Geforce 6800 on 4x agp trouble

[solss]

Card installed fine, works and everything, but i get horrible performance. No matter what settings i use on half-life 2, be it 800x600 with no AA or 1024x768 with 4x aa and 8x anistropic filtering, i get 30-50 fps in game with plenty of slow down. I'm using the latest official drivers. Specs are as follows:

2ghz p4 533mhz bus (might be the problem)
1 gig ddr266
geforce 6800 vanilla

From what others have told me its the 4x slot thats holding me back, but others say 4x makes a miniscule difference. So tell me, did i waste 300 dollars fixing up my computer for nothing? or is there a way to fix this.

 

[Crescent13]

One word... RAM. Half-Life 2 is one of the heavest games on memory, and DDR266 just won't cut it. I would hesitate putting it on anything slower than DDR400. The AGP bus is also a bit slow, but I still think your biggest problem is the ram. I'm guessing you will need a new MoBo to up the ram speed, and therefore new ram, and a new cpu.... oh what the heck just buy yourself a new computer to build around your graphic card 30-50FPS is still good for that setup though, expecially with 4x AA and 8x AF. I get around that speed with my rig (specs in sig).

 

[solss]

The thing is, I had 256 megs of ram just yesterday, game ran exactly the same, although with medium textures instead of high. I figured the 1 gig would help.. so there has to be something else here.

 

[baddog121390]

hl2 runs fine on my system with ddr266 and a 6800le on 4xAGP. although i do have a 2.5ghz p4 instead of 2ghz... i wouldnt think it would make that much of a difference though

 

[BillyBobJoel71]

you need ddr400 to really take advantage of a gigbayte of ram. I suggest selling the ram, and buying at least 512 mb of ddr400 (or pc3200).

 

[solss]

Motherboard only supports up to 266. It's not just half life 2 either, unreal tournament 2004 stays within 35-60 fps... might it be possible that i have a damaged card?

Just went into half life 2 again and set everthing except the directx level on low, character models, shadows.. texture.. NO change in fps, no matter what settings, its always the same.

 

[Kogan]

Did you really spend $300 on a geforce 6800 and 768mb ram? Take it back if you can.. That's too much to spend on those components

MSRP of a geforce 6800 is $200 (which means you can get it for less), and 1gb of ddr400 ram can be had for around $80. (any ddr will work in your motherboard, don't believe the motherboard specs, although you may not be able to clock it up to ddr400).

Other than that, just check everything else - make sure you have the newest motherboard drivers, newest directx, etc.. And if you're looking at just FPS and are doing benchmarking, make sure you have vsync turned off since that will limit you to 60fps or so to prevent tearing.

 

[solss]

It really can't be the ram, it works great... loads vampire bloodline levels in under 10 seconds compared to my 3ghz laptops 4 minutes (512 ram). I bought two 512 sticks in one pack and replaced the 256 since i've only 2 dimm slots. I do feel a bit taken though for my stupid mistake of buying old crappy ram when i could've bought something used in a new pc. Last time i trust people on IRC. Vsync isnt on.. No unlocking has been done, still on 12 pipes and 5 shaders. Something must be amiss... no one's ahd similar experience?

 

[mwmorph]

ram does not help load speed. the reason your lappy loads slow is cause of a 4200rpm drive versus your probabyl 7200rpm drive in the pc.

try new chipset bios and drivers and then new video card drivers. in fact, make sure all bioses and drivers are newwst.

 

[solss]

Everythings up to date. Last time there was an update was in 2003.

 

[mwmorph]

maybe try overclocking
http://www.tomshardware.com/cpu/20041221/cpu_charts-15.html#directx_9

look how much the 6800 struggles with a fx55 and 1gb ddr400 on 4xaa(59.7fps)
http://graphics.tomshardware.com/graphic/20050705/vga-charts-pcie-06.html
take some off for slow ram and cpu and agp4x(amybe 10-15% performance decrease right there in newer games) well, 50fps is about par)

you're better off no 2xaa or 12x10 resolution.

What im worried about is your ultra low ut2004 scores.

 

[solss]

Didnt think my intel mobo would allow for overclocking. 845gbv... If i'm wrong, any ideas on where to start?

edit: Oh, and i appreciate all the replies. thanks.

 

[Kogan]

Something's wrong UT 2004 should be going much faster (around 100fps) with your setup with aa/af turned on.

Let's see....
- Turn off AGP fast-writes in the bios - this causes some problems with 6800 cards
- Set your AGP acupecture (bad spelling) size to 128mb or 256mb - 256mb works best in the newest games.
- See if there's any new bios updates for your motherboard.
- check some other benchmarks to make sure the rest of your system is performing on par with other 2ghz intel systems - sisoft sandra, etc..
- double check vsync and make sure it's forced to off in the nvidia control panel.
- In the display properties/troubleshooting, make sure hardare acceleration is turned to Full.
- Un-install your nvidia drivers, reboot, use an nvidia driver-cleaner program to remove all traces of your old drivers, reboot again, then re-install the latest official drivers from nvidia.com.

That's all I can think of at the moment

 

[solss]

Tried all of that, no luck... keep thinking

 

[solss]

Reformatted .. turned out to be a waste of time. I guess the only thing left to do is change my motherboard someday and work my way up from there... unless anyone else has any other bright ideas.

 

[solss]

All right, right now im looking at an asus prp800-x at tiger direct to replace my motherboard. Shame I bought 266 ram just a few days ago... ah well. Question is... could the old intel 845gbv be restricting my agp bandwidth to cause this problem? Hope im not spending more money for nothing, especially if it turns out my cards just damaged.