Low performance on a good rig

My rig: AMD FX-8320 OC'd to 4.0 Ghz
Gigabyte GTX 760
8 Gigs ram on a single stick
MSI G series gaming Mobo
Rosewill 500W PS

That's my setup, which I think isnt too bad. Yet when I play Guild Wars 2 and there are a large number of players fighting (WvW zerg fights) I get about <5 FPS. I've turned all my setting down to the minimun and that does help at all. I've monitored all my temps (GPU, CPU) and nothing is abnormally high. My internet is about 100 Mbps. I just cant figure this one out. Any advice would be appreciated.
Thanks

 

Hi and welcome to TSG.

My first (and biggest) concern at this stage is your PSU. You using a low wattage, low quality power supply that is at the minimum recommended for your GPU. Ontop of that you are overclocking which further stresses the PSU. Personally, I wouldn't even consider anything less than a good quality 650W unit for that rig, in my opinion you are asking for trouble running that as it is.

Your RAM is also not optimal, 2x 4Gb sticks are a better setup than 1x 8Gb stick as it allows dual channel use. Might be worth upping it to 16Gb if you can get another stick to match the one you have.

Having said that, GW2 was (I say was as I haven't played it in a long time) a very graphically intensive game in fights (masses of particle effects etc).

When you say 'nothing is abnormally high' what are the actual temps? What are you using to monitor those temps? Have you checked and monitored the values of the +12v, +5.5v and +3v rails on the PSU at idle and under load?

 

I've been trying different programs to monitor my temps but most of them are showing my CPU temp at 17 degrees which I know isn't correct. Through the bios menu I've seen it at 31 degrees but thats not during gaming obviously. I am using MSI afterburner to monitor my GPU temp and the highest thats gotten is 51 degrees.

As for the voltages: +12V max is 13.38V +5V max is 5.8V and +3.3V max is 3.3V.

My current PSU is a rosewill RD500-2DB. and my MOBO is an MSI 970 g-series.

I was thinking that my PSU was the culprit but i wasn't sure. I have a friend that has a 800w I can "borrow". I'll try that and go from there.

 

Yes, those are what I have.

 

Are those voltages taken from the BIOS or Afterburner? If they are accurate then there is a cause for concern there as the neither +12v or +5.5v rails should never go that high. The PSU standard allows +/-5% for acceptable fluctuation but I wouldn't expect a decent PSU to even vary that much.

+12v +/-5% = 11.4-12.6v
+5v +/-5% = 4.75 - 5.25v

If your reported values are accurate (if they are from the BIOS they will be accurate) then I would seriously consider not using that machine any more until your replace the PSU with a higher wattage and better quality unit.

Your Rosewill PSU only comes with a 1 year warranty, so even the manufacturer doesn't have any faith in it! A good unit will come with at least 5 years, many higher end units have 10 year warranties. It has 2 +12v rails and neither of them, in my opinion, is suitable for running that graphics card.

My advise at this stage, regardless of anything else and any other problems, is to replace that PSU as soon as possible. Look for a good quality unit from a manufacturer like Corsair (AX, TX and HX models only), Seasonic, PC Power and Cooling or OCZ to name a few. I would get a minimum of 650w, maybe a bit higher if your are overclocking, the less you stress your PSU the longer it will last and the more stable its output will be.

 

I was using CPUID for the voltages. If they are as bad as you say, I would assume they aren't accurate. I'll check them in Bios when I get a chance. Either way I think the outcome will be the same and I'll need to get a new PSU.

 

Yeah you definitely need a different PSU because your system is throttling either the CPU/and or the GPU badly. You have a good motherboard, and 1 stick of ram even if not in dual channel isn't really going to hurt you as much as some would think - this a hardware myth you see in some forums at various times. Though dual channel does give you better bandwidth and overall performance, the difference translated to games is usually less than 1-2-3 frames per second at any given time depending. When you do get a chance you could try attaining another stick of the same exact memory to set up the benefit of dual channel.

 

Ok, so I got a 750w PSU and another 8g stick of ram (same exact one I already had). Put that all in but I'm getting the same performance . Now I'm starting to wonder if it's a software issue i.e. virus or something like that.
It's frustrating because my fiancee has an off the shelf PC with an i5, 4g ram, and my old gtx 550ti and she gets about 25+ fps while I'm getting 5. There is obviously something I'm missing. I should probably take my com to someone at this point. Since I'm just not knowledgeable enough to fix it.

 

What's the new PSU you have installed?