Poor game performance, expensive machine

[rob_jeffers]

OK before we start ill go through my setup

-Pentium 805d 2.66ghz @3.6ghz
-Gigabyte GA-965p-DS3
-2gb DC G.Skill pc2-5400 cas4 667mhz ram (2x1GB)
-Connect3d ati radeon x1900 xt 512mb gddr3 @1440x900
-Creative soundblaster X-Fi xtreame music
-Hiper type r 580w atx2.2 psu
-sata2 maxtor diamondmax plus 17 160gb hdd.

The problem is, i am not experiencing very good graphic performance, on any game, BF2 and Now 2142 are the games i play the most now, but i can only get an average of 40 fps, and other games, not noticing the fps are actualy not as smooth as i was expecting, i have a good graphics card (or at least i thought i did) and i was sure that bf2 should have no problems with full video settings, Well its only 40fps.

I did think that my processing power was the problem at 2.66ghz(stock) so i began overclocking it, im happy with 3.6, 3.7 was good but i had 1 or 2 issues, but the overclocking has only marginaly increased fps to about 5.

Ive also lowered the resolution to 800x600 in bf2 and still, 40fps.

Ive paid good money for this system (£1200) and i dont see why it should be performing so sluggishly.

Any ideas as to what the problem is.

 

[mesarectifier]

Have you updated your graphics drivers?

Have you cleared out any old ones?

What temps does your 805 run at?

What temps does your 1900 run at?

 

[celewign]

First of all, the BF2 engine is very sloppy. I dont want to be rude, but the folks at Dice tend to push out games that are... programmed quickly. Dice and EA have a set of very good titles with the Battlefield series, but a game shouldn't need tons of patches to make it playable. BF2 is not necessarily a good indicator of your computers power.

But still, it should do better than 40fps I imagine.

If its 40fps always, then try to find what is bottlenecking the machine. It must be a bottleneck somewhere. Ive played 2142 frequently at higher resolutions and gotten over 40fps with a weaker machine.

Have you tried emailing EA about it??
-cm

 

[muffin]

perhaps you have a very low refresh rate set on your monitor and your video card set for syncing each frame. my 6800gt plays BF2 just fine at 1024 by 768 with sync on...mine's set to 75 hz. just a thought.

 

[PC_God]

Stock cooler goes in trash, get same cooler I use in sig.

 

[dubplatepressure]

Stock cooler goes in trash, get same cooler I use in sig.

Agreed. On a side note I OC'd my 805 D stably up to about 3.5, but it wasnt stable for very long under load... Even at stock 2.66 it gets above 60 degrees celcius under heavy load for longer periods of use, so I can only imagine your pushing that chip up to 3.6 with the stock fan.... not safe.

 

[muffin]

what is your monitor? If it's a slower (25ms) timed LCD, then with vsync it should be pretty much exactly 40 fps. Check your display properties before you replace parts.

 

[swifty_morgan]

Over at the enquirer.net, or from Micosoft..... do a search at the update page, for directx 9c.... update for October 2006. This update suppose to fix some problems with bf2142. Good luck

 

[rob_jeffers]

Ok, i downloaded the new direct x, and found away to overide the frequency from 60hz to 75hz in catalyst control center. I also downloaded the latest inf for my monitor, which by the way is a belinea Can be Found here. which only really looks good on 1440x900 on desktop but most games will operate at 1024x768. I also selected in bf2142. 1024x768 @75hz.

I did get a little boost. But only to about 60fps 70max.

my graphics card reports in around about 60c and my cpu which has the zalman cooler, reports tempretures of about 50c when idle and 65c on full load.

Thought i would let you know my timings incase it is anything to do with ram, these are off cpu-z, i know nothing about memory timings or frequencies.

Frq=333mhz
CAS Latency=4
RAS TO CAS=3
RAS PRECHARGE=4
TRAS =12
TRC=14

but i think that the defualt is 4-3-3-10

I might also point out that i am using a unactivated (30 days left) downloaded copy of Media Center, but have purchased it last week just cant be bothered to reinstall it at the moment. So i cant get updates, i got the latest direct x from a third party.

And it isnt just bf games, i have a shocking fps in Microsoft Flight sim x, like 17fps.

 

[bailey203]

Hi there,

I've got a Ati x1900xt and found that it wasn't working as I hoped as well. what I did was to remove all the Ati drivers including the control centre and installed the omega drivers for Ati instead. As well as Ati tools, I followed the instructions from a website Tweakguide Ati (I think).

The card works alot better now.

 

[rob_jeffers]

I heard about that actualy, ill give it a try when i get back from work. Thanks.

 

[swifty_morgan]

I haven't put a Conroe system together yet, but, it seems to me that the memory is running slow. Shouldn't it be running at 400, not 333 ? You're only running 2gigs, so there's not need to try and get fancy with it. That processor, I think, has a fixed multiplier, so the only "adjustments" you need to make, for overclocking, would be the fsb.
Go into the bios and see if it's on "auto". It should clock right if set to that. If not, you'll have to reset it manually.

 

[rob_jeffers]

Ok after installing the omega drivers and setting the memory multiplier to auto, i get about 60-70fps in 2142 and still about 45 in bf2, 60 in doom 3 and 77 in americas army, is this good or is something still bottlenecking it, is it likely to be turdy memory.

 

[rob_jeffers]

OK, i checked settings adaptive aa was off and ran 3dmark 06 whic on the return to proxygon i was getting round 20fps and on the firefly things about the same but on the cpu test my system just crashes, it doesnt even make 1fps. I ran this test twice and both times it crashed.

Do you thik im overclocked to much or could it just be a nerdy proccessor, even though when i was at 2.66ghz there wasnt much difference in frame rates.

 

[pmr]

I haven't put a Conroe system together yet, but, it seems to me that the memory is running slow. Shouldn't it be running at 400, not 333 ? You're only running 2gigs, so there's not need to try and get fancy with it. That processor, I think, has a fixed multiplier, so the only "adjustments" you need to make, for overclocking, would be the fsb.
Go into the bios and see if it's on "auto". It should clock right if set to that. If not, you'll have to reset it manually.

WTF????

 

[AngryClown]

Maybe the CPU is throttling back because of the heat

 

[enforcer22]

Ok after installing the omega drivers and setting the memory multiplier to auto, i get about 60-70fps in 2142 and still about 45 in bf2, 60 in doom 3 and 77 in americas army, is this good or is something still bottlenecking it, is it likely to be turdy memory.

Two things. put hte cpu back to reguler clock speed cuz most games could care less and your not playing one that does care. second vsync dude turn that garbage off. I have the same card and i play bf 2 with everything turnd on max at 1920x1200 and i get more then 100 frames most of the time. Like was said you could have a heat issue (i do use the stock video cooler for my card) But my temps dont go over 60c on my video card which i wish didnt go that high

 

[muffin]

I'm not claiming to know the intricacies of LCD displays, but if a monitor has a refresh of 25 ms, then that monitor is only capable of displaying 40 FPS( 1000 ms / 25 ms = 40 FPS). If you have vsync on, which means that the video card only draws a frame every 25 ms, then you are limiting the maximum FPS to 40...or is that incorrect? My CRT has a refresh rate of 75 hz (75 frames per second)...which is why with vsync on the maximum FPS is limited to 75 FPS...which can be clearly demonstrated with games like UT or visualizations such as R4 for winamp which have a FPS indicator. If I turn vsync off the FPS goes up but quality goes down...tearing of textures etc. If you can tell me what vsync does other than syncronize the video card's output to the rate at which the monitor refreshes the screen's vertical scan, I would like to know, as it seems by the name of the function (V-SYNC) that it is precisely what it does. The tearing of textures is due to the videocard's attempt to draw more than 1 frame in the time it takes for the monitor to draw 1 frame...hence the disjointed appearance of the image. Please correct me if I am wrong...I'm only going by the name of the function and by my observations of the setting's effect on FPS.

 

[hobbitfeet]

The best way I can think of to fix your problem is to make sure everything works right.

Step 1:
Return everything back to stock or default settings.
Step2:
Update your Bios using Q-Flash to F7
Step3:
Backup anything you need to and format and re-install windows. Then update everything (os, driver, directX,etc....)
Step4:
Run some tests with programs like: 3D Mark06, PC Mark05, Prime95, Memtest86+, CPU-Z, Etc... (Watch your Temps. to make sure there good)
Step5:
Check Tomshardware CPU/VGA chart and compare scores and /or post them and ask if anyone is get simlar results.
Step6:
Install and patch your games and hope all that work paysoff

I know this sounds like a lot to do but it should help find or fix the problem. After all that and you know it works fine then you can start your oc and you should not have any problems.

Hope this helps.

 

[enforcer22]

My monitor has a refresh of 75hrz most lcd's however have 60. 25ms is the responce time of the lcd pixles mine has a 6ms responce time. i dont get the taring really sometimes every so often i get the top of the screen tares from the bottom but its so rare its not a big deal. V sync will limite your frames to the refresh but there is something i was reading about not at least being able to match the refresh and frames with a lcd causing problems with input or something. In anycase if your frames exceed what the monitor can show its simply disgarded.

 

[muffin]

thanks...learn something new every day. That makes sense...I was thinking in terms of refreshing the whole screen - I guess that does not apply to an LCD which is just a punch of physical pixels, not a single tube.

 

[enforcer22]

welcome to the digital age i have to get better at explaining things :-/

 

[advocate666]

wow, there is something seriously wrong with your computer, my pc, is lil lower grade and i can almost double your fps at 1280x1024 resolution.

 

[ikjadoon]

Yeah, something is seriously messed up. Don't have any programs running in the background, do you? Anything like that?

Maybe throttling..

~Ibrahim~

 

[advocate666]

dude, i have alot of shit running in the back ground.. even music off winamp.... and i still get a stable fps of 50ish with anti-aliasing x4

this computer is breed for gaming.. all i need to do now is update my cpu to dual core and and get dual channeled ddr2 and i am good to go with out sli