newbie help please.

[deem]

I've been a mac user for the last ten years and have always been an avid gamer. Having not got complete satisfaction from my xbox, ps2 or gamecube, I decided to take the plunge and shell out for what I hoped would be the Ultimate Gaming machine - a high(ish) end P.C.
A couple of weeks ago I bought a Medion base unit with an AMD 3200+ XP processor, 512mb RAM & a Geforce 5200 256mb Card. Being utterly disappointed, I then - 2 days later - bought a 5900 ultra 256mb, being assured this would absolutely pulverise HL2. I am very happy with the performance of games such as Call of Duty, but newer games, such as Far Cry, don't quite cut the mustard. What I really don't get is in 3DMark2001SE 'without any overclocking' Benchmarks lead tables, scores of around 17000-18000 seem quite the norm for similar set-ups, but i only manage around 12800-13000.
I thought that by spending £400 on a graphics card I'd be able to run any game at it's highest detail and retain a playable - and enjoyable - framerate. Am I missing something? I bought the unit from p* w*r*ld - so could it have a really crappy motherboard? if so would getting a new one improve my gaming? Would another 512mb ram help? Can my processor be holding back my Card?

Help! & thankyou.

Dan.

 

[Woodman]

I wouldn't worry about Far Cry man, since it's pretty new. You know, it's actually possible that today's systems can't actually run everything out there decently, especially the newest games ;P.

Did you run 3DMark2001SE in default, or did you turn a couple of things (like AA, AF) on?

Don't think you need to change anything unless your pockets are as deep as hell. Not a terribly big difference, but I would've gone for a Radeon 9800 XT something or the other, rather than that 5900U. 256MB on the GFX card is pretty much useless too man, so I guess you did lose a bundle getting that.

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Do not spit.

 

[deem]

thanks for the help - looks like Ive been bamboozled with this nvidia card. would changing it for a 9800 really make much difference? if it did then I'd bite the bullet and get one...

 

[Vimp]

I advise against it at this time. No one can tell you if you'll notice any difference from getting a 9800 pro, or 9800xt instead of what you have because what you have is almost top of the line for nVidia cards and based on the games you play your card just might be better then a 9800 card. However since far cry is the only game your mentioning having trouble with I would wait till the actual game is released and has been used as a benchmark so you can tell if switching to a 9800 card will actually improve things, and if so, by anything noticeable. Seeing as there are some games where your card performs better then a 9800 card you shouldn't waste so much money if your only going to notice a small increase on average.

<font color=blue>_____________________________________</font color=blue>
Vancouver, B.C., Canada
Asus A7N8X-X, Athelon XP 2500+ Barton,
Samsung 512mb DDR400, Creative Geforce2 GTS,
SoundBlaster Live! Value.

 

[endyen]

Well since you mentioned HL2. Take the 5900u back and get a 9800XT from asus or one of the other companies that have valid coupons for the game. The radeon is a better card, about the same money and you get a coupon for HL2. Be worned though, you will have to do a clean os install to get the card working right.

 

[deem]

Ok, so one person says dont do it and another says get yourself a 9800!! now im stuck. If i get rid of the 5900 ill get about £250 for it so the 9800xt will cost me £160. not sure what to do now. I've read everywhere that the nvidia cards didnt do well with d3 & hl2 betas or whatever, but surely nvidia must be working on drivers that will match the ati cards in time for these games being released? or would they really just sit back and accept defeat?

 

[Ris3n_Da3mon]

Honestly the 5900 is a perfectly good card, and should give good performance in both hl2 and doom3. The cause of the low 3dmark scores probably lies somewhere else. Can you list your full system specs? It might help in determining where the problem is.

01001001 00100000 01001100 01001111 01010110 01000101 00100000 01110011 01110000 01100101 01100001 01110010 01101101 01101001 01101110 01110100 00100001

 

[ChipDeath]

well with the 9800xt don't forget you also get the half-life 2 coupon, so that's another 30 quid saved, plus according to Gabe Newell (the Valve head-honcho), the engine actually compromises on quality on the nvidia cards to acheive good performance.

Nvidia are unlikely to make up all the ground with driver updates, at least not without sacrificing image quality - and they got severely bad press last time they did <i>that</i>. Basically I think their new chip architecture simply didn't perform like they expected it to when they first manufactured it, and Ati's corresponding new architecture suprised them with its strength.

I'm waiting for the next round of new stuff from both manufacturers before I upgrade from my geforce 4.

I think your first suggestion that your motherboard is not-that-great is probably the main reason for your comparatively poor 3dMark score. I'll probably have a heart attack the first time I see a Pc World PC with real good high-end components in. Do you actually know what motherboard it is, or at least what chipset it uses? Some tweaking might be able to bring out some more performance.

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<font color=red>Those of you who think you know everything are annoying to those of us who do.</font color=red>

 

[deem]

Hi, thanks 4 the help.

Info from aida32:

Motherboard Properties
Motherboard ID - 10/28/2003-KT600-8237-6A6LYM4DC-00
Motherboard Name - Unknown

Front Side Bus Properties
Bus Type - DEC Alpha EV6
Bus Width - 64-Bit
Real Clock - 200 MHz (DDR)
Effective Clock - 400 MHz
Bandwidth 3200 MB/s

Chipset Bus Properties
Bus Type - VIA V-Link
Bus Width - 8-Bit
Real Clock - 80 MHz (DDR)
Effective Clock - 640 MHz
Bandwidth 640 MB/s

Chipset Properties
motherboard chipset - VIA VT8377 Apollo KT400
In-order Queue Depth - 4
CAS Latency - 2.5T
RAS to CAS Delay - 3T
RAS Precharge - 3T

AGP Properties
AGP Version - 3.05
AGP Status - Enabled
AGP Aperture size - 128mb
Supported AGP Speeds - 1x, 2x, 8x
Fast-Write - Not Supported

One thing i did notice though is this:

Physical Memory
Total 511 mb
Used 261 mb
free 249 mb

does xp usually use up this much Ram!?
I dont have any other apps open.

Thanks again 4 everybodys help.

 

[Ion]

You got a Via chipset...anyway go download the latest hyperion 4in1 driver from Via to see if it helps to boost performance.

If thats the memory usage you get when boot up, i suspect something is running in the tray/background that are hogging extra memory. My typical start up use about 220mb.(include firewall/anti-virus/temp monitor and other minor stuffs)

Asus A7N8X Deluxe, Xp 2500+(3200+), 512MB RAM, Radeon 9500Pro

 

[deem]

well, i threw caution to the wind and popped out today and bought myself a sapphire 9800xt. CEX will give me 300 for my 2 old cards so it ended up costing me around 100. BUT!
endyen, you mention having to do a clean os install for it to work properly, would you mind telling me why? I wasnt intentionally ignoring your advice, but I tried just removing my nvidia drivers and installing my ATi ones and it all works OK, but the screen - type especially - doesnt seem nearly as clear and crisp as it did with the 5900. Is this why?
Thanks everyone for being so much help - and helping me spend another bloody 100 on what is turning out to be a very expensive addiction...

 

[ChipDeath]

A completely clean OS install isn't <i>really</i> necessary, as you've found out. If you've done a reasonable job of removing the old drivers before you installed the new ones you should be ok. You might find a clean install would give a very slight boost, but you'd likely not really notice.

On the image quality thing, are you sure you're running at the same resolution & refresh rate as you were before? that'd be my first guess.

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<font color=red>Those of you who think you know everything are annoying to those of us who do.</font color=red>

 

[deem]

youve got it! was on 75, needed to be 70.
sorry, one more question!
when you say 'a reasonable job of removing the old drivers' is there anything else I should be doing other than removing the 2 nvidia parts in 'add/remove programs'?

 

[ChipDeath]

oh and if you're not experiencing crashes and your system seems to be quite stable, I'd say to not bother updating your VIA drivers, they often cause more problems than they solve, unless your performance is really <i>noticeably</i> bad.

Make sure you don't have too much crap running at startup - if you've got loads of stupid little tray icons on your taskbar then they'll all be taking up RAM.

If you click <b>Start -> Run</b> and type <b>msconfig</b> and press return, you should get a little proggie come up, with a load of tabs on it. the last one says 'Startup' and if you click it it shows a list of most things that are being loaded on startup, and you can un-check them if you don't want them. Get rid of anything to do with M$ Office if you've got it installed (It being PCworld I'd not be suprised), such as 'Office Findfast' as those are real performance eaters. About the only things that are really necessary are 'System Tray' (SysTray.exe), and antivirus stuff.

Then after a reboot you'll be free of what you unchecked.

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<font color=red>Those of you who think you know everything are annoying to those of us who do.</font color=red>

 

[cleeve]

If tytpe isn't looking as crisp, check your refresh rates in the Catalyst driver panel. Make sure it's at least 75hz (if your monitor can handle it)... see how high you can go, the quality will increase.

________________
<b>Radeon <font color=red>9500 PRO</b></font color=red> <i>(hardmodded 9500, o/c 322/322)</i>
<b>AthlonXP <font color=red>2600+</b></font color=red> <i>(o/c 2400+ w/143Mhz fsb)</i>
<b>3dMark03: <font color=red>4,055</b></font color=red>

 

[ChipDeath]

There are programs available which clean out drivers... think someone mentioned one above somewhere...

You could use one to remove ALL your drivers (ATi & Nvidia) then re-install just the Ati ones to be sure.

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<font color=red>Those of you who think you know everything are annoying to those of us who do.</font color=red>

 

[pauldh]

So how many 3dmarks with the new 9800XT?

ABIT IS7, P4 2.6C, 512MB Corsair TwinX PC3200LL, Radeon 9500 Pro, Santa Cruz, Antec 1000AMG, TruePower 430watt

 

[deem]

well...
straight out of the box and in without any changes to any settings I got 14534. which I guess is OK.
But...
I have to say, this card ABSOLUTELY BLOWS THE 5900 ULTRA OUT OF THE WATER with everything I've tried so far, Far Cry, all settings Very High AA & AF both on full. Beautifull.
Pro Evo 3 perfect, Tiger woods 2004 - great, Unreal 2 just looks fantastic. Im actually able now to run Star Wars Galaxies now with absolutely everything turned on full AA, AF etc and all the in game details set to maximum, something the just wouldn't happen with my 5900 ultra. So the 3d marks score may not be a massive improvement, but as far as gorgeous looking games and rock steady frame rates are concerned it wins hands down. and lets not forget the free copy of HL2! Now to give Vice City a try...

 

[pauldh]

Well, actual gameplay is what it's all about. Enjoy the new card.

ABIT IS7, P4 2.6C, 512MB Corsair TwinX PC3200LL, Radeon 9500 Pro, Santa Cruz, Antec 1000AMG, TruePower 430watt

 

[Woodman]

SWG, oh yes.

Glad it worked out for joo, like Paul said, enjoy .

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Do not spit.