Upgraded from ATI 4850 to Sapphire 6870- No FPS increase.

[Itzviral]

Hey guys, I recently upgraded from a Visiontek radeon 4850 to a Sapphire radeon 6870.

Before the upgrade, I ran about 22FPS on "Ultra" Settings. After the upgrade... I am still running at 22FPS on "Ultra" settings. How could this be? As far as can possibly tell, 4850 -> 6870 should be a massive upgrade, and I'm seeing no performance increase. My CPU is not bottlenecked, as it runs about 55% on all cores when playing World of Warcraft. My ram runs at about 2.89/4.0gb when playing as well.

I don't see any reason why I shouldn't be getting more FPS than with my previous card. I guess its worth mention that in the Catalyst control center, the "Activity" meter hovers at 98%-100% when playing World of Warcraft as well. Am i really using the card to its maximum potential and not getting a performance increase?

Sorry if this comes off as a rant, but $250 should be an upgrade over the $100 card i bought 3 years ago. Any suggestions?

 

[SpadeM]

It could help if you posted the CPU/mobo u're using and if u wiped the system clean of the old drivers when installed the new ones. Without a more detailed look at your system, even the version of windows u're running and the resolution of the game, don't expect any solid suggestions.

 

[Itzviral]

It is a fresh install of Windows 7. Latest updates for both windows and graphics drivers.

Processor: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819103894
The game is running at 1920x1080 Resolution, but I have tried reducing the resolution and restarting the game with the same performance as before.

I do not know how to find the name of my motherboard.

 

[geekapproved]

You connected both 6 pin power cables and you have a capable psu?

 

[Itzviral]

Yes, and Yes.

 

[beltzy]

Hi Itzviral,

Some additional information would be helpful to figure out what's going on.
1) What is your processor clocked at?
2) Is your card staying at 22 FPS at all times during gameplay or only in certain areas?
3) Are you playing in fullscreen mode or windowed (fullscreen)? If you are playing in windowed mode there is a setting in advanced video options to limit FPS in foreground and background modes, which you should disable (so it runs as fast as possible at all times).

I have an i7-950 OC'd to 4Ghz and two HD 5850's in Crossfire, and in very crowded areas of capital cities I still drop to 20ish-30ish FPS in 1920x1200. This is a limitation of the game that is going to exist no matter how much graphics muscle you have. Now, if you are getting those kind of low framerates in dungeons, questing areas, etc that probably indicates a problem.

This page from Tom's recent WoW: Cataclysm performance guide shows the 6870 getting an average of 84 FPS at 1920x1200 resolution(cap'ed at 60 if you have vsync on), but keep in mind that is on a flight path and server traffic, huge amounts of other players, and the general framerate slowdown that everyone experiences in very densely populated areas are not a factor in the benchmark. You could take the same flight path that is tested to see if you get similar FPS under those circumstances. That should be a good indicator of where the problem is.