Upgrading, HL2, and you.

[Sanius]

I got a question guys. I have a geforce 6800, 512 mb DDR PC2700, and an AMD XP 2500+. I'm going to move up to a gig of DDR PC3200 and an AMD 3200+ 64-bit this christmas. With my current setup, I get pretty below average framerate. I'd say atleast 20 fps in water heavy areas. Canals gave me about 10 when I was looking over the level after fighting the gunship on that long stretch of road.

This is with settings of 1024x768, medium textures/models, high reflections, shaders, shadows, 4x AF/no AA.

So I want to know, what kind of FPS boost can I expect with HL2 with this upgrade? Tomshardware has a guide with CPU comparisons, and I compared my CPU to the new one i'm going to get, and on doom 3, it got a boost of 20 fps, farcry got 70, and 3DMark05 got about 800 points+ on the cpu benchmark.

 

[Zoetrap]

The increase in RAM will do wonders for your loading times as well. It sure did for me.

 

[melat0nin]

Are you saying you get 20fps in water heavy areas, or 20 FPS below averae?

If it's the former then there's a non-hardware related problem, probably drivers. Your 6800 should more or less eat HL2 up for breakfast. I ran HL2 on an XP 1700 with 512 megs of PC2100 and a 9800Pro and HL2 ran ultra-smoothly 98% of the time on medium-high settings.

 

[Sanius]

I'm saying that it's 20 fps in water heavy areas.

 

[AfternoonLemon]

I think you will need a monster of a setup to never have any slowdown, if you're getting 99.5% of the game smoothly I'd say thats good enough?

 

[Boogymanx]

You'll have loads more FPS after that, atleast I did with my upgrade to the 1024!

 

[Cukel]

Processor is everything. My upgrade from 2000+ to 3000+ 64bit doubled, no, tripled my fps. More RAM will also do good for loading times, but doesnt really affect fps.

 

[iMMuNiTy]

More RAM will also do good for loading times, but doesnt really affect fps.

It does.

 

[Sanius]

I think you will need a monster of a setup to never have any slowdown, if you're getting 99.5% of the game smoothly I'd say thats good enough?

You don't understand what i'm saying. It's not smooth 99.5% of the time. It's atleast 30 fps. Some might say it's smooth, but not if you have a videocard like mine.

 

[$kelet0r]

I got a question guys. I have a geforce 6800, 512 mb DDR PC2700, and an AMD XP 2500+. I'm going to move up to a gig of DDR PC3200 and an AMD 3200+ 64-bit this christmas. With my current setup, I get pretty below average framerate. I'd say atleast 20 fps in water heavy areas. Canals gave me about 10 when I was looking over the level after fighting the gunship on that long stretch of road.

This is with settings of 1024x768, medium textures/models, high reflections, shaders, shadows, 4x AF/no AA.

So I want to know, what kind of FPS boost can I expect with HL2 with this upgrade? Tomshardware has a guide with CPU comparisons, and I compared my CPU to the new one i'm going to get, and on doom 3, it got a boost of 20 fps, farcry got 70, and 3DMark05 got about 800 points+ on the cpu benchmark.

with a 6800 you should be getting fps in the region of 50+ at all times on high otherwise there is something wrong with your hardware or drivers

 

[Seagull]

Try scanning for spyware//viruses.

 

[HyperionCC]

with a 6800 you should be getting fps in the region of 50+ at all times on high otherwise there is something wrong with your hardware or drivers

I have to disagree with you. Without overclocking the out of box processor speed of an AMD XP 2500+ is 1883 MHz. This is a pretty "budget" processor, so I would think that getting 50+ fps would be impossible (or highly improbbable) because the system bottleneck is in the processor.

Additionally, I beleive an upgrade to the processor & the RAM warrants going all the way and upgrading the motherboard too, no??

Thay way your not locked into the 462 Socket..Maybe an upgrade to the 939 Socket which opens up the processor options to Athlon 64, and Athlon FX processors.

 

[Sanius]

You guys have no sense, or i'm just not being clear enough. My CPU is a terrible bottleneck, I need more ram, and I should scan and search for drivers. But I already asked WHY my framerate was so terrible, 9 months ago! And you guys all told me the same thing you did now.

I'm not asking you guys how to increase my framerate. I'm asking what you guys would expect my framerate to be compared to what I get now to when I upgrade. I'm not asking for anyone's help. I really should have been more clear on that.

 

[DrDevin]

I got a question guys. I have a geforce 6800, 512 mb DDR PC2700, and an AMD XP 2500+. I'm going to move up to a gig of DDR PC3200 and an AMD 3200+ 64-bit this christmas. With my current setup, I get pretty below average framerate. I'd say atleast 20 fps in water heavy areas. Canals gave me about 10 when I was looking over the level after fighting the gunship on that long stretch of road.

This is with settings of 1024x768, medium textures/models, high reflections, shaders, shadows, 4x AF/no AA.

So I want to know, what kind of FPS boost can I expect with HL2 with this upgrade? Tomshardware has a guide with CPU comparisons, and I compared my CPU to the new one i'm going to get, and on doom 3, it got a boost of 20 fps, farcry got 70, and 3DMark05 got about 800 points+ on the cpu benchmark.

You should be getting a very decent boost (your right your CPU is the bottleneck and 1GB is currently the minimum 2GB recommended), however some of it will be because of the strange performance you are getting now.

I have an XP2500+, 512MB DDR400 (running at 333) and a 6600gt. I play at 1280x1024, with all settings maxed at 4xAF and get absolute minimum 25-30FPS in busy areas with lots of water. Usually it is closer to 45 or so.

I know you arnt asking for help buy there must be a problem.

 

[Solver]

For medium settings at such hardware, you should be getting at least 40 FPS in most areas I'd say. And don't tell us that the game doesn't appear smooth at 30 FPS - you can't tell 30 and 40 FPS apart with your eyes.

After you upgrade, you should really get smooth framerates at all high settings, but try looking into your software now and you should be getting a performance boost even now.

 

[Seagull]

Eyes can see the difference between 30-40 FPS, and 100-200, etc.

 

[Solver]

Really? Come over for an experiment in controlled conditions. I'll run a game with controled FPS varying from 30 to 150 and ask you to identify the FPS values as they change. If you succeed to do so, I'll write a scientific paper on you,

 

[Sanius]

Hey guys, shut up. Try to anwser my question instead of stirring up an age old debate. I don't even know why I bothered with this thread.

But yeah, seriously. If you guys want to talk about this, take it to the off-topic forum. I just want an anwser. It's not really IMPORTANT, I just want to discuss it and have reason to be hyped. I don't need to know if I can tell the difference between 3 and 55 frames per second, now do I?

 

[Yogibbear]

Really? Come over for an experiment in controlled conditions. I'll run a game with controled FPS varying from 30 to 150 and ask you to identify the FPS values as they change. If you succeed to do so, I'll write a scientific paper on you,

My god! You mean to say that all those adverts for more processing power and better graphics cards... aka the 7800gtx 1 grand investment... saying that we'll have a better gaming experience are lies!!!! LIES!?

LIES!?

Yes I was being serious...

 

[Achay]

With my current setup, which seems similar to the one you want to buy, I get 70-100+ FPS (can't tell acurately it updates so quickly) The Switch to 1Gig of RAM alone will probably help alot, but moving to DDR 3200 will rock, if your mobo supports duel channel RAM.

Water heavy areas it maybe drops to 50-80, again cant really say accurately as the ingame FPS monitor is unbelievably fast updating.

When I get home tonight I'll run FRAPS, get a more accurate reading, but yeah, I'd say that new setup will give a big boost, probably close to mine, not sure how a 6800 compares to a 9800.

I currently run at 1024x768 4xAF 4xAA everything maxed. All settings on Graphics card etc default, no tweaking.

Athlon 64 3000+
Asus AV8 Pro
1Gig 3200DDR 400Mhz
128Mb 9800 Pro

[EDIT]

Oops, forgot, I blew a RAM stick last week, I actually only now have 766 400 Mhz

 

[iMMuNiTy]

For medium settings at such hardware, you should be getting at least 40 FPS in most areas I'd say.

Shens. He's playing with 4x AA - that's killing his CPU.

 

[Seagull]

I think you'll see a big improvement with loading times with the gig of ram over the 512, along with the much better CPU, expect some really good FPS (50-100) on all high.

 

[Sanius]

Shens. He's playing with 4x AA - that's killing his CPU.

What? I'm not using AA. That's AF you're thinking of.

 

[iMMuNiTy]

What? I'm not using AA. That's AF you're thinking of.

Ah yes, my mistake. Well then, Happy Virus Day.

 

[Sanius]

How could it be viruses? I did several dozen virus checks ever since I noticed there was a problem with preformance. Not to mention that I cleaned out my harddrive and reinstalled windows and all the latest drivers and it STILL didn't preform at the speeds I saw on benchmarks for the 6800. It's simply just my CPU bottlenecking my card.

Seriously, look at this cpu chart: http://216.92.52.205/index.html?modelx=33&model1=64&model2=80&chart=26

Doom 3 gets a boost of 27 FPS from an AMD Athlon XP 2500 to an AMD Athlon 64 3200+. And this is being tested on a system with a gig of ram and a 6800GT.

It's not viruses, or driver problems, or something in my configuration. My CPU is 3 year old hardware. Simple as that.

 

[iMMuNiTy]

How could it be viruses? I did several dozen virus checks ever since I noticed there was a problem with preformance. Not to mention that I cleaned out my harddrive and reinstalled windows and all the latest drivers and it STILL didn't preform at the speeds I saw on benchmarks for the 6800. It's simply just my CPU bottlenecking my card.

Seriously, look at this cpu chart: http://216.92.52.205/index.html?modelx=33&model1=64&model2=80&chart=26

Doom 3 gets a boost of 27 FPS from an AMD Athlon XP 2500 to an AMD Athlon 64 3200+. And this is being tested on a system with a gig of ram and a 6800GT.

It's not viruses, or driver problems, or something in my configuration. My CPU is 3 year old hardware. Simple as that.

Look. I played Half-Life 2 with 1700 GHz Celeron (HELL YEAH, CELERON!), 256 SDRAM (HELL YEAH, SDRAM, NOT DDRAM!) and a GeForce 2 MX, and I had 20-40 FPS on Medium settings. Your computer is significantly better, you should get no lower than 30 FPS in worst cases. Simple as that.

 

[Sanius]

Yes, but you are using a Geforce 2 MX. I'm using a Geforce 6800. And try to take into consideration that both cards are much different from eachother in more then just power. GF2 only supports as high as DX7, my card supports DX9. And DX7 cards do not have support for reflective water or bump mapping and all those other graphical goodies that make your computer beg for mercy.

My videocard IS powerful, but you need to remember that i'm using an outdated CPU. Having Dual 7800 GTX's running in SLI doesn't mean that you'll get 120 FPS in doom 3 when you have a 733 mhz P3.

 

[iMMuNiTy]

Yes..But that's a geforce 2 MX. Which basically means you're forced to use DX7 features. Things like bump mapping and reflections can take a hit on your CPU and GPU. Also, my framerate hit is during the strider battles towards the end, or other heavy firefights. You have no idea what you're talking about. I've been researching this problem for a year.

I have no idea what I'm talking about? Eat your words, I had a comp as twice as worse as yours for nearly three years, and upgraded it twice. So I think I fairly know what I'm talking about. Furthermore, if you're so smart, why the hell make a topic? Rely on you knowledge.

DX9 effects take a minimum hit on your CPU. GPU is not a problem with a VGA like yours, so it's not even worth mentioning. And even though I had DX7 effects, I had a weaker CPU. So, I dare to jump to the conclusion that

DX7 with my CPU = DX9 with your CPU.

Plus, you have 512 DDRAM and a great VGA to boot. So you're bound to have more fps than with my older PC at least by 10.

EDIT: I got a significant frame rate drop with my older PC in larger areas, or ones with lots of NPCs/entities.

 

[Sanius]

First of all, I made this topic because I wanted to get an idea of what kind of framerate increase I would get so I would be excited about it.

Second, if DX9 takes a major toll on your GPU, and it demands more from the CPU then it can give, then what does that give you? Slow preformance. A CPU that is as fast as your GPU means that both run at the speed that they were meant to run at. A CPU needs to send all of the information for the graphics, ragdolls, explosions, reflections, bump mapping, then send it all to the GPU, so that it can display it to your nice big monitor. But the problem here is, the CPU is trying to send out too much information when it simply can't go fast enough.

But still, I don't know much about this. No more then you do i'm guessing, so let's put it to rest, Alright? It's a childish debate. All I know is that upgrading my CPU and ram will give me a major framerate boost according to what i've been told many, many times. And from alot of benchmarks i've looked at.

 

[iMMuNiTy]

I'm not arguing that you shouldn't upgrade your PC. Do so. Upgrading your CPU and RAM will give you a major fps boost.

 

[RaBiD WeAzEL]

I'm gonna go ahead and say that Sanius is correct. Sorry iMMuNiTy... Having such a powerful card, like a 6800, in that system creates a major bottleneck.

Having a geforce 2 w/ other computer parts around it's par, as you do, creates a much more stable situation.

By having a DX7 card, with many features disabled (HARDWARE-WISE), it creates very little tax on your system... Having a 6800 at dx9 w/ just about all possible (current) features enabled creates a tax on the weaker parts of the computer.

Difference between his computer and yours is that he has a major bottleneck...

And Sanius, if you get 1gb of 3200 ram, and a 64bit AMD processor, plus a supporting mobo (Since I'd assume that you'll need one from a socket A to 754/939) you should get great fps on all high settings...

Here's a question, though:

Is this a vanilla 6800, gt, or ultra, or what?

This could have an effect on your new total fps.

 

[iMMuNiTy]

I'm gonna go ahead and say that Sanius is correct. Sorry iMMuNiTy...

Not that I'd like to argue further, but who you are to judge who's correct and who's not? Your experience in this is...?

Having such a powerful card, like a 6800, in that system creates a major bottleneck.[...]Difference between his computer and yours is that he has a major bottleneck...

Nope. Wrong. Guess again.

With his system, the bottleneck is everything but major. C'Mon, open your eyes and rub the sand out of them. I had my older PC upgraded with a DX9 video card R9550 (on a Celeron 1.7 GHz and 256 SDRAM), - now that was a major bottleneck. His CPU is as twice as powerful as mine was, furthermore, it's an AMD. Plus, Sanius has 512 DDRAM, where I had 256 SDRAM. The difference? Quite big. He should have a minimum effect of a bottleneck.

By having a DX7 card, with many features disabled (HARDWARE-WISE), it creates very little tax on your system... Having a 6800 at dx9 w/ just about all possible (current) features enabled creates a tax on the weaker parts of the computer.

True, bot those "taxes" aren't that big. Don't exaggerate.

It may as well be CPU conflicting with RAM. Check the nest of your RAM and clean it if there's dust. Hell, it'd be good if you cleaned your whole motherboard and its components thoroughly.

Upgrading is crucial though. I do not deny that this your CPU is a drawback because of your VGA, I'm stating that the drawback wasn't supposed to be that big. Did you use fraps to determine fps, or did you use the good ol' eye?

As Weasel said, and with that I fully agree, get a 1GB of RAM and a A64 3200+ (or a more powerful one if money allows you to) processor.

I'm sorry if I have been an ass, but I haven't spent three years learning computers for nothing.

 

[Sanius]

I have a Geforce 6800 Vanilla.

 

[supersaint]

with a 6800 you should be getting fps in the region of 50+ at all times on high otherwise there is something wrong with your hardware or drivers

I'd have to agree with the above statement. My 6800 Ultra eats HL2 for breakfast. I would suggest that you do have some other issues, if you're FPS rate is that low. A memory upgrade would definitely help, though.