9600Pro vs 9800Pro...Disappointed

[49erinnc]

Received my MSI 9800Pro from Newegg yesterday. Installed Cat 4.7 and sure enough, my card came up as the 9800XT which was great. I bought this card to replace my 9600Pro, which I loved but I wanted to at least future-proof my rig for another year, if that.

Figured I'd fire up the Doom3 multiplayer, expecting to see a MAJOR difference in performance from the 9600P to the 9800P(XT). And to be honest, I was really disappointed. Is there a chance that I just don't have something configured properly or was I expecting too much? When I had played with the 9600P, I was using 1024x768 and Medium settings/no AA/AF. With the new card, I ran it at 1024x768 at High settings/no AA/AF. I figured that even going from Medium to High, that I was still see a huge performance boost but no such luck. My only guess is that when I set it to High settings, that it automatically enabled AA/AF and that's why my performance struggled. I never tried the 9800Pro on Medium settings.

I DID raise my core/memory speeds to match those of a natural XT but this didn't really help out much. Would the performance be better if I actually flashed a new BIOS for the card? However, even at stock 9800Pro speeds, I figured I'd still see a big difference from the 9600Pro and I didn't.

Sound like something isn't configured properly or is the difference from a 9600Pro to a 9800Pro (XT) just not that significant on Doom3 or in general?

 

[nRollo]

Doom 3 runs poorly on all ATI cards except the X800XT PE.

Your 9800Pro is a HUGE upgrade from the 9600Pro, and will show huge gains on all other games. Hopefully you didn't buy a 9800Pro specifically for Doom3.

 

[Manzelle]

Originally posted by: Rollo
Doom 3 runs poorly on all ATI cards except the X800XT PE.

Your 9800Pro is a HUGE upgrade from the 9600Pro, and will show huge gains on all other games. Hopefully you didn't buy a 9800Pro specifically for Doom3.

I wouldn't characterize its performance as poor but rather weak...69fps 1024x768 High Quality is certainly playable for me...

 

[jiffylube1024]

It's not a good indicator of *true* performance, but you can try running 3dmark 2k3 to get a decent indicator of relative performance.

You should be getting ~5000 marks, +/- 1000 marks (as long as you have a decent CPU), whereas with the 9600 is would be 2500-3000.

Doom3 should be noticeably faster with the 9800 Pro, but as Rollo said, try other games as well.

The 9800 series is pretty much great for everything but Doom3; for D3 it's 'ok' but not amazing.

 

[jiffylube1024]

Originally posted by: Manzelle

Originally posted by: Rollo
Doom 3 runs poorly on all ATI cards except the X800XT PE.

Your 9800Pro is a HUGE upgrade from the 9600Pro, and will show huge gains on all other games. Hopefully you didn't buy a 9800Pro specifically for Doom3.

I wouldn't characterize its performance as poor but rather weak...69fps 1024x768 High Quality is certainly playable for me...

You're getting astronomical overclocks out of your card, though, Manzelle. My R360 core overclocks like crap, so they all aren't created equal .

 

[Marsumane]

Originally posted by: jiffylube1024

Originally posted by: Manzelle

Originally posted by: Rollo
Doom 3 runs poorly on all ATI cards except the X800XT PE.

Your 9800Pro is a HUGE upgrade from the 9600Pro, and will show huge gains on all other games. Hopefully you didn't buy a 9800Pro specifically for Doom3.

I wouldn't characterize its performance as poor but rather weak...69fps 1024x768 High Quality is certainly playable for me...

You're getting astronomical overclocks out of your card, though, Manzelle. My R360 core overclocks like crap, so they all aren't created equal .

Yes this is way high for frames on a 9800p. I get like 47fps on the demo w/ 1024x768, hq, quality texture settings. Based on the compilation of people's benches, i'm near the upper end as far as people w/ 9800p cards go. Then again, upon second thought, maybe he is actually using an x800p and just negating rollo's comment (which i think is a little far saying it's "poor". More like underpar in comparison to it's other showings).

Overall, the card is atleast 2x as fast. Especially oced to xt speeds. maybe your driver control panel doesnt have "application preference" checked for aa + af?

 

[Manzelle]

No, check my rig...I use a 9800 Pro...

 

[49erinnc]

Originally posted by: Rollo
Doom 3 runs poorly on all ATI cards except the X800XT PE.

Your 9800Pro is a HUGE upgrade from the 9600Pro, and will show huge gains on all other games. Hopefully you didn't buy a 9800Pro specifically for Doom3.

Not at all. I had already conquered Doom 3 a couple weeks ago on the 9600Pro and the single player ran really well at 10x7/medium/no AA/AF. I had very acceptable framerates with the 9600Pro but it was pretty choppy on the multiplayer, even at lower resolutions. I was just expecting to get significantly better framerates on the multiplayer with the 9800Pro. I only bought the 9800Pro just because it was time to upgrade, my wife was buying it for me as an anniversary gift and I (she) couldn't afford the X800/6800 series.

I guess I'll run the time demo because with the 9600Pro, I got an average of like 27 on that one. I'll be curious to see if I can get near 40 with the 9800 "XT". I also broke the 3,000 mark with my old card on 3dmark2k3, but just barely. I'll run that to see how much better I am now with the new card.

I haven't tried any other games yet other than Doom 3 so maybe that wasn't the best test to be using to compare the two ATI cards.

 

[49erinnc]

Well, I just ran the Doom 3 time demo and only got 27.1 FPS (average). That's only a couple frames better than what I got with my 9600Pro. I just find that hard to believe.

Gonna run 3Dmark next and see what I get with that. Maybe I just got something out of whack somewhere else because I expected much better results from this upgrade.

 

[chilled]

Originally posted by: 49erinnc
Well, I just ran the Doom 3 time demo and only got 27.1 FPS (average). That's only a couple frames better than what I got with my 9600Pro. I just find that hard to believe.

Could you give us the specs of your system plz?

 

[nRollo]

You don't say what your cpu is, perhaps that is the problem? Anyway, like I said, Doom3 is not the game to judge 9800Pros on. They are great cards for everything else, and should pretty much walk all over your old 9600P.

 

[zephyrprime]

I'm surprised nobody's asked what kind of CPU he's running. It's very possible that he's cpu bound.

 

[PrayForDeath]

Originally posted by: Manzelle

Originally posted by: Rollo
Doom 3 runs poorly on all ATI cards except the X800XT PE.

Your 9800Pro is a HUGE upgrade from the 9600Pro, and will show huge gains on all other games. Hopefully you didn't buy a 9800Pro specifically for Doom3.

I wouldn't characterize its performance as poor but rather weak...69fps 1024x768 High Quality is certainly playable for me...

And how the he** are you getting this performance out of your 9800Pro? What are you using watercooling or what? You got your Pro clocked at 450/450? I can only get 40FPS using your settings!

 

[49erinnc]

Originally posted by: chilled

Originally posted by: 49erinnc
Well, I just ran the Doom 3 time demo and only got 27.1 FPS (average). That's only a couple frames better than what I got with my 9600Pro. I just find that hard to believe.

Could you give us the specs of your system plz?

Sorry, I usually do that.

XP 2200+ (OC to 1984.1)
1024 PNY PC2700
Factory cooled MSI 9800Pro (412/365)

I'm thinking that it may in fact be my CPU that's holding back the vid card a little. Also, even though my memory is PC2700, I'm forced to run it in sync with my CPU FSB speed of 133MHz. Both of these issues combined, could be my problem.

I know this is a bit off topic, but since my CPU's FSB is capped at a lower speed than my memory, can I still run my memory at 333MHz (PC2700) speed? Or will I actually get better performance by running it at PC2100 speeds so it's in sync with my CPU? And 1,984 is as fast as my Athlon will overclock before giving me fits so I'm capped there as well.

I have money to upgrade to a XP 2600+. Do you think it would be worth it to get it so that I can run it and my memory in sync at 166MHz? Maybe that will kick my 9800P up a notch. Or will I still be held back? Asking because I may just suck it up for awhile until I can afford a 3.2GHz cpu.

Gonna run 3DMark01 now just to see what I get with things as they are.

 

[apoppin]

Originally posted by: 49erinnc
Received my MSI 9800Pro from Newegg yesterday. Installed Cat 4.7 and sure enough, my card came up as the 9800XT which was great. I bought this card to replace my 9600Pro, which I loved but I wanted to at least future-proof my rig for another year, if that.

Figured I'd fire up the Doom3 multiplayer, expecting to see a MAJOR difference in performance from the 9600P to the 9800P(XT). And to be honest, I was really disappointed. Is there a chance that I just don't have something configured properly or was I expecting too much? When I had played with the 9600P, I was using 1024x768 and Medium settings/no AA/AF. With the new card, I ran it at 1024x768 at High settings/no AA/AF. I figured that even going from Medium to High, that I was still see a huge performance boost but no such luck. My only guess is that when I set it to High settings, that it automatically enabled AA/AF and that's why my performance struggled. I never tried the 9800Pro on Medium settings.

I DID raise my core/memory speeds to match those of a natural XT but this didn't really help out much. Would the performance be better if I actually flashed a new BIOS for the card? However, even at stock 9800Pro speeds, I figured I'd still see a big difference from the 9600Pro and I didn't.

Sound like something isn't configured properly or is the difference from a 9600Pro to a 9800Pro (XT) just not that significant on Doom3 or in general?

hmm. . . i had a 9600xt for a short time then upgraded to a 9800p (b4 my 9800xt) . . . i found the difference 'striking'.

Now, when you go to HiQ in Doom III you automatically enable 8xAF (no AA).

Here's my Question: WHY did you install ANY drivers. All you have to do is remove you 9600p and install the 9800p. There is NO change of drivers. . . . that way you could compare performance directly.

?

EDIT: you could try reinstalling your OLD drivers (that the 9600 had); but absolutely run other benchmarks - especially 3DMark 01 and 03. Do you still have your old card?

And don't listen to snobs that say the 9800p doesn't run doom well . . . they don't even have skills to PLAY doom.

:roll:

 

[49erinnc]

Okay, just ran 3DMark2001 SE and only got 11,560 which I'm thinking is pretty darn bad.

By the way, I installed new drivers because I just wanted a clean slate all the way around when I popped in the new card. Probably should have left it as is but I doubt that a driver version is keeping my performance down so much. Running Omega 2.5.5.1 (4.7) right now. I ran that benchmark at 1024x768 and no AA. Hell, I was expecting a low score but was expecting at least 12,000.

And I can't imagine going from a 2200+/266FSB CPU to a 2500+/333FSB CPU pushing my benchmark up another 3,000. Would it? Or is something else causing me problems? Granted, my benchmark is MUCH better than what I got with my 9600Pro, but isn't 11,560 pretty low for what's essentially a 9800XT, with the exception of it being only 128MB???

 

[KevinH]

Those are really bad scores bro. My 9700Pro at 10x7 Hq is hitting 40fps with just a touch of overclocking (345/330). Your 3dmark2001 should be over 15000 easily. I'm just a tick under 15000K on 3dmark2001. If it helps, my system is an XP1800 running at 2241 mhz (13.5x166fsb) and a gig of Ram also. Other than than your superiod GPU, it seems like our systems are pretty similar.

It's been awhile since I helped troubleshoot but did you do a clean wipe of hte old drivers? Try the beta 4.9's from ATI's site....it should be a decent bump. Let me know how it goes.

Kevin

 

[Avalon]

Yeah, those 3dmark01 scores are very low. That's odd. I get around 17000. You've verified that nothing driver related is the problem? Make sure options in the control panel aren't forcing AA/AF. I just find it hard to believe that running an XP processor @ 2ghz with synched PC2100 ram is causing that much of a choke on performance. Try running the ram asynch @ PC2700 and see how your bench scores change, if at all.

 

[DarkKnight]

I think it is the fsb thats holding u back. My system is similar tp yours except my cpu is at 2.2ghz and fsb is 400mhz. The clock speed of my cpu doesnt help much, when it's clocked to 2.0 to 2.3 there is a very small difference in doom3. With my 9800np I get 36fps on 1024x768 high. Since clock speed doesnt help much and since your video card is better, i think it's your fsb. I get around 16000 in 3dmark using my system, so i think it will help in 3dmark also. Is it possible for you to lower your multiplyer and run the ram at 166mhz? that might help.

 

[apoppin]

your scores seem low . . . what about 3d-m'03?

try OTHER drivers - not the Omegas; use the ones you had with the 9600.

What do you use in Control Panel . . . are you "forcing" aa or af?

Is v-synch on or off?

run timedemo1 in Doom III and report the results


FINALLY, do you STILL have your 9600p?
. . . remove the 9800p and reinstall it (this time DON'T change the drivers) and see how it compares with the benchmarks you JUST ran with your 9800p.

EDIT: (really) finally, did you UNINSTALL the 9600 from your Hardware profiles? one time i had about 3 videocards show up in Device Manager . . . removing one gained back all my lost performance.

 

[49erinnc]

Really frustrating now...

As for your questions....

No, only running 3DMark01 SE.

V-Sync is OFF.

I had run timedemo in Doom3. From what I can remember, I got an average of 25 with the 9600P. With the 9800P, I got 27.1.

Yes, I completely removed the 9600 hardware from profile...nothing there now except the 9800Pro(XT).

As for drivers, I'm now back with CAT 4.3.

HOWEVER...NOW when I try to even run 3DMark01, it causes my computer to reboot. WTF????? The first time I tried to run it with new driver, it froze up on the splash screen of the first bench test. Every time after that, it rebooted my computer before it could even load the first bench test.

I'm totally baffled now. I hope that I didn't just get a bad video card. Doesn't really seem like that's the problem but I can't explain all my issues.

I'm going to try to run 3DMark ONE more time before I have to go to bed. If it crashes again, I'll just have to tinker more tomorrow after work. Man this sucks!!

 

[49erinnc]

Yep, did it again.

Just tried to run 3DMark one last time. The first test started up like everything was going to be fine. Then after the truck scene ran for about 10 seconds, I got booted back to my desktop.

I don't get it....

 

[Dman877]

You should get about 15k in 3dmark01 and like 5k in 3dmark03. If you don't get those scores, reformat, reinstall drivers, change settings, etc etc until you do. Then try playing Doom3 again.

And despite what everyone is saying about ATI sucking at Doom3, you should see a dramatic improvement with the 9800 Pro. Firingsquad wrote a good article on mainstream parts in Doom3.

 

[apoppin]

Originally posted by: 49erinnc
Yep, did it again.

Just tried to run 3DMark one last time. The first test started up like everything was going to be fine. Then after the truck scene ran for about 10 seconds, I got booted back to my desktop.

I don't get it....

ok, last time . . . do you STILL have the 9600?

If you do, put it back in . . . your 9800 might be defecctive or you might have borked up your system somehow.

If the 9600 runs like b4 (good) , it is the 9800 (rma it) . . . if it runs like crap, reinstall your O/S.

 

[49erinnc]

Yep, still have the 9600Pro. Will try to see if I have any problems with it tomorrow. If not, then a RMA is in order.

If I have problems with it as well, then I'll format my HD.

Thanks for the help...off to bed I go now.