7900GT low performance - any ideas?

[obliviongate]

Hi all. New to the forums, wondering if you could help.

I have just installed a 7900gt onto a HP mobo with a 3.2 Prescott P4. I have 2GB of standard 3200 RAM. The 7900GT is overclocked to theoretical maximums.

I've had it installed for a while and i made sure old drivers were removed and updated with the current BETA drivers. The drivers complained at first that the card wasn't getting enough power, and was running in super slo-mo safe mode or something, so i went out and purchased a new 450W supply. The new drivers didn't complain again.

However, i just ran a 3Dmark 05 and was expecting 9k+ but ended up with only 7400 points. Now, i know this isn't bad, but I was expecting more. F.E.A.R is showing average frame rates of about 63 FPS at 1024 x 768, 4x AA and 8x AF.

Is this FPS ok for F.E.A.R for my card, and what about 3DMark 05? I know that is low, but could that simply be my CPU bottlenecking the results. Would you say 3.2Ghz P4 is ok for this card? By the way, my HP-Asus mobo refuses to overclock the CPU through BIOS or windows.

Thanks

 

[The_Prophecy]

well lets see.... first... slap yourself for using a beta version of a video driver. That's almost as dumb and pointless as going out and formatting your system to install Vista. Version 84.21 should be the latest stable release of the Nvidia drivers... go get that and you'll probably see a nice improvment in those benchmarks.

 

[levicki]

84.43 drivers are AOK, I checked them on 7900GTX 512MB, and I am using them on 7800GT for a while now.
What happened to me once was 1800 pts instead of 2500 pts in 3D Mark 2006 SM3.0 test. It was caused (and I know it sounds totally weird but it is true) by system RAM working above the speed it could handle.
On the other hand, since you have overclocked the card you are maybe getting inverse effects -- past a certain speed it will slow down because of overheating and/or memory errors.

 

[obliviongate]

84.43 drivers are AOK, I checked them on 7900GTX 512MB, and I am using them on 7800GT for a while now.

On the other hand, since you have overclocked the card you are maybe getting inverse effects -- past a certain speed it will slow down because of overheating and/or memory errors.

Thanks for your reply. I don't think that it is the memory, because they are not super fast or anything, just standard DDR. I agree with you on the graphics drivers, and they are very stable. Infact, they are designed to cater specifically for 7xxx series card issues anyway.

I have overclocked the card, but it is very stable. The temperatures are very low considering, even in the most intensive games and I have never had any graphical issues or crashes.

I'm starting to think it must be my CPU, or is it ok? Does anyone else have this card with FEAR. Is 61-64 FPS ok for a 7900gt.

Thanks again. I really don't want to go out and buy a new motherboard and CPU.

 

[qkizz]

hi,
I have the same problem. Overclocking the card to 580/1840 helps just 300 points in 3dmark05 (7600 at stock settings and 7900 oc). Overclocking processor from 14x200 to 14x250 doesn't change much.

How can I see the beautiful over 8000 result in 3dmark05 what many, many people seems to get with no problem?

Going through 3dmark05 benchmark results database at futuremark I can't see much over 8000 results with P4 processors.

Your FEAR result seems to be sililar to mine.

I've recently found one guy complaining about the same issue at different forum. His solution was to update Intel chpset drivers to recent versions.
It didn't help in my case. But give it a try.

My conf:
-P4 520 2.8 @ 3.5 (14x250)
-2GB DDR2 667 (4-4-4-12)
-ASUS P5WD2
-OCZ 520W PSU
-XFX 7900gt

 

[gomerpile]

Users don’t really know that there is more to cooling the cpu and gpu for maxing the system. I have tested many different cooling setups and in interest I found the coils get very hot when ocing its this heat that causes the copper to weaken and this reduces the magnetism, this is what supplies the cpu with power my air system is doing a much better job at cooling down the coils or inductors. I am going with water cooled coils in my system I have tested the coil heat with different setups and it is a very true statement that when over volting the coils burn out and cause instability its not the cpu that burns out like people think it is the coils that weaken in magnetism this is the reason ocers don’t get what they use to get after ocing for a while the coils will tell you that they are strained by the color, the same problems occurs in cars trucks with coils in them. I have tested what I am saying here and it is the coils that cause the problems when a computer is cooled with a great cooling system but cant seem to get what some are getting this could be because the coils in one are a bit better quality than the others.

 

[qkizz]

System I have is new (except processor which was taken from 1 year old not OC computer).

Thermaltake Tsunami keeps my oc processor at 47C under the load.
Zalman VF-900cu will not let my graphics card exceed 50C under load.
System inside case stays at max 40C (2x120mm fans).
I'm not overvolting neither CPU nor GPU. Both works at stock voltages.
I do not think my system is overheating.