can someone identify what is causing my poor game performance

[TC91]

I am experiencing lots of drops in fps with games, most notably unreal tournament 3 and dungeon siege 2 (old rpg game from 2002).

This is my setup:
e6600 @3ghz
asus p5q vanilla
4gb mushkin hp2 ddr2 ram
sapphire 4870 1gb with 8.10 catalysts
ocz 600w gamexstream
vista 64bit

I do not think I should be having such issues especially with these older games which are frustrating as I am playing them most often for the time being. My old graphics card was an 8800gts 320mb which died on me and i replaced it with a 48701gb expecting a big performance gain and better gaming days but this has not been the case.

Unreal tournament 3 keeps dropping fps heavily into the 30-40's while in gunfights and its just plain unplayable. I have also tried setting all the settings to off/low and with the lowest resolution i can (640x480) and the fps STILL drops into the 30-40's which is frustrating me as ut3 is probably my favourite game. I really think a 4870 1gb card should be able to run the game super smoothly which has not been the case.

In dungeon siege 2 an older rpg from 2002 I also have my fps dropping a lot during battles or when theres lots of things on screen, like to 26-30fps and it is weird because the game is so old and i would expect my setup to be able to fly thru it.

This is on a fresh windows installation btw. Thanks and sorry for the long post

 

[dguy6789]

Something is definitely wrong. On my system, I run UT3 at 1680x1050 maxed out and the minimum fps is 62. Your hardware specs look fine, so I imagine the problem is settings somewhere.

 

[dalu]

Make sure you installed new card in correct slot PCI x16 not x1, i think you can check that in Bois, and try other version of GPU drivers.

 

[shortylickens]

Originally posted by: dalu
Make sure you installed new card in correct slot PCI x16 not x1, i think you can check that in Bois, and try other version of GPU drivers.

I always thought the little tabbed spaces in the slot were different, so he shouldnt be able to put it in the wrong slot.
http://lib.store.yahoo.net/lib...i-express-pci-card.jpg

 

[pontifex]

30-40 fps is unplayable??????

 

[TC91]

Thanks for the replies, yeah i have the card in the correct slot, there is only one 16x pci-express slot on the motherboard. I am also running 1680x1050 resolution. I had the same issues with my old motherboard which recently died on me (xfx 680i LT) and with the 8.9 catalyst's, and thus i had to reformat. 30-40fps to me is just plain unplayable in a game like ut3, its just so hard to aim and when theres a bunch of people or bots around me, i just dont stand a chance. I am thinking that it is the cpu maybe, although for dungeon siege 2 I really don't think i should be having any issues whatsoever since its a 2002 game.

Thanks.

 

[CrazyLazy]

Originally posted by: TC91
30-40fps to me is just plain unplayable

How is 30-40 fps unplayable? IIRC the human eye can only see around 30 fps per second anyway.

 

[Canai]

Originally posted by: CrazyLazy

Originally posted by: TC91
30-40fps to me is just plain unplayable

How is 30-40 fps unplayable? IIRC the human eye can only see around 30 fps per second anyway.

Ha, maybe your crazylazy eyes are limited like that, but not normal peoples

 

[TC91]

there is noticable slowdown when I am trying to aim (not as responsive) and it can get frustrating.

 

[HeXploiT]

Originally posted by: CrazyLazy

Originally posted by: TC91
30-40fps to me is just plain unplayable

How is 30-40 fps unplayable? IIRC the human eye can only see around 30 fps per second anyway.

The human eye is fooled at 24-30fps into believing it is seeing motion but actually we can detect much greater fps than this. There is definitely a huge difference between 30 & 60fps.

Ok now assuming this isn't all being played out on a 20GB hard drive I'm going to assume this is a software issue.
Try updating your chipset drivers and then try different versions of videocard drivers.

 

[TC91]

thanks for the reply, I am using the western digital caviar 640gb drive, its defragmented and everything. My chipset drivers are the latest ones from the asus support website, and i have used catalyst 8.7, 8.8, 8.9, and 8.10 so far with no luck. Is there a catalyst driver anyone would recommend?

Thanks again.

 

[HeXploiT]

Originally posted by: TC91
thanks for the reply, I am using the western digital caviar 640gb drive, its defragmented and everything. My chipset drivers are the latest ones from the asus support website, and i have used catalyst 8.7, 8.8, 8.9, and 8.10 so far with no luck. Is there a catalyst driver anyone would recommend?

Thanks again.

I would just start rolling it back one at a time. You know ATI cards have a great performance/price ratio but these driver issue are what prevented me from handing in the Nvidia badge.

 

[dalu]

You can try GPU drivers guide from here:http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=258626

 

[Juddog]

The thing I would suggest is if you have a second monitor, set up some polling programs to observe CPU, memory, graphics card, and hard drive usage. You may find it's a program in the background causing the issue. Vista has a built in IO usage meter that shows which tasks are using the hard drive the most.

 

[darkrisen2003]

Personal opinion. Format and reinstall OS because it sounds like you have changed alot of hardware and while you could just DL some registry cleaning software and have some luck getting it all sorted out it would just be easier and less painful to just go ahead and format. When changing hardware companies like it sounds you have been doing such as going from nvidia to ATI sometimes the registry as well as other places hold on to files making things act up. Again this is just my opinion and I dont always recommend formatting but in this case that is what I would do.

 

[Oyeve]

Check the temps on the card. I play that game at 1680x1050 on a x2 3800+ cpu and a 8800gt and run al at max and its smooth.

 

[TC91]

thanks for the replies,

I am on a fresh installation of windows right now (darkrisen2003 you may have missed it in my first post). My gpu temps are 79c idle and 85c under load which I do believe are normal temperatures for a 4870. I have tried manually adjusting the fan in ccc (8.10) to 50% but there is no difference in performance, just a lot of noise (can't believe how loud this fan can get).

Oyeve, how are your minimum fps? Particularly in Shangri-La / Santuary?

Thanks.