8800 GT to Radeon HD 6850

[ikbenrenz]

Hello,

today I swapped my old 8800 GT with a Sapphire Radeon 6850 1GB. I had already uninstalled the old nVidia drivers and installed the AMD driver download helper thingy, which recognizes your hardware and OS and finds drivers accordingly. When I started my first game, CoD4 promod, I immediately noticed that there was very little to no increase in fps, weird. After that I wanted to test it with a different game, this time Combat Arms, and I found out that the fps I was getting was even worse. Its minimum had gone from about 70 to 35.

I tried Driver Sweeper and removed remaining Nvidia drivers (normal uninstall apparently hadn't worked..). After a reboot the results were still the same.

I'm really curious to find out what causes this major lack in performance and I hope you guys can help me with this.

My PC's specs are:
Intel(R) Core 2 Duo E6750 @ 2.66 GHz
4 GB Corsair DDR2 RAM
HD Radeon 6850 (duh)
Antec Earthwatts 500W

Greets,

Rens

 

[blastingcap]

what's your resolution

could be cpu limited. try lowering graphics settings and if that doesn't improve fps then you are cpu limited.

 

[ikbenrenz]

what's your resolution

could be cpu limited. try lowering graphics settings and if that doesn't improve fps then you are cpu limited.

Native reso is 1680x1050 but I use 1280x1024 for the 75Hz, idk, I like it.
Used 1280x1024 in both games. Already tried lowering, didn't do anything.
I get your point, but how can it be CPU limitated if my old GFX card ran one game better?

 

[blastingcap]

make sure vsync is off
and also if you're going off one run that may not be representative... play a few more runs and if it's definitely much slower than your old card, you may have a problem
at that low of a rez you're probably at risk of being CPU limited anyway

 

[ikbenrenz]

make sure vsync is off
and also if you're going off one run that may not be representative... play a few more runs and if it's definitely much slower than your old card, you may have a problem
at that low of a rez you're probably at risk of being CPU limited anyway

FPS at 1680x1050 was lower anyway. My FPS has never really fluctuated from 1 run to another, Vsync is always off and I've set whatever I can to the lowest.
If this persists I'm just going to switch back rofl.
If it does and I do switch back, I'm going to put this thing in my brother's pc and see what it does.

120 euros down the drain

 

[aaksheytalwar]

Going from dx10 to dx11 can hurt

 

[ikbenrenz]

Going from dx10 to dx11 can hurt

Yea that's something I was worried about, since I don't play any new games..
On CS:S and CoD4 it's practically the same, however every other game there's a significant drop. I don't know if any of you know CrossFire but I'm currently running that at 50-80 fps -.-
Time to switch back lol.

 

[superccs]

This doesn't make any sense. Did you plug in the 6 pin power to the 6850? That card should be smoking fast in comparison to the 8800Gt. You should be able to get better quality and more frames.

 

[toyota]

that cpu will not even let you get half of what a 6850 can do in many games. in some games, DX11 can slow things down more with a slower cpu. even with my E8500 oced to 3.8, performance actually went down in BF 2 with DX11 using a gtx470 over the gtx260 in DX10. I had to run the game in DX10 just to match the performance I was getting with the gtx260.

and it never makes sense to play any game at 1280x1024 with a 1680x1050. if you have to lower the res on a 16:10 screen then at least use another resolution that has the same aspect ratio such as 12800x800.

 

[Atomic Playboy]

I would suspect a driver issue, possibly a conflict with the old drivers. Use driver sweeper and get rid of all the graphics drivers, both nvidia and AMD, then install the AMD ones again. If that doesn't work, you may need to do a fresh install of Windows. I wouldn't think that it would be a CPU limitation since your minimum FPS has decreased so significantly. Definitely be sure that you've disabled vsync, both in the ingame options and through the AMD 3D settings; 70 to 35 is a dead split, so it might just be a vsync issue.

 

[MustangSVT]

odd, i had a noticeable boost when i uppded from 8800gs to hd6850.

 

[IGhzI]

Seems to be a driver issue.. you can do what most people do when switching from nvidia to amd.. fresh install of windows

 

[ikbenrenz]

Am going to do a fresh windows install this afternoon, hope that works.

 

[Jaydip]

Before doing a windows reinstall download gpuz and check the gpu load while playing games.If its quite less than 100%, reinstallation won't help u unfortunately.

 

[SenorRed]

Before doing a windows reinstall download gpuz and check the gpu load while playing games.If its quite less than 100%, reinstallation won't help u unfortunately.

It could still help him, there is no telling what could be ailing his current setup without getting rid of the framework which all of this is built off of. If you start fresh, and there is still an issue, I'd be inclined to say it could possibly be an issue with the card itself. It would behoove you to install it in another computer, first run a couple bench marks with that PC and it's current video card, then install your new one and run the same bench marks. Assuming that on the paper the card is better, the proof should be in the pudding and at that point you will have a definitive yes or no to the video card being the issue.

Sorry it's a little wordy, but this is for sure the method I would use to rule out all of the possible defects.

 

[ikbenrenz]

Before doing a windows reinstall download gpuz and check the gpu load while playing games.If its quite less than 100%, reinstallation won't help u unfortunately.

I have checked that, using both AMD Overdrive and GPU-Z. While idle the clock speeds are 100 Mhz and 150 Mhz, when playing games, alt-tabbing quickly and looking at the speeds they were the normal 775 and 1000 for respectively the Core speed and Memory speed.

 

[Gonad the Barbarian]

Look at the GPU load. If it's much less than 100% something else is holding you back. If your CPU load on any of your cores is up around 100% it's that.

 

[Jaydip]

I have checked that, using both AMD Overdrive and GPU-Z. While idle the clock speeds are 100 Mhz and 150 Mhz, when playing games, alt-tabbing quickly and looking at the speeds they were the normal 775 and 1000 for respectively the Core speed and Memory speed.

Dude I told u to check the gpu load not clocks

 

[emptyshell]

I went from a 8800gt to HD6850 and saw 0 improvement in gaming. I swapped out my i3-530 for a i5-2500k and saw a huge improvement.

 

[Termie]

There's no doubt that the OP's CPU will hold him back - he'd probably get about 50-75% of the performance that the 6850 could potentially offer. That means he'd barely be faster than an 8800gt.

But in no way should he be slower. This isn't an issue of DX10/11, because he's playing older games.

OP - you said little to no increase in COD4. Can you be more specific? Have you run an average using FRAPS?

Also, you say the minimums in Combat Arms went down, how about the average?

You can use MSI Afterburner to test for all of the critical parameters, including GPU load, frames per second, and clock speeds.

 

[poohbear]

This doesn't make any sense. Did you plug in the 6 pin power to the 6850? That card should be smoking fast in comparison to the 8800Gt. You should be able to get better quality and more frames.

This. Dont listen to these ppl saying its cpu limited. A 6850 vs a 8800gt should be a night & day difference @ any resolution above 800x600. U sure its connected properly & correct drivers installed?

Sent from my MB861 using Tapatalk 2

 

[emptyshell]

This. Dont listen to these ppl saying its cpu limited. A 6850 vs a 8800gt should be a night & day difference @ any resolution above 800x600. U sure its connected properly & correct drivers installed?

Sent from my MB861 using Tapatalk 2

A lot of games don't utilize GPU well and still rely on CPU. GPU is irrelevant in a lot of games. Look at Dead Island.

 

[ikbenrenz]

This. Dont listen to these ppl saying its cpu limited. A 6850 vs a 8800gt should be a night & day difference @ any resolution above 800x600. U sure its connected properly & correct drivers installed?

Sent from my MB861 using Tapatalk 2

I installed Win 7 again and it's gotten a bit better, lowest fps on CA 44, lowest on CoD still 130 but I was looking into 3 smokes, it's mostly around where I want it to be (250, promod players will know). I do have an FPS config, however when I look into open spaces it drops down to as low as 150.


About the drivers, ask AMD 'cause I downloaded their autodetect thingy.
I used AMD overdrive to test the load % on both.
CoD right after alt-tabbing: http://oi48.tinypic.com/2ugfa7o.jpg
CA right after alt-tabbing: http://tinypic.com/view.php?pic=9s9bms&s=6

Both tested 1680x1050, ingame aswell as desktop reso.

Don't ask me why the links aren't the same format lol.

Also testing a 550 watt PSU tomorrow, to see if that's the problem.

EDIT: I just noticed the fairly low CPU usage you see in the graph at CoD. I took random screens after a couple of tests, and the graph on the screen shows significantly lower CPU usage, I had previously seen it get to the top, with downfalls inbetween.

 

[krumme]

I went from a 8800gt to HD6850 and saw 0 improvement in gaming. I swapped out my i3-530 for a i5-2500k and saw a huge improvement.

Can you share some benchmarks, because all the test i look at both anand, toms, whatever shows the oposite?

The 2.67core 2 is not the best for the 6850 - far from - but no matter the cpu as the weak link, there should be a noticable improvement in many games, espcially at 1680 res. And its a cheap upgrade.

 

[Jaydip]

I installed Win 7 again and it's gotten a bit better, lowest fps on CA 44, lowest on CoD still 130 but I was looking into 3 smokes, it's mostly around where I want it to be (250, promod players will know). I do have an FPS config, however when I look into open spaces it drops down to as low as 150.


About the drivers, ask AMD 'cause I downloaded their autodetect thingy.
I used AMD overdrive to test the load % on both.
CoD right after alt-tabbing: http://oi48.tinypic.com/2ugfa7o.jpg
CA right after alt-tabbing: http://tinypic.com/view.php?pic=9s9bms&s=6

Both tested 1680x1050, ingame aswell as desktop reso.

Don't ask me why the links aren't the same format lol.

Also testing a 550 watt PSU tomorrow, to see if that's the problem.

EDIT: I just noticed the fairly low CPU usage you see in the graph at CoD. I took random screens after a couple of tests, and the graph on the screen shows significantly lower CPU usage, I had previously seen it get to the top, with downfalls inbetween.

Well as u can see the gpu load is very low.It can happen due to CPU bottleneck.Oc the GPU and if doesn't yield any benefits then u r in a CPU bottlenecked situation.