ok, heres the deal. According to benchmarks around the www, the 3870x2 is suppose to get an average of 70+ fps in cod4 @ 1600x1050 with everything set to max.

That means AA, AF, All hiigh, basically the works. When I play the game, sometimes fps will go up to 95 but then it can dip to 28fps! i mean 28fps! wth. Anything below 50fps I can feel and it often dips to 50 or lower. am I expecting too much? does the bar for AF pushed too far to the right?

I can set to 2xAA but I mean I just paid $500+ for a video card and I should be able to rock this game np.

its ur ram... if u got vista

Sli'd 8800GT's in a 939 rig

That last bit of Nvidia fanboyism wasn't helpful, mousemonkey. At least ATI is honest and doesn't fudge drivers the way Nvidia did with Crysis (i.e. not displaying the water the way it's meant to be played just to get a few extra fps).

Quanger, benchmarks can be tricky guides and results will vary. It depends on what CPU you have as well as what GPU. Note that most of the benchmarks by Tom's, Anandtech etc. are done using quad cores. Sometimes it's the Q6600, but more recently the latest Intel EE.

Benchmarks are averages anyways when FRAPS is used. It can vary from session to session and Tom's and Anandtech rarely do averages from several sessions. Though H tries to do "real world" game tests, they often pick better drivers and settings for their favored Nvidia cards over ATI.

I'm CPU limited until I get a new LCD monitor this Friday, but I still get up to 60 fps at 1024 x 768 in The Witcher, but it drops down to 19 fps in some intense combats, but it averages 30-40 . Anandtech calculated 46 fps in The Witcher using the first in game cut scene at 1680 x 1050. I've noticed that I get more fps in cutscenes than I do in gameplay where there are quite a few monsters in a group.

That shows me that Crossfire's recognized in that game, whereas with LOTR online, I get 42 fps max can can drop to 20 fps in DX10 mode with Vista. When I get to play on the new 20" LCD then I won't be as CPU limited. When I get a Phenom 9750 in May on a Crossfire board then I definitely won't be CPU limited.

As for AF, I found that I could only get 20 or so fps in LOTR online with 16x AF, but it looks just as good with very sharp detail. So, if you don't like less than 50fps, cut down on the AF. The next generation of ATI cards are supposed to do better with AA and AF. Lastly, some games just don't recognize Crossfire or SLI.

So, you are probably doing okay because you don't have a quad core and you are getting real world gameplay. Note that your Athlon X2, while better than mine, is still a weak CPU by today's standards. If you can get a decent average fps with everything enabled at 1680 x 1050, then what's to complain?

hmm. you really think the x2 6400 is limiting? i mean it performs on par with the E6750 or so. Cod4 specifically does not utilize quad cores yet so that cant be a factor. I am running win xp sp2 with 2gb of ram which I think should be enough.

looking back, i remember when i had my athlon 700 with 256mb ram and a radeon 7200 (original), i was getting good fps in quake3 but the problem was it kept dipping low. I solved it buy adding another 512mb stick to the system.

But i really doubt an extra 2gb will solve my problem with fps dipping. Win xp only reconizes 3gb so having 4gb would be a bit of a waste. I refuse to upgrade to vista. I would consider it if it was free but otherwise i cant justfiy paying $$$ for that os. I wouldnt even buy it for $20.

With framerates that vary like that it's most likely memory or CPU. If your framerates were low but still holding really steady then I would say you could safely look at the fault being with the GPU. But in your case with frame rates going very high and dipping very low, it's going to be memory or CPU handling tasks that ocassionally bottle neck them, for example CPU could be any background task, specially norton or mcafee which are notorious for doing whatever the hell they want in the background.

Not fanboyism mate, although I do have a preference to nVidia cards over Ati's. And as both companies been equally guilty over the years of 'fixing' drivers to gain a few more points in futuremark and other benchmarks, I was merely out to show that either COD4 is an nVidia title or the OP should question whether or not their card is any good as 95fps can be achieved with a single card that has a single GPU.

If your CPU is limiting you then how the heck does my 939 3800x2 @2.0ghz manage over 200fps with all eye candy maxed out @1680x1050?

It sounds like a problem other than your hardware. You definately have the horsepower to run that game, try different drivers?

Hmmm mousemonkey I think something is being reported wrong if it says 200fps

One time fraps told me Assassins Creed was running at 150 fps but next time I ran the game it said it was 40-60 so I think it is reporting it to you wrong.

But maybe you have some futuristic technology we dont know about? Just givin you a hard time.

No futuristic technology just consistently high fps's on all the indoor bits and 50's and 60's outdoors, oh and it's not FRAPS that I'm using

i will definately rull out the issue if it is memory related. luckily, my friend has the same 2 sticks of ballistix ddr800 and i will pop that in my pc. so basically, instead of 2gb ram it will be 3gb since winxp doesnt reconize 4gb. i wish microsoft can fix that crap. they are well aware that MB can support over 3gb so why limit it to 3? lame. just another excuse for us to buy vista.

i get around 75-125 (capped at 125) All max settings, AA and AF all the way up.
1440x900 res.

Maybe so, but not on this occassion

Then put your hand in your pocket and shell out some dollars for a better card or cards

The first wave of 3870x2 reviews did tell of big 'dips' in the framerate, being something to do with heavy data transfers between the system memory and the cards memory (memories), and that future drivers should help eliminate/smooth this out.

Is it a sustained low, say standing still (if you can in cod4 lol) and after 10 seconds its still at 28fps?. Btw you have super-human eyes if you can feel when somethings dropped under 50pfs...