P4 + GeForce Ti4600 + 1GB of RAM = poor gaming?

[andrey]

Well,

I recently upgraded my computer to P4 2.52Ghz with 1GB of PC3200 DDR running on Asus P4PE. I also have GeForce 4 Ti4600 video card with 128 of RAM and I'm using WindowsXP. Everything looks good, right? Well, when I play certain games, such as Need For Speed: Hot Pursuit 2 and Unreal Tournament 2003, anything above 800 x 600 is somewhat choppy. I also have the latest drivers for all of my devices, as well as available Windows updates. Is it just me or does anyone else have similar experience in those games, which are probably desiged a little ahead of today's hardware?

Thanks,
--Andrey

 

[Shooters]

I've never played NFS: HP2, but UT2k3 will bring just about any current system to its knees. Also, "somewhat choppy" is a pretty general statement. Some people demand at least 60fps while others will swear that 30fps is silky smooth. I say run some benchmarks and compare the results to similar systems to see if you're in the ballpark.

 

[warrenpeace]

Sollution : send it over, i'll trade you even up for my athlon and 8500 :^P

Most likely something isn't setup properly in bios. Make sure everything is set to agp ande that 4x agp is selected. Also make sure the games themselves are not set to "software rendering".

 

[obeseotron]

While many people dispute 3DMark's validity as a benchmark, the online result browser will let you compare scores to others with similar systems. See if you're too far off what you should be.

 

[Wolfsraider]

intel accelerator driver and inf up to date?

 

[ElFenix]

are you playing online? in my experience UT2k3 is very ping dependent

 

[andrey]

Originally posted by: Shooters
I've never played NFS: HP2, but UT2k3 will bring just about any current system to its knees. Also, "somewhat choppy" is a pretty general statement. Some people demand at least 60fps while others will swear that 30fps is silky smooth. I say run some benchmarks and compare the results to similar systems to see if you're in the ballpark.

Probably if I'll give an example, things will make more sense. Let's take NFS: HP2 for example. While I drive the car by myself, no cops or helicopters around, everything is smooth as it should be, no problems whatsoever. As soon as there are several cars around me, cops, trees, etc.. or in other words, there is a lot of action, game start looking more like a slideshow.

I have installed both Intel INF update and Application accelerator. I will try to get and run 3DMark now and I'll post the results.

 

[andrey]

ok, I knew something was not right. Here is my results from 3DMark:

===========================
3DMark Score 11794 3D marks

Game 1 Car Chase - Low Detail 171.3 FPS
Game 1 Car Chase - High Detail 55.8 FPS
Game 2 Dragothic - Low Detail 219.3 FPS
Game 2 Dragothic - High Detail 119.4 FPS
Game 3 Lobby - Low Detail 152.7 FPS
Game 3 Lobby - High Detail 66.8 FPS
Game 4 Nature 76.1 FPS

Fill Rate (Single-Texturing) 1063.7 MTexels/s
Fill Rate (Multi-Texturing) 2321.6 MTexels/s

High Polygon Count (1 light) 57.5 MTriangels/s
High Polygon Count (8 lights) 12.5 MTriangels/s

Environment Bump Mapping 135.5 FPS
DOT3 Bump Mapping 149.7 FPS

Vertex Shader 98.9 FPS
Pixel Shader 122.3 FPS
Advanced Pixel Shader 99.4 FPS

Point Sprite 30.0 MSprites/s
===========================

Other people with similar configuration get around 12500 - 14000 3D marks, but I guess 11794 3D marks isn't too bad either, especially considering I was getting around only 5800-5900 3D marks with my previous configuration, PIII 1.2Ghz with 512MB of RAM, other components the same.

 

[John]

Your score is fine. The other people are probably o/c'ing their ti4600.

[*]Try different detonator drivers
[*]Trade your ti4600 for a 9700 Pro

 

[John]

 

[Duvie]

I agree...Most of those ego nuts that post those things usually tweak the crap out of the cards and go into display setting and turn the opengl and direct3d to lowest settings for optimal performance...I bet you could tweak a bit and easily get another 200-500...Then if you oc'd a bit you would be right there....


I think you need to download the guide to do a complete and full uninstall of old detonators and any other remience of old drivers. This means cleaning registry....Then follow nvidia's recommend install procedures...I think it is maybe a bad driver install or you need to play with settings in the display setting under advanced and under the direct3d and opengl tabs....Make sure AA isn't being enabled as it will directly effect performance....

 

[xMikey]

On a rig like that you should get no slow downs.

I am playing the demo of NFS - HP2 on an Athlon 900 with 512MB RAM and a geforce 1 ddr 32mb. And it runs very well at 1024*768 32bit. Now I know it is not the full game, as it's not avaliable here yet. I looking at a Geforce 3ti in anticipatin for it...


Mikey out!!

 

[fkloster]

Something is very VERY wrong with your system andrey to get the slow downs you are describing....are your memory timings set correctly?

 

[BD231]

fkloster is on the right track Andrey. Check your mem timings, and make sure your DDR is not running at 2100 speeds(133mhz). 9 of 10 votes says your running your DDR to slow if you ask me.

 

[andrey]

Originally posted by: BD231
fkloster is on the right track Andrey. Check your mem timings, and make sure your DDR is not running at 2100 speeds(133mhz). 9 of 10 votes says your running your DDR to slow if you ask me.

Well, after tweaking my memory settings I get a better result of 12832:

=====================================
3DMark Score 12832 3D marks

Game 1 Car Chase - Low Detail 196.7 FPS
Game 1 Car Chase - High Detail 62.0 FPS
Game 2 Dragothic - Low Detail 229.7 FPS
Game 2 Dragothic - High Detail 125.2 FPS
Game 3 Lobby - Low Detail 171.7 FPS
Game 3 Lobby - High Detail 78.2 FPS
Game 4 Nature 77.2 FPS

Fill Rate (Single-Texturing) 1063.7 MTexels/s
Fill Rate (Multi-Texturing) 2321.8 MTexels/s

High Polygon Count (1 light) 58.0 MTriangels/s
High Polygon Count (8 lights) 12.5 MTriangels/s

Environment Bump Mapping 136.1 FPS
DOT3 Bump Mapping 150.1 FPS

Vertex Shader 98.9 FPS
Pixel Shader 122.8 FPS
Advanced Pixel Shader 100.2 FPS

Point Sprite 30.0 MSprites/s
=====================================

Is that score pretty decent for my system specifications or am I still missing something?

Thank you so much once again,
--Andrey

 

[SexyK]

Originally posted by: Wolfsraider
intel accelerator driver and inf up to date?

I agree, make sure you have these two pieces of software installed and up to date, it can make a world of difference.

Kramer

 

[Bovinicus]

The problem is not one of tweaking. Make sure all non-essential settings are turned off. Disable AGP fastwrites in the BIOS. Up your aperture size to 64MB-128MB (It shouldn't affect your system because you have a lot of onboard VRAM, but you would be surprised). Fool around with video caching/shadowing in the BIOS. Try uninstalling the applications in which you are experiencing slowdowns and reinstalling them. As well, try uninstalling your video drivers totally and reinstalling those.