Is this performance normal? (video card question)

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TimeWave0

Junior Member
Dec 9, 2005
9
0
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I bought ATI's All in Wonder X800XT card which has 256Mb of GDDR3.
I have one of theearly AMD Athlon 64 3000+ processors that clocks at 2.0 ghz
I have 512MB of DDR400.

Performance:
Quake 4 played at medium quality at 800x600 resolution with Anti Aliasing off lags for about 10-20 seconds every time i enter a room, sometimes longer. I wouldn't mind if it were a second delay but it seems rediculous to sit and wait for that long. When it lags, my machine isn't making any extra noise (in fact it's silent) when lagging. When i click on Quake 4 "detect automatic settings" which allows q4 to judge the settings, it says i should run it at 640x480 on low quality. This seems absurd. Is quake 4 really that demanding or is something wrong with my machine? I'm considering upgrading my processor and ram if those are bottlenecking my video card. What do you all think?

P.S. I'm new to your forums but have noticed the expert information displayed on your site. I would greatly apreciate any feedback from you all.

thanks,
Anthony
 
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imported_Soldier

Member
Feb 6, 2005
135
0
0
Yes Quake4 is that demanding. Its not your video card that's causing the problem though, it's your ram. 512meg is simply not enough memory for new games. 1 gig is the minimum and some new games like BF2 will actually run better with 2 gig.

With 1 gig of ram you might be able to run at 1024x768 as long as you keep the image settings at med quality. With only 512meg you just dont have the room to hold all the texture data in ram so the pause is your system loading new data from the harddrive when you enter a room ....
 
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mwmorph

Diamond Member
Dec 27, 2004
8,877
1
81
Originally posted by: TimeWave0
I bought ATI's All in Wonder X800XT card which has 256Mb of GDDR3.
I have one of theearly AMD Athlon 64 3000+ processors that clocks at 2.0 ghz
I have 512MB of DDR400.

Performance:
Quake 4 played at medium quality at 800x600 resolution with Anti Aliasing off lags for about 10-20 seconds every time i enter a room, sometimes longer. I wouldn't mind if it were a second delay but it seems rediculous to sit and wait for that long. When it lags, my machine isn't making any extra noise (in fact it's silent) when lagging. When i click on Quake 4 "detect automatic settings" which allows q4 to judge the settings, it says i should run it at 640x480 on low quality. This seems absurd. Is quake 4 really that demanding or is something wrong with my machine? I'm considering upgrading my processor and ram if those are bottlenecking my video card. What do you all think?

P.S. I'm new to your forums but have noticed the expert information displayed on your site. I would greatly apreciate any feedback from you all.

thanks,
Anthony
Click to expand...


it's called swapfile. you dont have enough ram so the extra files have to bve written to harddrive which is much slower than ram. also, turn off all processes and make sure you dont have malicious software on your pc. a adaware and then spybot search and destroy and then an antivirus scan would help, followed by a defrag of the hdd and then buying yourself some ram.
 
ddogg

ddogg

Golden Member
May 4, 2005
1,864
361
136
your ram is definetely bottlenecking your performance. put in another 512mb stick and then report back(if possible).
 
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Wentelteefje

Golden Member
Dec 6, 2005
1,380
0
0
No quake 4 is not as demanding.
Click to expand...
True, it runs better than "This is your Doom" 3...

But that doesn't mean he shouldn't be getting an extra 512MB... One of the early S754 3000's... A Newcastle or so? You could try pushing that a little too, but it won't be that high unfortunately...
 
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TimeWave0

Junior Member
Dec 9, 2005
9
0
0
hey thanks everyone. I'll invest in another 512 of ram and report back. Do you all think its time to upgrade the CPU as well? I tried researching CPUs last night but i became confused when confronted with the variety of AMD CPUs out there right now. Apparently i haven't' been paying too much attention over the years... I have a 500 dolalr budget.

P.S If this question needs to be posted elsewhere let me know. Thanks.
 
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Wentelteefje

Golden Member
Dec 6, 2005
1,380
0
0
You might better post it in the General Hardware section, but I'll still answer it... ;)

If you're about to invest in new hardware, wait a second with buying that second 512MB...

What you'd like to be getting will be this...

ASRock 939Dual-SATA2 - $ 68 Don't get scared by the name ASRock... ;) this one is a mainboard that performs Very Good, and the best part of it is that it supports AGP and PCI-Express... Because it would be a waste to do away with your X800XT AGP... It's still too good...

Eventually, you'll be able to switch to PCI-e then... When M2 is around, you can even buy an upgrade card from ASRock to make those processors fit on your mobo too... This truly is a mainboard built for the future...

AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+ - $ 322 Dual Core goodness, it overclocks very good too (BTW that ASRock can hit quite high, look here and here...), and Dual Core is the future... :)

For the mem... Buy this G.SKILL 1GB DDR PC4000 stick, it is certified to work at 250MHz, because eventually you'll want to overclock that X2 a bit... I know, it's still a single stick, but then you can buy another later (2x1GB is better than 4x512MB), and have Dual Channel...

For now, that will be about 10% slower in games, but when you'll buy that second stick, it'll fly... :)

TOTAL: $ 508.79 (shipping included)





 
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johnnqq

Golden Member
May 30, 2005
1,659
0
0
you should be able to pay at 1600x1200. quake 4 isn't THAT demanding, but you do need more memory like everybody said.
 
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TimeWave0

Junior Member
Dec 9, 2005
9
0
0
in reply to
________________________________________________________________________

You might better post it in the General Hardware section, but I'll still answer it...

If you're about to invest in new hardware, wait a second with buying that second 512MB...

What you'd like to be getting will be this...

ASRock 939Dual-SATA2 - $ 68 Don't get scared by the name ASRock... this one is a mainboard that performs Very Good, and the best part of it is that it supports AGP and PCI-Express... Because it would be a waste to do away with your X800XT AGP... It's still too good...

Eventually, you'll be able to switch to PCI-e then... When M2 is around, you can even buy an upgrade card from ASRock to make those processors fit on your mobo too... This truly is a mainboard built for the future...

AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+ - $ 322 Dual Core goodness, it overclocks very good too (BTW that ASRock can hit quite high, look here and here...), and Dual Core is the future...

For the mem... Buy this G.SKILL 1GB DDR PC4000 stick, it is certified to work at 250MHz, because eventually you'll want to overclock that X2 a bit... I know, it's still a single stick, but then you can buy another later (2x1GB is better than 4x512MB), and have Dual Channel...

For now, that will be about 10% slower in games, but when you'll buy that second stick, it'll fly...

TOTAL: $ 508.79 (shipping included)
__________________________________________________________________________

sounds like a great deal. Thanks so much for spending the time to figure that out for me. I'm a bit nervous to throw 500 at the first mobo, ram, processor suggestion, but it seems like a great deal.
 
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