Horrible performance...something is wrong

[mikecic]

Hey guys. I am having a horrible problem with my gaming rig and cannot figure out for the life of me what it is. First of all my specs are: ASUS M2N-32 SLI Motherboard, 750W Power supply, AMD X2 6000+ stock @ 3ghz, 4 gb corsair 800mhz ram, Vista 64bit, Nvidia 9800 GX2. My problem is crysis and crysis warhead. All other games run great but these two are giving me a lot of trouble. I run at 1360x768 and no AA or AF and no matter if I have the settings on low or very high, I am only producing around 10-20 FPS. This seems odd to me because of the strength of my video card and I do not think my CPU would be holding back the GPU that much. I simply cannot figure it out. I tried defragmenting HD, running different drivers with my GPU, overclocking my card, installing patches, updating, the whole nine yards and nothing seems to work. If I were to guess I would say its something with my ram b/c if I am looking down at the ground, FPS are very smooth but when I look up into the jungle or heavily fortified areaa, everything goes to hell. Any help would be much appreciated.

 

[mactronix]

Well if changing the settings isn't making a difference in FPS then something is causing a restriction somewhere along the line.
Can you do a bunch of resolution tests ? Say 800x600 for a start and then 1360x768. Do both resolutions with AA and AF on and with it off. Post your results and then we can go from there. As you say its not the CPU holding you back.
Are you running V-sync by any chance ? that can have a cumulative effect with any other restriction and really drag down the FPS. Other than that im thinking you may be resolution restricted thats why i need you to do the tests.

Mactronix

 

[megamanx00]

Hmm.. interesting. I use Vista 32 bit myself, since well the college gives it to me free thanks to MSDN . Too bad they don't give the 64-bit version, anyway, I don't think it's your CPU. Could be a driver issue? Really though since each GPU on the GX2 only has 512MB I can see why it would slow down in some areas, but putting everything to low uses a lot less memory so I don't know. Are running the 1.2 Patch? What drivers are you using?

 

[mikecic]

Alright guys I did the resolution test. Did not see that much different between 800X600 than I did at my native 1360X768 If I put all visual settings at Medium to Lox on 800X600 it ran semidecent with fps hovering around 40 but nothing more than that. It just seems real odd to me to have the most powerful GPU on the planet and it running these two games like complete garbage. Interesting fact though is I see no difference if I'm running one of the GPUs opposed to both of them simultaneously. So I do not know if Crysis is not recognizing and utilizing both of the GPUs inside the 9800 GX2. Keep the ideas flowing...they are much appreciated. Also, could I tweak some settings inside the Nvidia Control Panel to fix this??? My current settings are on "application controlled"

 

[mikecic]

Also, I am running the 177.98 beta drivers because all others did not show improvements. Original crysis is patched to 1.2 but Crysis Warhead was just purchased and I do not believe they are any new updates for it yet. It is frustrating because they say that is supposed to be a lot better optimized than the original crysis but I do not see any improvements on my machine. Motherboard wouldn't be holding the GPU back would it???

 

[mactronix]

Im assuming that 1.2 includes the patch for running dual cards ? the game dosent support it out of the box. I would love for you to be able to hook up to a larger screen to test for resolution restrictions. 1360X768 is a small screen and 800X600 is over half less in terms of pixels so its kinda sugesting thats the problem. Of course you wont go buy a big screen just to test this but do you know anyone with a bigger screen you could try it on?
What about the V-sync ? are you using it. If not use it and if you are turn it off and let us know if it makes a differance.

Mactronix

 

[mikecic]

not using vsync. I never have. And in terms of the screen im using...I have a vizio 27 inch LCD capable of 720p. So 1368_768 is the highest it will produce. Im connecting video card to screen through a vga cable. Tried an hdmi cable but did not work at all