Struggling to find what is bottlenecking my rig

[Killsomecero]

I recently purchased a new desktop from iBuyPower:
iBUYPOWER Desktop PC PHANTOM SERIES NE502 AMD FX-Series FX-8350 (4.0GHz) 8GB DDR3 1TB HDD 120GB SSD Windows 8.1 64-Bit - Newegg.com

AMD 970 Motherboard
MSI GTX 980 4GB
AMD FX-8350 (4.0GHz) 8core processor
1TB SATAIII HDD
120GB SSD
(1x)8GB DDR3 1600MHz ram
600W PSU
1920x1080p Display
NZXT GUNMETAL Phantom 410 Gaming Chassis
iBuyPower custom liquid cooling


*Sorry about the lack of specification, I bought the computer pre-built because I do not have expertise with building desktops. I have not opened the desktop itself because there has not been a need to as of yet, but I know the general structure of one and how to locate and identify the components if it is necessary


On paper, the GTX980 should very easily have swam past any and all games at 1080p. Strangely enough, it (maybe not the 980 itself but the desktop) seriously struggles with not very demanding games.

Tera Online sits at 30-45fps on ultra settings and then rises to 60 for short, brief periods of time before going back down to 30-45.
Archeage on complete max settings with dx11 at 1080p sits at 80+ FPS almost the entire time
Witcher 3 on ultra with Nvidia hairworks on and bloom fx usually stays between 35-55FPS.
League of Legends at 1080p always sits at 60fps, my monitor is 60hz but I imagine it goes into the 200's uncapped
Arma 3 tends to go from 28-50fps on high settings (not ultra)
Dayz runs VERY poorly. 20-50fps on high preset, averages around 30. unplayable above high

The point I'm trying to make is that the benchmarks are completely scattered. It doesn't make sense for there to be this big of a gap in the performance of the desktop, and I believe that running a stable 50+ fps on Witcher 3 and at least 45 on arma3 with ultra would be more reasonable for a card of this caliber.

I tried looking everywhere to find the cause for the lack in performance:
GPU Temps idle at 33C and rarely climb above 64C during intense gaming with the computer-determined fan speeds. I can easily keep it under 60, maybe even 50 with fans at 65% so overheating really does not seem to be an issue.
The CPU itself seems to perform well in most benchmarks online but I know little in this department. Most games don't utilize 8 cores that much I know, and from what I have gathered intel i5 seems to be the king of gaming, but is it the CPU itself that is holding back the 980? I do not fully understand the concept of 4core vs 8core in practical gaming and power-per-core..
Something I noticed in MSI afterburner is that pagefile usage seems to be constantly very high. In fact, it is the only one that even seems to be a threat in any way. I've researched it and reduced the amount of allocated space in my HDD for pagefile.sys (which seemed to improve framerate very slightly), I also disabled all unecessary startup programs from my computer. The pagefile usage used to stay at ~9000mb and slowly climb during gaming and now it is lower (3180 as I write this 'idling', rising at a constant rate), but something about it just doesn't stand out to me as the cause of the bottleneck.
The last thing is the ram. During normal gaming, I use about 70-80% ram, now I truly don't know if this is too much or too little; game debate says that 8gb should do the 980 just fine at 1080p, but I plan on buying another 8gb stick to try and solve the problem.

Idle: (picture heavy)










Thank you to the hardware experts that take time out of your days to help people like me.

[Zaphry]

why only 1 memory card? Witcher 3 requires 8gb of memory on recommended settings, so no wonder you are struggling.

[Devanh]

AMD was all I read

[Killsomecero]

why only 1 memory card? Witcher 3 requires 8gb of memory on recommended settings, so no wonder you are struggling.

Now this did make sense for witcher, but why would a simple mmo like Tera underperform in such a way? Not only that but Dayz and ARMA 3, both of which have 4gbram recommended?
This is what I am planning on buying: G.SKILL Ripjaws X Series 8GB 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Desktop Memory Model F3-12800CL10S-8GBXL - Newegg.com - the 'type' of ram is not very significant, does this look good to you? 240-pin 1600mhz seems to be supported by the AMD 970

AMD was all I read

So you're saying the CPU is the bottleneck here? I kept coming back to the 8350 as the issue in my rig, but I would need a new motherboard along with the cpu since intel chips arent supported in AM3+. In this case, which I am willing to upgrade the CPU (dependent on cost), what chip and motherboard would you recommend to replace the AMD 970/8350?

[Confucius]

It's likely the CPU. MMOs are very heavy on cpu usage because of the way they have to be rendered with other players around, so an older mmo can have more cpu usage than some newer single player games. Since MMOs generally only utilize 1 core (Until dx 12) your 8 core AMD won't perform very well in them.

Try running firestrike nd it will tell you what is bottlenecking your system and let you compare it to similar builds to check if it isn't just a malfunction on your parts. Using the free demo is fine for this. 3DMark - test your graphics card with the gamer's benchmark

[Killsomecero]

Fire strike alone:









Combined tests (NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 video card benchmark result - AMD FX-8350,Gigabyte Technology Co., Ltd. 970A-D3P

[Confucius]

I would expect something more like this: https://i.imgur.com/erkKNxV.jpg from a 980. So I am assuming it's your CPU at this point or there is something wrong with your gpu.

[Killsomecero]

I would expect something more like this: https://i.imgur.com/erkKNxV.jpg from a 980. So I am assuming it's your CPU at this point or there is something wrong with your gpu.

After a few more days of researching, the bottleneck connects to the cpu more than anything else. I've been looking at a new motherboard/cpu combination, what would be your recommendations?

This is what I have in mind right now:
GIGABYTE GA-Z97-HD3P LGA 1150 Intel Z97 HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard - Newegg.com
Intel Core i5-4690 Haswell Quad-Core 3.5GHz LGA 1150 84W BX80646I54690 Desktop Processor Intel HD Graphics 4600 - Newegg.com

[Zaphry]

After a few more days of researching, the bottleneck connects to the cpu more than anything else. I've been looking at a new motherboard/cpu combination, what would be your recommendations?

This is what I have in mind right now:
GIGABYTE GA-Z97-HD3P LGA 1150 Intel Z97 HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard - Newegg.com
Intel Core i5-4690 Haswell Quad-Core 3.5GHz LGA 1150 84W BX80646I54690 Desktop Processor Intel HD Graphics 4600 - Newegg.com

Remember to check the wattage consumption on CPU and what your motherboard can support. I saw from previous settings that your old CPU would take around 145W and motherboard would give around 125W at the most.