rebuilt my second machine today now using a x5650 hexcore from a i5 3570k which will go in a itx board X5650 24gb corsair xms3 1 evga 660s 2 1tb wd red 2 2tb wd red Ocz 120gb ssd 1 750gb wd black Corsiar 750d case Corsair cx750 psu Corsiar h100 Pioneer bdxl bluray writer Connected to a samsung s24c450 monitor
I'll start this by saying sorry about the dust and pics. How my PC looked when I got in from work: How my PC looked 45 mins after the above: How my PC looked 45 mins after that: {param} Will be sticking with one card till I upgrade the motherboard and CPU, the 8320 cannot feed one 680 let alone two at stock speeds and I cannot get an overclock to be stable on it.
This is gonna be hard to explain but when the second card is in, the whole PC feels laggy, even typing in Windows with nothing else running in the background. Max Payne 3 for example will have some random lag where moving through the menus where you click on something, nothing will happen, click again and it'll work fine but then jump to another option a second or two later. Borderlands also doesn't feel right with both cards. Crysis 3 maxed out looks lovely and bumbles along in the 40fps range but again, it doesn't feel right, it feels like it's running at half the FPS. Nudging the settings down doesn't seem to help much either.
Sounds like microstutter but that shouldn't occur in Windows. Measure your frametimes in Crysis using fraps. See how often you get above 50ms between each frame.
lancer - did you do a fresh driver install when you popped the second card in? It may help, as this does sound very micro-stuttery!
I didn't admittedly, I shall try that. Also, I will admit I was eyeing up your Maximus board and i5 in the marketplace but after dropping £150 on the 680 and £85 on the 860i so far, I didn't think I could afford it Also, while I'm here. Is there anything wrong with the way I did the PCIe 8 pin wiring on the two cards in the second pic? Should I have one run to each card rather than both runs going to the top card and then to the bottom one?
I'd personally run one cable to each card, with both connectors from each cable running to a single card. ...and you could always sell the 680s and buy my 780Ti
After sorting the cables out and re-installing the drivers, I think it's sorted. Windows feels the same to use and Crysis runs lovely. Here are the results from the frametimes: I have no idea what I'm looking at Edit: Forgot to say, thanks for your help both
What you are looking at there is frame variance – the time between frames. In a game PERFECTLY running at 60fps – you have a frametime of an even 16.6ms (1000ms/60fps). This means there are exactly 16.6ms between each frame – and thus silky smooth gameplay. However you could have a game running at 60fps with terrible frame time variance, which would make the game appear to the player as jerky as all hell. In this situation you might have 10 frametimes that look like this: 10/18/19/9/22/75/62/5/3/10 Those two big frames there (72 & 62) are the equivalent of 13 and 16fps if you extrapolate them over a second. However, within a second, the smaller 5ms etc mean you still end up with an average of 60fps. So, really ‘frames per second’ is a very poor measurement of smooth gameplay. Huge spikes in frametimes mean you get ‘stuttering’ and while fraps or whatever might telling you the game is running at 60fps, to the user, it might feel like a lot less.
New Build Specs: Corsair 350D i7-4790k @ 4.6ghz @1.26v 16gb Corsair Vengance pro @ 2,133mhz Crucial M100 512gb MSI 770 GTX Gaming 2GB Lamptron FC2 fan controller 4x SP120 fans. Waiting to put a custom loop in and push this processor much further. Probably add some more red backlighting as well around the edges of the case.
