HD 5830 VS GTX 570 Superclocked Question/Worries

[bleachhead2]

Hello,
I recently sold my HD 5830 graphics card for 99$ and I purchased a GTX 570 Superclocked for 299$. According to the Windows Index the card is actually scoring lower than my old HD 5830. I just spent 200$ more dollars for this upgrade. Did I waste my money? Was this an actual upgrade? I had first purchased a GTX 560 Ti Superclocked and that had the same Windows Index as the GTX 570 Superclocked now but I had exchanged it for the GTX 570 Superclocked because I wanted and true upgrade and at the moment I am afraid i've wasted my money. I am running a Dell XPS 630i with an Intel Core 2 Quad @ 2.66ghz. 8GB Ram. 750W power supply and a low rpm hard drive 320gb.

 

[Sunius]

No you did not waste your money. GTX 570 is about twice as fast as your old HD 5830.

Question about underperformance: did you uninstall AMD drivers? Did you install the newest Nvidia drivers? Did you try actually playing any games? Windows rating might sometimes be buggy..

What is your power supply unit?

 

[bleachhead2]

The power supply is a stock Dell 750w. I did uninstall the AMD drivers. I am confused about the differences in what would make the gtx 570 twice as fast because when i view the technical specs of both cards they seem extremely similar. I did play a game and seems to play the exact same as my old card. I am currently playing Diablo 3 and when there's a lot of action going on like multiple characters ,monsters, etc my fps goes from like 80 to 1-10 and basically get almost a frozen screen.

 

[Sunius]

Could you run unigine heaven benchmark just to make sure your card is working properly?

http://unigine.com/products/heaven/download/

Furthermore, did you connect one 6-pin and one 8-pin power connectors directly from your power supply to your graphics card?

 

[aaronstyle]

Your hard drive and CPU are holding your back, it looks like. 2.6 ghz is pretty slow, try overclocking your processor, if you know how and are willing to do it. That should alleviate some of the bottle necking that you're experiencing.

 

[bleachhead2]

Could you run unigine heaven benchmark just to make sure your card is working properly?

http://unigine.com/products/heaven/download/

Furthermore, did you connect one 6-pin and one 8-pin power connectors directly from your power supply to your graphics card?

I think I connected two 6 pin connectors. The Gtx uses a one 6 and one 8? I'll have to use that program later when I am home. Thanks for the link.

 

[bleachhead2]

Your hard drive and CPU are holding your back, it looks like. 2.6 ghz is pretty slow, try overclocking your processor, if you know how and are willing to do it. That should alleviate some of the bottle necking that you're experiencing.

I read that the dell xps 630i can be overclocked from the bios. Is that a good idea? Will that lessen the life of the processor? I was thinking of upgrading the motherboard to get a new i5 instead. Should I get an ssd?

 

[Sunius]

SSD will boost up your PC loading times, but will not improve your fps. Overclocking is safe if you got an aftermarket cooler. Don't try it with stock one.

I still think it's a driver problem and Core 2 Quad @ 2.66 Ghz should not bottleneck GTX 570. At least not to the degree of 10 fps. 60 - maybe. But not 10. GTX 570 on itself should pull over 120 fps.

 

[tjs4ever]

I have tested this thoroughly: my C2Q Q6700 @ 3.2ghz is bottlenecking my GTX570 5-10% depending on the title. I get a solid 7.9 for both graphics sections, however. At stock, the bottleneck was slightly more, but still not really noticeable in-game. It is noticeable only when comparing FutureMark or similar benching scores. With that in mind, and upgrade to an I7 or I5 would bring with it performance increases in most PC tasks.

OC that CPU to an even 3.0 anyways, should not even require a voltage adjustment.

 

[bleachhead2]

SSD will boost up your PC loading times, but will not improve your fps. Overclocking is safe if you got an aftermarket cooler. Don't try it with stock one.

I still think it's a driver problem and Core 2 Quad @ 2.66 Ghz should not bottleneck GTX 570. At least not to the degree of 10 fps. 60 - maybe. But not 10. GTX 570 on itself should pull over 120 fps.

any advice on an aftermarket cooler compatible would be great help thanks.

 

[bleachhead2]

I have tested this thoroughly: my C2Q Q6700 @ 3.2ghz is bottlenecking my GTX570 5-10% depending on the title. I get a solid 7.9 for both graphics sections, however. At stock, the bottleneck was slightly more, but still not really noticeable in-game. It is noticeable only when comparing FutureMark or similar benching scores. With that in mind, and upgrade to an I7 or I5 would bring with it performance increases in most PC tasks.

OC that CPU to an even 3.0 anyways, should not even require a voltage adjustment.

thanks for checking, everything you said is very informative.

 

[Sunius]

This one is a very decent aftermarket cooler:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835103065

Did you run the unigine benchmark?

 

[tjs4ever]

That cooler is decent, but the ArcticCooling 7 pro got better reviews (currently sold out at newegg) but either will get you the mild OC we're after here. Keep in mind that not all c2q have the same overclock potential: 3.2 is the highest for me before insane voltages were required.

Good luck!