Unsadisfactory frame rate. Software, hardware or setting?

[Nyrii]

(04-11-2014, 05:38 AM)kinkinkijkin Wrote: Yes, it would work. You need a recent beta to disable PowerPlay using MSI Afterburner, though, I think, since older versions just made AMD unofficial overclocking support it. It really sounds like you're using an old version; the new betas have the unofficial overclocking setting in the settings.

I have some good news at last! Got MSIAB beta, disabled ULPS (shouldn't affect me but still), enabled unofficial OC without powerplay, increased power limit to 25% but did not touch Clocks, and with a small run I did with Mario Kart [HLE + all speedhacks: Skip EFB, Ignore format, EFB Texture, Safe Cache, XFB disabled, Fast Depth, Per-pixel disabled] @ 4xIR + 8xQ CSAA it ran at ~60fps the entire race. If I reduce or indeed remove AA I can work with less speedhacks + LLE at about the same performance, although a map like Wario's Mine is much more demanding... i'll try that soon.

I did notice, however, that new "elements" and abrupt transitions into vast areas seem to cause lag spikes, not big enough to break the flow of gameplay too much but very noticable especially with the sound jutter and to avoid the spikes I had to turn down AA completely and even reduce IR to x3. For example in the Sherbet Land map doing a 180 turn and having the camera pan across the vast area with the big penguins in the middle causes a spike and then as whatshisface drops down indicating 'wrong way' there's another spike. This doesn't happen the second time in the same play and strangely isn't consistent as even on same setting the spike can just not happen at all.