I recently built a new computer and included:
a Pentium D 820
1 gig of PC2-3200(iknow i skimped out)
300W power supply (came with case)
regular cd/dvd burners, nothing special
and i splurged on a Geforce 7800 GTX512

I just finished installing lost coast and performed the video stress test all maxed at 1920x1440. I got a vary good framerate at 66fps. Then i wanted to see how far it could really go, so i put everything at vary lowest settings at 640x480. At the end of the stress test, I got about 68FPS. Since there was little performance diffrence in the two I figured something is bottlenecking at 68 or so fps but im not sure if it is the CPU, MEM, PSU, a combination thereof, or even all of the above. Any tips would be appreciated!

your CPU is probably holding you from getting more, but so what at 60+ fps. If you want more you need a dual core 4800.

300W PSU with a GTX 512??? I suggest you changed that before something fries. Ummm...maybe your Vsync is on^^;;;? (is no genious in the matter)

I have Vsync turned off and the 300 W PSU seems to do pretty well but it might be starving my card. BTW a 4800 would take a new mobo and I dont want to spend that much on my comp after spending that much on the video card.

Unless you WANT to burn the $750 or so you spent on the GTX512 get a better power supply. 300W is not enough--regardless of brand.

I agree, I would at least get a $90 550watt Antec TruePower or better quality one.

While it can be debated on the quality of the PS if you do the math, most system DO NOT need more than 300 watts of power..

If you do any research, you will see that the total for his system is prb around 250 watts..

This hype about 400-500 watts PS is just vendor overkill

Running a quality 300 watt PS with basically same kind of setup except for an Athlon and my mesured (yes I mesured) power consumption is 235 watts under load..

My 2 cents..

BTW in the bottleneck is prb the CPU as mentionned

A 300 watt PSU that comes with case is generally low quality and does not output much over 200 watts without maxing power...

CPU could be the bottle neck, since most games are not Multi-threaded apps.. some may perform worse or better. Try changing the affinity of the process to one cpu if not already or to both. Theres an article as well as some benchmark results of this on TH.. http://www.tomshardware.com/2004/0 [...] index.html

First of all he is using a P4 820, so it uses about 305 Watts AT IDLE. Secondly, the processor is not the bottleneck unless he has a less than sufficient cooling solution for it. May sound silly, but disable Hyperthreading and see if you get better performance. HT usually slows down games and is optomized primarily for multitasking.

If that doesn't help cpu has nothing to do with it...its either your mobo drivers or possibly video drivers. You definately need a bigger PSU for this config though...

like the otherS i strongly approve that your psu need to be changed fast....

by the way wattage in psu is an average for all the llines in it 3v 12v ect...

what really matters for the video card is the amperes. you should have at least 15 amps on the 12v line to be safe for the vidcard.

an amp is a power production rate of 1 watt per volt.

even if the 7800gtx512 is less power ungry than it's predecessor you need a good 12v lline to feed it. Some site advertise it to gulp up to 100w
by itself.

a good psu is not expensive and will protect your system by maintaining the ohm's law balance. If you starve the card or cpu of voltage the AMPS AND HEAT WILL ROCKET SKY HIGH AND FRY SOMETHING.

Hope it help you understand electricity.

Either get a new power supply or sell you disk drives.

The glass is neither half full nor half empty, the glass is twice the size it needs to be.

who needs disk drive anyway ?

maybe lafontma could get a LaCie bigdisk with a external power supply
and win his point +

Images can go a long way, but then again, so can prison time.

check for a patch or update for the game and card, also some driver setting force image quality[vsync] set it to performance or by app what ever you have in driver. 3dmark05[free demo] score is a better test of cards performance,and SiSoftware Sandra 2005[free trial] will give a full system rating.

what's your Mobo? the bottleneck should be your Mobo. A good video card cannot unleash its full potential if you pair it w/ a lame Mobo & chipset.