GTX 275 + PSU/GTA 4 question. Advice and expertise welcomed.

[flippercus]

Hey all.

I just purchased an EVGA GTX 275 896 MB overclocked edition. I upgraded from a superclocked XFX 8800 GTS 640 MB.

I went to play GTA 4 and I am getting barely 4 fps more than my old card on the same exact settings.

I get on average of 25-30 FPS on a measly 1280 X 1024 LCD monitor. Tom's benchmarks on the card, on very high texture filtering, showed something like 60 + fps. I have the view distance and car density slider down to the SINGLE digits in the GTA 4 options, too. I have reflection on low and medium as well as shadows.

What's going on here?

Here's my system:
Intel 2 Q6600 @ 3.18 ghz, 4 gb Corsair XMS ram, Vista 64-bit, 620 watt Liberty Enermax PSU.

I am stumped.

I installed the latest drivers after doing the proper cleaning (safe mode, restarts, etc).

On some games, I get the performance boost I would expect and the card performs amazingly well. There are a handful of very new titles where I get very high FPS but then during graphically intense parts I get a moment of hitching. To make it stop I need to turn stuff down to average or even low settings that my Nvidia 7 series PC can run. And I am not talking about setting the options to insane settings.

Should I upgrade my PSU? They recommend 40 amps for the gtx 275. Here is my psu, please check it out. There could be instability in the power on the rails that may cause it to hitch during the most intense parts. I run 1 hard drive, 1 dvd rom, a non-stock cpu cooler, and 6 other fans.

SO, what do you think about the GTA 4 thing and what about the PSU? Ample or could it be the root cause for occasional hitching in a few titles?

Thanks for reading.

 

[coozie7]

There is plenty of juice and Enermax is one of the better builders.
Check you do not have too many programs loaded and running at startup or that you AV software is not getting in the way. Also clear any files off the desktop, icons are fine but not files.
I have also been told Aero can make a difference but so far no one has stated clearly if this is an issue or not.

 

[sprucebr1]

Did you unistall old drivers first? That can help sometimes. I'm sure your new GPU will whip GTA4, you just need to aware of what your doing here. GTX 285 is way newer than 8800GTS 640. I would try the new drivers first, at worst you may have to re-install GTA4.

 

[djbrad007]

Did you disable vsync?

Did you update the game?

 

[flippercus]

Thanks for the thoughtful and constructive replies.

Yeah, it is a 275 gtx. I uninstalled my old drivers using the usual safe mode + cleaner + install new ones approach.

I DID have AVG anti-virus and have since gotten rid of it. Maybe that was a culprit? I use another program that I make sure is not running when playing or installing games.

I also have defragged my hard drive since my first post and the usual things. I leave as few processes and programs running in the background as possible. I'll check it out and see if that helped.

It's not that GTA 4 is unplayable, it just runs much lower than I'm seeing posted in Tom's (and other site's) benchmarks. I can run it with very high textures and high mostly across the board but on those sliders I have to keep them pretty low. I am only running 1280 X 1024 so I thought it would be better. GTA 4 is also up to date. I might just need to do a fresh install and see if that helps. Oh, and I don't run with vsync on. In my card driver settings it is all set to default with the usual "let app decide" and whatnot.

I was freaked out about my psu and wasn't sure if I needed to get a new one. Did you guys look at the link I put with its specs? I think I have 44 amps total going into the gpu, the nvidia site says you should have a minimum of 40. It's probably just me worrying about something unnecessarily.

I'm pretty knowledgeable about computers but it always helps to have another set of eyes looking at it. I'll report back if I figure out how to get this new set-up optimized in case it helps someone else.

 

[flippercus]

I just ran the game and put everything as low as possible. I get the same FPS! It doesn't change at all. Low textures, crap everything. I did a benchmark on 3d mark 2006 and only got 11,896 as my score. When I do the "can I run it" program on the 3d mark site (and yes, I know I can run it, but was checking to see what it would say) it lists my hardware configuration, saying it should be several thousand above that range in 3d mark. I know it is not a perfect way to check your system and there are too many variables but something is tamed.

I guess a reinstall is the only thing that makes sense. If that doesn't work, I am totally lost.

 

[chripuck]

I just ran the game and put everything as low as possible. I get the same FPS! It doesn't change at all. Low textures, crap everything. I did a benchmark on 3d mark 2006 and only got 11,896 as my score. When I do the "can I run it" program on the 3d mark site (and yes, I know I can run it, but was checking to see what it would say) it lists my hardware configuration, saying it should be several thousand above that range in 3d mark. I know it is not a perfect way to check your system and there are too many variables but something is tamed.

I guess a reinstall is the only thing that makes sense. If that doesn't work, I am totally lost.

That is what v-sync is... you've let the App decide in the driver settings and in the App (GTA IV) you have v-sync set. I dont have the game but it's either a setting in the ingame options or its a tweak you can do to an ini file somewhere.

That is the ONLY thing that would produce that behavior.

Just an FYI, if you dont know already, v-sync basically matches the FPS of your game to the refresh rate of your monitor. If it can't match it evenly sometimes developers will have it match in even intervals e.g. a 60 hz flat panel with the game running at 30 fps.

 

[trkorecky]

Sounds like v-sync is the culprit, though I just wanted to point out that GTA IV is a highly CPU-intensive game and most of the benchmarks are run on i7's and the like.

 

[Guest]

I am a bit late since i JUST got GTA4, i installed patch 1.0.3

I have a Q6600 and a new GTX 275, and the game runs MUCH BETTER than what i read anywhere on the net.

I have all settings on high and run at 1680x1050, recommended settings.

I am using Nvidia drivers 186.18. I think you must have a "forced" driver setting which puts your FPS down, for example you might have transparency antialiasing on or something.

I do actually think your 3dmark setting is "more or less ok"..i am running my PC overclocked to 3.6 ghz and my card is also a little overclocked, in 3dm06 i get 17748. So for your system at3.18Ghz i dont think 12k 3dmarks is that far off.

By the way i am running windows7.

I think your PSU "might" be able to do it, Enermax is pretty ok, i just dont want you to get a 1000W PSU or something and then not have a peformance gain since its something else.

G.

 

[successful_troll]

I am a bit late since i JUST got GTA4, i installed patch 1.0.3

I have a Q6600 and a new GTX 275, and the game runs MUCH BETTER than what i read anywhere on the net.

You THINK that the game runs much better on your system…

Your system can run GTA4 with the same performance like any other system with Q6600 & GTX 275 simple as that.

 

[Kill@dor]

Wow thats bad... I'm getting 32FPS on a E6600 3.0 OC Core 2 Duo and 8800GT on 1920x1080 60MHz res and high quality textures (which isn't good either, but when i play online i get 60+fps WTF). I can see everything in the distance in high def online..but in campaign it lags to 30fps...

Anyway, i would recommend you check you ram. What is it running it with CPUz? Its not your GPU thats the problem, its your CPU and RAM.