XFX 7800 GS AGP Extreme Edition Performance Issue

Hi there, I'm having trouble with my recently purchased XFX 7800 GS AGP Extreme Edition. I can happily play games such as Half Life 2 on high graphics, the frame rate staying around 50/60fps inside. However, as I continue to play, the frame rate begins to decrease, and I have found that even in the same room, in the exact same standing position, the frame rate can decrease to 20 to even 15fps. At this point it stays at this frame rate until I quit the game.

My system specifications are:

P4 3.0ghz HT
1gb RAM
200GB Hard disk space over two Maxtor HDD's (120gb + 80gb)
XFX Geforce 7800 GS AGP Extreme Edition
Latest Geforce Drivers

I don't think temperature is important - even while playing games, the card temperature hits 45 degrees peak. I wasn't sure if it was a PSU problem or not, I believe it is 350/400watt.

Hope you can help me out with this problem. Thanks in advance

Sorry to hear about the problem. What driver version are you currently using and have tried? This could be a video card problem or be a PSU issue with it having problems keeping up after continuous play. Let us know the brand, wattage rating and 12v rail amperage. For that card it is recommended to have about 400watts with about 20amps on the 12v rail. The temps do sound very good if you only get to about 45-50 under a load. I recommend starting a support ticket at www.xfxforce.com and/or calling in at 800-880-3225.

XFX Support

I could see that from the none Extreme Edition. Check your video Drive to make sure its recognized the Extreme Edition else your running at a cool 375MHz. If your GPU is being miss recognized as the none Extreme Edition also would make sence for the low heat of 45 Degrees.

If this is the case you'll have to start your computer in safe mode and uninstall the drivers and then reload and try reinstalling. I would try installing from the latest update software from XFX.

Regardless of this card being a 7800 you need to dial back the settings as HL2 can put a hurt on mid range GPU's.

WHen the frame rate hits it's lowest values, is your HD light blinking like crazy? You said you have two hard drives, I assume they're IDE. If you put them both on the same IDE channel, you're creating a bottleneck.
The HD is more often the limiting factor in performance, even with large amounts of RAM. Make sure your HDs are the masters of their respective IDE channels (dont connect them both to the same ribbon cable).

On Call of Duty 2 it now seems to retain a constant FPS, however, the game halts fairly frequently with a black screen.

OK, now that sounds like a PSU problem because halts mean short losses of power. Has your computer randomly restarted for no reason? If so windows is trying to tell you its protecting you hardware due to power loss or a spike. I would suggest trying another PSU.

Yeah, it tends to restart for no reasons sometimes, then others I get blue screens - normally BAD_POOL_CALLER.

I run HL2 on a similar system with a 7800GS at 2048x1536/4xAA with everything maxed out in the game settings; occasionally it might chug a little but otherwise it's perfectly playable.

Word on the street is that nVidias 93.81 driver set has been known to cause slow downs. What have you got for drivers?

If the FPS go down, then I would say something is overheating.

Is there any card below the XFX? did you check the temp when is in load? what is the temp of the cpu?

Yes, try that. I believe the BIOS aperture size has to match the video card memory so try it and see if that fixes your problem.

It wasn't AGP Aperture after all - I can't find that. It was something to do with AGP, AGP Shared Size perhaps? Either way, it was greyed out to 32MB.

I have a P4S800-MX-SE Motherboard.

edit: Found out that by alt-tabbing off some games then coming back after a few minutes restores them to the expected frame rate. For example, Trackmania plays at 70 FPS, then goes down to around 50 after a few races. I alt-tab to Firefox, surf for about 5 minutes, come back to Trackmania to play at 70 FPS again.

That heat is a bugger

With My 8800GS (The Full System Specs Are In My Sig) I Get Around 145FPS Average With Spikes Of 165FPS, And A Minimum Framerate Of 80FPS, Every Enviroment Detail At Maximum 8xAA, 16xAA, Ultra High Quality @ 1680x1050

I had the XFX 7800 GS extreme. I played HL2 at 1024x768 ( I just like that res) with everything maxed out 2X AA and 4X AF. FPS avg around 45, unless im outside in really big areas..where it falls to about 20ish for a few seconds.
max fps: 130
min fps: 17 -> very rare

But I never found the game unplayable.


In call of duty 2, My settings are similar except i didnt use any AA and AF, everything else was set on the ultra settings. I almost always had over 30 fps.
max fps: 300
min fps: 20

I also know that if anything my cpu and mobo were the main bottle neck:

socket 478 P4 2.5Ghz and a 4X agp slot mobo


I have a 380 watt Tagan psu with 22A on the 12V rail.

the avg temp i got after a good couple of hrs of gaming ( me + my brother use the same pc) was about 43 degrees.

RMClock from Right Mark is very helpfull. Displays temps, usage graph, throttles.
http://cpu.rightmark.org/download.shtml

Hmm, I'm a bit confused about how that shows stability. I see it's not displaying your CPU temp?

Heres RMClock 2.2 in executable form (exe): http://cpu.rightmark.org/download/rmclock_22_bin.exe

Maybe that will display your temperature.

I have this same card, was having issues with it only running at 15 FPS, etc... this is known problem with these cards. the temp monitoring in the bios that is supposed to throttle the card down when it gets too hot, also kicks in if it is too cool...
I received a BIOS update from XFX that solved this... you can do it yourself also ir you have something that lets you tweak the BIOS, just disable temp montioring.

send me a PM with your e-mail, I will forward the email from XFX support with the BIOS and needed files to flash the card.

sorry, meant to get back to you on that... the email bounced.
gmail wouldn't accept a ZIP file ?

just an after thought.. doyou know the exact model? the bios i have is for a T70K-UAD

Yeah, the bios was for the model T70K-UAD which is the exact model of the card. And yes, georgelawton, I did back up my original bios.

I haven't started one, no - I'll get to that now, actually.

Bios version is 5.70.02.33.05, and I'm using 93.71 Forceware.

RIDICULOUS Problem? 7800GS too cool temperature issue

Read through this thread.

PM'd!

And Datman, the GPU is running at around 42 degrees idle - it's not too cold.

I didn't receive the email - sent another PM following up.

Thanks, tried that already.
I didn't have the problem before, just after the driver change to 93.71.