Recently upgraded, performance too low

[Guest]

Hi everyone,

I recently upgraded most components of my pc, and I feel like the results aren't satisfying at all.

I switched from:

AsRock ConROE Xfire SATA II
Intel Core 2 Duo 4800
2 GB DDR2-800
Geforce 8400 GS
Levicom 450W Power Supply (can't remember exact model)

to

Gigabyte 880 GA-880-GM D2H
AMD Phenom X4 955
Kingston KVR1333D3N9K2/4G
XFX HD 5870 HD-587X-ZNFC
Be quiet! 530W Pure Power L7

I kept my HDD (Samsung HD322HJ) and my old drives.

I am running WinXP SP3 because I can't afford a copy of 7 atm, which afaik limits the used RAM to 3GB and forces me to use DirectX9 instead of 11.

The core of interest for me is playing WoW which in some situations kicks me down to 20 fps whereas my girlfriend in the exact same situation had 5 fps more with a PC that's a lot older (Core2Duo 6something, Geforce 8800 GT etc.)

I am playing on medium settings on almost everything.

My problem is, that I don't know where to start searching for the cause of this problem.
Are there any mandatory changes in the BIOS settings, as I haven't changed any of these yet.

Which benchmark could / should I use to test my PC's performance and get comparable results?


Any help would be highly appreciated.

 

[bearracuda]

I just did the same thing. 'Cept I picked a 5770 and a biostar mobo. Have you already installed your flurry of new drivers? Having the latest Video card drivers is going to be of particular importance.

http://support.amd.com/us/gpudownload/Pages/index.aspx

You can get 'em there if you haven't yet.

 

[3xch4ng3]

Hi everyone,

I recently upgraded most components of my pc, and I feel like the results aren't satisfying at all.

I switched from:

AsRock ConROE Xfire SATA II
Intel Core 2 Duo 4800
2 GB DDR2-800
Geforce 8400 GS
Levicom 450W Power Supply (can't remember exact model)

to

Gigabyte 880 GA-880-GM D2H
AMD Phenom X4 955
Kingston KVR1333D3N9K2/4G
XFX HD 5870 HD-587X-ZNFC
Be quiet! 530W Pure Power L7

I kept my HDD (Samsung HD322HJ) and my old drives.

I am running WinXP SP3 because I can't afford a copy of 7 atm, which afaik limits the used RAM to 3GB and forces me to use DirectX9 instead of 11.

The core of interest for me is playing WoW which in some situations kicks me down to 20 fps whereas my girlfriend in the exact same situation had 5 fps more with a PC that's a lot older (Core2Duo 6something, Geforce 8800 GT etc.)

I am playing on medium settings on almost everything.

My problem is, that I don't know where to start searching for the cause of this problem.
Are there any mandatory changes in the BIOS settings, as I haven't changed any of these yet.

Which benchmark could / should I use to test my PC's performance and get comparable results?


Any help would be highly appreciated.

There's shouldn't be any reason that you're getting less performance than your previous setup. I would definetly check the Drivers for the Video Card & Motherboard to see if that helps.

Motherboard Chipset Drivers:

http://support.amd.com/us/gpudownload/windows/Pages/raid_windows.aspx#3

Video Card Driver:

http://sites.amd.com/us/game/downloads/Pages/radeon_xp-32.aspx

Don't forget the CPU Optimzer Driver either:

http://support.amd.com/us/Pages/dynamicDetails.aspx?ListID=c5cd2c08-1432-4756-aafa-4d9dc646342f&ItemID=173&lang=us

 

[Guest]

Drivers are up to date.

How much increase of performance can I expect from Upgrading to Windows 7, thus being able to use DirectX 11 instead of 9 plus an extra Gig of RAM?

Also can anyone recommend benchmark programs as asked for above?

 

[bearracuda]

Well, since you're wanting to play games with this computer, I'd recommend Unigine Heaven, but if your computer's having trouble getting WoW to work at more than 20 FPS on medium settings, it might not be able to run unigine at all.

I don't think upgrading to win7 would do a lot, unless AMD's drivers are VERY badly optimized for XP. If you have a second hard drive to move your important files onto, I might recommend formatting the drive and reinstalling windows. I'm pretty strongly convinced the problem is on the software end, because the 5870 is a MUCH better card than the performance you're getting out of it.

... Also, just a thought: Are you sure you've got your monitor plugged into the card itself? The performance you're getting is almost exactly what I'd expect out that motherboard's onboard chipset.

 

[Guest]

First of all thanks to everyone who answered so far.

I might have found the root of the problem, though I am not sure yet.
First, it seems that a WoW-Addon was causing lots and lots of errors which decreases performance significally.
I'll fix that and see wether I can tell a difference or not.

Regarding Unigine Heaven:
As far as I was able to tell, that benchmark is only available for DX11 or am I mistaken?

And yes, the monitor cable is plugged into the GFX-card, not the onboard GPU
Could it be necessary to disable the onboard hardware?

 

[Guest]

Found out that Unigine had a DX9 Mode aswell.

Here are some results. I can't really tell wether that's good or bad but from the comparable results, this didn't seem to be too bad.

http://graubart.bplaced.net/unigine_20110805_1443.html

http://graubart.bplaced.net/unigine_20110805_1451.html

http://graubart.bplaced.net/unigine_20110805_1508.html