No Performance increase after upgrading video card...

dcoaster

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I recently upgraded my Dell E510 from the included ATI 256MB X600 card to the Sapphire 512MB X1650 Pro. The specs are:

Pentium D 820 (2.8GHz)
2GB DDR2-533 (4x512MB)
80GB SATA HDD 7200rpm (15GB free)
Sapphire 512MB X1650 Pro
305-watt Dell PSU
Vista Home Premium

Anyway, I cannot see any difference from when I upgraded from the X600 to the X1650 Pro. It actually looks even worse (i.e. jumpy framerates, not as smooth of graphics, etc.) What could be causing this? I do have the latest drivers installed (I think the ones put on ATI/AMD's website around June 5) and the framerates don't improve with a low quality setting. What am I doing wrong?!?! Thanks for your help!
 

cristip60

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Reinstall your OS.
And the x1650pro isn't that good it only has 4 pipelines and it's a x1600xt with a die shrink to 80nm.
You haven't really upgraded the x1650pro isn't that great you should gett rid of it and get the 7600gt it's around the same money.
 

Hatman

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1650xt is an equal card with 7600gt, if your an ATI fan. Got enough power to give your games good performance on mid settings at 1024x768
 
the X1650 is clocked much higher than the X600, and is more efficient. (EDIT: I made a mistake, comparing the X800 and the X1650, which are quite close performance-wise). However the biggest trouble I'd say comes from your CPU: 2.8 GHz for a NetBurst puts it very low on the pecking scale - lower than the Ahtlon64 X2 3600+.
I would think that your new card is bottlenecked by the CPU (while the older one just matched it well), and Vista isn't helping matters at all. Moreover, you may be having driver troubles.

I'd recommend installing WinXP and re-bench both cards with a clean driver install between each uninstall/reinstall (there are utilities that REALLY remove drivers - check Guru3D for those)
 

dcoaster

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Thanks for the tip, but since it originally came with XP and I did a upgrade (not clean install) I wouldn't be able to install Vista again (once it gets better hopefully). I guess I'll have to live with it. By the way, can I replace the CPU with something like a P D 940 at least without having to reinstall Windows or is it much harder than that? Also, do you think Vista is to blame for this or can drivers be a part of it (Is ATI's driver dept. on track :p ?) Thanks.
 

cleeve

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Ok, ran 3dMark05 and got a score of 4035.

That doesn't seem bad.
An X600 would have probably gotten below 2500 on your system.

The X1600 PRO is much better than the X600, but you might be running new, denmanding titles that require more graphics power than either of them can supply.

What games are you running?
 

Sidonas

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It's not good .. A 7600gs with DDR2 do 4000 :roll: x1650xt is equal to 7600gt so it should get like 5k or something :wink:
 

jonisginger

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Your system isnt brilliant, and any ATi cards below the X1800 series aren't really as good as the nVidia ones. Get a 7600GT+ or a X1800+
 

dcoaster

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I'm not running any new games like Oblivion or WoW or Halo, it's mainly an older game (Red Alert2) and Roller Coaster Tycoon 3 (RCT3 seems to be intensive for my system :!: ). I have lowered the resolution to 1024x768 with no AA and still no increase in performance...

In the Vista Performance index, the lowest score was Graphics (Aero) which got a 4.6 (I don't think that's real bad...) The odd thing is that the Game Graphics score was 4.9. The games don't seem to perform like they should with a 4.9 rating.

Thanks for the help!
 

morerevs

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Those games are more CPU/memory than GPU dependent. Also I don't know how much power this card draws but your PSU is not too great, but for the most part Vista + old games (not fully supported?)+ not great system = low FPS.
 

dcoaster

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Hmm have you installed the latest (Vista) drivers.

Yes, the latest ones were from June 25th.

Those games are more CPU/memory than GPU dependent. Also I don't know how much power this card draws but your PSU is not too great, but for the most part Vista + old games (not fully supported?)+ not great system = low FPS.

This card does work in my comp, even though it says this card needs a 350-watt PSU, but isn't it like a "it does or it doesn't work" kind of thing? Where if it works, it should work fully, not partially?
So would you recommend that I upgrade my CPU to a higher-end Pentium D (940?) to get better FPS? Is this easy to do on a Dell because I have heard that it isn't?

Thanks.
 

jonisginger

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Dell I tihnk (literally) practically weld the cpu to the board lol. Is that true, that was a quick look at a 2 year old Dell a while back.