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7800 GS only slight improvement from 4-year-old GeForce 4??

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Anonymous
a b U Graphics card
June 13, 2006 7:19:28 PM

hello all,

in 2002, i got a top-of-the-line dell system with

Pentium 4 2.53 ghz processor
1 gig of ram
geforce 4 AGP video card w/ 128mb

it's held up pretty well throughout the years. it can run half-life 2 pretty decently, but i would really like to increase my fps.

SO, i bit ago a bought a EVGA GeForce 7800 GS AGP w/ 256mb

it did improve game performce a bit but only slightly. my fps only went up on average 5 or 10 frames. some new effects were able to come through, as well, which has been nice.

i thought this card was going to make all my games run so smoothly, according to the reviews and whatnot. overall, i've been dissapointed with its marginal improvement.

i was wondering if i have done something wrong, or if part of my system is holding me back. what can i do to gain the highest increase of fps?

today, playing counter-strike: source @ 1024x768 w/ medium quality settings, the frame rate sunk to below 30 at parts.

i am really confused, as i thought this card would perform better. ANY help would be greatly appreciated.

thank you.

More about : 7800 slight improvement year geforce

June 13, 2006 7:41:33 PM

Be sure you update your motherboard drivers.
Anonymous
a b U Graphics card
June 13, 2006 7:49:31 PM

how do i found out what make/model motherboard i have?

device manager or something else?
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June 13, 2006 7:52:43 PM

Coul a 2.53 GHZ CPU be a bottleneck?
June 13, 2006 7:53:40 PM

You will have to open up your box and look at the motherboard. I would also look up and make sure it is an agp 8x and not a 4x slot. I went from a 6600gt to a 7800gs and the performance difference is outst anding. I do have a 3.7ghz pentium 4 though. I dont know if your processor is the bottleneck or not. The other thing is how much ram do you have in your box, and what kind is it?
June 13, 2006 7:55:22 PM

Your board probably only supports 4x agp and your new card is 8x agp.
June 13, 2006 7:59:58 PM

theres no diff between 4x and 8x agp.. ok there is but very little, 5 fps at most, and thats only if the slot is the bottleneck, css at 1024 will not have a agp slot bottleneck. u prob didnt update ur nvidia drivers, u may have a very outdated version, prob havnt updated it since u got ur computer so thats probably the problem, check ur drivers and that should fix it, 30fps is very low for a drop on medium settings, i highly doubt the cpu is a bottleneck at those fps... also check in the bios to make sure fastwrite is enabled, this makes it run much faster.
June 13, 2006 8:02:41 PM

Quote:
Your board probably only supports 4x agp and your new card is 8x agp.

That won't make any difference.

2.53GHz P4 isn't really a bottleneck, it could be, but not a huge one.
June 13, 2006 8:03:59 PM

Wouldn't suprise me if the 2.53GHz 533MHZ FSB P4 is bottlenecking you. P4s were complete garbage until they hit the 800MHz FSB. Finally gave them an advantage over the Athlon XPs for a little while.

AGP 4x vs 8x is practically no difference.
June 13, 2006 8:08:30 PM

You don't really need to worry about what motherboard you have, but you can if you want. If you go to the dell support website and enter in the service tag id that is on the sticker on the side of your case, next to the windows sticker, the website will tell you everything about your machine.

However, all you really need to do is go the intel website and download the chipset inf file. I guess you should use the dell website to find out what chipset you have, and then get the driver file for that particular chipset. You could also download the file from Dell if you wanted, but I would get it from intel.

I'm assuming that since your original video driver wouldn't recognise the new card, then you must have installed the new driver that came with the card? However, if you didn't get it from nvidia.com, I would probably go out and get that latest nvidia driver too, but that isn't causing this problem, IMO.

The processor and platform might bottleneck your new card somewhat, but I would expect you to get better performance than what you are getting right now.
June 13, 2006 8:09:00 PM

Definately a driver issue as I run CS:S on high @ 1280x1024 with my x800. My processor's faster, but not by so much that you should be bottlenecked to that extent. I'd try updating video drivers first and then mobo drivers if that doesn't help.
June 13, 2006 8:13:52 PM

my athlon 2400 and 9600pro with 1 gb memory can css on medium at 1024 at higher fps average than this kids dell. the athlon 2400 is quite a bit slower than the 2.53 and the 9600 was deff the bottleneck in my system, still the fps was higher, im deff going with a driver problem, video driver not chipset. go to whatever the manufactures website is and get the latest
June 13, 2006 8:19:08 PM

While I'm nearly 100% confident this is a driver issue, and my guess is a chipset driver issue, I would like to know for sure.

So, when you go to update drivers, please do it one at a time so you can determine which one is was.

The card is so new and the driver version that will come with that card is so new that any updated driver from either the manufacturers website or the nvidia.com website will be very close to what came shipped with the card.

Assuming that driver shipped with the card was what was already installed, because of course the older driver would not have recognized the new card, then I personally think the problem is the chipset driver. Just a little Sherlock Holmes power of deduction, or, whatever. :wink: This of course is all leading from the assumption the video driver shipped with the card has already been installed. I have one of those cards and the shipped version for mine was 81.98, I think.

I'd like to know for sure though, just our of curiosity. :p 
June 13, 2006 8:33:27 PM

...2.53GHz 533MHZ FSB P4 ...doesn't bottleneck nearly as bad as some have stated. My secondary machine has a P4 2.53/533mhz and it runs CS:Source great at 1024 res.
June 13, 2006 8:59:15 PM

Download the latest nVidia graphics driver for your OS from here.

Uninstall your current GRAPHICS driver.

Install the driver you just downloaded from nVidia.

Source is CPU sensitive but I believe a P4 2.53 is more than enough to run it well.
a b U Graphics card
June 13, 2006 10:25:23 PM

fresh reinstall?

defrag?
June 13, 2006 10:50:56 PM

Ok. First of all, there is DEFINATELY a driver problem. I have a Dell 4550 with a P4@ 2.4ghz/533 fsb with 1280mb ram and an x800 GTO in a 4x slot and I can play CS:Source with just about everything turned up and at 1024x 768 and get no problems with my framerates.

I would check out Dell's site for hardware updates and maybe a BIOS update from them. Before I got my x800 GTO, I updated all the hardware drivers and it worked in my aging system flawlessly.

You may want to check what you are starting up in msconfig. and if you have any spyware/viruses. That could also cause a slowdown.

Question: have you disabled all the Dell bloatware??
June 13, 2006 11:14:44 PM

The Half-Life 2 engine is very CPU demaning and you have a weak CPU. But it could also be a driver issue.

Runt 3dmark05 and compare your score with other 7800GS scores to see if there is something wrong with you computer or if it is only those games.
June 13, 2006 11:18:38 PM

It's your power supply.

A 7800GS absolutely has to have a power supply over 350watts *WITH* a +12V rail that pushes *18 Amps* preferably more. I'm guessing your +12v right now might be around 6.5-9V when it should never dip below 11.75V

Check your +12v rail in either your BIOS under PC Health, or with a utility called Speedfan (available at www.almico.com). Make sure it does not drop beneath 11.75v, as that would indicate that your system is running underpowered which would be the most likely cause of this issue.

I know first hand because I just had this problem myself. I had very mediocre FPS rates, and nobody could help me figure out why. I figured it out on my own and purchased an aspire 520w from Newegg for $49.99. It has a +12V rail that pushes 36amps and runs my card full out. I have literally doubled if not more my FPS and on higher detail settings.

It's a power hungry card, as are nearly every new card out today.
June 13, 2006 11:29:37 PM

Power is certainly something to consider, and the Dell is probably lacking some in that department.

The 7800gs is going to pull 50-65 watts, from memory, so it's not out of the question that his current PS could handle it. I think often people overestimate the amount of power required for machines, but in this case I think it's a good idea to check it out since that mahcine probably came with a smaller PS, probably 250W or something like that, as a guess. That doesn't mean it won't supply it, but it's worth checking out the voltages for sure.
June 13, 2006 11:35:59 PM

Quote:
hello all,

in 2002, i got a top-of-the-line dell system

And you probably havent formatted your hard drive since then.

Your 7800GS should be kicking ass, I havent had any problems with mine.
June 13, 2006 11:50:34 PM

If your voltages do show low using a monitoring program, what ever you do, don't buy a new one off the shelf before you verify if that particular Dell machine uses a proprietary PS. The older machines do, but I think they have changed and started using standard pin-outs for their power supplies.
June 14, 2006 1:18:37 AM

I can reasure you that the 7800gs by far is way faster, I have a 5700 and v8200 and 6800ge and all benches are with this system and the 7800 is 3000 points more than the 8200 and 2000 with the 5700 and the 6800 you can see from my orb.
Anonymous
a b U Graphics card
June 14, 2006 3:07:46 PM

here's the system layout, other than the 7800 GS AGP and a new Antec 500W Power Supply w/ smartpower 2.0...

Quantity Parts # Part Description
1 0R788 PROCESSOR, 80532, 2.53G, 512K, 533FSB, SOFTWARE KOGYO
1 1T751 ASSEMBLY, CARD (CIRCUIT), PLANAR (MOTHERBOARD), 850E, TRANSFORMER SKY DIVE MINITOWER, DIMENSION
1 6H257 KEYBOARD, 104, 6P, UNITED STATES, AUDIO, NMB, MIDNIGHT GRAY
1 4P608 MOUSE, UNIVERSAL SERIAL BUS, 2BTN, WHEEL, OPTICAL, LOGITECH
1 8R835 CARD (CIRCUIT), CONTROLLER, PC INTERFACE, USB-2.0, ADAPTEC, DIMENSION/PRECISION
4 4T235 RAMBUS INLINE MEMORY MODULE, 256, 400M, 128X16, 8C, 40
1 4J133 KIT, SPEAKER, 120V, ADA995, DELL AMERICAS ORGANIZATION
1 1P930 KIT, COMPACT DISKETTE, COMPACT DISK READ WRITE, ROXIO, V5.2
1 2P509 COMPACT DISK READ WRITE, 680M, I, 5.25" FORM FACTOR, 40X, NEC CORPORATION, CHASSIS 2001
1 5740C CABLE, AUXILIARY, INTERNAL, MODEM, 4C
1 8F217 MODEM, V.92, INTERNAL, DATA/FAX/VOICE, SOFT, Z, DIMENSION
1 0R575 DIGITAL VIDEO DISK DRIVE, 680M, 16X, I, 5.25" FORM FACTOR, LITEON, CHASSIS 2001, V3
1 38FRH CARD (CIRCUIT), MULTI-MEDIA, AUDIO, SANTA CRUZ
1 4N458 CARD (CIRCUIT), GRAPHICS, 128MB, NV25, DIMENSION
1 6D822 ASSEMBLY, CABLE, VIDEO, PRECISION WORKSTATION
1 5R212 FLOPPY DRIVE, 1.44M, 3.5" FORM FACTOR, 3MD, NO BEZEL, NEC CORPORATION, CHASSIS 2001
1 7J379 HARD DRIVE, 80G, I, 1N, 7.2K, 40G/P, MAXTOR VIPER
1 6K223 KIT, SOFTWARE, WKS-STE2K2, 5.25" FORM FACTOR, ORIGINAL EQUIPMENT MFGR., ENGLAND/ENGLISH
1 9T412 KIT, SOFTWARE, APPIAN, DELL IMAGE EXPERT 2000, PREMIUM, DELL AMERICAS ORGANIZATION
1 8T301 KIT, SOFTWARE, APPIAN, PAINT SHOP PRO, V7.05, ENGLAND/ENGLISH, DELL AMERICAS ORGANIZATION
1 1R596 KIT, SOFTWARE, OVERPACK, WINDOWS XP PROFESSIONAL, COMPACT DISKETTE W/DOCUMENTATION, ENGLAND/ENGLISH, A02
1 8R093 KIT, DOCUMENTATON ON FLOPPY DISK, SOFTWARE, DIGITAL VIDEO DISK DRIVE, CYBERLINK, 4.0C.11
1 6P578 CARD (CIRCUIT), NETWORK, PC INTERFACE, INTEL, PRO-100M
1 5K430 KIT, SOFTWARE, LUCASFILM THX CERTIFICATION, ENGLAND/ENGLISH, WINDOWS XP, SUPPORT
1 6D251 DISPLAY, CATHODE-RAY TUBE, 21, DUAL, P1130, MIDNIGHT GRAY, DELL AMERICAS ORGANIZATION
Anonymous
a b U Graphics card
June 14, 2006 3:13:28 PM

Quote:
hello all,

in 2002, i got a top-of-the-line dell system

And you probably havent formatted your hard drive since then.

Your 7800GS should be kicking ass, I havent had any problems with mine.

actually, i put a 2nd harddrive like 3 years ago, and i format the system drive several times a year.
June 14, 2006 3:15:29 PM

Ok, so you have already swapped your PSU....luckily Dell appears to have stopped using proprietary power supplies. :wink:

CARD (CIRCUIT), PLANAR (MOTHERBOARD), 850E, TRANSFORMER SKY DIVE MINITOWER, DIMENSION

You have an 850e chipset.

850 Chipset drivers

Above someone gave a link to the nvidia drivers. Get those 2 and you should be good. If that doesn't work, then I would probably suggest a fresh install of the OS, like also mentioned by someone above.
Anonymous
a b U Graphics card
June 14, 2006 4:24:36 PM

i uninstalled the nvidia drivers and reinstalled the latest ones from their website, but it didn't help anything. :( 
June 14, 2006 4:50:48 PM

OK, what about the chipset drivers?
June 14, 2006 6:00:17 PM

Quote:
hello all,

in 2002, i got a top-of-the-line dell system

And you probably havent formatted your hard drive since then.

Your 7800GS should be kicking ass, I havent had any problems with mine.

True, true. But nowadays Mother doesn't like it when you re-install too much unless you satisfy her financially. Greedy whore! Although if the OP has true Dell re-install disks, that may not apply here.
June 14, 2006 6:06:11 PM

I would have thought the AGP drivers were included in the inf file...I thought I saw it was, but maybe not. In any case, you should look around in that chipset section and try to find anything related to AGP.

You might also want to check at the dell site and see what they list for your computer, but in most cases I have the best luck going right to the source, either Intel, nvidia, etc.
Anonymous
a b U Graphics card
June 14, 2006 6:56:43 PM

well, this has been disappointing. i wish i could figure this thing out and play my games as i thought they would.

anyway, i really appreciate the help from everyone.

after i installed the new chipset drivers, cs looked a bit better, but it slowed it down quite a bit. i'm not sure. maybe i should just start looking at a new processor/motherboard/chipset/ram setup...
June 14, 2006 7:18:51 PM

How many processes are you running in the background? What antivirus software are you using?
June 14, 2006 7:36:32 PM

Quote:
Wouldn't suprise me if the 2.53GHz 533MHZ FSB P4 is bottlenecking you. P4s were complete garbage until they hit the 800MHz FSB.


Sorry, but that's nonsense. I have a P4-3.06, and it runs fine with a 7800GS.

As for the original poster, this may well be the 'cold bug'. Check the card temperature, because the 7800GS runs at 20% of full speed below 38C.

If that's the problem you'll need a new BIOS to disable the temperature checks in the driver until nvidia fix it properly. Not sure which card you're using, but XFX have one on their web site for their cards.
Anonymous
a b U Graphics card
June 14, 2006 7:38:30 PM

i am running zonealarm.

right now, it's requiring 30,000 K of memory usage.
June 14, 2006 7:43:15 PM

Well, or driver problem or a bad card. The cpu can be a bottleneck, but not by much.
I'm able to run cs:s stress test 1280 4xAA and trilinear and get 75fps with a 6600gt
June 14, 2006 8:32:32 PM

Disable Vertical Sync (Vsync) in the Driver setup, in Display Properties.
June 14, 2006 8:33:20 PM

Quit leading the guy on, changing drivers, updating apps etc, 4x vs 8x etc. Those help but the bottom line is memory bandwidth and indirectly the CPU due architecture limitations of the CPU.

If you so much as looked at the interactive CPU charts at Tom's you'd see it, even though they did the tests with a 6800GT.
http://www23.tomshardware.com/cpu_2004.html?modelx=33&m...

http://www23.tomshardware.com/cpu_2004.html?modelx=33&m...

You can see how CPU an memory can cap the max performance of the video card.

I know this first hand and its especially pronounced when you compare say a 2400+xp and A64-3000 which I have tested using the same DDR400 and the same 6800GT video card I had at that time. The cap of the 2.53 P4 is only marginally higher than the 2400+xp, so it is too be expected that you wouldn't see much of a performance gain.

At the minimum the motherboard has to be replaced, and at this point in the time it probably means the CPU needs to go to. The cheapes route would be something like a ULI1689 board (rought $60) and a A64-3000+939 ($100) and the 7800gs would not held back any more.
June 14, 2006 8:35:32 PM

I've said this before never ever buy a dell if the person wants power dells are not for the power user. if you cant get better performance with the 7800 than this proves how much dell really do suck like my orb shows the difference in fps in graphics opposed to the 3 4 and 6 most of us here agree that the g4 wont come close to fps I've worked on plenty of dells and each and every one, I told them to get rid of it. Tonight I am putten a burner in a computer for a guy that had one ,he call me when he had the dell. His problem was performance just like you. I tried every thing to speed it up with very little improvement after spending half of the day I said its dells shitty parts that is the problem and I suggest him to buy the list of parts and he did after that day I only had to visit him to repair a virus and now the burner very satified customer but not so with dell at all.
June 14, 2006 8:39:16 PM

Which ZoneAlarm?

How many processes are running in the Windows Task Manager and do any of them look very suspicious, like a bunch of random numbers and letters?
June 14, 2006 9:11:01 PM

If that psu doesn't fit because of the power cable placement hole on the back of the computer, then you can purchase a Dell specific psu here

Hope it helps.
June 14, 2006 10:11:27 PM

Quote:
You can see how CPU an memory can cap the max performance of the video card.


Sigh. Now try a benchmark that's not CPU-limited... like most modern games.

There's absolutely no reason why a 7800GS should be getting frame-rates that low. A very simple way to prove that the CPU is irrelevant would be to push up the resolution in Counter-Strike to 1600x1200 or 2048x1536: if the game runs slower, it ain't the CPU causing the problem.
June 14, 2006 10:21:33 PM

GNome, did you try running Driver Cleaner? That's very important when you don't reformat between switching graphics cards.

I don't know about Zone Alarm, but I imagine that DirectX suspends it during games.
June 14, 2006 10:38:47 PM

alright i got one for ya....is your motherboard agp 3.0 compliant? just thought i would ask im not sure
June 14, 2006 11:23:52 PM

Yes, Dump It For At-Least A 3GHz+ CPU, Or Better Yet Sell The POS And Build One With A Athlon 64
June 14, 2006 11:44:10 PM

For those saying to dump the platform, lets look back objectively at what was originally said.

A 4 year old video card, arguably a very good one for the time and one that beats a lot of the 5xxx series of cards, but still this box only sees an improvement of 10 fps when upgraded to a state of the art card, at least per the original posters description for one particular game.

Now, lets consider for a moment, what if that original card had been upgraded 2 years ago to some state-of-the-art card at that time, what ever it may have been. Do you think you would have expected a larger increase in performance than 10 fps, all things considered with respect to resolution and detail settings? I would.

I guess the real question is this: Do you think a GF4 was on the edge of being bottlenecked by that particular machine back in 2002 when it was a brand new computer? That's essentially what everyone who thinks the platform is at fault is saying, and I am not convinced you are right.
June 15, 2006 12:29:06 AM

It could be that you're running into the cold throttle bug, that appears to affect those cards...

I picked up a GS just after they came out, installed it into my 3ghz P4 rig, replacing my old x800, eagerly booted Oblivion, and felt my heart sink as my shiny new graphics card delivered a storming 5fps.

What temperature is your card running at?

I found that if I manually held the fan on my card, to stop it spinning (no, seriously), until the gpu temperature passed 39oC, and then ran a game, the performance was great. No complaints at all.

Having established that it was the cold throttle bug, some forum surfing around these parts, led me to the tools that I needed to turn the feature off in the cards BIOS, i.e. no more stopping the fan, until the things temperature had crept up, before kicking off a 3d app.

It's certainly worth checking what temp your card is running at, and seeing if it does speed up above 40oC, if it's running cool, before you go upgrading random bits of your system.

D.
a b U Graphics card
June 15, 2006 9:13:53 AM

Quote:
Yes, Dump It For At-Least A 3GHz+ CPU, Or Better Yet Sell The POS And Build One With A Athlon 64


ummm better ideas - either overclock it like hell (cpu), format the system and start fresh (always helps anyhow) or yeah sell all of it but NO buy a up and coming conroe system (current systems are a space waster and cost way more then when conroe comes out).
a b U Graphics card
June 15, 2006 9:17:58 AM

Quote:
It could be that you're running into the cold throttle bug, that appears to affect those cards...

I picked up a GS just after they came out, installed it into my 3ghz P4 rig, replacing my old x800, eagerly booted Oblivion, and felt my heart sink as my shiny new graphics card delivered a storming 5fps.

What temperature is your card running at?

I found that if I manually held the fan on my card, to stop it spinning (no, seriously), until the gpu temperature passed 39oC, and then ran a game, the performance was great. No complaints at all.

Having established that it was the cold throttle bug, some forum surfing around these parts, led me to the tools that I needed to turn the feature off in the cards BIOS, i.e. no more stopping the fan, until the things temperature had crept up, before kicking off a 3d app.

It's certainly worth checking what temp your card is running at, and seeing if it does speed up above 40oC, if it's running cool, before you go upgrading random bits of your system.

D.


somehow i dont think so
a b U Graphics card
June 15, 2006 9:19:28 AM

Quote:
alright i got one for ya....is your motherboard agp 3.0 compliant? just thought i would ask im not sure


um yeah check out benchmarks done years ago - theres like some huge 5% advantage of agp2x against agp8x
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