Problem with 9800 pro?

[adio2001]

Hey, I just recently bought an Ati Radeon 9800 Pro 128Mb card. My problem is that, after I installed it and set up the drivers, I went to play TFC. As most of you probably know TFC is not a very demanding game. But when I am playing my fps drops to like 60 then back up to 85. It fluctuates a lot. But if I turn off vsync I get solid FPS but with tearing ( which I hate). Also when I run the 3dmark03 I get way below normal scores for my cpu/gpu setup. I am thinking it might be I set it up wrong, or maybe it's a bad chip? Or possibly my PSU isn't powerful enough? I don't know. Here are my specs for anyone who was wondering.

AMD Athlon XP 2400+ at 2.100Ghz
Soyo KT333 Dragon Lite (only allows 4x, could this be it?)
768Mb Kingston PC2700 DDR sdram
Radeon 9800 Pro 128
20GB Western Digital
40GB Seagate Barracuda
Sound Blaster Audigy2
Windows XP Pro Corp. SP1

Any suggestions would be helpful. Thanks in advance!

 

[Xtasy0]

which driver version do you have installed?

do you have your chipset drivers (via 4in1s, er hyperions now) installed?

do you have AA and AF enabled?

agp4x and agp8x don't show much difference at this point in time.

also what was your score in 3dmark03?

and why are you using 3dmark03? (its a terrible benchmark)

probably not a bad chip, probably not a psu issue, probably just a software/hardware setup issue.

i've heard lots of people say that radeons do that in HL/CS/TFC the framerates soemtimes drop for weird reasons, have you played other games? how do they run?

 

[adio2001]

I have the newest Catalyst drivers installed. My score in 3dmark03 was I think 5307. Im going to try again. I have AA and AF set to application preference, does that make a difference? Most other games do run fine. And I use 3dmark03 so I can see the pretty DX9 features . Thanks for trying to help though, I appreciate it.

 

[dawdler]

It isnt that bad of a score... Depends on more settings that just FSAA/AF (you can get like 8000+ score if you REALLY want it )
TFC I suppose you mean team fortress classic, which is HL. HL is notoriously bad on the ATI cards... Its mainly Opengl (unless they have seriously fixed up D3D since I last played) and that is not the best mode on the Radeons...

But the most important thing: If you have Vsync on and say a refresh rate of 85, if your card do 84 fps, it will HALVE! It will not do 84 fps! It will do 42 fps instead! Until you get 85+ "in theory" again, then it will lock at 85 once again... That's the bad thing with Vsync, you need to maintain very high real speeds for it to maintain a steady locked speed. In action it happens alot, and it can drop easily.



Btw, "and why are you using 3dmark03? (its a terrible benchmark)"
It has been confirmed that both Nvidia and ATI approve of it, the two biggest card manufactorers. The latest detonators increased 2k3 speeds ALOT (method questionable, but that's not important), so they obviously think its an excellent benchmark now

 

[adio2001]

Well Dawdler you just explained my problem in a nutshell, everytime I am in a battle my fps dies. I'm glad to know it's not my card. Thanks man.

 

[3DDuL]

I got 5475pts in 03 with 1.8ghz, 1GB rdram and a 9800pro =\

 

[Xtasy0]

Originally posted by dawdler
Btw, "and why are you using 3dmark03? (its a terrible benchmark)"
It has been confirmed that both Nvidia and ATI approve of it, the two biggest card manufactorers. The latest detonators increased 2k3 speeds ALOT (method questionable, but that's not important), so they obviously think its an excellent benchmark now

please read this article Benchmarking Right

and this one Benchmarking Wrong

and this one, Benchmarking Future

then come back and explain how 3dmark03 is not a terrible benchmark.