Comming out of lurking

[SnowBall]

Hey guys, havent posted in forever, just been lurking around these parts the past few months. Anyways, straight to the point. I recently removed my 9800 Pro from my rig for an x850xtpe. I played a lot of new games with utter shock and awe at the amazing preformance. However, The source engine seemed to run the same as it did on my 9800 pro. So I tried the CS Stress Test and ended up with results no higher than 89fps. No matter how high or low I made the settings, it wouldnt go over 89fps. I knew this wasnt right, I should be getting like 150 fps on my rig. I tried cl_showfps 1 and saw that my frame rate barely ever went over 60fps until the very end. It stayed locked in the 50s for the most part. Everything else runs great though. I got a 3d Mark 03 score of 11700. Doom 3 runs on high without a hitch, Far Cry never looked better, Halo never stutters, and Deus Ex 2 is smooth as can be. I have all the latest drivers, and theres no way its my system. My rig is pretty much top of the line. P4 3.2 ghz OC'd to 3.5ghz, 2x512 pc3200 ddr ram, x850xtpe, 1 WD 60 gig 7200rpm (windows drive), 1 WD 120 gig 7200 rpm drive (steam installed). Asus mobo 800mhz fsb. I really hope someone knows whats wrong, because this is driving me nuts.

 

[J_Tweedy]

Have you got vsync enabled? If you do, your framerate will never go above the refresh rate of your monitor.
Btw, why is it driving you nuts? 89fps is more than enough, and you wont notice significant slow down untill t drops below 40ish anyhow.

 

[SnowBall]

vsync disabled. Yes, the demo looks nice, but it really doesnt push your hardware that much. I get plenty of slowdown just playing css online or playing hl2. FPS between 30 and 70 usually.

 

[J_Tweedy]

well, it should be running fine- make sure you haven't got programs running in the background if you want the perfomance it sounds like you want, also try turning down AA and AF- they can rape the fps, and turning them down a bit will show no big visible diff.

 

[SnowBall]

Tried about every setting possible, formatted my comp, closed everything in the background, etc... Tried all of the obvious stuff. Makes no difference.

 

[J_Tweedy]

It must just be the Source engine then (duh, J_Tweedy!). Can't think of anything right now, but I can relate. I bought a new comp almost just to play hl2- AMD64 3200+, gig of pc3200 RAM, 6800gt, and I never really got above 90-100 frames unless in smaller spaces. Didn't think anything much of it tho.

 

[SnowBall]

It must just be the Source engine then (duh, J_Tweedy!). Can't think of anything right now, but I can relate. I bought a new comp almost just to play hl2- AMD64 3200+, gig of pc3200 RAM, 6800gt, and I never really got above 90-100 frames unless in smaller spaces. Didn't think anything much of it tho.

I got a friend who has a near identical rig, cept his is pci express compatable and has an x850 pro. He gets higher frames than me. Bout 120 fps - same settings as me.

 

[J_Tweedy]

Well i don't know what the problem is, but i settled for what fps i got because they were perfectly acceptable- i figured if i never used cl_showfps 1 i would never have noticed it.

 

[Ti133700N]

Maybe your PSU can't give enough juice. What is it?

 

[SnowBall]

Maybe your PSU can't give enough juice. What is it?

Thermaltake Purepower 420w. Like I said, only thing it runs slow on is HL2.

 

[Sanada]

It must be a setting or something. You should try tweaking the driver settings. I mean, my Radeon 9700 Pro can still get high FPS (in the range of about 30-90, sometimes 100+) on the highest detail. Make sure you turn of AA/AF unless you really want it. When I downloaded the latest ATI drivers, it was turned on regardless of what is set in HL2. It caused my FPS to never go any higher than 30. I downloaded the Omega drivers instead and was back to normal.

 

[Asus]

What resolution are you playing at? Enable AA or AF?

Your card should hold it's solid framerate if you have it set to high resolution with AA/AF enabled. You can see here that with a highend machine, raising the Resolution and AA/AF still holds pretty good FPS. GFX card used was a 6800U.

 

[SnowBall]

What resolution are you playing at? Enable AA or AF?

Your card should hold it's solid framerate if you have it set to high resolution with AA/AF enabled. You can see here that with a highend machine, raising the Resolution and AA/AF still holds pretty good FPS. GFX card used was a 6800U.

1280x1024
Tried every setting. Highest possible setting vs lowest possible settng. Usually ends up with a 10fps difference in the stress test. Between 80-90 fps.
EDIT: Gonna try defragging my drives. Dont know how that would help since I defragged a week ago and formatted my c drive.

 

[SnowBall]

Just ran Aquamark and got a score of 56770. Seems awfully low to other peoples scores with rigs similar to mine. It must be something wrong with my card or my computer. Is there a chance the card would be broken in some way?

 

[fenner]

Umm maybe you have a fps cap on. What is your fps_max set at?

 

[SnowBall]

Umm maybe you have a fps cap on. What is your fps_max set at?

300 fps

 

[holydeadpenguins]

Drivers dude. www.omegadrivers.net or maybe spyware or virus problem, check how many processes you are running.

 

[SnowBall]

Tried omega drivers and tried uninstalling and reinstalling the catalyst drivers about 3 times. Even formatted my comp.

 

[holydeadpenguins]

My last suggestion i that your computer just sucks. Get a new mobo and amd cpu.