Major performance drop caused by new mobo!

[Stupidsmartarse]

Hey.

I've just bought a new motherboard cos my old nforce 1 decided to blow up on me. I didnt go for anything majorly good as its only temporary. I installed the new motherboard and since then playing hl2, hl2dm and css has been like watching a slideshow. I'm not sure if it's just with source games as i dont have any others to test with, but i can't see it only being a problem with just these games. My system is a bit crappy and outdated, but when i had my nforce 1 installed it ran fine. I could play css fine on a 32 and even 64 player server and it would still run smoothly with many players on screen at a time. Now though, all it takes is 2 or 3 players to bog me down to fps that are obviousley in the single digits as you can even count the frames:S. The motherboard i bought is an Asus A7V8X-X KT400/333 X series. I have tried many different settings in the bios, the main ones being agp performance control [Enabled], agp fast write control [enabled], video memory cache mode [USWC], graphics aparture size [128mb] (same as my gpu memory) and agp capability [4x] (gpu only suports 4X).

My pc's specs are

Athlon xp 1600 1553mhz,
512mb pc2100,
gf4ti4600 128mb,
mobo ^^,
350W PSU.

Like i said i know its not a good rig, but i didnt have any problems with these games until i bought the mobo a few days agoso it has to be a mobo problem. I aslo reformatted (twice) while trying to solve this problem as i know parts of the drivers from my old mobo were probably knocking around somewhere and could conflict with the new ones. So if anyone has any ideas on how i can solve this please let me know. Im thinking i have probably missed a vital setting in the bios as im not really experienced with setting the bios up.

EDIT: Oh and i also have all the latest drivers, and the latest bios. I have also tried a few different drivers for my gfx card just to be safe.

 

[DrDevin]

This problem usually is caused by drivers. From the fresh install you have to:

1) Install service pack 2 (unless your copy is slipstreamed/new)
2) Install newest motherboard drivers
3) Install newest video drivers
4) Install newest soundcard drivers
5) Go to windows update and get all of the critical patches

 

[Stupidsmartarse]

This problem usually is caused by drivers. From the fresh install you have to:

1) Install service pack 2 (unless your copy is slipstreamed/new)
2) Install newest motherboard drivers
3) Install newest video drivers
4) Install newest soundcard drivers
5) Go to windows update and get all of the critical patches

I have done all that, although not in that order and minus SP2. I never had SP2 installed with the old motherboard btw and that ran fine. The reason i never installed SP2 is that i heard from many people that it cause a loss of performance in games.

Here's exactly what i did, in this order...

1) installed newest mobo drivers
2) installed direct x 9.0c
3) installed newest video drivers
3) installed sound drivers <<<sound is on board. I had to install the ones that came with the board as i couldnt seem to find any online.
4) installed SP1
5) got windows update

Also before i did any of this i installed firewall, virus scanner and modem drivers before i went online as i didnt want to get flooded by the countless worms circulating atm.

 

[DrDevin]

You seem to have done it right although the order I listed is suppost to be the best order to do things. You might have some sort of fault in your board or your BIOS is set wrong. Make sure you have all performance settings like ram timings and such set to the fasted avaliabe setting. Also make sure nothing is set wrong in your video cards control panel. If you downloaded steam or patched it then make sure the game has been 100% acquired other then that you have a wierd problem. Also check to make sure you properly cleaned and set the heatsink on your CPU, chould be throttling itself back (who knows!). Finally make sure you have set the right multiplier and FSB in the BIOS.

 

[Stupidsmartarse]

You seem to have done it right although the order I listed is suppost to be the best order to do things. You might have some sort of fault in your board or your BIOS is set wrong. Make sure you have all performance settings like ram timings and such set to the fasted avaliabe setting. Also make sure nothing is set wrong in your video cards control panel. If you downloaded steam or patched it then make sure the game has been 100% acquired other then that you have a wierd problem. Also check to make sure you properly cleaned and set the heatsink on your CPU, chould be throttling itself back (who knows!). Finally make sure you have set the right multiplier and FSB in the BIOS.

Yeah multiplier and fsb. i have no clue what i am supposed to set those to. and im not even entirley sure even of what they are:|. I was thinking this could be the problem, do you have any tips on what settings i should use?

 

[Lahire149]

Yeah multiplier and fsb. i have no clue what i am supposed to set those to. and im not even entirley sure even of what they are:|. I was thinking this could be the problem, do you have any tips on what settings i should use?

sounds like the problem, They determine the speed that your processor is running at.

I believe your FSB should be set to "133mhz" which equals a 266fsb because it's double pumped.
And your multiplier should be set to "10.5x" ... 133mhz X 10.5multiplier = 1400mhz (stock processor speed for a XP1600)

If my information is incorrect, somebody feeel free to correct it.

 

[Stupidsmartarse]

sounds like the problem, They determine the speed that your processor is running at.

I believe your FSB should be set to "133mhz" which equals a 266fsb because it's double pumped.
And your multiplier should be set to "10.5x" ... 133mhz X 10.5multiplier = 1400mhz (stock processor speed for a XP1600)

If my information is incorrect, somebody feeel free to correct it.

Ok, i have set the fsb and multiplier to what you said but it doesnt seem to help performance at all. With my old motherboard i was using 158 fsb and the cpu was running at like 1.6ghz with that setting and the games were running fine. This problem is really getting annoying now. I cant think of what else it could be. Are there any other bios settings i could have missed? And thanks to all for your help.

 

[Stupidsmartarse]

As it happens a m8 of mine has an nforce 1. same as my old board, so im gonna install that right now and check out the performance difference.

 

[Stupidsmartarse]

As it happens a m8 of mine has an nforce 1. same as my old board, so im gonna install that right now and check out the performance difference.

seems much much better with the older mobo:|

 

[Lahire149]

are you sure you have the latest drivers from the manufacturer's website?

 

[Stupidsmartarse]

are you sure you have the latest drivers from the manufacturer's website?

Yes. There is a newer version, however those are beta so i decided to get the latest final release. Although, looking in add/remove programs doesnt show the drivers in the list, but they must be installed properly as the motherboard is recognising the rest of my devices. USB, gfx card etc. Anyone else that's using via 4 in 1 drivers can you look in add/remove programs to see if the drivers show there? Thanks!

 

[Lahire149]

Do you have much experience with BIOS settings?
BIOS sounds like it could be the problem considering that you have the latest drivers...You did uninstall the old drivers from your nforce1, didn't you?