Low performance on 295 GTX

[Alcartur]

Hello all, I just noticed that my 295 GTX is not performing as it should, while playing MW3 I couldn't use AA, had to set shadow to low and other couple of things just to get an acceptable FPS, another thing that got me questioning my VGA performance is Far cry 2, I've seen some benchmarks where the 295 GTX would get average 93 FPS on Very High, but when i run the far cry 2 bench on Very High my average FPS is 41, I also found a page on the nvidia site that says the optimal settings for a game with you VGA and the average FPS you should get from it, I tried it with Just cause 2 and I got barely 30 FPS where the nvidia website said I should get 49 average FPS (or 41, I don't remember).

My Specs

CPU: QuadCore AMD Phenom II X4 Black Edition 955, 3200 MHz (16 x 200)

PSU: Corsair 850w

DIMM1: Kreton 51634xxxx68x6502xx 2 GB DDR3-1333 DDR3 SDRAM (8-8-8-22 @ 609 MHz) (7-7-7-20 @ 533 MHz) (6-6-6-17 @ 457 MHz)
DIMM2: Kreton 51634xxxx68x6502xx 2 GB DDR3-1333 DDR3 SDRAM (8-8-8-22 @ 609 MHz) (7-7-7-20 @ 533 MHz) (6-6-6-17 @ 457 MHz)
DIMM3: OCZ Gold XTC OCZ3G13332G 2 GB DDR3-1066 DDR3 SDRAM (7-7-7-16 @ 533 MHz) (6-6-6-14 @ 457 MHz) (5-5-5-12 @ 380 MHz)
DIMM4: OCZ Gold XTC OCZ3G13332G 2 GB DDR3-1066 DDR3 SDRAM (7-7-7-16 @ 533 MHz) (6-6-6-14 @ 457 MHz) (5-5-5-12 @ 380 MHz)

MotherBoard: ECS A790GXM-AD3

And my current nvidia driver is the 285.62

 

[HEXiT]

take out the slower ram its not really needed. 4 gigs is plenty to play most games
you should always use the same speed and latencies as not doing so will cause the mmu to mix and match the timings often forcing the ram to work to a spec its not designed for... this can cause harm to both the ram and the cpu in the mid to long term. this may actually solve your problem as its likley to reduce the cpu temps as the mmu wont have to work as hard which in turn stops the cpu from throttling if it gets close to or above its max.

next try different drivers to see if that makes a diff... go back a few iterations to be sure.
as for the benches you want to check your temps and voltages. the 295 will work very well with that cpu on most games. on mw3 you should be getting 91 fps solid with everything turned on, native settings and 2-4x fsaa.
so either its not getting enough power due to a failing psu or its overheating... corsair are a decent brand but they fail like any other, just not explosively so try moving the power to the gfx onto a different rail if you can. if performance picks up then the psu has a fault.
if your temps are off then make sure its free of dust by spraying compressed air into the vents and into any gaps you can get the nozzle into.
lastly , good luck...

 

[Alcartur]

The temp is good, it never goes higher then 85º at full load and if the PSU where at fault what kind of symptoms should I be looking for? Because the system isn't instable, running burn in tests doesn't crash my comp. I'll try removing the ram modules.

 

[HEXiT]

than it may just be down to the ram, but the max temp of that cpu is 62'c do if your hitting 80 then you have a problem. amd cpu's rearly throttle often they just burn out.
if your meaning 80'f then you still may have a problem coz the operating temp of that cpu is around 50'c/122'f even with good cooling. so you may have a temp issue being hidden by a bad gauge.