Performance Grade - Marginal.

[Jpmwell]

So i completed my first build on saturday night, got windows 10 installed and downloaded some games on sunday and got to playing.
Plays great and I’m loving finally being able to Pc game and it feels so much better knowing i built it up myself with a little help from a couple friends and a few folks on here.
But i couldn't help notice that on the Radeon software i downloaded, on all three games I'm running so far all have a “Performance Grade - Marginal” in my performance report the worst of the three being DayZ having an average FPS of 29.2.
Is there anything I've done wrong or is it simply the case that the parts ive chosen are just sightly struggling to cope with the performance these games demand?
Ive also noticed my system crashing on start up of Pubg more than a couple times.
is there anything i can do? Or will it be a case of having to upgrade over time?
build consists of...
Ryzen 5 3600x
Msi B450 tomahawk max
Sapphire nitro+ 5700 xt
Wd sn550 1tb ssd
Seagate 2tb hdd
Corsair lpx 16gb (2x8gb) 3600mhz ram
Corsair RM650 80+ gold fully modular psu
Any help is as always appreciated.
Thanks in advance.

 

[Frindis]

I know little of hardware tweaking but I have to mention that the Radeon Software at times has been unstable with games, which for some has made their game crash. When it comes to Dayz, it is a game that is not that well optimized, just like Arma 3, so a little optimization tweaking will help. From what I can see, your computer should have no problem running any of the games you mentioned on high-ultra from the get-go.

 

[Jpmwell]

Thanks for the quick reply Frindis, i’ll need to do a bit more investigating before i go tweaking my hardware just to make sure I'm not messing with something i shouldn't be, good to know that it may not be my hardware after all.

 

[Kaamos_Llama]

Congratulations on your build! Your specs look great to me. What resolution is your monitor? if its 4K i'd be less surprised at your frame rate.

Also as a fellow 5700XT user I'd recommend turning off most of the Radeon features under the graphics tab in Adrenaline. See if PUBG stops crashing then you cold re enable them one by one and see which is the problem if you miss them. Or leave them all off, they didnt seem to make much difference to me.

I also find it hilarious how the Adrenaline software tells me my 7700K is bad and I should upgrade to a 16 core 3950X for optimal performance. Not that the 7700K is cutting edge anymore but the advice is a little dubious.

 

[Jpmwell]

Congratulations on your build! Your specs look great to me. What resolution is your monitor? if its 4K i'd be less surprised at your frame rate.

Also as a fellow 5700XT user I'd recommend turning off most of the Radeon features under the graphics tab in Adrenaline. See if PUBG stops crashing then you cold re enable them one by one and see which is the problem if you miss them. Or leave them all off, they didnt seem to make much difference to me.

I also find it hilarious how the Adrenaline software tells me my 7700K is bad and I should upgrade to a 16 core 3950X for optimal performance. Not that the 7700K is cutting edge anymore but the advice is a little dubious.

Hi Llama,
My monitor is actually a 4k samsung unit however it was of the lower price bracket, it only runs at 60hz .
I was considering a new monitor at the weekend but had to weigh up wether spending £300 would merit the jump up to 144hz and losing 4k compatibility.
That being said my intention was never to run full 4k on my build, so don't know if maybe the higher refresh rate would benefit me at the compromise of no 4k.

 

[Kaamos_Llama]

I'm only at 2560x1440 @ 60hz so I'm further from the cutting edge myself.

If you wanted to check if the Graphics card is your limit run Day Z at 1080P, if youre still getting the heavy frame dips then you are CPU limited at those points. I don't play Day Z but I've heard its that way at times as Frindis said.

IPS based 144hz monitors of the same resolution are just starting to appear here (Finland) at semi reasonable prices. Ill jump there at some point. 4K is a bit of an investment still and I also think a bit beyond the 5700XT for me. Probably be O.K at medium settings I'd guess, but I like to try and max things out as much as possible.

Do you have the Samsung 28 inch 4K TN panel? If so you might be surprised how nice a good IPS or VA panel at 2560x1440@144hz looks in comparison. If you can find some way of testing it out for yourself I would definitely do that.

 

[Jpmwell]

I'm only at 2560x1440 @ 60hz so I'm further from the cutting edge myself.

If you wanted to check if the Graphics card is your limit run Day Z at 1080P, if youre still getting the heavy frame dips then you are CPU limited at those points. I don't play Day Z but I've heard its that way at times as Frindis said.

IPS based 144hz monitors of the same resolution are just starting to appear here (Finland) at semi reasonable prices. Ill jump there at some point. 4K is a bit of an investment still and I also think a bit beyond the 5700XT for me. Probably be O.K at medium settings I'd guess, but I like to try and max things out as much as possible.

Do you have the Samsung 28 inch 4K TN panel? If so you might be surprised how nice a good IPS or VA panel at 2560x1440@144hz looks in comparison. If you can find some way of testing it out for yourself I would definitely do that.

Yeah thats the one, 28” display with a resolution of 3840x2160 and it is a TN panel.
Do you think a monitor with a lower resolution but higher refresh rate and different panel type would see better viewing? As I'm not totally fussed on 4K just yet, as it does seem to be the lower end of the 4K monitor list, im sure there will be far far better than mine at probably treble the price, which I'm not wanting to pay just yet.
I’ll try DayZ out tonight at the first opportunity i get to run it at 1080 and see how i get on from there.
In terms of turning off most radeon features, are there any set features you recommend disabling that i can try for myself?

 

[Zoid]

Yeah thats the one, 28” display with a resolution of 3840x2160 and it is a TN panel.
Do you think a monitor with a lower resolution but higher refresh rate and different panel type would see better viewing? As I'm not totally fussed on 4K just yet, as it does seem to be the lower end of the 4K monitor list, im sure there will be far far better than mine at probably treble the price, which I'm not wanting to pay just yet.
I’ll try DayZ out tonight at the first opportunity i get to run it at 1080 and see how i get on from there.
In terms of turning off most radeon features, are there any set features you recommend disabling that i can try for myself?

Your specs are good (congrats on getting it up and running!), and with that hardware you will be able to run any game you like if you dial in the correct settings.

Your performance could be down to a couple things. Firstly, playing demanding games at 4K and high settings is still out of reach of most GPUs. Your 5700XT is strong and should be able to target 30 FPS at 4K, but you might need to tweak your graphics settings. If you want to hit higher framerates, you'll probably need to lower your resolution. As @Kaamos_Llama mentions, you can also play with disabling Radeon features and see how that impacts performance.

The other thing I'd recommend doing is downloading MSI Afterburner and setting up the in-game overlay so that you can monitor your hardware while gaming. I would set it up to monitor GPU usage and temp, CPU usage and temp, and RAM usage. Whenever a game is not giving you your expected performance, toggle the overlay and see what's getting maxed out.

Lastly, as @Frindis mentioned, some games just aren't well optimized and run like crap even on high-end machines. I have not personally played DayZ but I know it has a reputation for running poorly.

 

[Jpmwell]

Thank you @Zoid the satisfaction alone of building your own rather than buying prebuilt is definitely worth it.

i’ll download afterburner tonight at the first chance i get, mess about with some settings too see what and where i can improve to get games running higher fps.
I did notice that it runs Squad perfectly fine with no issue and got around roughly 57 Fps, so i knew the performance was there i just couldn't get my head around what would be dropping the grade to marginal.
At least i have a starting point from here to move forward and begin to tweak settings to optimise the potential. Thanks again to all of your help guys.

 

[Kaamos_Llama]

Yeah thats the one, 28” display with a resolution of 3840x2160 and it is a TN panel.
Do you think a monitor with a lower resolution but higher refresh rate and different panel type would see better viewing? As I'm not totally fussed on 4K just yet, as it does seem to be the lower end of the 4K monitor list, im sure there will be far far better than mine at probably treble the price, which I'm not wanting to pay just yet.
I’ll try DayZ out tonight at the first opportunity i get to run it at 1080 and see how i get on from there.
In terms of turning off most radeon features, are there any set features you recommend disabling that i can try for myself?

@Zoid is absolutely correct to mention you can monitor FPS in game with Afterburner, sorry. I'm sure there's an option for an in game monitor within the Radeon Adrenaline suite as well, but I'm fairly new to it at this point as well and havent looked into it yet.

One other thing I can mention, using Radeon Image Sharpening its possible to run the games at for example 70% resolution and then apply RIS to it to gain a sharper image at a higher FPS. Some games have a resolution slider in the settings you can set to a lower percentage. This will basically have your GPU doing less work and the RIS software sharpens the image so it looks almost as good as native res. Techspot has an article and video (Hardware Unboxed is their channel) on it which you could search for, I'm not sure on the rules here for posting links. In games that don't have a slider In believe you can set up a custom resolution in Adrenaline which will be upscaled.

As to whether its worth it to change or not, that's going to be up to you to decide if its worth the cost. I think I'd prefer a Freesync/Gsync solution at 1440 to 4K 60 but if you dont mind working around it with what you have then go for that. But for sure you should investigate properly for yourself before spending any money!

 

[Rolfil]

I have a Samsung 4k TN Monitor but mine supports Freesync from 45hz-60hz. Check to see if your monitor supports it. You also have to actually turn it on in the monitor settings - mine has a joystick like control on the back bottom right to change settings.

I have a GTX1060 and by either frame limiting some games to 30 fps or lowering the settings it looks fine. I do find I'm having to play some more modern games in 1080p though.

 

[Jpmwell]

I have a Samsung 4k TN Monitor but mine supports Freesync from 45hz-60hz. Check to see if your monitor supports it. You also have to actually turn it on in the monitor settings - mine has a joystick like control on the back bottom right to change settings.

I have a GTX1060 and by either frame limiting some games to 30 fps or lowering the settings it looks fine. I do find I'm having to play some more modern games in 1080p though.

It does support freesync but whenever i try to turn it on in my menu its greyed out, im wondering if i change the input port the hdmi cable is in it may sort this out.
Ive found dropping the resolution in games certainly helps but in terms of games like dayZ ive came to accept that the game isn't completely perfect so there will be some issues outwith my hardware.
So until such times as i upgrade to a better gpu/cpu/mobo i’ll just need to grin and bear it.
I wish now that i maybe spent a little bit more for maybe slightly higher end parts but i cant complain I'm really enjoying PC gaming so far.

 

[Oussebon]

Possibly the first thing to try with poor performance would be to download Firestrike, run the benchmark at stock settings (with freesync disabled), and then compare your scores to other similar systems. You could post a link to the result here if you wanted a 2nd pair of eyes to help interpret.

You'd want to monitor your CPU and GPU temperatures during the run.

An RX 5700 XT is a much better fit for 1440p high refresh than 4k, but you'll still want to check whether the hardware is performing at the level you'd expect from it before buying new monitors

 

[Jpmwell]

Possibly the first thing to try with poor performance would be to download Firestrike, run the benchmark at stock settings (with freesync disabled), and then compare your scores to other similar systems. You could post a link to the result here if you wanted a 2nd pair of eyes to help interpret.

You'd want to monitor your CPU and GPU temperatures during the run.

An RX 5700 XT is a much better fit for 1440p high refresh than 4k, but you'll still want to check whether the hardware is performing at the level you'd expect from it before buying new monitors

Thank you for the input Oussebon, i’ll get that sorted tonight and tweek settings and try running the benchmark see where in at then i’ll post results here, thank you!