HD3870 Performance Issues

I just upgraded to a Visiontek HD3870 from a 3 year old x700 pro and figured i'd be in for a huge difference but to my dissapointment the HD3870 is giving me almost identical framerates, sometimes more, sometimes less. The main two games I play are World of Warcraft and Hellgate London. The x700 pro gave me ~20-30 fps most of the time in WoW with all high settings, maxing at 60 when staring at walls with vertical sync on. Hellgate was almost unplayable with 5-20 fps during any kind of action with medium/low settings. I figured the 3870 would keep WoW at a constant 50+ easy and make Hellgate smooth for the most part. Unfortunately i'm getting ~10-30 fps in Hellgate with medium/high settings and still 20-30 in WoW with the same settings as before.

From what i've read this card should be kicking these games asses. 3dMark06 gave me a 5077 which from reading others scores is pretty damn low for this card. I've tried several catalyst drivers going from the 7.9 all the way up to the new 7.12. No results. Ati/amd support gave me a list of crap to do-adjusting hardware acceleration/cleaning temp files type stuff, all of which did nothing, and i'm waiting to hear back from them for more advice.

My system is nearly 3 years old this xmas but it was good for its time, built to be upgradable, but I suppose it could be bottlenecking the card. Posting specs below.

Processor: Intel Pentium 4 540 3.2 Ghz Oc'd to 3.6 Ghz
PSU: Antec 500w
Motherboard: Asus P5AD2-E Premium
RAM: 2GB Kingston DDR2/533
Hard Drives: 300GB Hitachi & 120GB Seagate
Monitor: 19" Viewsonic CRT
Video Card: Visiontek HD3870
Sound Card: Integrated 7.1 Surround
Operating System: Windows XP Home SP2 / DirectX 9c

Try messing with the res as strangestranger suggested.

My first thoughts is that it's a CPU bottleneck - If you decide to upgrade your CPU, DO NOT BUY A PENTIUM D 8xx or 9xx. You will see almost no difference in performance.

did u remove your old drivers before you installed the new card?

id uninstall the drivers and remove the card from the device manager and reboot, this will give u a standard drive, where u can then install the new cat 7.12 drivers, i dont have any of ur games but i get over 9500 in 3dmark06 stock and 11000 overclocked.

900 for cpu...that's about right imo. My friend got 653 in 3dmark06 with a PD 805 and a 6800. Not good eh?

Yea thats what i can't believe. Playing WoW right now and im getting about 15 fps all the time...something just isn't right but i dunno what it is. Anyone have any thoughts?

I have the same problem.

Wow fps is 60 when i stand and drops when i move around. Last card was 7800GT and the fps was the same. UT 3 laags like hell. I have the latest drivers and runed wow repair utility with no help.

Bioshock and Oblivion both run with max quality. 3d mark 2006, basic settings around 9k.


CPU: AMD X2 5600+
Ram: 2gb
VGA: Club 3D HD 3870 512mb
Mob: Asus M2N-E SLI
Power: Antec 450w
Monitor: Samsung 20''

Ok i don't have the best mob and cpu. But the HD3870 has been downgrade in wow. I start moving around and the fps drops to 20 and even less. The screen laags and freezes. I didn't have that problem with 7800gt. 7800 freezed when it was a lot of action. It seems like the HD3870 have no memory. When i reach new palce it starts loading the scenery and fps drops like hell( didn't have that problem before). The HD3870 has been downgrade when playing WoW, a big one.


H2: Episode 2 runs great

You see the thing is I have the same exact card as you and I am running everything at maxx with no lag at 1280x1024.
Here are the benchmarks

http://service.futuremark.com/compare?3dm06=4414349

You have a lifetime warranty give them a call. I think its your mobo and cpu and hell even your ram. This card is prolly to badass/fast for the rest of your pc to handle.

Its not the card because if it was hardware problem then it would not work rather then get slow FPS.
If it was software then yes you would get lag from the card but they have put out updates and I have the same card and get no problems.
What does that leave left?
You other PC components.
Upgrade bro!

I just figured it out you need a AMD bridge instead of that sli crap.

Fixed the problem!

I turned off 2 things in ATI Ctalyst Control Center

1) Adaptive Anti-Aliasing
2) Catalyst A.I


Wow fps turned to normal and even better.

Conclusion: ATI Catalyst CC still sucks!!

They slow down your GPU by one generation for each option.

actually adaptive AA and catalyst A.I are not stupid, people who say they are though, that is another story.

i don't know how serious people are about the ccc but if you are being serious especially valts17 you ain't very bright, how you can blame a programs adjustable settings for a problem i don't know.

most settings, especially, depending on the game, adaptive AA will come at a fps cost, in some games like CS:S for instance will not be affected too much because the things which adaptive AA benefits are relatively scarce, put it on another game, red orchestra for me and my fps will plummet to half or less.

is that example the CCC's fault, no it is mine.