The Cohhilition

Hey guys, i really really need help!
so this is the setup i had two weeks ago

AMD FX Bulldozer 4100 3.6ghz
Gigabyte GTX 560Ti 448
Crucial Ballistix Sport 4gb
gigabyte ga-78lmt-s2p

i had really bad fps so i bought a new graphics card: r9 280x MSI 3gb
its not as bad now but its still really really bad i get 40 fps in bf3 on high(not ultra) and sometimes it goes down even to 15fps! while people play bf4 on ultra with 70 fps!
i dont understand whats wrong please help?? do i need a new processor or something?
also my friend that has the same setup only difference he has 16gbs of ram and ga 78lmt usb3
but he bought that 560 and he has 80fps on ultra on bf3!!!! WTF

anyone??

Its definately CPU Bottleneck since i was playing bf3 and now it lags all the time and when i went to see gpu usage it only went up to 37%

I would first take a look to make sure you have all the proper and updated drivers for your motherboard, chipset, graphics card, and the newest bios. Using the ones off the disks is ok to start with but most of the time they have updates out to correct issues that have been found. If you have two monitors run a CPU meter and GPU meter to determine which one is running high %. What type of hard drive is the game on? new/old? Do you notice slowness anywhere else or just in BF3?

everything seems to be up to date apart from bios because im not sure how to update it and i really dont want to try. i only have one monitor and the hard drive is a 500gb hdd hitachi i think, DayZ Standalone has low fps too

its your processor bro(dayz is really cpu heavy),it think its time to switch to the intel side. do you have any money and/or how much can you save up to.

what about other games because arma 3 is performing really bad too
plus why does my old card run really really good in my friends setup? hes got the same stuff apart from i have 4gb ram he has 16gb ram
but he has the same mobo as me or the one higher i have ga78 lmt s2p and he has ga 78 lmt usb3

oh i didnt see that you only got 4gb ram that might be a major factor buy 8gb ddr3 > 1600 mhz (hyperx fury is cheap right now)
start with that then i would recommend that you buy a better processor later

Yeah 4gb is way too little for gaming IMO, never go below 8GB

how can it be the ram tho? it was running completely fine when i got my pc with old card i got super perfect performance then over time it got really bad i bought a new graphics card and still bad!

How fresh is your windows install?
Is your HDD close to being full?
Clean up your startup programs.
Turn of AV/Firewall to see if that helps. (create exclusions for the game if it proves to be those)
Have you loaded anything to watch performance to see CPU/RAM/GPU/HDD usage? (this is help determine if it is a hardware issue or not)
Cleaned up all unwanted programs/files by running a cleaning program like CCleaner?
Clean the Registry?
Get a copy of Spinrite and run a Level 4 Maintenance to fix any HDD issues (Great tool for HDD failures too)
Run a DXDiag.exe and send it to me.
Make sure to remove old Video Card Drivers as well.
If it got worse over time it sounds like a HDD or Filesystem issue.

*only attempt these if you know what you are doing, some if done incorrectly can damage your system*

i reinstalled my windows about a month ago maybe 2 at most
i have 2 500gb hdds divided in 3 parts all half full
when i installed my new graphics card i didnt delete my nvidia ones(i dont know that much)
but i have uninstalled them now.

Can you do the Save All Information and PM it to me?

Sure. ill do it in a short moment

Your DXDiag looks fine I saw no conflicts that would cause slowness.
You said it got worse over time about how long ago was is good? Was it good and fast when you first installed everything and is now slow?

i had the pc for like 2 years, what i mean is when it was built it i was playing everything so smooth and perfect on my old card and now its just gotten so bad that a new a lot better card is not helping that much

well i doubt it the cpu, atm the most games doesn't require much of the cpu performance but yes from the graphic card, you should upgrade your memory, 4gb is rly to low, try to install your games at other partitions different of the one that you have the windows installed, and maybe you don't have the drivers correctly installed, try to download Ccleaner, uninstall your drivers run the registry cleaner and then install them again, if this doesn't work try to seek professional help.


ps: well also your motherboard might not be able to support at 100% efficiently the new graphic card.

With it degrading like that over time I will say there is HDD issues. They need to get repaired or a new HDD will be needed. Yes the 4gb of RAM is low and should be upgraded as well due to as games get patched and as your systems gets patch things will take more RAM also more programs running in background. OHH try this as well go to Start > type MSCONFIG into the search open that, go to Startup turn everything off that is not needed. (Keep video card stuff and sound card stuff) restart and try playing again.
I checked your MOBO and yes your video card will not run at its best which is the problem with a lot of AMD boards right now only have PCI-e 2.0, but unless you are running like BF 4 on Ultra it should not make a difference. Also if you do get RAM make sure to pick a better speed for that board which will accept 1333 OC up to 16bg.

For HDD recovery and maintainence I use https://www.grc.com/sr/spinrite.htm works like a charm, but can take a long long time to complete. Had one run for 233 hours once granted it was a 4 TB HDD.

I would say right off the bat its combined with you only having 4gb of memory , now a days i don't build a pc system for people with less than 16gb of memory, 8 is the minimum.

The FX-4100 could get uppped to a 6xxx series and it would function alot better.

and i would recommend getting a couple of ssd's 128gb for OS / Programs only and a minimum 256gb ssd for installed games only.

Its a little costly to upgrade perhaps but just do it over time.