Lower than expected performance. Radeon x800 xl

[Thanatos]

I recently upgraded my video card so that I could run games at the native res of my new lcd monitors without stuttering\low fps. It's a radeon x800 xl 256 agp upgraded from a radeon 9800 pro 128.

From reviews of this card I was expecting 80-100 average fps in HL2 at 1600x1200 high quality but I'm getting 70-80 average fps at 1280x1024 high quality. My system specs are not far below the test system used by anandtech and are based off a previous buyers guide:

MSI K8N Neo2 Platinum mobo.
OCZ EL DDR PC-3200 / 400MHz / Platinum / Revision 2 ram. x2 512 mb.
AMD Athlon 64 3500+ socket 939.
Radeon x800 xl 256 mb agp.

(Using the timedemo's from anandtech)

HL2 benchmark: High quality no aa\af 1280x1024:

at_canals_08-rev7
5341 frames 60.655 seconds 88.06 fps 7.792 fps variability

at_c17_12-rev7
3145 frames 55.295 seconds 56.88 fps 5.024 fps variability

Not only are those waaaay lower than the ones on anandtech's review of the card they're not better than my 9800 pro in terms of lows during complex scenes.

Does anyone have any suggestions of things I could look into? Bios settings, video card settings\tweaks, anything? I have the latest drivers for the card and relatively recent ones for my chipset.

 

[TheGreatGrapeApe]

Where are you getting your performance results to compare to, because both X800XL reviews at Anand are using far superior systems (FX55 & 4000+), and yes HL2 is highly system limited, especially at low res & low AA/AF.


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