Is this all my 8800gts 320 can do?

[Lionhardt]

Hey. I have an EVGA 8800gts 320 meg SUPERCLOCKED, and so far it has done pretty well pushing my Samsung225BW 22" 1680 x 1050 screen. This is also with an e4300 that i recently oc'ed to 2.4ghz, and 2 gigs of kingston value ram.

I've been playing company of heroes, and when i set everything to ultra at the native res w/ 2x antialiasing, it lags a bit. Is this normal? I would expect it to be able to drive that game at an easy 40 fps? That's not the big part though. When i play MS FSX and i max out everything, it only plays at 15-20 fps, and im pretty sure that should be higher too. In quake 4 with everything maxed at ultra and 2x AA, it still lags a bit, dropping to 20-25fps sometimes.

The worst though, is with FEAR. I have everything maxed out, 4xAA, 8xAF, at the highest res suported by v1.0, 1290 x 920, or something like that, and it always ranges from 25-35fps, never going above, but sometimes going below. In the performance test, none of the FPS was above 40, ever. People with 7800's get above 40? I tweaked with softshadows, nothing but a 2~ fps change. I then set everything to low, and it didnt go above 40-ish...

Did i do something wrong? When i did the oc, was i supposed to lock the pci-e bus at 100mhz, not at AUTO? I have no clue why this happens, i should be getting a constant 60 fps in almost every game.


This is on VISTA.


-Lionhardt

 

[col-p-todd]

I think company of heroes is on of the games that the 8800gts 320mb version does suck at vs the 640mb version.

i,ll check the web and see if i can find a review showing this.

but the 320mb version performs the same in most games but 2-3 games it really sucks in vs the 640mb. that's why i got the 640mb, don,t wanna risk having on of thos games that the 320mb sucks at.

 

[tarkenstar]

yup, probably related to the memory, not sure if that game has a large amount of textures or not, any game with large amounts of textures needs the added memory of the 640MB version to run higher resolutions.

 

[col-p-todd]

here is 1 link showing that an oc 320mb gets beat by the stock 640mb version in coh


http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1697,2093452,00.asp

 

[Lionhardt]

Yeah, but like i said, FEAR, Quake 4, FSX, and i forgot to tell you about KOTOR, yes, KOTOR. Maxed out everything: maxed textures, 8xAA 16xAF, and i get average 30 fps with dips into the 20's. Im VERY sure i shouldnt be getting that. There has to be something other than memory in effect here. I know about the whole memory thing, but ive seen benchs where it can play battlefield 2 or 2142 at 16xaa and af and at maxed tex, everything, and not lag?

 

[Lionhardt]

Also, the FEAR benchies show like 50~fps average at 1600x1200! Im only playing, right now, at 1290 x 930 or something liek that (later i will l;ay at 1680 x 1050) and that is with the same card i have, with the 320 Mb buffer.

What the hell?

 

[tarkenstar]

is it possibly a heat issue? what's the temps like, if they are too high the card will sputter and be unhappy, how's the airflow in the case? when is the last time you formatted? defragged? all of these things can affect your FPS, CPU..

for example, in my soon to be upgraded(parts on the way thank god) I have a nasty bottleneck on my 8800GTS 640MB/FX-55 in some really horrendous 1GB of DDR1 RAM.. CS:S is not able to max out in settings @ 1440x900 as at about 85% high settings I drop to 40/50 FPS.. I will post back the difference the upgrade makes on this card(going to E4300 like you).

Something else is likely the cause of your issue, be it simple like not having defragged in a year or just to much crap on the system and needing to format, or not so simple like parts overheating or starting to die out on you.

 

[abasoufiane]

i think your card should get much higher FPs than that, and the kotor test is a joke.

soeither you card is the problem or MOre probably , it doesn't get anough juice from your PSU , there is a good chance for this being the issue.

 

[Lionhardt]

Well, to answer both of you. I just built my first computer. I asume the 8800gts 320 uses 1 pci-e power connector? Im using Vista, which i jsut installed, i defrag like twice a week...haha. Out of my 250 gig hard drive, about 160 gigs are free. I have a 650watt 52 amp antec truepower trio. I have thast with the antec p180 case, which has 3 120mm fans. I also checked rivatuner, and it has my idle temps at like 58 C for my 8800gts, the highest i saw during FEAR were 68 C, but that doesnt seem right? I was playing FEAR an hour ago, and it stayed at 60 fps w/ Vsync on for like 10 mins, and that was even during battles. Then it went down to 30 all of a sudden, and sometimes goes down to 20-25fps.

???

 

[col-p-todd]

then it looks like it may be the temp. since u were able to get 60fps for a while (until the card got to hot) and then lowered the clock speed to prevent the card from getting destroyed by the heat.

Keep watching all ur temps cpu an gpu en nb. u might end up getting better / more fans.

 

[tarkenstar]

nothing with those video card temps, slightly above average but not FPS affecting... i'll reply later gotta jet!

 

[jjknoll]

I have that same card and have it now running 600/2000 (I set my fan to 100%). The only relevant game I play right now is Titan Quest. My system specs are e6600@2.925, 2gb ram, raptor, 750w thermaltake. I set everything to max but usually leave AA off. I play at 1600x1200. Now this game granted has a lot of issues but I often run in the 20's in forested areas and sometimes with multiple targets drop into the single digits. I run xp home 32-bit. I think that with AA on and max settings the 320 will struggle, even though you are running about 10% less pixels than I am. I don't have any experience with any of the games you listed so I know this won't be a big help. I really like my card despite it's drawbacks. At the time the 640 was like $100+ more and my budget just could not handle it. I do wish I had that card but I also like the $100 and TQ is playable in the 20's (a lot of the time it runs 40-60 in less demanding visual environments) so overall I am not going to complain. However it may be though that is all our cards can do at these resolutions. Have you considered dropping a little of the eye candy to see if the performance increases drastically? Maybe lower quality is tolerable to get a smoother performance. Just a thought.

 

[swifty_morgan]

Try reading through this post made the other day

http://forumz.tomshardware.com/hardware/8800-gts-ftopict240198.html

Shoulda got the 640 card. Wide screen monitor....... shader intensive games.......... they need the memory. Better crank back on the settings so your games will play better.

 

[slim142]

Yeah, but like i said, FEAR, Quake 4, FSX, and i forgot to tell you about KOTOR, yes, KOTOR. Maxed out everything: maxed textures, 8xAA 16xAF, and i get average 30 fps with dips into the 20's. Im VERY sure i shouldnt be getting that. There has to be something other than memory in effect here. I know about the whole memory thing, but ive seen benchs where it can play battlefield 2 or 2142 at 16xaa and af and at maxed tex, everything, and not lag?

Let me tell you 8xAA and 16xAF needs A LOT of power.

Make sure in the taskbar, right click the NVIDIA icon and go to perfomance and quality settings and you have AA in Application controlled as well as AF.

Now, I think you should do this. Get nTune from NVIDIA, then go to GPU overclock (or whatever is called), OC the core clock 10mhz and the memory clock 15Mhz, also put MANUAL CONTROL OVER THE FAN and make sure you put 125% and then APPLY.

Then go to NVIDIA control panel, go to the OC options and make sure you put Apply this settings at startup.

Now that your videocard is OC a little bit and your fan running at 125% try running your games and see your FPSs.

You should also OC your CPU a little more, something like 2.8Ghz would be perfect. Also, make sure you have any NVIDIA GPU EX or Videocard Booster in BIOS off and also Linkboost (if it applies) off. Make sure your PCI-Express ports are running at 100Mhz.

Dont forget to have the lastest drivers from NVIDIA (not betas).

 

[nachowarrior]

I'm not very familiar with the game, but based on some differing opinions based on a lot of things I've read...

a)check your ram and cpu speeds and make sure all the multipliers and what not make sense (usually clock it normal, if using amd x2 proc, 2.4 or 2.8ghz with ddr2 800 is best)

b) this sounds nuts.. but try underclocking your card to what the original nvidia spec is

c) if at all possible change out your ram, even for a lesser amount... kingston is cheap... and I had a buddy that bought it for every system he owned... and his pc was slow compared to what it should have been.

d) if all else fails, try using an x64 os... if you can get your games to run on ubuntu x64 i'd suggest that... but win xp x64 sucks for compatibility.. vista is just going to eat your memory, proc, and vid card, so may skew any results (not to mention it's still in it's baby faze)... the reason i suggest an x64 os is that all the processes that run in the background run more efficiently on an x64 os (win xp x64 is kinda pointless here cuz most of them just run on the x86 "emulator") so I'd think that'd free up some gaming space... i suggested ubuntu cuz it doesn't eat away at your ram... so it'd free up space there too

my main concern and first thought would be to tweak your clocks on your vid card first... because it's the easiest and often times companies will "overclock" or "superclock" just to get you to pay a few bucks more for the thing when you can overclock it yourself... so anyway. i didn't read all the posts, just skimmed and I hope my post helps ya out..

that would cover most of the hardware problems I can think of off the top of my head right now.

 

[bullaRh]

many people have issues with vista and fear, what mouse you got?

 

[jjknoll]

Try reading through this post made the other day

http://forumz.tomshardware.com/hardware/8800-gts-ftopict240198.html

Shoulda got the 640 card. Wide screen monitor....... shader intensive games.......... they need the memory. Better crank back on the settings so your games will play better.

After reading that post, I totally agree. If you can afford a 640 (or better) with resolutions starting at 1680x1050 you should go for it. My budget did not allow for this at the time, but it probably would have helped me enormously. That card is a real nice card yet, but perhaps a bit much for that resolution and the max detail. If you are not happy with it though you can give it to me! I have an sli board that would be a very kind and loving home for it!

 

[flooder]

Hmmm...I guess you have too many OC parts? Everything is heating up pretty good in your case. You can upgrade your video card from eVGA to the GTS 640MB, the GTX, or the Ultra for some extra cash. Alternatively, slap on another GTS 320MB in SLI configuration.

 

[benfc123]

I just built a new system with a MSI 8800 GTS 320 OC, E6600 overclocked to 3.15ghz, 2 gigs of Corsair DDR2-8500 on a Gigabyte P965-DS3. COH is all I have played on it so far and I have had no lags or problems whatsoever with every setting on High or Ultra and AA enabled. The FPS test that is in COH gave me an average of 78fps and a minimum of around 50 I believe. Maybe your processor speed is bottle necking you.

 

[makoau58]

Sorry to say, but you answered your own question with the last line of your post. There is no need for a long complex answer but to say that Vista is already accounting for a 10 - 15% performance drop over xp in all those games. Hopefully as time goes on they will continue to improve the drivers just to get back to the speeds of xp.
DX10 card or not, you will still suffer under Vista for gaming for a long time yet.

 

[makoau58]

Sorry to say, but you answered your own question with the last line of your post. There is no need for a long complex answer but to say that Vista is already accounting for a 10 - 15% performance drop over xp in all those games. Hopefully as time goes on they will continue to improve the drivers just to get back to the speeds of xp.
DX10 card or not, you will still suffer under Vista for gaming for a long time yet.

 

[slim142]

Well I didnt know the perfomance lost on vista was of 10% to 15% but I agree that on WXPSP2, things would be better.

 

[gomerpile]

I think your cpu is holding you back. Remember the write up the 8800 needs the fastest of cpu's. The test were done wiff 6600 to 6800 cpu. Their results were the gpus perform better with high end cpu.
Fastest cpu

 

[nachowarrior]

does your cpu max out when playing? (task manager showing it at 100%)

 

[No1sFanboy]

That's not the big part though. When i play MS FSX and i max out everything, it only plays at 15-20 fps, and im pretty sure that should be higher too.

FSX maxed out? I'm surprised you would get those frame rates with it maxed out. The hardware to run FSX maxed out has not been sold yet.
Your cpu will have a bigger effect on FSX than your gpu. If you have not patched FSX yet do it so it will take advantage of you're second core. Other than that you could overclock your cpu more to up it's performance.