9600xt lags in games

[BBC454]

System: p4 1.6ghz with 850 chipset intel mb, 384 mb rdram, 7200 rpm hd, (older campac).

My friend is having very poor performance in all games with his new card. The video card was upgraded from a Geforce 2 gts 64mb to a Sapphire 9600xt 128mb. All of the drivers have been updated and he even reformatted the hd. It runs every game very choppy like it can't handle the games. The gts ran these games just fine, the games are counter-strike and nfs underground, not demanding games. The 9600xt should run these games flawlessly. The only thing that might hinder performance is it is hooked up to a 4x AGP slot. What could be wrong with it?

Also, I noticed that everyone seems to use the 3dmark program for testing, is the free download just fine to use?

Thanks

 

[CCityInstaller]

I'm not sure what is causing the lag. I was having similiar problems with my 9600 Pro, but I ran driver cleaner and the problems went away. Is he using the latest ATI drivers? I am using version 3.10 and am having no problems. As for 3dMark, everyone uses the free version.

Josh

 

[BBC454]

He is using the newest Catalyst 4.1 drivers for the ATI's, which should still work fine for a Sapphire.

 

[daveybrat]

Has he gone to Intel's website and downloaded the newest chipset/inf software?
Just go to downloads, then chipset, then 850, your operating system and look for Inf utility.
This will install the latest AGP and IDE drivers for his board.

 

[Sylvanas]

it could be cpu lag or the Ram i had a problem like that, i got some more ram and it all worked fine

 

[CaiNaM]

Originally posted by: BBC454
He is using the newest Catalyst 4.1 drivers for the ATI's, which should still work fine for a Sapphire.

try running cat 3.10 and see how it works.

some people have been reporting CoD problems are back, wolf: et is now having performance issues, etc. the only real thing you gain in hardware montioring, but perhaps at the sacrifice of stability/perfomance. not one of ati's better releases of late. 4.1 totally messed up a system to the point i couldn't even install/remove any other drivers. thank goodness i left "system restore" enabled in my wife's pc, lol..

besides, 4.2's should be out in feb.

 

[Viper96720]

ATI and CS is buggy sometimes. Try checking out CS forums for fixes. CS forum
scroll down to part about changing opengl dll

 

[Mem]

CS 1.6(Steam) is fine for me with my Sapphire 9700NP and ATi CAT 4.1 drivers,anyway run it in OpenGL, try it with fastwrites disabled,trueform off in ATi control panel,V-sync on(you can try V-Sync off as well to see which feels better to you) and play with the other settings,I prefer AA on "application preference" AF on "16x Perfomance",I`ve all the other sliders on max quality setting.

Also check your video card IRQ is not sharing IRQ with soundcard.

Also try these below(taken from Rage3D)

stutter problems:
- try to disable all icons in the tray (right bottom corner in default...where the clock is )
- try disabling as many programs as possible (use alt+ctrl+del to see which programs run in background)
- you can set with the task manager the priority of your 3d program up to high (causes some problems, but could also help)
- you can set the hardware acceleration in windows down a notch (fix stutter in 95 %)
- try disabling agp fast writes in bios (some guys say so , I have no certain results with it)
- execute smartguard and look if everything is enabled
- try changing "system" in the device manager from acpi-uni (default win xp, means a motherboard with 2 or more cpu) to acpi (one board with one cpu)..some people have success, some not (me inclusive )
- stutter in opengl is fixed with the latest ati drivers

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bad performance:
- see stutter problems
- antivirus programm in background?
- other heavy programm in background ?
- execute smartguard and look if everything is enabled
- many people are angry about bad performance in some games like battlefield..remember that perhaps your firwall or internet conection makes trouble

 

[titanmiller]

The Nvidia control panel (when using coolbits) has an option to "render no more than X number of frames ahead)" The default is 3 but I get tons of lag in BF with that setting so I have to set it to 0 for that game to run properly.

 

[Viper96720]

May also want to limit the fps in CS. Then when slowdown happens it isn't as bad.

 

[Jayavarman]

I think your thread subject answers your question. I have a Powercolor 9600XT and it's not much faster then my old GF 4 4200. I'm gonna RMA this crippled lamer and get me a GFX 5900.