8800GTX Performing as it should??

[captain_triton]

Hi All,

This is my first post. I recently purchased an EVGA 8800GTX primarily to play Call of Duty 2. I am wondering if the performance i am getting is as it should be however.

I am running the game at a resolution of 1680x1050 with a 60 Hz refresh rate. AA is set at 4x and AF is at 2x (override through drivers). Graphical settings are at the high end. Shadows on, Corpse numbers on large, Dynamic lights on normal, and Smoke Softening of everything.

When there is no activity i have no problem maintaining 60FPS (vsync on) but as soon as there is combat, the performance can drop into the high 20s, especially when there are lots of smoke and lighting effects. Even smoke alone can drop FPS.

I would have thought this card could do better and i am wondering if it isn't getting enough power for some reason or if i'm just being paranoid.
The rest of my specs are:

Intel Conroe E6600 (oc'd to 2.81 GHz)
2 GB DDR2 667
Gigabyte 965P-DQ6 mobo
Creative Audigy 2 ZS
2 x 250 GB WD Caviar 7200 rpm drives in RAID 0
Silverstone Zeus ST65ZF PSU 650W
EVGA 8800GTX with Forceware 97.94
Windows XP SP2

Is this the performance i should be getting from this rig?? I am paranoid about the power issue because i've been reading about people who have been getting less than optimal performance only to replace their PSU and find their PC is flying. I've only had this PSU for a year and it seems very robust. Was previously powering a 7950GX2. It's advertised output is 650W (don't know the actual output :? ) and the 12V line rating (there are 4 12V lines on this model i believe) is 42A which is well above Nvidia's reccommended.

I also have issues with Quake 4 (1.3 patch) at similar settings. Very similar if not a bit worse to my GX2's performance actually which doesn't make much sense to me.

If anyone with experience in benchmarking numbers could give me some insight into this matter i would be very appreciative. My own knowledge only goes so far .

Thankyou for reading this long post.

 

[captain_triton]

Come on guys surely someone has some experience and opinion on this. Would really appreciate some help .

 

[lostandwandering]

I think some people said that turning VSync off helped their numbers tremendously. Give it a shot. As far as your PSU, you should be fine unless the unit is going bad, but a Silverstone shouldn't do that in just 1 year.

 

[The_Abyss]

Update your drivers. The ones you have are way old and pretty rubbish to be honest - they were the ones right at the release of the 8800 and they were poor and buggy.

For Win XP - http://www.nvidia.com/object/winxp_2k_158.19.html

 

[captain_triton]

Yea i thought turning off vsync would help too but the minimum fps stays roughly the same. Higher max can be achieved but that's about it. Maybe i'm just expecting too much from this card at these settings.

Too bad a i can't afford SLI but with the R600 apparently so close i wouldn't be the best time to do that anyway.

Update your drivers. The ones you have are way old and pretty rubbish to be honest - they were the ones right at the release of the 8800 and they were poor and buggy.

As far as i was aware 97.94 came out just before the 158 beta drivers. Anyhow i've got them on my HD so now's good a time as any to try them i guess.

 

[captain_triton]

Latest drivers didn't do anything.

*sigh*

Guess i have to wait for the R600 or the 8900GTX to get the performance i want. Mind you, for a single card to be running this detail to a playable level is pretty impressive.

 

[nightscope]

Hi All,

This is my first post. I recently purchased an EVGA 8800GTX primarily to play Call of Duty 2. I am wondering if the performance i am getting is as it should be however.

I am running the game at a resolution of 1680x1050 with a 60 Hz refresh rate. AA is set at 4x and AF is at 2x (override through drivers). Graphical settings are at the high end. Shadows on, Corpse numbers on large, Dynamic lights on normal, and Smoke Softening of everything.

When there is no activity i have no problem maintaining 60FPS (vsync on) but as soon as there is combat, the performance can drop into the high 20s, especially when there are lots of smoke and lighting effects. Even smoke alone can drop FPS.

I would have thought this card could do better and i am wondering if it isn't getting enough power for some reason or if i'm just being paranoid.
The rest of my specs are:

Intel Conroe E6600 (oc'd to 2.81 GHz)
2 GB DDR2 667
Gigabyte 965P-DQ6 mobo
Creative Audigy 2 ZS
2 x 250 GB WD Caviar 7200 rpm drives in RAID 0
Silverstone Zeus ST65ZF PSU 650W
EVGA 8800GTX with Forceware 97.94
Windows XP SP2

Is this the performance i should be getting from this rig?? I am paranoid about the power issue because i've been reading about people who have been getting less than optimal performance only to replace their PSU and find their PC is flying. I've only had this PSU for a year and it seems very robust. Was previously powering a 7950GX2. It's advertised output is 650W (don't know the actual output :? ) and the 12V line rating (there are 4 12V lines on this model i believe) is 42A which is well above Nvidia's reccommended.

I also have issues with Quake 4 (1.3 patch) at similar settings. Very similar if not a bit worse to my GX2's performance actually which doesn't make much sense to me.

If anyone with experience in benchmarking numbers could give me some insight into this matter i would be very appreciative. My own knowledge only goes so far .

Thankyou for reading this long post.

Don't think this is going to do much but set your ram ratio and your cpu clock rate at 1:1 (set cpu speed at 333 X 9 = 2.997 Ghz). Should help improve the system's performance.

Also, did you install the new drivers correctly? Did you install driver cleaner pro and cleaned your old drivers after you removed them? Then install the new drivers?

And did you check for viruses/spyware/adware lately? Do you have any antispyware/adware/virus programs?

Have you defraged your system lately? Undefragged harddrives play a role in gaming performance.

 

[captain_triton]

Don't think this is going to do much but set your ram ratio and your cpu clock rate at 1:1 (set cpu speed at 333 X 9 = 2.997 Ghz). Should help improve the system's performance.

Yea i'll try that. Will probably have to up the vcore to achieve that speed though so will monitor the temps closely.

Also, did you install the new drivers correctly? Did you install driver cleaner pro and cleaned your old drivers after you removed them? Then install the new drivers?

I uninstalled the old and removed the Nvidia folder in my C: drive but i didn't user Driver Cleaner Pro. I've installed it and will try using it.

And did you check for viruses/spyware/adware lately? Do you have any antispyware/adware/virus programs?

Have never had any problem with this sort of thing so i don't have any such programs installed at the moment. I'll try installing Microsoft Defender or whatever it's called now and scan my PC.

Have you defraged your system lately? Undefragged harddrives play a role in gaming performance.

Harddrive is in top shape at the moment.

Thanks for your suggestions i'll let you know how this goes.

 

[nightscope]

Don't think this is going to do much but set your ram ratio and your cpu clock rate at 1:1 (set cpu speed at 333 X 9 = 2.997 Ghz). Should help improve the system's performance.

Yea i'll try that. Will probably have to up the vcore to achieve that speed though so will monitor the temps closely.

Also, did you install the new drivers correctly? Did you install driver cleaner pro and cleaned your old drivers after you removed them? Then install the new drivers?

I uninstalled the old and removed the Nvidia folder in my C: drive but i didn't user Driver Cleaner Pro. I've installed it and will try using it.

And did you check for viruses/spyware/adware lately? Do you have any antispyware/adware/virus programs?

Have never had any problem with this sort of thing so i don't have any such programs installed at the moment. I'll try installing Microsoft Defender or whatever it's called now and scan my PC.

Have you defraged your system lately? Undefragged harddrives play a role in gaming performance.

Harddrive is in top shape at the moment.

Thanks for your suggestions i'll let you know how this goes.

Don't think you would need to up the Vcore when you up the speed...try without increasing it, if it's unstable, try increasing by the LOWEST amount possible and try it again.

When uninstall the old drivers and installing new, try doing this (I would remove the ones you have now and install the newest ones, even though you said you already have the newest):

Download but NOT install the new drivers
Uninstall the old drivers, when it asks you to restart, restart, but go to safe mode (pressing f8 constantly)
Run driver cleaner while in safe mode (remove everything nvidia related)
Restart again
Install the new drivers
Restart again

Also, when running anti-virus/adware/spyware programs, I usually go to safe mode and run them from there (it takes longer but it finds everything...or most things).
I use a combination of these:
Spybot - Search and Destroy, Adaware Se Personal, and Avira Classic.
You can get the first two from download.com...and avira from free-av.com
Download/install them, update them, and run them in safe mode. Run Avira first, then spybot, then adware. They're great.

Oh, and download/install CCleaner. IT'S very good! You can run it normally, don't have to do it in safe mode. But it basically cleans out your system of stuff you don't need. Everytime you run it it feels like you've just done a clean install of windows!


Tell me what happens.

 

[captain_triton]

Cheers Nightscope i have my CPU oc'ed and the temps have barely raised. Played COD2 for a while with no crashes. This Antec 900 case was worth every penny i paid - keeps hardware nice and cool.

I also used DriverCleaner Pro after uninstalling the drivers this time around and i did a Spyware scan with MS Defender that removed 3 high level viruses.

I will look at the programs you suggested later on tonight once i have some work done. Performance in COD2 seems to have improved a little from what it was. It looks like a very hardware intensive game though so i guess some slowdowns are to be expected when running at the settings i have.

 

[Xazax310]

Well seeing as you and me both have somewhat the same setup, i have an EVGA 8800GTX and E6600, and let me tell you when playing COD2, i usually MAX everything out.

1280x1024
16x AA
16x AF
Maxium details/textures/lighting

I get 60FPS and higher, but the game drops off to 30 and 25 from time to time but hardly that much.

Now your playing at 1650x1080 and i hardly think your straching the surface of what that 8800GTX can do. You should also look into OCing thay 8800GTX to 637mhz core and 2000mhz memory that will give you a signficant increase in performance.

 

[Eviltwin17]

Latest drivers didn't do anything.

*sigh*

Guess i have to wait for the R600 or the 8900GTX to get the performance i want. Mind you, for a single card to be running this detail to a playable level is pretty impressive.

these drivers are still in beta stage, they arent official and probably still have bugs to tweak