Software or hardware issues???

[oxide7]

This is my system.
Mobo - GIGABYTE GA-965P-S3
CPU - Intel C2D E6400
RAM - CORSAIR XMS2 1GB (2 x 512MB) DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) (another 1gb is on the way)
VGA - EVGA GeForce 8800GTS 640MB
PSU - Antec SmartPower 2.0 SP-500 ATX12V 500W Power Supply
OS - Windows Vista x86

I've been playing a few games with this setup and Im a little confused.
From my understanding i should be able to play most games completely maxed out without any real issues. Like Oblivion or NWN2, even the LOTRO stress test.

Oblivion even with some settings turned down and some completely off, Most games are not getting a very good frame rate. I was playing oblivion and i was getting in the 20s and lower at times. i have shadows almost off, i DO have HDR on, and random other settings, but most have been turned down to make the game playable.

With NWN2 i have everything at max except the advance settings which are like huge texture maps for shadows mainly, and the game is almost fine, but still jaggy with any action.

Any ideas whats going? do I just need that extra gig or ram? should I go back to overclocking the CPU? is this just bad nvidia driver, or Vista's fault?

Any help would be appreciated, thanks guys.

 

[krisz]

I think it is just Nvidia driver issue. I wouldn't be so worried about it. I get some slow downs in Battlefield 2142 sometimes, in Vista and i have an 8800GTX. Not to mention the sound card drivers are still beta until March and April depends on the flavour of sound card you have so at this point in time it is almost impossible to determine what causes the slowdowns in Vista, but i would bet my money on the drivers.

If it really bugs you just downgrade to XP and you'll be fine. Otherwise give Vista a few more months to have mature drivers and then everything should run fine.

 

[oxide7]

Cool, I figured it was vista's fault, I just wanted assurance I guess. Thanks.
Time to wait I guess
Maybe I'll set up a Dual Boot.

 

[kittenkiller]

i got another one of those:

iv been playing far cry and when i turn everything on, it plays the same as if i only turned everything on medium (except for the antialiasing and anistropic filtering) i want the water graphics to look real, but they only look 2nd-to-lowest no matter how high i turn it up in the settings. and i want dynamic light, its always about 2nd-to-lowest but if i set it up one notch it does benefit it some, but anything above that doesnt benefit it further. and whenever i set shadows to anything but 'low', the textures on the ground that im walking on just turn black.

software problem? i think so. i have a geforce 6800gs, pentium d 3.2ghz, 2gb ram, 500gb hd.

plz help. thx in adv

 

[krisz]

i got another one of those:

iv been playing far cry and when i turn everything on, it plays the same as if i only turned everything on medium (except for the antialiasing and anistropic filtering) i want the water graphics to look real, but they only look 2nd-to-lowest no matter how high i turn it up in the settings. and i want dynamic light, its always about 2nd-to-lowest but if i set it up one notch it does benefit it some, but anything above that doesnt benefit it further. and whenever i set shadows to anything but 'low', the textures on the ground that im walking on just turn black.

software problem? i think so. i have a geforce 6800gs, pentium d 3.2ghz, 2gb ram, 500gb hd.

plz help. thx in adv

Yeah that is definitely driver issue. A while back i remember seeing someone posted screen shots of FarCry with his 8800 GTX and the ground was black and the details were like crap. I think he installed the 8800 drivers on top of the previous Nvidia drivers and it got corrupted.

Try to uninstall all the Nvidia drivers and then install the latest drivers clean. It is recommended on the Nvidia website anyways that you uninstall any previous drivers first before install the latest one. I know it worked for that guy after a clean install of the latest drivers everything worked fine.

The uninstall all the Nvidia drivers the best way to go is boot into safe mode, and do it from there. There is also a free software on the web that helps you clean up everything when you uninstall drivers and such. I believe it is called driver cleaner or something like that. Go to Guru3D and search for driver cleaner.

Good luck