FSB not correct, poor computer performance, gamer in need of help!!!

[computergeek]

I'm sorry for the long post but I desperately need help.

I'm about to lose my mind over the computer I just built (see spec below). I need to know if I'm just being too picky or do I truly have reason to expect more out of my rig. My expectation are to move my character from side to side without stutters, breaks, artifacting, etc. I don't expect to see performance drops during big fight scenes or scenes with several NPC's on at once. I really shouldn't suffer from sluggish movements or controls. I feel like I should be able to play any game on the market without having to tweak the crap out of it to get good performance, but unfortunately that's not that case.

Games: Everquest 2, Everquest 1, Doom 3, Half Life 2, Far Cry, Unreal II

Processor ? Intel Pentium 4, 3.0 GIG, 800MHZ FSB, HT Technology
Motherboard ? Intel, 865 Chipset (Latest Chipset Drivers Installed)
RAM ? 1 GIG PC3200 DDR400 Ultra
Hard Drive ? 120 GIG, Maxtor SATA, 7200rpm, 8mb cache
Video Card ? ATI 9800 Pro, 128MB RAM (Was Running 4.11 Cat Drivers, Now running 4.12 Cat Beta Drivers)
Power Supply ? Ultra 400Watt
Drives- 52x CD-ROM, 16x DVD, 3.5 Floppy
OS - Windows XP Professional, SP2 (Firewall disabled)
Other Software - Norton 2002 (Disabled during game play)

A friend of mine said I should run 3Dmark05 benchmark software to get an accurate analysis instead of just assuming my PC isn't performing like it should. I ran three different 3DMark05 tests, each with different graphic settings. These are the settings within the Catalyst Control Panel that are titled Direct 3D and OpenGL. My options ranged from High Performance to High Quality.

For the first test I set the video card to Medium Quality. When the demo started I immediately knew I was about to get some horrific results. My first score was a whopping 1259. As the demo was playing my FPS never went above seven. For the second test I set the video card to Balanced and received a much better score of 2130. It was a better score but the demo lagged and stuttered like I was running an old GeForce 2 MX 16MB card. For my final test I set the video card to High Performance and received a score of 2036. I was surprised my score actually went down instead of going up.

My next step was to go online and compare my results to others with similar rigs. At this point I wasn't sure if my score was good, average, or just plain horrible (I expected the worse). The first few scores I saw before narrowing my search down ranged from 8,000+ to scores in the 11,000's. Man did that ever burst my bubble. Once I narrowed the query down a bit the scores were a lot more in my range but still a considerable amount higher than mine. The average score ranged from 3,000 to 5,000. I compared the specs for each rig and they were almost identical to mine with the exception of faster memory speed on their 9800 and a slightly faster FSB, which brings me to a HUGE concern of mine.

My boards supports 800Mhz FSB Processors which is what I have, but 3DMark05 says I only have a 200Mhz FSB. I noticed that others were higher than 200MHz but no where near 800MHz, so I'm not sure if 3DMark05 is talking about something else or all of us got screwed when we bought our processors. I did notice somebody that was using an Athlon 64 3000+ and was only displaying 17MHz FSB, which I know isn't correct.

I'm completely lost and now it appears my FSB is lower than what it should be. HELP!!

 

[Kovie]

The FSB is correct. Intel uses a quad-pumping system to increase the effective bandwidth of the bus. The base is 200 and the effective rate is 800.

Also your 2130 score is about right for your system. 3DM05 likes the latest generation cards much more than even ones made a year ago. Also 3DM05 is debatable as far as its usefulness as a benchmark goes, as it doesnt even remotely give an indication of how actual games play.

I have essentially about the same system you have, and dont have any problems playing any game out there right now. Play some actual games and see its performance with the system.

 

[WA261]

Your fsb will not actually run at 800fsb

 

[computergeek]

Thanks for the quick response!

I've tested games like Painkiller, Unreal 2004, Call of Duty, Far Cry, Doom 3, Half-Life 2, Everquest 2, and a few others. Call of Duty, Painkiller, and Unreal 2k are the only ones that perform almost flawlessly. The others have several issues that irritate me to no end, and shouldn't be happening imo. Note: All games are played at 1024X768 and default settings. I even turn off AA, Shadows, and lower sound quality but still experience issues.

Examples:

Doom 3 has several levels that display poor frame rates and stuttering. I've been through several different tweaks but it still doesn't perform like I thought it should. I run the game on medium quality, 1027 X 768, AA OFF, Shadows OFF, etc.

Half-Life 2 stutters whenever it loads a new level or loads a new scene. It's a slight stutter which was supposed to be fixed in a recent patch but I still have the issue. This isn't the sounds stutter issues others are talking about on the boards, this is graphical stutter. I spoke to Ron and he said he doesn't see any stuttering at all.

Far Cry stutters during heaving scenes and tends to be sluggish when I move my gun from side to side.

Everquest 2 performed really well when I first installed it. A few days later performance started to drop and graphics became sluggish and stuttered in some areas. There was also a large thread created for this issues but nothing was ever solved for people still having the problem

One other question?

I have four DIMM's on my mobo broke down to channel A and B. Right now I have both 512MB sticks in the channel A slots. Would that impact gaming performance?

 

[Mister Dark]

Many people with decent systems are getting stuttering in HL2. It seems to happen reguardless of system specs. I think certain levels in Doom III do the same. Not sure about Far Cry ...

 

[stelleg151]

if your as sensitivity to mouse lag as I am, I tend to notice mouse lag in all D3D games that I dont notice in Open GL games, could be the issue with farcry.