hideous underperformance of new gaming PC`

[chairmaker]

OK. I have a problem. I am a first time home system builder. The build seems to have gone OK (except for 1 thing - more of which later - i don't think this is the problem). I have fairly high spec BUT games (bioshock let alone crysis) are a slideshow on reasonable settings. My 3Dmark score is 1120 when comparable systems are 10 000 +.

Full system specs as follows:
Gigabyte GA-P35-DS3
Intel Q6600
OCZ Technology 2x1GB PC2-6400 DDR2 Platinum
Inno3D 8800GT OC 512MB
Corsair 520 Watt, ATX, EPS12V, PS/2, Modular Power Supply
Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium 32-bit OEM DVD
Seagate Barracuda 7200.1 500GB 7200RPM S300 32MB
Gigabyte 3D II liquid cooling kit
standard dvd writer, monitor etc.

All non-3D applications seem to be working fine (e.g. web browser) so I am of the opinion there's a problem with my 8800GT that restricts its performance but doesn't fully kill it. The driver I have is up to date (forceware 169.25) and I have clean installed this with no impovement.

(Yes, the 8800GT does have an auxilliary 6-pin PCI power supply and this is plugged in. Looking at the GPU status in windows, the power state is D0 which I believe is normal and with no restrictions?)

Any suggestions would be appreciated - I am at my wits end



PS - the one complication that occured was that in the 1st day of switching the system on for the 1st time, the controller for the fan on the Gigabyte 3D II liquid cooling kit went puff - literally, with a smell of ozone etc. However I believe that the problem was there before this happened with bad perfomance in bioshock. I returned it and re-installed the cooling system, with nothing else untoward happening.

 

[snarfies1]

>>Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium 32-bit OEM DVD

Problem located, upgrade to XP.

 

[smartel7070]

Have you downloaded CPU-Z to see at what speed your 8800gt is running ? Some of the 8800gt's have some problems with some boards regarding the PCI-E lane speed. It seems some of them default to 1x lane speed instead of the standard 16x. This is due to the 8800gt being PCI-E 2.0 and the P35 motherboards are PCI-E 1.x. If that is your problem look on Gigabyte's website for a bios update. This would be the first thing I would check since your hardware config seems to be pretty good.

 

[Dooyas]

Yup, that sure explains a 9000 lower score.

Lets see, claims are 10-30% lower performance on Vista vs XP, gee that sure works out doesnt it Snarfies?

To the OP, do you have the system overclocked at all? Have you tried setting it back to original settings for testing?

 

[chairmaker]

Have you downloaded CPU-Z to see at what speed your 8800gt is running ? Some of the 8800gt's have some problems with some boards regarding the PCI-E lane speed. It seems some of them default to 1x lane speed instead of the standard 16x. This is due to the 8800gt being PCI-E 2.0 and the P35 motherboards are PCI-E 1.x. If that is your problem look on Gigabyte's website for a bios update. This would be the first thing I would check since your hardware config seems to be pretty good.

According to CPU-Z the link width is indeed 16x.

very oddly though under the CPU tab when I started CPU-Z up this time, the multiplier is switching at random between 6 and 9 ( and hence core speed from 1600 to 2400 MHz). This was not happening when I have checked this on previous occasions!

 

[korsen]

If anything i'd guess it was the pci-e lane(ing) not setup correctly. I've got 2x2900Pro's and i'm playing bioshock maxed out at 2048x1536. Haven't forced driver settings yet but it's been smooth the whole way through.

 

[chairmaker]

Yup, that sure explains a 9000 lower score.

Lets see, claims are 10-30% lower performance on Vista vs XP, gee that sure works out doesnt it Snarfies?

To the OP, do you have the system overclocked at all? Have you tried setting it back to original settings for testing?

No, I have not tried overclocking - I was aiming to get it working normally before cranking it up!

 

[smartel7070]

Ok then have you used speedfan to monitor your temps while running 3dmark ? The waterblock on your cpu could be mounted incorrectly if so your cpu would overheat and throttle itself to lower speeds so it won't fry. Could also be happening with your gpu block if you watercool the video card. I'll be back later tonite to check your progress.

 

[Smoked Turkey]

Updated DirectX?

 

[vip3569]

>>Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium 32-bit OEM DVD

Problem located, upgrade to XP.

Idiot

 

[Zorg]

very oddly though under the CPU tab when I started CPU-Z up this time, the multiplier is switching at random between 6 and 9 ( and hence core speed from 1600 to 2400 MHz). This was not happening when I have checked this on previous occasions!

I'm sure it was, you just didn't notice it. That is C1E, it can be disabled in the BIOS but there is really no reason, because it's not your problem.

http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/247006-28-running-full-speed-wrong-multiplier

 

[chairmaker]

Thanks for all your suggestions guys - really appreciate your help on this one.

Direct x - definitely running version 10

Regarding cpu temps - core temps tells me 34 - 38 degrees idle, only goes up a couple of degrees during and at the end of running 3DMark. No more than 43 for any core absolute max.

Zorg - thanks for the pointer re the multiplier.

any more suggestions? - i can't help feeling its something to do with the graphics card - are there any tools which can tell me if its running ok?

 

[warezme]

Inno3D 8800GT OC 512MB

A long time ago I had one 8800GTX that would run fine with the drivers that came from the factory but whenever I tried to upgrade the driver to any other version, the card would go into safe mode and run horribly slow.

Turns out the card had a bad voltage regulator that was being triggered by a the newer drivers. Apparently Nvidia thought no one would bother to upgrade their drivers or something?

If your card has a bad voltage regulator or something similar it will go into safe mode on boot up and run like crap. Sometimes I would get a pop up warning on boot up but not always.

Also try unplugging the card and moving it to another slot and see if that makes a difference.

 

[StaggerLee]

I've got essentially the same problem. After a couple horrendous weeks of research, it's looking like it's a fairly common problem with the power supply. The cpu is not supplying power to the video card early enough in the boot cycle, and the card is then dialing down performance because it thinks it's underpowered. I'm waiting on an adapter from Enermax which is supposed to fix the issue. You may want to contact your PSU manufacturer, since it seems that many of them are aware of the issue (although they aren't all that forthcoming with admitting it's their problem).

If you do a quick search on "slow 8800gt psu" you'll find lots of answers.

 

[StaggerLee]

sorry - that should read "the psu is not supplying power ..."

 

[enforcer22]

>>Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium 32-bit OEM DVD

Problem located, upgrade to XP.

way to be useless.

Anyways i use Vista ultimate though i dont have your card mine are factory OC'ed ignore my sig i now use Dual 3870 cards and i havent personaly had any performance issues in game.

I have never heard of the company that made your card. If it was me personaly i would return it and get a different brand that confines to the refference design. Like has been suggested reverse all over clocks as well. I would say make sure your power supply is really a 520Watt but i would find it hard to believe corsair would make a POS componant but then again i have no exp with thier power supplys.

 

[Silverion77]

Corsair PSUs are very good.

Download Rivatuner v2.06 and go under monitoring and tell us the results on the graph

 

[StaggerLee]

Here's the link that explained it for me (assuming this is the psu issue)

http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?p=10408472#post10408472


And as for it being surprising that corsair would build a crappy unit, I would agree but I've got an Enermax Galaxy, which by all regards should be the best on the market, so I think this has hit across the board. Seeing the problems others are having with various models pretty much confirms it.

In my case the PSU was hugely rebated which is why I went with the 1000w model, and now I think I know the reason. When I compare the user manuals for the one that shipped with my unit versus the latest shipping model, they've now got a specific connector for the motherboard's PCI-e molex which wasn't there before, and I believe it's for precisely this problem.

 

[chairmaker]

Here's the link that explained it for me (assuming this is the psu issue)

http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?p=10408472#post10408472


And as for it being surprising that corsair would build a crappy unit, I would agree but I've got an Enermax Galaxy, which by all regards should be the best on the market, so I think this has hit across the board. Seeing the problems others are having with various models pretty much confirms it.

In my case the PSU was hugely rebated which is why I went with the 1000w model, and now I think I know the reason. When I compare the user manuals for the one that shipped with my unit versus the latest shipping model, they've now got a specific connector for the motherboard's PCI-e molex which wasn't there before, and I believe it's for precisely this problem.

StaggerLee - sounds like you have hit the frickin nail on the frickin head as the saying goes.

I will be taking this up with Corsair and/or the vendor. It seems madd ghey that PSU and GPU manufacturers haven't got together sooner to sort this 5H17 out.

Thanks so much for your help


Silverion - I have got RivaTuner 2.06 but can't see any monitoring or graphs??? possibly i'm being dumb...

 

[Silverion77]

clip on the arrow at the top half above driver settings. Then hit the picture that looks like movie film with a magnifying glass. That will bring up the monitoring

 

[chairmaker]

OK, results of the hardware monitoring from RivaTuner 2.06:

Graph 1 - Core Clock \ ROP domain, MHz: scale from 0 - 1500; @ 648 MHz
Graph 2 - Core Clock \ shader domain, MHz: scale from 0 - 1500; @ 1512 MHz - i.e. more than the graph allows, and has a warning sign on graph scale
Graph 3 - Memory clock, MHz: scale from 0 - 1500; @ 950.40 MHz
Graph 4 - Core Temperature, C: scale from 0 - 200; @ 50 MHz

These results are rock solid when running only firefox

 

[Silverion77]

Well those are right...the warning is just saying the scale is too small

Try doing a load test and tell me the results. Firefox isnt enough

 

[chairmaker]

i ran 3Dmark (generally running the various tests @ 2 - 5 FPS) and none of those graphs budged in the slightest - all flat horizontal lines

 

[Silverion77]

hows the CPU running?

 

[dodian]

It might be that your video acceleration is at software and not hardware.
On XP it would be right click on desktop -->properties-->settings-->Advanced-->Troubleshoot--> Drag the hardware acceleration to full.