[Solved] Low FPS with good hardware

I am getting really bad frame rates in the games ive been playing, i only get about 25-40 fps in sims 3 and 30-38 fps in Rainbox Six Vegas i have all the latest drivers installed and with my harware i should be getting really high frame rates.

Im running

Ati Radeon HD4650 512mb PCI-e

Intel Core Duo E8400 stock clocked at 3.0ghz

2GB DDR2

Windows xp Home Sp2

420W Power supply

I don't know if the fact that i haven't updated to SP3 has anything to do with it but the Geek-squad representative at my local best buy couldn't even figure out the issue, i did just upgrade my motherboard and cpu but i updated all the drivers to everything on my system.

Wait did you reinstall Windows after the hardware change? If not theres the problem.

Hunter315 has it then. I might also add if you are running DDR2-800 that E-8400 is pretty much a free overclock to 3.6. Even with stock cooling.

Now I regret paying $130 for that GPU should have gotten the 4870. Won't have the money to upgrade any time soon so ill have to deal with it. I've been thinking about overclocking I've never done it myself so I didn't want to risk it but I've seen some videos on how to do it

1440x900 with 4aa/8af and you wonder why you have low frame riates with your 4650? Drop the AA, the frames should go up.

what brand is the psu?

I don't know anything about sunbeam PSUs, to be honest (they make at least one really awesome CPU cooler though ), but XFX is definitely a good brand. The double lifetime warranty increases it's resale value, as the next person to own it, also gets a lifetime warranty out of it. With non reference cooler, it may be necessary to increase the cooling in your case by a small amount, if you don't have good airflow already. 4870s are warm cards, and all that heat will be dumped into the case, not an issue with good airflow.

You can save 20 bucks on the video card and get the 512mb version. At 1440x900 and below, you will not get much use out of the 1gb of ram. I have had great success running my 4870 512mb as high as 1920x1080.

And if you do have heat issues, use that 20 bucks to buy a couple decent fans, spend some time tieing up your cables out of the path of airflow, and you should be good to go.

I think my airflow is decent i just got a Cool Master case ($50 range) including the fans i installed i have a 120mm fan sucking in air from the front, a 80mm fan sucking air in from the side pannel and a 120mm sucking out all the hot air from the back of the case, i have room for 1 more fan on the side pannel right above the cpu, and i wanted the 1g just to be sure i dont have to upgrade within a year but if the memory only has to do with the resolutions at this point then i would rather grab a 512, BUT the same brand card with 512 is $124.99, and the 1g version has a mail in rebate deal that will end up costing me $124.99 so ide rather get the 1g just in case

ah ok. How about the cpu temperature then?

edit and have you tried l4d with the new system?

Those temps seem just fine, no worries there...

Awesome i thought it might have been getting hot, im just going to upgrade my GPU and power supply

As Hunter315 says, AA is hard on the card, either reduce the leval or drop it entirely
for a nice boost in speed. Also look at lighting effects: Reflections, shadows, water effects and HDR can also cause a heavy drain on the card.

I think this is a better PSU:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6817341022

I bought one of those XFX cards, with that same cooler and found it to be noisy and hot... 90c under Furmark with the side panel off the case and the fan at a noisy 100% caused me to return it within 2 days.

I hated coolers that dump their heat into the case, and my experiences with the XFX HD4870 have only soured my opinions further and since all the HD4870s in your price range have that type of cooler I'm going to suggest this instead:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6814161244

Turn your side fan around to exhaust air. I have an 80mm in the side of my cheap cooler master case, and tried both ways, and with it exhausting, system temps dropped dramatically. I also have 120 front, 120rear fans.