Gainward GTX 260 Golden Sample - why so slow ???

[v3sttt]

Hi all.

Few days ago i purchased Gainward GTX 260 GS. I was expecting a great fps boost in games compared to 7900 GS but my system performance is really disappointing and I think that too poor for this card.
I get only about 8500-8700 (SM2.0 ~ 3550, HDR/SM3.0 ~ 4800-5000 ) points in 3d Mark 06 (stock settings, win xp sp3) and games run not as smoothly as they should... I'm sure that this can be caused mostly by my slow CPU - Athlon X2 4200+ because I haven't noticed any other problems with graphic card - specs are detected by system (and other programs like GPU-Z) properly, it is powered by 2 PCI connectors, the GPU temperatures are ok, there are no system crashes and latest drivers are also installed.
So I would like to ask: do You think or maybe have some experience that CPU has such a great influence on GTX 260 performace or maybe there could be other bottleneck in my system???

Of course I'm going to upgrade CPU but my plan was to do this a little later because of lack of money.
My second question is: will any from AMD Phenom X4 series give me significant fps improvement???

The rest of my system specs are: 3GB OCZ DDR2 800 MHz, Samsung Spinpoint 500 GB HDD, Corsair TX 650W PSU and Asus M2N-SLI Deluxe motherboard (AM2 socket but supports AM2+ after BIOS update).

Thanks for all Your opinions and suggestions.

 

[TotalLamer]

A Phenom X4 would be better, sure... a 9950 BE would be nice, but I'd really go a step farther and grab a Phenom II 940 or 720 if you're going to upgrade.

 

[chizow]

Its your CPU. Definitely go for the fastest X3 or X4 drop-in replacement in your budget.

 

[alcoholbob]

Can you clarify what you mean? What games are you playing? If you are playing an MMORPG those are CPU bound. If you are playing a shooter you should be seeing a massive fps boost regardless of your CPU, even an 8800 would run in circles around your 7900. I'm going to assume its your choice of games.

I'm saying this because my system (4200+, 7800GTX) was struggling with Oblivion and Bioshock but it was night and day difference when I went to a 8800GT, it went from completely choppy to smooth, usually in the 30fps range. For most games your 7900 should still be your bottleneck, not your CPU, because frankly, the CPU that was around in the Geforce 7 days were single core Athlon 3200+ or Pentium 4 3GHz chips.

 

[AnonymouseUser]

Uninstall drivers + driver cleaner + install latest drivers

 

[thilanliyan]

OC your CPU a bit and see if it helps.

 

[josh6079]

Originally posted by: chizow
Its your CPU. Definitely go for the fastest X3 or X4 drop-in replacement in your budget.

:thumbsup:

 

[v3sttt]

I play mostly shooters and of course there is an improvement in fps with new gtx 260 comparing to 7900 GS.
But I bought this card to smoothly run most games on high settings in widesrceen resolution 1680x1024 becouse according to many tests publicated on internet it should be possible.
But now I don't have enough fps in few games on my old crt with 1024x768 nominal resolution. For example with 7900GS I had average about 18-30 fps on medium/mainstream settings in crysis/crysis warhead and now almost the same results but on high/gamer in dx 9.0c without any AA. Also CoD 4 and 5 run with large fps drops to below 20 what is unplayable for me. In other shooters it is better but generally I have about 2 times worse fps results that in systems based on similar graphic cards in many benchmarks.
So that's why I'm asking if this is CPU what is holding my card back because I had always thought that CPU has a secondary influence on performance in typical games and I was not expecting such a huge difference.

Anyway thanks for your answers, It looks that I have to change mu CPU soon.

 

[thilanliyan]

Can you OC your CPU? Try that to see if it helps...if it DOES help then the CPU is the problem.

 

[v3sttt]

Originally posted by: thilan29
Can you OC your CPU? Try that to see if it helps...if it DOES help then the CPU is the problem.

I'll try but have never done it before so I must read some OC "theory" first.

 

[BlueAcolyte]

The signs of a CPU bottleneck are very low minimum frame rates, so it certainly sounds like this is the case.