EVGA GTX 670 FTW problem/newbie build, low 3DMARK 11 score

[alfabet0]

Hi all. First I'd like to apologies in advance for spamming this thread with build photos & screen shots and second I'm not terribly bright so please bare with me, as I get easily distracted....Ooh Something Shiny!

Build:
Silverstone SST-FT02B-W/ Asus Maximus V Gene/ Intel core i5-3570k, Samsung green 8GB, Dark rock pro 2/ EVGA GTX 670 FTW, Antec high current pro 750w/ Samsung SSD 830 256gb, Win 8 pro.

I've been having problems with my EVGA GTX 670 running civilization V, I've everything set on lowest setting and still this game is sluggish or lags with much of the map greyed out wen moving the camera, even in the start menu of Civ EVGA precision X shows that my GTX is running at a GPU temp of 71 and is hot to the touch.

I have clean-installed the latest NVIDIA beta drivers and I've swapped out the ram to no effect, would reinstalling directx 11 help?

Running 3DMark 11 demo on Performance 1280 x 720 (720p)
http://www.3dmark.com/3dm11/6450600
SCORE P8474 with NVIDIA GeForce GTX 670(1x) and Intel Core i5-3570K Processor
Graphics Score 9118
Physics Score 7038
Combined Score 6930

Watching the videos at this screen resolution it looks like the opening intro to Tomb Raider 3 and still at times the fps drops down to 21!

The following photos of my build might be helpful in problem solving this?:









The following are screen shots of my system:I'd have chosen home group but for some reason it was not an option on installation of Win 8.


Diagnostics tell me everything is hunky dory and Windows performance index is at 7.9 is this EVGA GTX 670 faulty? have incorrectly plugged something in?

[najiro]

wow those are indeed low scores. does the driver crash? are you using the latest nvidia driver? could you pull out the nvidia control panel and check it out.
or if you just installed new drivers, clean installation is very important.

[alfabet0]

Welcome najiro, your input is greatly appreciated

wow those are indeed low scores. does the driver crash?

Can you be more pacific on driver crash if you mean do any application crash not per say, but I've had trouble getting some steam games to work like Fallout 3 Borderland GOT they seem to work ok ish at first then develop problems, no error messages as of yet.

I've had this build since last christmas but due to the poor performance/inexperience with pc building haven't been able to enjoy it as of yet.

(I should add that before I had Windows 7 but the same problems persisted)

[Terbinator]

Your CPU cooler is the wrong way round to begin with - unless the fan has been swapped round on it?

[chuckskull]

Firstly Civ 5 does that with large maps even no matter how much horse power you have, you'll notice the interface gets laggier and laggier once you reach the modern ages, particularly going into cities. It's just not very well optimized. play zoomed in is my advice. As for errors on other games, not much to go on without details, but I played both those games and they both had bugs.

Do you have something other than 3D mark 11 to test with. It's older than your card. I never used it so can't really judge your scores/FPS. 3Dmark13 is out free now via steam try that(you can compare your scores to some other users here). Might help up get a grasp on the problem. Also if you're using EVGA precision, make sure frame rate target(bottom left corner) is disabled, I think it defaults on. Also double click the graphs("performance log") in that corner to expand them, leave them open during the next 3dmark run and you'll have a much better idea of what's going on.

On the temp front it shouldn't be that high fully idle, but it will heat up quickly when loaded, 71c isn't unusual for a card like that, have a look at temp on the desktop. when it's not been loaded for a while, it'll probably be much lower, if not then that might be your problem, check it under load, much above 90c would be a problem. You can also adjust your fan speeds via EVGA Precision.

[alfabet0]

(Disclaimer I'm utterly shattered from work at the mo please forgive the less than cohesive post if you'd like to bare out till tomorrow I'll be happy to respond more fully)
I do feel that I've done wrong by you both you great chaps Terbinator & chuckskull my sincere apologies for my bad forum etiquette.
I have to be honest in my blind desperation to problem solve this I went to another forum http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/sho...php?p=24172940, and given my less than eloquent forum writing skills & previous dead threads on Hexus

I'll attempt to keep all updated on current status and welcome any feedback but wouldn't hold it against you if you'd rather leave it at that.

Here's a quick run down on what has been posted in a forum far far away:
My thanks Gregster for the screen shot, as instructed I have enabled prefer max performance in Nvidia control panel.

On PC start up EVGA precision X.

In Civilization V all setting on lowest preset or off, also I've set Vsync off as standard as the card got alarmingly hot on the previous medium settings in Civ V.

(Note that after implementing max performance in Nvidia control panel performance remains poor/slow/lagy)

Gregster What are your temps at idle? and also what do they get to when under stress? Could be one of the following problems...
Bad cooler contact on the GPU possibly - poor case air flow - poor TIM.

My cooler is a Dark rock pro 2 the thermal paste is Arctic-silver 5, I wouldn't rule out a badly done CPU install as this is my first and only build, I recon my next step is to try a re-apply the thermal paste & re-install the CPU cooler.*

Used CUPID Hardware Monitor for the above but it only seem to show case temps not CPU?
The above is as you'll all know well is CPU-Z, if there's any monitoring software you'd recommend above the above then please do so, will be happy to give them a try.




(EDIT) Just had a look at my CPU temps in BIOS at idle it goes from 26-27c are these bad temps?

[Jasp]

Looking at everything you have posted it all seems fine tbh, this may just be a game specific issue, the temps and clock speeds on the 670 are all correct, my 670 SC runs up to 80c in certain games.

Whats your monitors native res also, noticed its only running at 720p? make sure its on the correct native res eg full hd.

[chuckskull]

Had a quick look at your overclockers thread and replies here. It seems like you've have a bad run of luck with buggy games(frankly the last year or so has been shocking when it comes to buggy games). Civ 5 displays the behaviours your describing with my PC too and I have a 680, 32GB RAM and a hefty overclock. Apparently the next expansion is focusing on the end game so maybe hope there for better late game performance.

[alfabet0]

(Jasp) Looking at everything you have posted it all seems fine tbh, this may just be a game specific issue, the temps and clock speeds on the 670 are all correct, my 670 SC runs up to 80c in certain games.
Whats your monitors native res also, noticed its only running at 720p? make sure its on the correct native res eg full hd.

I've been reluctant to upgrade my monitor due to the problems I've been having, however I do have a 42" LG TV I hook it up to which displays at full 1080p I set the correct rez but still the same problems, It's very strange no matter how low I set the graphics bar everything struggles in Civ V.

(chuckskull) Had a quick look at your overclockers thread and replies here. It seems like you've have a bad run of luck with buggy games(frankly the last year or so has been shocking when it comes to buggy games). Civ 5 displays the behaviours your describing with my PC too and I have a 680, 32GB RAM and a hefty overclock. Apparently the next expansion is focusing on the end game so maybe hope there for better late game performance.

My commiserations chuckskull but you'll forgive me for saying it's nice to hear that I'm not alone in the buggy performance issues, it's funny I've got a 10 year old Dell desktop upstairs, with only 2g of ram and a legacy Nvidia graphics card and Civ V runs smoother on it than my current £900+ build.

[chuckskull]

My commiserations chuckskull but you'll forgive me for saying it's nice to hear that I'm not alone in the buggy performance issues, it's funny I've got a 10 year old Dell desktop upstairs, with only 2g of ram and a legacy Nvidia graphics card and Civ V runs smoother on it than my current £900+ build.

I'll bet your old dell is crying by the atomic age on a big map, but back to the point. From what I can tell from everything you've posted here and on overclockers. Everything is absolutely fine with your PC hardware wise. The only remaining question there is CPU temp under load. You can use this http://www.alcpu.com/CoreTemp/ for temp monitoring. your idle temp looks fine though.

Only other thing now would be trying to tweak Civ 5 performance, apart from turning graphics down, the only other thing I've found that help was excluding the games directories from my virus scanning. Which gave a me a few seconds less turn time. There are some other suggestions floating around but I've never found a magic fix. It just slowly gets faster as they update the game.

[alfabet0]

I did have one error message when installing Core Temp 1.0 but it seems to be working now

Core Temp has encountered an error and needs to close

At idle.

Running Prime95 Small TFF's for a few minutes.

Just for a complete picture running Civilization V.

chuckskull you'r a peach, it's a perfect little CPU monitor is there a graph or history tracking option? at any rate I feel I'm making some progress here, but your point still stands I may have been expecting to much from Civ V.

Note: I've no anti-Virus software besides Window 8 native Windows Defender+Firewall, but I take great care not to visit any dodgy websites and have Java script and flash player disabled as default in Chrome.

[chuckskull]

Temps are fine, no worries there.

Windows defender does what it does well, but it's not a full blown anti-virus. I'd install one ASAP. Even highly reputable websites can and have been be compromised. I've used Avast free for ages with no problems, the paid version has a good feature set too. http://www.avast.com/en-gb/index

The logging options are limited on coretemp, but if you enable logging in the tools drop down it will create a .csv file in the install directory.

[alfabet0]

Think I'll install Kaspersky internet soon to be on the safe side, although we've reached a conclusion to this thread and Civ V is still slow, at least I know it's not my build I need to worry about

My sincere thanks to both of you for hand holding me through this panic attack-o-mine

(EDIT: Was suggested at overclockers that I run CPU-Z at the same time as the temps seemed a little high)

Might or not be of relevance?

[chuckskull]

I assume it was to see what voltage you were running. Your temps are a little bit high, but I put that down to having an MATX board and small case and I do mean little bit, 5-10c. Not near enough to cause throttling or any other problems. I notice your voltage is 1.2v, so either you left it set like that when you stopped your overclock or your board is defaulting a little high. Won't cause you any problems either way. For reference mines at 1.2v for 4.5ghz. That voltage boost will account for some of the temp.

[alfabet0]

(I apreaciate your continued support, but if you at all tire of this thread please to not feel obligated to continue, as I've already taken much of your time)
My case Silverstone SST-FT02B-W is a full tower http://www.scan.co.uk/products/silve...window-w-o-psuBut you bring up a very interesting point in regards to foltages on my preifious overclock, as a newbie I used AI Suite to overclock in Windows which was a bad choice, as I've been unable to remove every tracy of it to tate.

Here is a copy & past of my other thread:
For peace of mind I think I will remount it, I used these instructions from the following link:
http://www.arcticsilver.com/intel_ap...n_method.html#
Using the Vertical Line method as indicated here, assuming I understood it correctly?
http://www.arcticsilver.com/pdf/appm..._line_v1.1.pdf

grasp the heatsink and very gently twist it slightly clockwise
and counterclockwise one time each if possible (Just one or two degrees or so if possible). Please note that some heatsinks cannot be twisted once mounted.

As it was with my install I was unable to twist my CPU cooler which may have contributed to the problem?

I have heard that the grain of rice method is good, but I whent what I thought was the safe route at the time.

Also, can your cooler take another fan on the front?

Unfortunately no, it's already a two fan with the BeQuiet.

Note:I even used ArctiClean 1 & 2 as instructed by the above website, before mounting it, besides the fact it was already a clean CPU. when I cleaned the CPU cooler contact plate with a coffee filter and ArctiClean a corner became slightly discolored and remained so despite many attempts to remove it.

[chuckskull]

Nah it's fine. At worst, it might be why core #2 is consistently a little hotter, but often that's just how the chip is. I have one core that's about 7c hotter constantly no matter what. Temps aren't causing you any problems, you still have a good 20c headroom, before you get that territory.

Before taking the whole thing apart go into the bios and set the cpu voltage, to default or auto(not sure how it's marked in the asus bios). If there's a reset to default option in AIsuite, give that a click too, see what that does to the temps or go ahead and put your overclock back on.

The discolouration is nothing to worry about. The IHS(silvery square bit on top) is just metal the actual CPU is buried underneath, it's there to protect it.