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Hutchie91 · ‎08-20-2016

So I bought a new build a few days ago, not knowing too much about Intel processors I went with the i5 6500 thinking it would be more than enough for gaming at ultra 1080p or maybe 1440p next year if I get a new monitor.

However, although it seems my average framerates are higher than my old rig (FX-8350 @4.4Ghz and a Zotac Amp Extreme GTX 970 @1556Mhz) I'm still getting some noticable drops below the 60's on a few games when trying to run them at 1080p ultra.

Need for Speed, for the most part runs at like 120fps but certain parts of the map drop down to the low 50's, such as the bridge next to your garage if you make two right hand turns, and thats with shadows dropped down from Ultra to high.
Just Cause 3, again for the most part runs anywhere between 90-120fps, but once you get to cities and government bases and actually start causing some chaos, it drops down to the 50's or sometimes high 40's.
Forza 6 Apex, any race where it's raining, it will drop down to the lower 50's.

For now, all I'm wanting is just solid 60fps without drops at 1080p on ultra, something I was assuming the 1070 should easily be able to handle given that the 970 could almost pull it off. I know Just Cause 3 had some horrible issues at launch Ive read, but I'm guessing by now all that has been ironed out as I dont suffer from problems as bad as people were complaining on launch.

CPU usage in just cause hits the high 80's low 90's when the frame rate dips, from what I remember last night, Forza 6 Apex has Core's 1 and 3 at 100 usage.

So did I make a mistake getting an i5 6500 and is it causing some bottlenecks for this card or is this just the nature of some games? From the benchmarks for Just Cause Ive read I've never heard of bad frame drops even with a 980ti in main towns and I dont get how they would claim 50's is playable.

I've also noticed that when I do a stress test on the CPU, despite selecting the Performance option in the bios, all my cores only clock at 3.3Ghz instead of Core 1 at 3.6, Core 2 at 3.5, Core 3 at 3.4 and Core 4 at 3.3.

Does my motherboard need a bios update? I've got all the power settings in Windows and in the nVidia control panel to max performance and the card is OC'ed to 2113Mhz

My specs:

Windows 10 Pro 64 bit version 1607
Corsair Obsidian 750d Airflow Edition Case with 5 Corsair AF140 chasis fans
Asus Z170-E MoBo
Intel i5 6500
Alpenfohn Matterhorn Black CPU Cooler
16GB Kingston HyperX Fury DDR4 @ 2113Mhz
Asus Strix RoG GTX 1070 on the latest 372.54 drivers clocked to 2113Mhz
Corsair RM850i PSU

Nate152 · ‎08-20-2016

Hi Hutchie91

An i5 6600k won't bottleneck the ROG Strix 1070.

I'm using an i5-6700k overclocked to 4.75GHz and my ROG Strix 1070 overclocked, with crysis 3 at 1440p ultra settings no AA for the most part is 50-60 FPS.

If you're using high amounts of AA try backing it down to say x4, x2 or off, do a little test with each this should improve your frames per second. I like to set all the game settings to ultra then add a little AA if it allows.

Make sure turbo is enabled in the bios, if by chance you're using real temp open it and click settings, make sure "Disable Turbo" is unchecked. Your cpu cooler seems like a pretty good one with 6 heat pipes, you could try running all 4 cores at 4.0GHz and see where temps are.

ROG Strix 1070 OC Guide - ROG Spatha X Rapid Fire - ROG Falchion Touch Panel - z270 BCLK Overclocking - Xsplit Gamecaster Guide - ROG RX 460 OC Guide

Hutchie91 · ‎08-20-2016

Nate152 wrote:
Hi Hutchie91

An i5 6600k won't bottleneck the ROG Strix 1070.

I'm using an i5-6700k overclocked to 4.75GHz and my ROG Strix 1070 overclocked, with crysis 3 at 1440p ultra settings no AA for the most part is 50-60 FPS.

If you're using high amounts of AA try backing it down to say x4, x2 or off, do a little test with each this should improve your frames per second. I like to set all the game settings to ultra then add a little AA if it allows.

Make sure turbo is enabled in the bios, if by chance you're using real temp open it and click settings, make sure "Disable Turbo" is unchecked. Your cpu cooler seems like a pretty good one with 6 heat pipes, you could try running all 4 cores at 4.0GHz and see where temps are.

I just have the 6500, not the one of the 'k series' so unfortunately I can't overclock, although I know you can download a BIOS to still overclock a non K cpu, but I don't know how well my motherboard would handle an overclock even say to around 4.0Ghz rather than the 4.5Ghz is possible with just the i5 6500.

I'll go into my BIOS now and double check that Turbo mode is enabled in the BIOS, I just assumed that using ASUS' Performance preset in the BIOS would automatically have it enabled too.

Nate152 · ‎08-20-2016

Sorry my mistake,

Try resetting the bios to defaults and see if this gets the cores boosting to 3.6GHz.

ROG Strix 1070 OC Guide - ROG Spatha X Rapid Fire - ROG Falchion Touch Panel - z270 BCLK Overclocking - Xsplit Gamecaster Guide - ROG RX 460 OC Guide

Arne_Saknussemm · ‎08-20-2016

I would not think that CPU will "bottleneck" that GPU either...

I'd try BIOS At defaults and GPU at defaults too. Sometimes the ragged edge of OCing, while it does not crash gives worse performance than backing off a bit...

Temps of GPU and CPU OK?

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Hutchie91 · ‎08-20-2016

Arne Saknussemm wrote:
I would not think that CPU will "bottleneck" that GPU either...

I'd try BIOS At defaults and GPU at defaults too. Sometimes the ragged edge of OCing, while it does not crash gives worse performance than backing off a bit...

Temps of GPU and CPU OK?

Yeah, given my setup I believe my temps are pretty decent, under full load during a OCCT stress test my package temps don't go past 51c and during 20 minutes of Haven Benchmarking the 1070 won't budge past 54c with the fans set to 50% rpm, both just using air cooling and my case doesn't have any side panel fans. Just 3 AF140 exhaust fans (1 back 2 top) and then 2 AF140 intake fans at the front.

Nate152 · ‎08-20-2016

I'm with you Arne the i5 6500 shouldn't be a bottleneck, in these gaming benchmarks the FPS are pretty much identical with the 6700k.

ROG Strix 1070 OC Guide - ROG Spatha X Rapid Fire - ROG Falchion Touch Panel - z270 BCLK Overclocking - Xsplit Gamecaster Guide - ROG RX 460 OC Guide

Nate152 · ‎08-20-2016

Yeah it should be fine and your temps are great too !

The only game that was faster was crysis 3 and cryengine 3 is one of the few game engines that can utilize 8 threads, hopefully we'll see more game engines doing this in the near future.

Is your cpu back to normal after resetting to defaults?

ROG Strix 1070 OC Guide - ROG Spatha X Rapid Fire - ROG Falchion Touch Panel - z270 BCLK Overclocking - Xsplit Gamecaster Guide - ROG RX 460 OC Guide

Hutchie91 · ‎08-20-2016

Nate152 wrote:
Yeah it should be fine and your temps are great too !

The only game that was faster was crysis 3 and cryengine 3 is one of the few game engines that can utilize 8 threads, hopefully we'll see more game engines doing this in the near future.

Is your cpu back to normal after resetting to defaults?

So I ended up updating my motherboard BIOS to the latest one on ASUS' site from the one that was shipped with the board and it seems to of done the trick, and I haven't put the MoBo into it's Performance preset yet.

Forza 6 Apex is still maxing out cores 1 and 3 however during races when it's raining which is when the game is at it's most taxing, I'm no longer dropping below 60fps with everything on ultra and MSAA at 8x. Just Cause 3 is now running a lot better. Before hand, just grappling and parachuting around a town/city or military base was enough to drop the framerates before even getting into a gunfight, now I only get the odd dip only if there are multiple explosions going off within like 50 meters of where I am and 3 apaches raining hell on me. With Need for Speed, turning the Shadows down to High makes the game now run flawlessly, however putting the Shadows back to Ultra, there is still certain points in the map where the framerate drops which is annoying, but if it's only happening in one certain area and probably won't be noticable without MSI's OSD, then I'm happy to keep the Shadows to Ultra.

I'm guessing then the small framedrops I'm experiencing in NFS and JC3 are just limitations of the game engine itself when it has to load in new parts of the map etc and is something everyone has to put up with.

Cheers for the replies and help though, glad to see getting the 6500 wasn't a total disaster then 🙂

Nate152 · ‎08-20-2016

All right, great to hear a bios update helped you. 🙂

I think with the AA at 8x is why you're getting slow downs in certain places, even at 1080 p 8x AA can be pretty demanding. In Afterburner's on screen display enable the gpu usage and see if it's maxing out.

The best thing I think to do is set all the game quality settings to ultra with the AA off then slowly add AA until you notice slowdowns, you'll see the gpu usage go higher each time you go higher with the AA.

When the gpu usage or vram usage maxes out performance starts to suffer.

ROG Strix 1070 OC Guide - ROG Spatha X Rapid Fire - ROG Falchion Touch Panel - z270 BCLK Overclocking - Xsplit Gamecaster Guide - ROG RX 460 OC Guide

An i5 6500 a bottleneck for 1070? Not getting desired performance.