New GTX 480 Problems - Need Advice

[PCJake]

I just got my EVGA GTX 480 SC Edition today (replacing my GTX 280). I put the card in, installed the latest WHQL drivers (197.41) for Windows 7 64-bit, and loaded up Bad Company 2, expecting some sort of performance increase. Instead, my level loading times more than doubled and my FPS has decreased by 10-20 FPS with the same settings as before. I'm trying to figure out what the problem is.

I installed the latest EVGA precision and the first thing I noticed was that the program wasn't displaying my Core Clock at all. It was just grayed out. I'm no expert but this seems like it could be a driver issue, so I'm downloading the latest Beta drivers now. I'd appreciate any ideas you guys may have.

 

[Lonyo]

For the loading times, see this thread.
It seems to be a DX11 issue so your GTX280 wasn't affected (assuming you are now using DX11 mode).
As for FPS, no idea.

 

[QuantumPion]

You could try checking your power supply voltage readings while loading the video card and make sure there is nothing funny going on that might indicate a power problem.

 

[PCJake]

You could try checking your power supply voltage readings while loading the video card and make sure there is nothing funny going on that might indicate a power problem.

Is there a program you would recommend for this?

 

[JAG87]

Well first of all, DX11 loading times are longer than DX10, so it's normal.

Second, I have no idea how it's performing slower, it should be quite a bit faster. To do an apples to apples comparison, force DX10 with the exact same settings as before, and check performance. It HAS to be much faster.

 

[Worthington]

Install the precision from the CD, 1.9.2. Thats the one you should be using to start. Make sure to uninstall whichever one you have now first.
As the others said, your load times are because you are using a Dx11 capable card. Same issue that ATi user's had that recently got fixed in a driver update. Force Dx10 via the settings.ini file if you want your load times back.

Once you get precision installed take a look at your GPU usage while you are in game.

 

[Thor86]

Yep known issue.

http://forums.nvidia.com/index.php?showtopic=166287

 

[PCJake]

Install the precision from the CD, 1.9.2. Thats the one you should be using to start. Make sure to uninstall whichever one you have now first.
As the others said, your load times are because you are using a Dx11 capable card. Same issue that ATi user's had that recently got fixed in a driver update. Force Dx10 via the settings.ini file if you want your load times back.

Once you get precision installed take a look at your GPU usage while you are in game.

I uninstalled all my old drivers and installed the Nvidia drivers, DX10/11, and EVGA precision off of the disc that the GTX 480 came with. I forced DX10 in Bad Company 2 and the performance shot up quite a bit. I tested Bad Company 2, Just Cause 2, and Crysis Warhead and all of them are running the GPU at 100% according to EVGA Precision.

So I think the problem was just with Bad Company 2. Performance is better in games than with my GTX 280, but not drastically so to be honest (I can turn a few settings up in each game, but they all dip into the 40-50 FPS range from time to time. I'll see if I can overclock the card a little more for some extra performance.

 

[shangshang]

sounded like you expect a miracle out of the 480

 

[JAG87]

I uninstalled all my old drivers and installed the Nvidia drivers, DX10/11, and EVGA precision off of the disc that the GTX 480 came with. I forced DX10 in Bad Company 2 and the performance shot up quite a bit. I tested Bad Company 2, Just Cause 2, and Crysis Warhead and all of them are running the GPU at 100% according to EVGA Precision.

So I think the problem was just with Bad Company 2. Performance is better in games than with my GTX 280, but not drastically so to be honest (I can turn a few settings up in each game, but they all dip into the 40-50 FPS range from time to time. I'll see if I can overclock the card a little more for some extra performance.

What resolution and AA are you running? Nothing should be dipping under 60 unless you are running 2560, or 1920 with a ton of AA, except Crysis and Metro of course.

If you resolution and AA are reasonable, take a look at your cpu also. You might be bottlenecking the 480. Keep lowering the resolution and see if the frame rate improves, if it doesn't then your CPU is bottlenecking.

And FYI, DX11 should be faster than DX10 all things being the same. It's more optimized according to DICE, but that might just be a bunch of baloney since DX11 enables soft shadows, I wouldn't know because I play with vsync. But DX10 vs DX10 difference should be very noticeable with your GTX280.

 

[QuantumPion]

Is there a program you would recommend for this?

OCCT is what I use (stands for over clock check tool or something like that). It's a good program for testing CPU and GPU stability, temps, and voltages.

 

[PCJake]

What resolution and AA are you running? Nothing should be dipping under 60 unless you are running 2560, or 1920 with a ton of AA, except Crysis and Metro of course.

If you resolution and AA are reasonable, take a look at your cpu also. You might be bottlenecking the 480. Keep lowering the resolution and see if the frame rate improves, if it doesn't then your CPU is bottlenecking.

And FYI, DX11 should be faster than DX10 all things being the same. It's more optimized according to DICE, but that might just be a bunch of baloney since DX11 enables soft shadows, I wouldn't know because I play with vsync. But DX10 vs DX10 difference should be very noticeable with your GTX280.

OK, you may be onto something. My CPU may very well be bottlenecking. I'll use Bad Company 2 as the example here, since I'm pretty sure it's CPU intensive:

I play at 1920x1200. With my GTX 280 I set "object detail" to medium, "shadow quality" to low, 8x AA, and HBAO off (everything else to high). With those settings I hardly ever dipped below 60 FPS. I expected to be able to turn those settings up (except, perhaps, for HBAO) and maintain 60 FPS with the new GTX 480. No such luck. When I turn object detail and shadow quality alone up to high, my frame rate drops to 45-50 (playing SDM in Arica Harbor).

I did what you said and turned down the resolution down to 1280x720, and then down to the minimum. Neither one improved my frame rate. In fact, it seemed to get worse. Does this mean that I'm being CPU bottlenecked by a Q6600 running at 3.33Ghz?

 

[HumblePie]

BFBC2 is also very CPU dependent. Unless you are using an overclocked quad i7 then the CPU is bottlenecking the graphics. As such, now matter how powerful a graphics card you put in, the performance won't change much.

EDIT, yes the q6600 at 3.3 could be a bottleneck.

The best test is to turn the settings up for both. While the 480 would be at 40fps at higher settings, the 280 should be much worse.

 

[PCJake]

BFBC2 is also very CPU dependent. Unless you are using an overclocked quad i7 then the CPU is bottlenecking the graphics. As such, now matter how powerful a graphics card you put in, the performance won't change much.

EDIT, yes the q6600 at 3.3 could be a bottleneck.

The best test is to turn the settings up for both. While the 480 would be at 40fps at higher settings, the 280 should be much worse.

Yes, it was much worse. So, theoretically, overclocking the 480 won't improve in my FPS (in BC2, at least) at all?

 

[SHAQ]

It will increase your DX11 performance for sure.

 

[Worthington]

The CPU could definitely be an issue (with BF:BC2).
My frame rate literally doubled (from low 40s-70s to 80-140+) when I moved from a E8400@4.0ghz to a i7-920@3.8ghz. You've already got a quad but this game is so cpu dependant it's probably holding you back quite a bit.

 

[JAG87]

Yes, it was much worse. So, theoretically, overclocking the 480 won't improve in my FPS (in BC2, at least) at all?

Look, it's very simple.

Leave all settings on high, because those settings affect CPU load believe it or not. They affect draw distance and quantity of objects, and physics calculations. Make sure all settings in your settings.ini are on high.

Next put your settings to native res and whatever AA and AF you would like to use.
Bench.

Next put resolution to something stupid like 640x480 and disable AA and AF.
Bench.

If your fps still dips to the same undesireable value, you are in craptown.
Not even 3-way sli will help you.

 

[PCJake]

Look, it's very simple.

Leave all settings on high, because those settings affect CPU load believe it or not. They affect draw distance and quantity of objects, and physics calculations. Make sure all settings in your settings.ini are on high.

Next put your settings to native res and whatever AA and AF you would like to use.
Bench.

Next put resolution to something stupid like 640x480 and disable AA and AF.
Bench.

If your fps still dips to the same undesireable value, you are in craptown.
Not even 3-way sli will help you.

But a fancy new i7 would, eh?

My mistake was trying to test the full potential of the GTX 480 with BC2, that's for sure. I switched over to using the Just Cause 2 benchmark, and I'm getting MUCH more impressive results, especially after some fairly hefty overclocking.

After overclocking to 1666 shader clock and 2100 memory clock (that's over a 200Mhz increase on both shader and memory):

Not too shabby, I take back anything bad I may have said about the GPU itself...So far I haven't had any crashes or artifacting with those settings (I'm going to push the memory clock a bit higher, but I think the shader clock is as high as it's going to go on regular voltages). I would still like to figure out why DX11 kills performance on BC2, though.

Edit: As usual, Crysis Warhead is bringing out the overclock-induced errors where other games don't. I might have to back the clocks down a bit, but it's still looking good.

 

[JRW]

But a fancy new i7 would, eh?

My mistake was trying to test the full potential of the GTX 480 with BC2, that's for sure. I switched over to using the Just Cause 2 benchmark, and I'm getting MUCH more impressive results, especially after some fairly hefty overclocking.

After overclocking to 1666 shader clock and 2100 memory clock (that's over a 200Mhz increase on both shader and memory):

Not too shabby, I take back anything bad I may have said about the GPU itself...So far I haven't had any crashes or artifacting with those settings (I'm going to push the memory clock a bit higher, but I think the shader clock is as high as it's going to go on regular voltages). I would still like to figure out why DX11 kills performance on BC2, though.

Edit: As usual, Crysis Warhead is bringing out the overclock-induced errors where other games don't. I might have to back the clocks down a bit, but it's still looking good.

You have a GTX 480 why run Just Cause 2 with most of the eye candy disabled?

This is how ive been running it with a EVGA GTX 480 (standard model, no overclock):