. But, this is the issue with the game in general. Doesn't explain why older CPUs with GPUs of much lower expectations are running at 70-100 FPS (my 9 years old PC is playing in medium settings with more FPS for christ sake... plus i got friends with lesser PC configs that are running ESO perfectly). It's not the CPU in question here because all CPUs react the same cause ZOS said so^^. It's the GPU that is not responding apropriately to a game that theoraticaly should not exceed 40-50% of this GPUs abilitys (in everything ultra high this is). So bottomline is, when you have a PC that plays Fallout 4, Witcher 3 and other highly demanding games in ultra high without even starting to sweat, well then the facts kinda lead you to the conclusion that it's the games fault for this bad performance.

So I would ask once again any ZOS employ that lurks around in the forums and is reading this post to take the necessery steps into adressing this issue. This is a ZOS problem overall.

If your willing to try it, you can use the AMD Over Drive part of Catalyst/Crimson control Panel, and find the "Power Control Silder" and increase that slider by increments of 5% and see if your game smooths out. There are a few games that benefit from this setting.

What this setting does is it allows the GPU to draw more power before AMD Powertune kicks in. It seems every card behaves differently when it comes to Powertune just like some chips OC better then others...try moving that Power Slider in increments of 5% and see how performance goes, you have very little risk of hurting the card as long as you don't mess with Clocks, Voltages, or Fan settings.

Also monitoring Temps on that GPU, how hot does it get? Anything over 86c is bad...i know people say online you cna run them at 90C but thats just crazy....for reference i have 2 R9 290X in Crossfire and my Top card never exceeds 70C and my Bottom Card never Exceeds 65C even during the summer months....Temps on your GPU play a very important role...use GPU-Z or HWInfo to monitor your temps after 30+ mins or so of playing ESO and see what your max GPU Temps are.

You should be getting better FPS, and i just want to make sure its not Temp related,.

if its not. If you PM your manufacturer(Gigabytle, Asus, MSI, Power Color, etc) and make of your card, i'll fill out some feedback forms on AMD beta driver program and see if i can get AMD to look into the issue. They are usaully pretty good about fixing things if you can give me a detailed description i'll get it submitted.,

bountyspiter · February 2016

@RinaldoGandolphi thank you for your input

But tbh I really don't feel like messing with my GPU options. Getting the power up is something I won't do. Explanation is simple. As I said in earlier post, I'm playing highly demanding games without performance issues. Fallout 4 in ultra high and the performance is above the clouds. And because I'm truly convinced that this is not a problem with my GPU performance, but a problem with the game not being optimised correctly to run smoothly with this GPU, I will not temper with these options. Although, I have been monitoring my rigs performance in general. Right now, I have been online in ESO for at least 8 consecutive hours. My GPU temperature is 50C. So once again, there is nothing wrong with any hardware or software in dispute here. The problem is purely by ZOS side, and it needs to be adressed and fixed by them. Also I will look into this AMD beta driver thing. My PC technician mentioned it too, so no need to be bothered m8. But thank you for any and all assistance.

Loves_guars · February 2016

bountyspiter wrote: »

So bottomline is, when you have a PC that plays Fallout 4, Witcher 3 and other highly demanding games in ultra high without even starting to sweat, well then the facts kinda lead you to the conclusion that it's the games fault for this bad performance.

Not to mention that one year ago the game was running fine. ¬¬