gtx260 Upgrade to 6950 worse...

Toggle sidebar Toggle sidebar
T

TwinsComeback

Junior Member
Jun 28, 2011
9
0
0
Something isnt right here. I realized my setup would bottleneck the card, but I cant see any improvement; its actually worse, it has random but frequent lag spurts in any game I play no matter the graphics.

I downloaded the latest ati catalyst drivers and uninstalled the old nvidia drivers. Can my setup right now just not handle the card?

Is it because im using winXP with dx9?

q8400 at 2.66ghz, 4gh ddr2, 750I sli MB, Xion800w powerreal, HIS iceqx 2GB 6950
 
3

3DVagabond

Lifer
Aug 10, 2009
11,951
204
106
TwinsComeback said:
Something isnt right here. I realized my setup would bottleneck the card, but I cant see any improvement; its actually worse, it has random but frequent lag spurts in any game I play no matter the graphics.

I downloaded the latest ati catalyst drivers and uninstalled the old nvidia drivers. Can my setup right now just not handle the card?

Is it because im using winXP with dx9?

q8400 at 2.66ghz, 4gh ddr2, 750I sli MB, Xion800w powerreal, HIS iceqx 2GB 6950
Click to expand...

If you are using XP 32bit most of your memory access will be used up by the 2Gb that the card uses. Leaves ~1.5GB address space left for the rest of your system. I believe your swap file also uses up some as well (not certain about that?). You could be running out of system RAM.
 
E

ensign_lee

Senior member
Feb 9, 2011
401
0
0
I thought that only onboard video uses available system memory? The 2GB of memory on the 6950 is supposed to run independently?
 
dfuze

dfuze

Lifer
Feb 15, 2006
11,953
0
71
ensign_lee said:
I thought that only onboard video uses available system memory? The 2GB of memory on the 6950 is supposed to run independently?
Click to expand...
You are correct, but if I remember correctly 32 bit xp has ability to have total of 4gb memory address space used by anything, and if the video card has 2gb of memory then it can use 1/2 of the available space when you are gaming leaving only 2gb of adressable space for system memory.
 
A

Arkadrel

Diamond Member
Oct 19, 2010
3,681
2
0
Can my setup right now just not handle the card?
Click to expand...

Honestly? abit of a mis-match of a cpu-gpu.

Your GPU is a powerhouse, if anythings holding you back its probably either software issue, or your CPU.

Is it because im using winXP with dx9?
Click to expand...

Time for Win7, so you can use Dx11 :)
 
apoppin

apoppin

Lifer
Mar 9, 2000
34,890
1
0
alienbabeltech.com
dfuze said:
You are correct, but if I remember correctly 32 bit xp has ability to have total of 4gb memory address space used by anything, and if the video card has 2gb of memory then it can use 1/2 of the available space when you are gaming leaving only 2gb of adressable space for system memory.
Click to expand...
Refresh your memory correctly:
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/ram-memory-upgrade,2778-3.html
We know that a 32-bit application only can address a maximum of 2 GB of RAM and that 32-bit Windows systems can actually handle just 3.25 GB (or even less if more than 4 GB of memory is installed). Windows Vista and 7 will show the full 4 GB in the System Info, but the "missing" RAM is reserved by the system for hardware that might be incompatible with 64-bit systems. Also, a portion of the system memory is needed by the graphics card, although the size of this portion is not the same as the size of the graphics card's video RAM. This is another misconception we'd like to dispel. . . .
A common misconception found occasionally on forums is that the entire graphics card memory is always mirrored in the system RAM. This is not true
Click to expand...
The real issue is that there really isn't that much performance improvement in DX9 games from upgrading to a HD 6950 from a GTX 260. BFG10K found similar lack of performance going from his GTX 285 to a GTX 470.

Upgrade to Win 7, OP. Drop a dead gaming OS.

That said, there is something wrong with the OP's system or settings are misconfigured:
it has random but frequent lag spurts in any game I play no matter the graphics.
Click to expand...
You might try to reinstall your AMD drivers and make SURE that the Nvidia graphics drivers are gone completely. The best cure for that is reformat your HDD, blow away XP and upgrade to Win 7 clean install.
 
Last edited:
H

Holler

Senior member
May 23, 2000
222
0
0
dfuze said:
You are correct, but if I remember correctly 32 bit xp has ability to have total of 4gb memory address space used by anything, and if the video card has 2gb of memory then it can use 1/2 of the available space when you are gaming leaving only 2gb of adressable space for system memory.
Click to expand...


This. time for win7 64-bit, you won't look back. your cpu is also holding your card back a bit.
 
H

Holler

Senior member
May 23, 2000
222
0
0
apoppin said:
Refresh your memory correctly:
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/ram-memory-upgrade,2778-3.html

We know that a 32-bit application only can address a maximum of 2 GB of RAM and that 32-bit Windows systems can actually handle just 3.25 GB (or even less if more than 4 GB of memory is installed). Windows Vista and 7 will show the full 4 GB in the System Info, but the "missing" RAM is reserved by the system for hardware that might be incompatible with 64-bit systems. Also, a portion of the system memory is needed by the graphics card, although the size of this portion is not the same as the size of the graphics card's video RAM. This is another misconception we'd like to dispel. . . .
A common misconception found occasionally on forums is that the entire graphics card memory is always mirrored in the system RAM. This is not true
The real issue is that there really isn't that much performance improvement in DX9 games from upgrading to a HD 6950 from a GTX 260. BFG10K found similar lack of performance going from his GTX 285 to a GTX 470.

Upgrade to Win 7, OP. Drop a dead gaming OS.

That said, there is something wrong with the OP's system or settings are misconfigured:

You might try to reinstall your Nvidia drivers and make SURE that the AMD graphics drivers are gone completely. The best cure for that is reformat your HDD, blow away XP and upgrade to Win 7 clean install.
Click to expand...


This statement is a little misleading....

It might not be 1:1 ratio, but the video card still consumes a considerableamount of the addressable memory space in xp 32-bit. Speaking from experience, I recall running two 8800GT in SLI on 32-bit xp and they consumed almost 1 gig of addressable space. I popped them out and replaced with a old temp pci vid card laying around and my usable memory was back. had to go to vista to get my 4 gigs of ram back.
 
Last edited:
3

3DVagabond

Lifer
Aug 10, 2009
11,951
204
106
apoppin said:
You might try to reinstall your Nvidia drivers and make SURE that the AMD graphics drivers are gone completely. The best cure for that is reformat your HDD, blow away XP and upgrade to Win 7 clean install.
Click to expand...

He's gone from nVidia to AMD. I'm assuming you just mistyped?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

TRENDING THREADS

COMPANY
RESOURCES
FOLLOW
Top Bottom