Stupid Question

[mykey37]

OK....
I just got a Geforce 7800GS OC from BFG to replace my 9800 pro. Problem is that this thing isnt performing any better than the old card. Now i looked up the specs for this thing and it needs at least 20Amps on the 12V rail to operate. I looked at my PSU which is an Antec 550W and it only pushes 19Amps through the 12V rails. Question is....Do you guys think the PS is why im getting such crappy performance? This thing should blow the 9800 out of the water.

Thanks in advance!

 

[cheetsy]

in my experience when i had power problems with a psu no where near as powerful (wattage wise) as that the nvidia drivers would pop up and tell me that the card wasnt getting enough power and that the speed was being reduced to compensate, so i dont suppose thats ur problem, but i might be wrong

what about ur other specs? mobo etc?

 

[Rugger]

It's not the PSU. Even though the ATX 12V v2.0 and later specifies two 12V rails, the two rails are not completely independent. Basically you can add the ams from both rails and subtract about 2 amps to get max amperage for the PSU. You may be having driver issues. How did you remove the drivers from the ATi card before you installed the nVidia card/drivers? If you didn't thoroughly remove the ATi drivers, then that may be at least one source for your issues...

 

[mykey37]

specs are
p4 3.0Ghz w/hyperthreading with 512 cache
1 gig p2100 ram ( i know)
ECS socket 478 Mobo with onboard LAN
SB Audigy 4 S.C.
40 Gig SATA 150 HD
40 Gig IDE HD


The thing is this card isnt giving any better performance than the 9800 pro i had

 

[mykey37]

I removed the drivers through add/remove programs and also searched the registry for anything pertaining to the ati card and deleted them.

funny thing is i tried running LTCYCFG which i ran with the radeon and it doesnt even show the video card there. Yet it does show up in device maager and i have installed the latest forceware drivers.

 

[cheetsy]

dont know whether it would make a difference as obviously it wont be there now but, when u removed ur radeon did you uninstall the device in device manager first?

 

[mykey37]

No.. I just removed it from the add/remove programs...

 

[cheetsy]

not sure whether that would have caused any problems, tbh ive always had nvidia cards so not made the swap, erm it cant hurt i guess to re install windows, that will sort out any software issues without the pain in the ass trouble shooting...

 

[mykey37]

well a reinstall of windows isn't on the top of my list but I can do it if need be.. I mean if all other methods fail then yes i can do a reinstall but that isn't something i want to try off the bat. But your right, it would definitely sort out a driver issue...

 

[cheetsy]

aye i know its a pain, but in theory as you said, if all else fails that should sort it!, perhaps try downloading one of those driver cleaner programs, not used one myself tho so i cant recommend them, and, registry crawler would be good for searching out all ati stuff, has a built in search function!

 

[mykey37]

I will give the cleaner stuff a try.. I also found it odd that the LTCYCFG program i run does not even show the video card. That right there tells me something is amiss. what that propgram does is allow you to reduce the latency of the agp card in order for it to run better. Thanks for all your input tho!

 

[cheetsy]

not familier with that program, im a PCI-E user anyhow, hope i was able to help, best of luck, if you manage to sort it let us know

 

[Rugger]

Use something like DriverCleaner to try and remove any remnants of the ATi drivers. In the future, the best way to remove a vid card and its associated drivers is to reboot into safe mode and uninstall the software/drivers from there.

 

[nukemaster]

What games are you playing on it?
i mean there is no real noticeable performance increase in some games. if u still play any game based on Quake3 (Q3, ET, Jedi-knight, and so on) they all by default max out at 91 fps or so unless you go and com_maxfps 999 or something like that.

Another thing to look into in v-sync, sync every frame and page flipping. they are all the same and all limit your frame rate to the refresh rate so at 60hz you will stay at 60 fps, 75 @ 75 fps and so on. if either of these are the case then you can just start maxing settings to get more out of your new card. i personally like vsync as it gets rid f the line you can get in high action areas on games. and if you lock it at lets say 60 then you never have to put up with the fps going up to 999 for some time then back to 70....then up to 200. i find it feels smother with v-sync on

as for PSU, good luck overloading that thing.

hope this helps

 

[mykey37]

I'm playing games like farcry, SW battlefront2, HL2, and things of that nature. I never use Vsync since i heard it limited your framerates. I will look at some driver settings and let you all know how it goes... Any other suggestions? let me know... Thx!

 

[mykey37]

Well, i ran the system in safe mode and deleted all drivers for my old ati card and also the nvidia and then istalled the latest nvidia drivers. My frames are the same but i dont think its card related now. I am getting little stutters in certain games like NFS MW but i am thinking it could be the hard drive. I saw these stutters before with my old card as well. I have a 40 gig sata 150 drive and i defragged it and it is a little better but still stutters. My next step is to get another drive and see how that goes. I installed the demo for BF2 and it runs really smooth were the ATI was chugging along with the same settings.

 

[Rugger]

How full is the HDD? Is your rig clean of adware/spyware?

 

[Datman]

When you used the cleaner was it called Catalyst Uninstaller, from the Ati website. As this removes ALL traces of the ati drivers.

 

[doolittle]

you can also try to get the latest mobo driver set & install it, maybe you removed the AGP GART driver by mistake along w/ your old drivers?

 

[splenda20]

I hate to break it to you, but there's a good chance that your limited by your CPU. Especially with those games. If the performance is identical or only slightly better, then that's the most likely culprit.

You might want to post this in the Graphics card forum as you might find some fresh ideas there.

 

[Grimmy]

I don't agree. The P4 3Ghz should be good enough.

Though, the memory... PC 2100 - might be a bottle neck.

I thought that (3ghz) P4 is a 800FSB mhz processor.

Prehaps DDR400 (PC3200) would help out some?

Though I guess the MB might not run it if it only supports 533/400, and then again, it won't run that P4 at 3ghz if that was the case.

 

[poO_onyou]

I replaced my 9800pro with a 7800gt. The new 7800gt was performing worse then my 9800pro. After using driver cleaning programs, and several driver reinstalls I gave up and RMA'ed the 7800gt. The replacement card worked great no problems and blew my 9800 out of the water performance wise.

 

[Grimmy]

Errr.. 7800GT? You mean.. GS?

What was the replacement card?

The same thing.. since it was an RMA?

 

[poO_onyou]

My card was a EVGA 7800gt, not the GS, and the replacement card was the exact same make/model. I just wanted to point out the card could be flawed since my replacement works excellently. The orignal card worked... it just ran Counter Strike: Source on low graphics and resultion with 30fps. I get a constant 100fps now.

 

[Grimmy]

I read the post, but not the name.. Thought you were mykey37.

Sorry... ponyou

Just going from a 9800pro to 7800GT would mean.. MB upgrade.. heh