Whats wrong with my system?

[athlon3400]

When I play high end games like far cry or doom 3 my machines lags like crazy, when I go to open doors it will pause and the graphics are kind of glitchy. In Doom 3 I have the graphics set on medium or high quality and the graphics seem to clip, no artifacts just 'clip' I dont really know how to explain it better than that.

My specs:
Athlon XP-M @ 2.7ghz 200*13.5 @ 1.94V
512 kingston hyper-X dual channel 2.5-3-3-8
Abit NF7-S Rev-2
MSI 9800Pro flashed to XT @ 400/355 for some reason i get artifacts overclocking this card, I have a thermaltake Giant III on it with a case fan blowing over it all and it still wont evenr each XT speeds.
WD 200Gig Sata
Modified Aquarius 2 liquid cooling system
Antec True Blue 350watt PS


Thanks for your time
-Athlon

 

[athlon3400]

One thing I noticed that is very strange is when I run pcmark02 my memory scores are only around 2000, with 2X256 in dual channel with a fsb of 200 shouldn't they be around 4000?

-Thanks

 

[TWC]

You need a gig of ram, this will stop the hitches when doors open and cut your load times in half. Your card is NOT an XT so why would you think it would do XT clocks? If its artifacting its probably the VRAM, try some vantec solid copper ramsinks.

http://www.sidewindercomputers.com/vaiccobgara.html

P4 2.8 @ 3Ghz, Radeon 9800Pro 380/340, 1GB Corsair xms DDR333, Audigy 2ZS on Boston Acoustics B7800 4.1's, Western Digital 7200rpm 80gb SE, Antec True Power 480W

 

[athlon3400]

I think its an XT because it has a R360 core, so it IS an XT, I flashed the bios to the medion XXL bios and it is now an XT card with 128megs of ram. I have a thermaltake giant III cooler on it as well as ram sinks.

 

[RubberPants]

Deffinetly need more ram, I had 512 and would get lag in those games too, put another gig in and I'm flying

P4 3.0 Ghz HT 800Mhz FSB
1.5 GB Dual Channel DDR PC3200
ATI Radeon 9800 pro

 

[jammydodger]

Doom3 uses some very large textures, in high mode it only compresses these a bit and it ultra mode it does not compress them at all. Therefore you need huge ammounts of video card RAM. Yours only has 128meg, you need 256 for high and 512 for ultra.

 

[athlon3400]

Well thats good to know, because today I bought a new dual channel ram kit(2 X 512 of 3200)

One more thing, what is an average score in pcmark04 for 3200 dual channel, I cant get into the ORB and I cant seem to find anyone with an amd system running a gig of 3200.

Thanks
-Athlon

 

[jammydodger]

I think the limit is with your video RAM rather than your system RAM, but increasing the system RAM will prolly help too.

 

[sweatlaserxp]

it has a R360 core, so it IS an XT

That doesn't mean that your particular chip is suitable for XT speeds. Also, the 9800XT has faster VRAM at tighter mem. timings, another significant issue. They choose the XT chips based on factory tests, not simply on the number of the core.

<A HREF="http://atomfilms.shockwave.com/landing/landingIndex.jsp?id=dumb01&mature=accept" target="_new">DumbLand</A>

 

[addiarmadar]

Freezing at the doors in doom 3 is "texture thrashing" which involves lack of video memory. Really cannot avoid that even when upping the cache in the cfg file.

After flashing the AGP card and you get snow then you need better cooling solutions on the core. Snow could also be a result of lack of voltage to the core for the clock speed but you are below xt speeds so that is not it. Artifacting could be normal side effect for the 9800s using the r350core, notice this in 3dmark03. I cannot play my core on my 9800pro-xt past 405 without snow showing up in Doom 3.

In your case, glitches are defiantely not good. Flash the card back to pro and run stock and OC ot XT speed to see if it still does it. If you dont have ramsinks on the AGP card then please do it.

<i><font color=red>Only an overclocker can make a computer into a convectional oven.</i></font color=red>

 

[addiarmadar]

Oh yeah another thing, get another 512mb stick of RAM. Doom 3 uses more than that on the average high quality and paging is such a bitch. Could very well be you "clipping" problem.

<i><font color=red>Only an overclocker can make a computer into a convectional oven.</i></font color=red>

 

[athlon3400]

I already bought new ram, I now am running 1.25 gigs in dual channel with tight timings. I didnt flash the card to XT I just changed the card ID in the bios to an XT, the bios is still factory. I dont get artifacts unless I go past 400/365 even though I have a thermaltake Giant III dual heatpipe cooler on it. So basically the only thing I can do to run these games on high settings is to buy a new video card? Even though I jsut spend $350 on this 9800pro?


Thanks,
-Athlon

 

[sweatlaserxp]

Another issue is that overclocking a mid-range card in Doom 3 barely yields any performance increase. The difference is more dramatic on the new cards.

<A HREF="http://atomfilms.shockwave.com/landing/landingIndex.jsp?id=dumb01&mature=accept" target="_new">DumbLand</A>

 

[addiarmadar]

I run Doom3 fine on high with my 9800 pro. May wanna tweak the cfg file around follow that game tweek from Humus, believe there is a posting of that here.

<i><font color=red>Only an overclocker can make a computer into a convectional oven.</i></font color=red>

 

[Coyote]

Get the Humus Tweak (just google it). It really cut down on the "freezing" when opening doors etc in Doom3. The tweak is for ATI cards. Also make sure you have at least the Cat4.9's (IIRC), they supposedly have a Doom 3 tweak in them too.

Actually, there are quite a few tweak guides out there for D3. Some of these improve performance or visuals. Here's an example <A HREF="http://ucguides.savagehelp.com/Doom3/FPSVisuals.htm" target="_new">http://ucguides.savagehelp.com/Doom3/FPSVisuals.htm</A>. They detail out the specific setting in the cfg. file

Mobile XP 2600+ (11X200)
Abit NF7-S v 2.0
Maxtor 60GB ATA 133 7200RPM
512MB Corsair Twinx 3200LL
BBA 9800 Pro
Enermax Noisetaker 420 watts
Win2K sp4