Hardware RX 480 Performance issues

[DarkFlare69]

I bought an RX 480 8GB to replace my GTX 960. I looked up benchmarks and gameplay footage before buying it. It performed (on video benchmarks) a lot better than the GTX 960 I had before. The 480 also has no bottleneck on my CPU, but the 960 did.

So now that I have it, I'm struggling to get 40FPS in GTA 5 and in Watch Dogs 2 on the lowest settings at 1366x768 resolution.

Spoiler

Also Minecraft gets about 50FPS on average. It's still playable I guess but I'd expect at least 60 with VSync disabled from this card

There has to be something wrong because even my GTX 960 could get 60FPS on the lowest settings at 1366x768 resolution. Benchmarks from YouTubers such as LinusTechTips and RandomGamingInHD show that I should be getting much higher performance than this. Even the $70 GT 1030 performs better than my RX 480 does in GTA 5. I tried changing the DirectX version, disablind VSync, and other stuff. No luck

I figured that it must be defective, so I ran a FurMark test and it seems fine:

I couldn't find any RX 480 benchmarks, but I looked at the GTX 1060 online since the performance between the two is similar and it got a score of 4578. So I think the benchmark shows that the GPU is not defective.

My PC
CPU: AMD FX-8320 (8 cores @ 3.5GHz)
GPU: AMD RX 480 8GB Nitro+
Motherboard: Gigabyte 970 Gaming
RAM: 8GB DDR3 1600MHz
PSU: Thermaltake 550w 80+ bronze certified
SSD: 500GB Samsung 850 EVO (Primary, running everything off of this)
HDD #1: 1TB 7200rpm (Used for backup)
HDD #2: 250GB 5400rpm (Used for some projects)

What could the problem be? Any advice would be appreciated. I don't know why the performance would be worse than my old video card.

 

[RaMon90]

Ehm indeed, something is wrong could it be the driver? Did you try any other games or did you try to re install gpu drivers?
You should be able to get most games at 1080p max settings.

 

[DarkFlare69]

Ehm indeed, something is wrong could it be the driver? Did you try any other games or did you try to re install gpu drivers?
You should be able to get most games at 1080p max settings.

I'm using the latest drivers and I uninstall all old drivers before updating

 

[raystriker]

I've seen problems like these happening when Windows updates. As a last resort, try formatting and reformatting your Windows installation from scratch. I know its a lot of work, but it will be worth it.

 

[DarkFlare69]

I've seen problems like these happening when Windows updates. As a last resort, try formatting and reformatting your Windows installation from scratch. I know its a lot of work, but it will be worth it.

I do that every 2 months anyway for security. It hasn't fixed the issue. I got the card in February but wanted to try and fix the problems myself before asking people for help. Do you have any other ideas?
I've only done it twice though.

 

[RaMon90]

I do that every 2 months anyway for security. It hasn't fixed the issue. I got the card in February but wanted to try and fix the problems myself before asking people for help. Do you have any other ideas?
I've only done it twice though.

You tried to reinstall driver and it didn't work, now you said that you also reinstalled windows. That makes me think can be one of your pc component that doesn't work well? I could be wrong.
How is the cpu temp during ingame?

 

[DarkFlare69]

You tried to reinstall driver and it didn't work, now you said that you also reinstalled windows. That makes me think can be one of your pc component that doesn't work well? I could be wrong.
How is the cpu temp during ingame?

I reinstalled the drivers after reading your post and did a quick test. It didn't fix anything. I haven't formatted since April.

I'll check the CPU temps later tonight and see if it's getting too hot

 

[RaMon90]

I reinstalled the drivers after reading your post and did a quick test. It didn't fix anything. I haven't formatted since April.

I'll check the CPU temps later tonight and see if it's getting too hot

I was thinking about your cpu temp, maybe it's overheating and bad cooler. If not, I don't know what can be the problem.

 

[DarkFlare69]

I was thinking about your cpu temp, maybe it's overheating and bad cooler. If not, I don't know what can be the problem.

I'm using the stock coolor so that could be why. But then again, if it's overheating now, wouldn't it have overheated when using my previous GPU?

 

[SkyDX]

I'm using the stock coolor so that could be why. But then again, if it's overheating now, wouldn't it have overheated when using my previous GPU?

Not necessarily as the RX480 is more powerful and generates more heat, it's worth to look into.

 

[RaMon90]

I'm using the stock coolor so that could be why.

Yeah maybe but not necessarily, I mean usually stock cooler are ok if you don't overclock.

 

[Byokugen]

Bottleneck would be a good starting point, but I wouldn't bet on it. Try the drivers that came with your GPU. Could you pop your old 960 and retest?

 

[Armadillo]

Should run the games with rtss + hwinfo overlay on top. Then you can see exactly what is going on (temps while you are playing, load on individual cores, load on gpu, clock speeds etc), see if anything odd is going on or if it's bottlenecking for some reason.

 

[raystriker]

Try using some older drivers that are confirmed to work, just in case.
If you have a friend, try the card in his system.
Try RMAing if nothing works

 

[DarkFlare69]

I ran HWMonitor in a window next to GTA 5. After about a half hour gameplay period, the CPU and GPU tempartures never reached above 57 degrees Celsius. The CPU clock speed stayed at 3717MHz most of the time and the usage was around 55%. The GPU ran at ~1300MHz the whole time.

The one thing I noticed was that the GPU usage hardly ever went above 30%, and when it did, it would jump to a number like 85% for a second and then go back to anywhere between 0% and 30%. Other than that everything seems normal.

 

[orangy57]

Is the GPU getting enough power?

 

[DarkFlare69]

Is the GPU getting enough power?

it should be, it's a 550w power supply

 

[Byokugen]

You are not getting enough juice man. Your system uses ~500w, thermaltake is a bad psu, that one that you use is terrible. You need to try something a bit stronger.
Disconnect everything except ssd and gpu. Retest again, so no other hdd, fans, nothing. Just cpu cooler, gpu and ssd connected.
Let me know how that went

 

[RaMon90]

On windows 10, I assume you already have the option power profile set to high performance right? Gpu usage is low, it sometimes means that it's bottleneck. However on youtube i've seen a guy using same cpu+gpu and it runs fine, cpu wasn't overclocked and it run games fine on very high settings.

 

[Byokugen]

On windows 10, I assume you already have the option power profile set to high performance right? Gpu usage is low, it sometimes means that it's bottleneck. However on youtube i've seen a guy using same cpu+gpu and it runs fine, cpu wasn't overclocked and it run games fine on very high settings.

Bottleneck is around 3% with that cpu+gpu so it's ok. PSU is weak-ish