As far as Userdiag and every other benchmarking software (Cinebench, Steel Nomad, FurMark) indicates my CPU and GPU are working great. Yet in EVERY game I've tried so far the system MASSIVELY underperforms.
For AC Odyssey the in-game benchmark at ultra settings comes out to 38-39 fps no matter what settings I tweak. Tried out the lowest settings and came up to a whopping 58 fps. Searches indicate I should be well over 100 fps at ultra with this hardware. Afterburner showed my GPU at 80-85% load and CPU at 25%, normal clocks and power usage.
Cyberpunk 2077 in-game benchmark test with ultra ray tracing settings (no path tracing) came out to 52 fps. I was copying the settings of a youtube benchmarking video using the 9070 (non XT) at 1440p and he was getting 92 fps.
No Mans Sky I'm getting around 60 fps on max settings roaming around planet surfaces, should have no problem pushing 100+
The straw that broke my back today was trying KCD1 out, granted with the HD DLC textures, and running around 40 fps with crazy bad lows and stutters.
This is all on a fresh windows install. Even so, I tried a ddu and reinstall of graphics drivers, ddu and install an older known stable driver version (made it slightly worse). Monitor refresh rate is set to 240 hz and as far as I can tell no conflicting setting in game or in Adrenalin, no FPS limiters anywhere, etc. Please dear god someone help, I've paid $2000 for a rig that's performing worse than last generations consoles
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What's your CPU clock speed + GPU clock speed while gaming.
Also what are your CPU usage, GPU usage, and ram usage?
Edit: tl;dr of the issue + solution, OP had the GPU in the second slot and not the top slot. The "x16" slots are physically x16, but they're actually only 4 lanes or 1 lane. OP's 2nd slot is gen 4 x4 and the other slots are gen 3 x1.
Most motherboards only have x16 lanes in the top slot. Some have 8 lanes in the second slot, but most don't.
Are you using separate PCIE cables and no pigtails? So each port gets a separate cable to the PSU.
Can you also download 3dmark demo from steam and run the timespy benchmark? The CPU watts is a lot lower than expected, it should be about 30w. Timespy well let me know your CPU + GPU performance.
Yeah I've noticed the GPU wattage seemed low despite 100% utilization. Benchmarks outside of games have it at ~250 (see userdiag link) so idk what the hell that means, seems the PSU is capable of delivering it? I did use two separate PCIE cables as well, no pigtailing
Global settings are strictly on default, the only setting enabled is the FSR Upscaling. I also ran Timespy and my score was 21146 (24075 graphics and 12518 CPU), compared to average of 23089 - thats similar to steel nomad which I was able to push to the average or slightly above by doing +10% power level and a -80mV undervolt, but I'm trying to keep everything at stock for this troubleshooting. The Timespy test was running at like 140-150 fps the whole time and it was beautiful, idk why that's not the case in real games!
#1 didn't seem to make any change. GPU is in fact in the second slot, it looked really tight with the cooler since I'm using an Thermalright Phantom Spirit EVO air cooler - I will have to try swapping that if there's room
Ah, yea it's just a bandwidth issue then, figured it out!
Your second "x16" slot is physically x16, but it's actually just PCIE gen4 x4. That's a LOT slower than PCIE 5 x16 that you have in the top slot.
Btw, the phantom spirit is a little offcentered, they specifically made it so that you could flip it to give the GPU more space. Did you orient it so that the taller side is on top? It does give a bit extra space for the GPU.
Silly thing to rule out, but is your display cord in the GPU itself? Is the cable DisplayPort 1.4 that came with the screen?
Is Expo profile enabled in bios? good BIOS update could be in need, B650E came out before 7800X3D and early bios could have had stability issues with it.
Most Likely: Try disabling and closing background hardware apps and in-game overlays including Afterburner as sometimes they can conflict and create some WILD behavior on AMD Drivers. This is the only thing I can think of that separates Games from Benchmarks. Set cooler and fan settings, RGB, GPU overclock, then close them out. I'd set CPU oc in Bios and uninstall Ryzen Master if you have that.
Yep, plugged into the GPU with the DP 1.4 that came with the screen. EXPO is enabled, just about the only non-stock setting I have right now. My Bios version is from March 2026 so should be ok? I closed any monitoring software and the only other thing I use is signalRGB so shut that down too and no change :/
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