Is my MB killing me?

[Goblingee]

Hi Guys,

I recently upgraded most of my system, I got a cpu, mb, ram bundle.

FX-6350
8gb ddr3 Black Mamba 1600mhz
Gigabyte GA-78LMT-USB3
Radeon 7870

I have been having massive latency issues on Planetside 2 and it doesn't seem to be the network that is causing the issue as my ping in bellow 40ms but after playing for 20-30 mins the screen is lagging really badly with people skipping about all over the place and flying through the air and making the game unplayable.

I have opened my ports for the game, even tried disabling my FW and setting up as a nat server on the router but nothing seems to make any difference.

I have also tried playing with AMD overdrive both on and off, I have tried allocating cores to PS2 only.

I am thinking now that the most likely hardware issue would probably be with the MB so was looking at getting the ASRock 970DE3/U3S3

The processor runs at 3.9ghz and with overdrive boosts to 4.5ghz so is more than powerful enough.

The ram should not be an issue but will be upgraded in the future and the GPU should run on high-ultra with no issues. (I still get the issue on very low)

When the game is running smoothly I am getting 40-50fps on high but then after 20-30 mins it drops right down to virtually nothing, also when I hit alt+f to see the fr it is showing cpu rather than gpu, does this mean that the game is not utilizing my gpu?

I am at a loss really as to what to do about it.

Any ideas?

Thanks guys (and or girls).

[Rbstr]

If you ping is low you don't have latency issues, given "ping" is latency. Connection issues are usually not going to cause frame rate issues.
You seem to be describing two issues.
#1 people floating around and hopping: Is your frame rate bad when this is happening? If your FPS is ok this is a connection issue but not necessarily latency. It's more of a quality thing, you're losing packets or something. Hard to say what might help that. Can you directly connect the computer to the modem to make sure it's not the router?

#2 very bad frame rate after 20-30mins?

[CPU] or [GPU] that you see with alt+f is what is currently bottle-necking your frame rate. CPU can be either the CPU itself or your system memory bandwidth. The game is going to usually be CPU limited unless you're running on higher resolutions.

You're overestimating your CPU's power, but I don't think that's your issue overall. I think things are overheating so your CPU is throttling back.

I don't see much reason to blame your motherboard compared to the CPU or RAM.
Get CPU-Z and when the lag hits make sure your RAM and CPU are running at the rated speeds. Get speedfan or something to check your temps.

[Goblingee]

Thanks Rbstr,

My thought on the MB was down to possible hardware conflicts and a cheap MB, it would make perfect sense to upgrade the MB to something that is better balanced and more powerful, just like upgrading any other part of a computer if it was causing delay or any other issue between RAM, CPU, GPU.

Strangely enough, I think I have it sorted. I know that there are a few other people having similar issues so here is what I did.

1. turn off AMD Overdirve on both CPU and GPU
2. check your bios to ensure that the cpu, ram and gpu are set correctly (if you are overclocking then do it through bios as AMD Overdrive seemed to be causing issues for me) and do not overclock from bios and run overdrive at the same time.
3. I downloaded CPU-Z adn GPU-Z and ran the game in windowed mode so that I could see what was going on with the CPU and GPU monitors at the sides of the screen.
4. Ctrl Alt Del and set affinity on all processes, I had PS2 running on cores 0-5 with all other processes not on core 0, this way PS2 can utilize any core but will always have core 0 to its self (note that you will need to do this step each time you start the game up)
5. I set the graphics to medium although my system should be able to run happily on ultra but I didn't want to interrupt my 40-50fps in big battles 3 hour lag free game session by upping it. I will let you know how it goes on high/ultra over the next few days.

Interestingly I also turned the rear top case fan round to make it extract rather than draw air in, common sense dictates that hot air rises so best to have low front fans drawing in and high rear fans extracting... core temp is now running bellow 40d and GPU is running at about 27d

Core 0 was running at about 80% @3.9ghz
GPU was running at 27% @1ghz
GPU Ram 1.2ghz

I am fairly sure that a better CPU cooling system would also help as some of the 80% was probably percieved rather than real usage due to heat.

I hope this helps others that have had the same issues.

[Rbstr]

Glad you figured it out, I guess...but you didn't include the before temps/speeds to really confirm to me what was going on.

Just some things:
The MB isn't really a "performance part" like CPU/RAM/GPU are. It's more of an enabler - it supports what you put in or it doesn't. Looking it up it doesn't support particularly fast RAM (only 1333). Other than that, it's fine.

Your tower should be configured in "negative pressure", so there's more air blowing out than in. Never have more intake than exhaust. Balanced is OK too.

Don't screw with the cores manually. If you're up-to-date on your windows updates it's going to do a better job on its own.
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/...ance,3119.html

I don't think ultra is all that reasonable to expect...what resolution do you use?