Poor performance in games

grumpycrab

frugal_mike wrote: »

...
I bought it from Aria, about a week ago.

Sort it out Aria. Note you have 7 working days cooling off period to return the goods (Aria will have notified you the first day of this period).

frugal_mike

Ok, just checked in DxDiag which lists the display as AMD Radeon HD 7800 series and the manufacturer as Advanced Micro Devices inc.

And yes, it's a desktop PC. Click here to see the full spec. (Interestingly I paid less than that for it when I bought it, I must have got in at just the right time).

I gave some games another go last night and things seemed to have slightly improved. Braid was running at 30fps (not sure if it's locked at that), and Dark Messiah managed to reach a little over 20fps; playable but not totally fun. I would have expected better than that for such an old game on a new PC!

frugal_mike

jaydeeuk1 wrote: »

One brand of radeon based graphics card doesn't use reference hardware, bios and possibly drivers (I'll try and find which) and using the generic AMD drivers can cause problems. Try finding the gpu manufacturer and see if they have their own drivers available.

Interesting. Is there a way to check the brand without removing the side of the PC and reading the label? I just checked the AMD website and I definitely have the latest driver installed (as reported by DxDiag)

frugal_mike

grumpycrab wrote: »

Sort it out Aria. Note you have 7 working days cooling off period to return the goods (Aria will have notified you the first day of this period).

That boat sailed on Tuesday unfortunately (my fault, I was on holiday last week and didn't get chance to properly look at it until this week). There is still SOGA though, if it really is faulty and not just set up incorrectly.

grumpycrab

I guess if you installed Windows yourself talking to Aria won't get you very far.
Belarc should give you a good hardware inventory if you don't want to open the box. EDIT: http://www.belarc.com/free_download.html
You could ask Aria if they use a benchmarking tool so you can compare performance possibly.

frugal_mike

Bizarrely it now seems to be working perfectly. Call of Juarez at 60fps (although that game stutters a lot even at that framerate, there are complaints on the steam forum about that), Dark Messiah at 60 fps, Moto GP 13 at 40-50fps, and it even managed Sleeping Dogs on Extreme graphical settings at about 25-30 fps.

I didn't change anything myself, although there was a windows update that could have changed something.

I'll keep my fingers crossed that it doesn't go sluggish again...

bingo_bango

grumpycrab wrote: »

I guess if you installed Windows yourself talking to Aria won't get you very far.
Belarc should give you a good hardware inventory if you don't want to open the box. EDIT: http://www.belarc.com/free_download.html
You could ask Aria if they use a benchmarking tool so you can compare performance possibly.

SiSoft Sandra Lite will give you every conceivable detail of the GPU (along with CPU, RAM etc.) and might point to a problem with the unit. Worth having a poke around before hitting up Aria.

Haven't used the Belarc tool Grumpycrab mentions, so can't comment if Sandra is any more detailed.

frugal_mike

I was a little premature the other night. It was indeed working then, but has gone again. I think I've found the problem too (i've certainly found *a* problem).

So I tested the GPU and it appears to be working perfectly. It's switching from 2d to 3d clock speeds as it should, and it happily runs at 60fps under full load using a load testing tool I downloaded.

I then used the same tool to load test the CPU, and the test consistently bailed out after 5-10 seconds due to the CPU temperature exceeding 85 degrees. That seemed a little odd, so I downloaded a fan speed monitor. It claimed that all fans in the case were at 0 rpm except the gpu fan. I checked in the box and the two case fans were spinning, but the heat sink fan was indeed stationary!

I looked at it a little more closely as the machine booted and it did attempt to spin (so it is getting power), but after a few judders gave up. I went into the BIOS settings and all the health checks were disabled (temperature and fan failure warnings). I turned them all on and rebooted, and the BIOS warning beep started. The CPU temperature was over 80c just sat in the BIOS settings screen!

So I think I had been getting poor performance in games because the CPU was overheating and I assume the BIOS would lower the voltage to it at that point, causing a bottleneck? Either way I can't have a machine with no heatsink fan. Aria claim to have stress tested the machine for 8 hours, but I imagine the CPU would have melted if that was true.

Back to aria it is then...


Oh, and to answer an earlier question this is the specific GPU I have...

newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814150608

Weird_Nev

Well done for getting to the root of it. Fans are cheap, at the end of the day, unsurprising that some of them fail.
I'd be a bit worried that the CPU might have "cooked" itself if it's been running with only passive cooling. Was this sold as an overclocked machine? Why did they feel the need to stress test it if not?

frugal_mike

No, it was sold as stock clock speeds. I was actually wrong and they claim to have tested it for 16 hours. From their product description they claim to have:

Rigorously tested at 100% CPU workload & 90% memory workload for 16 hours

I'm definitely worried that the CPU has been damaged by the lack of a fan. Unfortunately their phonelines are shut on weekends, and no doubt will be on a bank holiday Monday too. I'm going to call them on Tuesday to see what they're going to do about the possibility of the CPU failing.

They also claim to only cover £10 towards the return postage costs. I've never posted anything as large as a pc before, but I bet I can't buy adequate packaging and courier fees for £10! The Sale of Goods Act requires them to cover all costs though. I'll see if I can get them to arrange a courier, they'll be able to get better rates than me.