Hey all,
So I recently purchased a PNY 8800 GT 512MB. The performance, to date, hasn't been very good. I am slide showing in certain areas of Crysis on default high settings, when my old MSI 640MB G80 GTS was fine in those areas. I am only getting a max of 20 fps in Crysis on high, no better than the GTS and I didn't expect much more, but I drop down to much lower rates, 5 fps in highly populated areas, and the stuttering is much worse. I keep getting stuttering in a number of games and have had a number of screen lockups in games that never used to trouble the old GTS, especially Company of Heroes, a game which in benchmarks does much better than the GT. I know that heat is sometimes an issue with these cards so I intentionally set the fan at 75% and I know my temps aren't going much above 60. I made sure to properly uninstall all old drivers and I used Driver Cleaner Pro. I really don't know what to do here. I didn't expect the card to be much better, I mainly upgraded so my brother could have my older card, but I never expected it to be worse. I am thinking about returning it as I bought it from Best Buy. Does anyone know about PNY and maybe if another brand, BFG, might be better? As a last note, I haven't changed any setting in any of these games since updating and I have tried reinstalling the drivers as well.

The only thing I can think of aside from defective video card is PSU. Maybe your PSU is dying out, not being able to perform as well as before or something since Ultra PSU aren't very good in terms of quality and performance. I read that the 750W Ultra 2 PSU only does 400W.

Thing is this new card pulls less power than the old card I had, and that card had no problems.

That's why I said it could be degrading. PSU degrades like 10% every year or so, I believe.

So it degraded 10% in one day? Because I am talking about this is the performance I am getting the day of installation of the new card. It worked fine, a couple hours before, with the old card that uses more power. I honestly don't think it's the PSU is my point.

Send the card back to PNY.

at this point ya got nothing to lose!try and exchange it for a different brand ie. BFG or EVGA.

also would look into getting a more reliable brand psu as ULTRA's psu rep kinda stinks. so in the near future i would look for a new psu!

my 2 rusty pennies!

I heard the new 171 drivers are gonna kick perf up in Crysis as much as 40%. Might want to give that a try.

RMA the card for a new one. The one you have is probably defective.

Yes, please RMA and let us know what happens. I've had my EVGA 8800 GTS 640 SSC for a year now and was thinking about selling it and picking up a GT 512...

It sounds like you either have driver problems or a faulty card. Try updating to the latest WHQL drivers from Nvidia (169.25). If that doesn't work you might have to cut your losses and RMA

One more thing, what motherboard are you using? It's a longshot, but you may be having a PCIe issue where it is running on a 1x link instead of 16x. I've heard that some PCIe gen1 mobos exhibit this behavior with PCIe gen2 cards.

Edit: Ah, I see in your sig that you are using a 965P DS3. Good choice

I have tried the latest drivers, and tried installing them a number of times. I do understand that my PSU is not great, but I plan to upgrade that at a later time and I don't think it is not the problem right now.

I think I will return the card, though it is a serious pain in the butt. This doesn't seem like the level of performance I have heard for these cards.

My question then is this, should I return it for another PNY, or try another brand like BFG?

PNY is fine really, but most people prefer Evga, XFX, BFG in that order (imo).

I just swapped my old card back in, replaced the drivers, and restarted. No problems at all in the same spots where the GT is getting maybe 5 fps. Sigh, I am pretty positive it is the card. Thanks for the advice guys.

Evilonigiri, what brand would you choose?

Check the PCIe link width with cpuz just to be sure.

As for brand preferences, eVGA has never let me down. Step-Up is just unbelievable.