gtx260 possibly bottlenecked by my system?

[roid450]

hello.

i just bought a evga gtx260 superclocked and came form a 9600gt superclocked.

i did get a nice increase in FPS in all my games but i still drop suddenly in some games to the low 20s where it starts to stutter. i play Unreal 3, Kane and Lynch Dead Men, Need for Speed Prostreet and Assassins Creed. i run them all at 1600x1200 on a Samsung 204B LCD 5ms response

8xAA and 8xAF on all of them. i run Vista Ultimate but have XP also as dual boot.

i woulda thought with this card i wouldnt have any of these problems.

heres my system

AMD Opteron 185 Denmark dual core 2.6ghz socket 939
DFI Lanparty nf4 Ultra-D
2gb OCZ DDR400 platinum 2.5-3-5-7
580watt Hiper modular supply
1 750gb seagate SATA and 1 220gb WD SATA

 

[Narynan]

Have you tired using precision tool to up the fan speeds some and see if it does the same thing? Try running it at 80% fan speed, and see if its throtteling because its heat related.

 

[roid450]

i have ITE Smart guardian on my mobo. and i have the AMD cool n quiet bulls$$$ setup in the bios

my cpu runs in the 50-60º range while gaming

but my north bridge gets hardcore like 70+

oor are u talking about my video card fan speed? i dont have that tool. it did come with some 3dmark and some EVGA tools but i have not installed either

 

[scheibler1]

3ghz is the breaking point for bottleknecking an 8800gt or above with an intel cpu. Your not getting all out of the card...especially with an amd cpu which is slower than the current intels clock for clock

 

[roid450]

so basically im gonna have to possibly upgrade mobo ram and cpu if i want even higher.

ok thanks for the reply.

but i also just tried something. i went to the nvidia gtx260 settings and set the CPU to render only 3 frames ahead instead of the 6 i had it at.

so now on crysis i jumped to 20s-30s fps steady at 1600x1200 on all HIGH settings and 8xAA as nvidia settings say

all my other games benefited now from setting the CPU to only render 3 frames ahead.

thanks for your helpscheibler, ill keep that in mind when upgrading sometime in the future. i dont see me playing crysis tho. i just got the demo to try it out and im not a fan of Farcry like games. crysis just reminds of me of farcry and IMO its not that bad ass as people say.

UT3 still looks better IMO.

but thanks for ur help.

 

[scheibler1]

no problem. If I were you I wouldn't upgrade either...until you can't play games besides crysis b/c the gtx 260 should be plenty even if slightly bottleknecked

 

[chizow]

There's a good chance you'd benefit greatly from a faster CPU, you're already running some settings that can help you identify bottlenecking. I'll start off by saying 8xAA is pretty intensive for any modern title at that resolution, so those 20-ish minimums might be unavoidable even with a faster CPU. If you disable AA and don't see much increase in FPS, then you're probably CPU bottlenecked. If you lower resolution and disable AA and don't see much increase, you're probably CPU bottlenecked. The benefit of a faster CPU is that it'll raise the maximum number of renderable frames produced by the game engine, meaning it should raise your FPS across the board with or without AA.

 

[roid450]

thanks a lot chizow. in thisc ase I AM bottlenecked then.

i lower my res in COD4 or Crysis and i still have about low 20s or sometimes its so low i cant even play.

on COD4 at 1600 and 8xaa and 8xaf i get about 30-40 but sometimes it drops in the 20s just momentarily. but i lower resolution and it dont help much at all if any.

i also noticed on my riva tuner dignostics of the speeds and temps and all, that at 2 points, while i was playing COD4 right now the core clock and mem clock dropped down a fre hundred mhz for a few seconds. both at the same time.

also my CPU usae is very high or near 100% now

if i wanna upgrade CPU i would have to get a AM2 socket or a new intel quad core and motherboard and memory

 

[roid450]

ok now i have another problem. i chose to play COD4 right now to run some more tests and diagnostics.

and i noticed my FPS dropped and raised suddenly. i would be in the 20s then would jump to the 60 range and then stay there for a while. then drop again suddenly.

i noticed my clocks dropped a lot of times too. im wondering if maybe i do not have enough power now. i have a 580watt Hiper Type R modula supply. i have 20amps on 1 12v line and 18 on the other 12v line

heres some pics of what were the graphs

http://i70.photobucket.com/alb...gtx260/diagnostics.jpg

 

[chizow]

Originally posted by: roid450
ok now i have another problem. i chose to play COD4 right now to run some more tests and diagnostics.

and i noticed my FPS dropped and raised suddenly. i would be in the 20s then would jump to the 60 range and then stay there for a while. then drop again suddenly.

i noticed my clocks dropped a lot of times too. im wondering if maybe i do not have enough power now. i have a 580watt Hiper Type R modula supply. i have 20amps on 1 12v line and 18 on the other 12v line

heres some pics of what were the graphs

http://i70.photobucket.com/alb...gtx260/diagnostics.jpg

The good news is that clock throttling is caused the 2D/3D power saving feature in the drivers, and is fixed in the newer drivers. Nvidia Driver Download I believe 177.87 and later fixed the issue. Hopefully that was causing the ~20FPS drops in your games.

Other than that you will probably need a faster CPU to see higher frame rates, but if you're consistently at a playable frame rate and the driver fixes the drop offs that's a good start.

 

[roid450]

thanks a lot chizow. again to the rescue. much appreciated.

but the ones im downloading are the 177.92 ones. i didnt see the 177.87 ones.

but they are 50% done now and ill report back later after trying them out

i didnt know nvidia had an advanced driver search

 

[roid450]

the new drivers sorta fixed it. i can get farther now as far as time before it has some dips in FPS and mem clocks. these are beta tho, i dunno if that matters or not.

but its better than before for sure. it said these new drivers gave a 10% increase in Assassins creed.

 

[roid450]

well i dont know what to do now. but perhaps just wait it out for again newwer drivers.

i have the newst ones. and in Assassins creed i got no gains. in some parts for about 1 minute or less im getting 60+ fps then it drops to the 10s and 20s and mainly 30s. then jumps agian.

my clocks are stable now and dont go from 2d to 3d anymore.

 

[roid450]

well i fixed it. i turned off cpu throttling and now i get steady 40+ fps in cod4 and get like 60+ asasssins creed.

it only gets to low 60C with stopck cooling

 

[scheibler1]

good to hear!

 

[roid450]

yes it was a huge relief!

thanks to all who helped and looked in the thread!