MSI Geforce GTX 275 Performance Issues

Oh I forgot to give you these details as well.

Rivatuner's Graphics Subsystem Diagnostics Report give me the following values:

$0100000100 Core clock domain 0 : 300.856MHz
$0100000101 Core clock domain 1 : 601.712MHz
$0100000006 Memory clock : 100.000MHz (200.000MHz effective)
$0100000007 Reference clock : 27.000MHz

Clearly, something has to be wrong with the GPU. The core clock domain 0 is supposed to be 667MHz, core clock domain 1 about 950MHz, and the memory clock should be 1200MHz. So clearly this card is under performing and is faulty isn't it?

I just read the post of about Prototype, and it states that the GTX 260 gets about 48 FPS on 1920 x 1200, 4 AA. I get around 30-40 FPS at maximum. I noticed that they use the Core i7's for the bencmarkins, but certainly it couldn't make that big of a difference.

Bencharmarks of Far Cry 2 also showed that the GTX 275 should get around 60 FPS at very high details. Mine gets around 25-30 FPS. So clearly something is very very wrong here.

Any suggestions?

w0tness I would say your psu is your problem the psu you listed is a gigabyte 585 with 2 - 12 volt rails with 18 amps each.and I beleave the 275 don't know the brand says at least a combine 12 volt of at least 43 amps,not that it's going to use to 43 amps but look you are powering a

MSI OC Edition Geforce GTX 275: Running 186.16 NVIDIA Drivers.
AMD 9600 Quad Core, 2.3 Ghz Processor
MSI K9A2 Platinum Motherboard
2 x 2 1066 Hyper X Western Digital RAM

all on 36 amps I would go with at least a 650 or 750 good brand power supply with those spec (corsair,pc power,ocz,etc)

is this your video http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E168... 2 6 pin connectors on the video.

hope this helps you out .I do believe you are under powering the video.

A PSU will not rob performance, it will cause bugs and things to break. The card will not all of a sudden grow a personality and choose to work half assed with less power.

It might limit over clocking, it might cause bugs up its ass, but it will work or not, there is no mid ground. That is not how it works.


To the op, yes, an i7 over a phenom 1 will certainly make that big of a difference....

Well certainly the i7 can't make a difference of 30 frames or more and those clock speeds of mine are way to low. Something must be terribly wrong here if a Gtx 260 outperforms me.

Another thing, I get low frames no matter what I make the resolutions or the graphics settings. In far cry 2 I get around 30 FPS, although on Tom's benchmarkers the Gtx 275 is supposed to get around 61 FPS on high details and 1920 x 1200.

So whether I'm playing at 1224 x 1080 or 1920 x 1200, I'm still getting very poor and sluggish performance, so its not the CPU. It could eiter be drivers, the PSU or the GPU that is faulty.

More suggestions and help please  

Your CPU is bottlenecking. OC it to 3GHZ and see the results. Atleast 2.7GHZ

The pehenom 1 just is that slow compared to the i7 yeah, Like suggested OC it to 3,0 ghz and ull notice a nice increase

So does the CPU speed directly effect the speed at which my GPU runs? Basically, my CPU speed is limiting my GPU speed?

Yes, the CPU is holding the GPU back, either purchase a faster CPU or overclock the one you have.
Start your journey into overclocking by taking a look at our Overclocking Forum.
Do not enter into this lightly, do your research first. Overclocking is not that hard, but there is pitfalls for the unwary and it is possible to do severe damage by selecting the wrong settings.

w0tness coozie has a good point : First reassure yourself by doing this: Load Rivatuner and set it to monitor your GPU clock speeds then load a game, run it for a minuet or so and exit back to Rivatuner. Your graph should look something like this:

https://sg2vkq.bay.livefilestore.co [...] titled.bmp

This shows the card going from idle, to full speed, running a game, a pause while I went into an options screen, a return to the game and finally exiting, with the clockspeeds dropping to idle.
This is normal.

Assuming you graph looks similar, the soloution is to overclock the CPU, or purchase a faster one.
Start your journey into overclocking by taking a look at our Overclocking Forum.
Do not enter into this lightly, do your research first. Overclocking is not that hard, but there is pitfalls for the unwary and it is possible to do severe damage by selecting the wrong settings.

also the other people have a good points,psu will not help your performance,and you shouldn't compare your pehenom to a I7 like the rest of the other people suggested .

I still say that psu is not good for that video card,and the psu is not the issue with your performance.for your performance issue just try what coozie suggested.

Sorry guys, the link I posted and Major53 linked to is invalid.
Try this one instead:

Still can't seem to launch that link Coozie  .

I've managed to OC my cpu to about 2.67 ghz, running at 230 FSB without adjusting the voltages. Do you guys think I'll be able to OC the CPU even further, to around the 2.9 - 3.00 Ghz mark? I'll just have to adjust the voltages as I go. Any advice?

Seem to be getting a performance boost of about 10-15 FPS in prototype, running at around 55-60 FPS running 4 AA, Details all set to high and at a res of 1920 x 1200. Does this seem like a good FPS score?

Thanks for all the feedback so far, really appreciate it!

w0tness those frame rates sound about right.

I'll try to get that link working.
Watch your CPU temperatures like a hawk, mate! If you are on stock cooling it's very easy to over heat the CPU.

w0tness coozie correct about cpu temps if you try to overclock any higher mite think about after market heatsink and fan.

Rather pointlessly, I have now got the link to work 
We REALLY mean it about the temperatures, keep pushing on stock cooling and you could damage the CPU.

I've got a $ 80 Gigabyte fan + heatsink on it already, but yea, I'll be watching the TEMPS. Do u guys think I'll be able to push the CPU a bit further?

OK, I was a little needlessly worried about the cooler and you sem to know a bit about overclocking;)
It's a lottery, there's no way anyone can tell what final overclock any individual chip can acheive, all you can do is push it until it falls over and back off a bit.
Take a look at Xbitlabs, I think they have a article on overclocking the Phenom.
BTW,if you MB has a temperature alarm in the BIOS, now would be a good time to set and activate it.

KK, will do bud. Thanks a lot for your help. Will keep u guys updated on any new developments!

It might be a bit redundant now, but the figures you see in RivaTuna are the ones it displays for 'Standard 2D'. To see the 'actual' clock figures you expect, under Driver Settings | Customize... select the little graphics card icon to show the 'System Tweaks' dialog, on the 'Overclocking' tab, select 'Enable hardware overclocking', let it get your system values, then select 'performance 3D' in the drop down list. You should see the correct numbers, and put your mind at ease that your card is not actually faulty.
Hope this helps.