Poor 8800GTS Proformance

[ty1er]

I just receintly upgrade my trusty old AMD3500+, 6800GT rig to a C2De6700 with a 8800GTS in it. I have just been totally unhapped with the proformace for the my evga 8800GTS card. I only play a few games, UT2004 and Quake4 once in a while. Everyone knows about the incompatiblities (choppyness) with UT2004 and the 8800 series drivers. But im also expriencing slow downs when runing Quake4.

I would really like to be able to run the same benchmarks as the main hardware review site run when benchmarking there video cards. Does anyone know of any review sites that provide a downloadable ingame timedemos of the games they benchmark? That would be extremely useful to compare proformance.

Nvidias drivers for the 8800 series are horrible. I have always bought nvidia based cards, form the TNT, up through the geforce series. I have never ran into any major driver problems. The 8800 series has been out for over a half a year, you'ld think that they would have these issuses ironed out by now.

 

[chizow]

Curious as to why you aren't running the GTS in your C2D rig rather than the AXP rig? CPU could be bottlenecking performance there. As for game issues, I think the G80 does have some performance problems with either Quake 4 or Doom 3, I forget which (both games with a lot of hype that no one plays ), but I don't think the problems are bad enough for you to be "disappointed" with performance. Should be on par or slightly faster than anything short of a GTX/X1900/X2900. If anything those games are built for speed and need CPU cycles as much as GPU horsepower, so again I'd look at the CPU as a potential bottleneck.

 

[videopho]

"Nvidias drivers for the 8800 series are horrible. I have always bought nvidia based cards, form the TNT, up through the geforce series. I have never ran into any major driver problems. The 8800 series has been out for over a half a year, you'ld think that they would have these issuses ironed out by now"

I'm in the same boat you're.
My 7900GTX in rig #1 still often outshines my new 8800GTS in rig #2 in some games, especially when it comes to my favorite games such FSx or Silent Hunter 4.
The 8800GTS performs pretty poorly with horrible pic quality as well as frame rate in some of these games.
Until Nvidia can get its act together we have to live with that kind of performance for quite sometime.

 

[ty1er]

Originally posted by: chizow
Curious as to why you aren't running the GTS in your C2D rig rather than the AXP rig? CPU could be bottlenecking performance there. As for game issues, I think the G80 does have some performance problems with either Quake 4 or Doom 3, I forget which (both games with a lot of hype that no one plays ), but I don't think the problems are bad enough for you to be "disappointed" with performance. Should be on par or slightly faster than anything short of a GTX/X1900/X2900. If anything those games are built for speed and need CPU cycles as much as GPU horsepower, so again I'd look at the CPU as a potential bottleneck.

I am running the 8800GTS in the e6700 setup. I just updated my sig to reflect that.

The reason that I am disappointed, is because when I was running my old system and the frame rate dropped from to much on screen action it was expected, cause I was running a game in too high of a resolution. But now I have "Horsepower" coming out the wahzoo and expreience slow downs for no other reason then poorly written drivers.
When one goes out and makes a 300 plus dollar purchase on a video card that has been out for more then a half of a year, one expects deceint drivers. Thats all.

I can see it already, nVidia will come out will thier next gen video cards, and all of us with 8800 will get the shaft.

 

[chizow]

Well I'm personally quite pleased with the 8800 drivers and the G80s performance overall. I know its largely dependent on what games you play though, particularly for older games. Maybe try the 162 Beta drivers on the nZone site, as people have been raving about those.

Also, what BIOS are you running for your P6N? The 1.0 rev that shipped with mine was horrible, and games were absolutely unplayable with 4GB until I flashed my BIOS to rev 1.3. Everything runs silky smooth now, 4GB goodness in Vista x64 Ultimate.

 

[manimal]

Did you reinstall your OS? ? Are you running vista? did you get the 320 and are trying to run the 512 meg minimum ultra setting in Q4? What res are you playing at?


Give us more info.

 

[ty1er]

Originally posted by: manimal
Did you reinstall your OS? ? Are you running vista? did you get the 320 and are trying to run the 512 meg minimum ultra setting in Q4? What res are you playing at?


Give us more info.

Yes, Im running a fresh install of Windows XP. I have the 640mb GTS.

I have been searching around the net, and I have been finding people with simlar problems.

UT2004 Issuses with the 8800

Once I turn down the AA in Quake I dont expreience the slow downs. I was trying to run the game at 1680x1050 with 4xAA. I was thinking that this card could run it without any problems at this res. Guess not, cause my frame rate drops below 30, when I go from room to room.
I'm gonna install the last Q4 patch 1.4.2, I'll see if that helps any.

 

[apoppin]

Originally posted by: ty1er
I just receintly upgrade my trusty old AMD3500+, 6800GT rig to a C2De6700 with a 8800GTS in it. I have just been totally unhapped with the proformace for the my evga 8800GTS card. I only play a few games, UT2004 and Quake4 once in a while. Everyone knows about the incompatiblities (choppyness) with UT2004 and the 8800 series drivers. But im also expriencing slow downs when runing Quake4.

I would really like to be able to run the same benchmarks as the main hardware review site run when benchmarking there video cards. Does anyone know of any review sites that provide a downloadable ingame timedemos of the games they benchmark? That would be extremely useful to compare proformance.

Nvidias drivers for the 8800 series are horrible. I have always bought nvidia based cards, form the TNT, up through the geforce series. I have never ran into any major driver problems. The 8800 series has been out for over a half a year, you'ld think that they would have these issuses ironed out by now.

FIRST of all, run Futuremark's 3DMark05 and 3DMark06 at stock just to give us an idea if you are in the ballpark or not.

IF you are scoring about 9,000+ in '06 then you might want to look at benchmarking

and you will also need FRAPS to tell you exactly what FPS you are running

What is your LCD's resolution? ... hopefully it is not a 30-incher ... you need sli'd GTSes for that.

edit ... i see:

Once I turn down the AA in Quake I dont expreience the slow downs. I was trying to run the game at 1680x1050 with 4xAA.

no ... you should NOT be experiencing slowdowns at that resolution with 4xAA and all in-games setting maxed and at "ultra". I ran PREY - a more
demanding D3 game at 16x12 with no problems maxed out 4xAA/16xAF
--post your 3DMark06 score

and are you SURE nothing is "forced" in the CP - no "HQ" settings?

http://forums.anandtech.com/me...062057&highlight_key=y
[EDIT:fixed]
post number 5:

PREY v1.3 maxed/ultra/4xAA/16xAF/boost 8800GTS-640M OC

Vista
14x9 - 52 min / 146 max / 91.44 Av
16x12 - 34 min / 112 max / 68.34 Av

WinXP
14x9 - 61 min / 169 max / 109.16 Av
16x12 - 38 min / 132 max / 80.02 Av

no slowdowns ... Q4 should perform better - at 16x10 !

Do you have the latest Q4 patch and drivers including for your MB?

 

[BFG10K]

The UT2004 stuttering is a known issue and I get it too.

For your Quake 4 problem try turning off the game's multi-core setting in the menu.

 

[ncage]

wierd............i have a 6600gt and play UT2004 with no problems at all even at the highest resolution.

 

[BFG10K]

i have a 6600gt and play UT2004 with no problems at all even at the highest resolution.

The stuttering problem is limited to G80 cards.

 

[ty1er]

Originally posted by: ncage
wierd............i have a 6600gt and play UT2004 with no problems at all even at the highest resolution.

Originally posted by: BFG10K
The stuttering problem is limited to G80 cards.

Yeah, I wish I could just throw my 6800GT in my new rig. But its agp, so I cant.

 

[apoppin]

did you ever find your benchmarks?

did you run 3DMark06 or are the issues limited to only two games?

 

[ty1er]

Originally posted by: apoppin
did you ever find your benchmarks?

did you run 3DMark06 or are the issues limited to only two games?

I havent had a chance to run any other benchmarks. But I am gonna try and run some soon. I'll post back with my results. Thanks.

 

[ty1er]

Here is my 3dmark06: 8964

Operating System - Microsoft Windows XP


Benchmark Settings
Default Settings - Yes
Program Version 3DMark06 - Revision 1 Build 0
Resolution - 1280x1024
Anti-Aliasing - None
Texture Filtering - Optimal
Vertex Shader Profile - 3_0
Pixel Shader Profile - 3_0
Force Full Precision - No
Disable Post-processing - No
Force Software Vertex Shaders - No
Force Software FP Filtering - No
Disable HW Shadow Mapping - No
Color Mipmaps - No
Repeat Count - Off
Fixed Framerate - Off


Main Test Results
3DMark Score - 8964 3DMarks
SM 2.0 Score - 4013 Marks
SM 3.0 Score - 3850 Marks
CPU Score - 2393 Marks

Detailed Test Results

Graphics Tests

1 - Return to Proxycon 32.777 FPS
2 - Firefly Forest 34.105 FPS


CPU Tests

CPU1 - Red Valley 0.755 FPS

CPU2 - Red Valley 1.214 FPS


HDR Tests

1 - Canyon Flight (SM 3.0) 34.661 FPS

2 - Deep Freeze (SM 3.0) 42.337 FPS

 

[apoppin]

i think that is about right .. just a bit CPU limited ... maybe

i got about 9150 with 8800GTS-640 OC and my e4300@3.0Ghz
-and of course that is the 'OC' 640M

 

[ty1er]

And here is my 3Dmark05


3DMark Score 15063 3DMarks

CPU Score 8879 CPUMarks


Detailed Test Results

Game Tests

GT1 - Return To Proxycon 58.2 fps

GT2 - Firefly Forest 44.8 fps

GT3 - Canyon Flight 83.9 fps


CPU Tests

CPU Test 1 4.7 fps

CPU Test 2 7.4 fps

 

[Laminator]

Your scores look perfectly fine.

 

[BFG10K]

Did you disable multi-core in Quake 4 like I asked you to?

 

[will889]

It's not just about disabling multi core if you happen to have a 320MB 8800GTS. There's a huge ongoing thread in the NV forums and at Nvnews forums about how there are severe FPS drops with the 320MB model specifically in many games Oblivion included with all types of rigs and all types of power supplies and with all recent drivers tried. It appears that the arbitrary and non standard memory sizes may be the issue since it's been noted that most games see the 320MB model as a 512MB card, and a sort of memory paging/incorrect memory behavior exists, and alt/tabbing out of and back into games solves it for a few minutes. Not just that, but the entire 8800 series of cards and the respective drivers have severe issues with any older quake 3 based games (COD1-MOHAA etc) where if you have any sort of advanced/dynamic lighting enabled in game the FPS will drop from (example) 120 FPS to 5-15 FPS for periods of 10-60 seconds at times, or whenever lighting effects are present (like explosions or gunfire), and so far there are no solutions for those games other than disabling dynamic lighting, but why should one have to do that on a $300.00-$400.00 card?.

 

[aka1nas]

He has a 640MB GTS

 

[ty1er]

Originally posted by: apoppin
i think that is about right .. just a bit CPU limited ... maybe

i got about 9150 with 8800GTS-640 OC and my e4300@3.0Ghz
-and of course that is the 'OC' 640M

Yea, my score is pretty close to that.


I did a few more benchmarks, and I found out why some of them were slightly lower then they should be. When benchmarking using Prey and HL: Lost Coast I notice a good increase in frame rate when I shut off prime95. It didnt even phase me to that I shouldnt have this running when benchmarking. doh/ as I bang my head against my desk.


With prime95 off my 3Dmark06 score was pretty much the same.

But here is my results benchmarking Prey (Demo: guru3d-6.demo)

NO Prime running in the background:

Resolution: 1280×1024
Demo: guru3d-6.demo
Shader Detail: Highest
Aspect Ratio: [4:3]
Antialiasing: 4×
Anisotropic filtering: 16×
Graphics BOOST: disabled
Score = 114.2 FPS

Prime Running

Resolution: 1280×1024
Demo: guru3d-6.demo
Shader Detail: Highest
Aspect Ratio: [4:3]
Antialiasing: 4×
Anisotropic filtering: 16×
Graphics BOOST: disabled
Score = 105.9 FPS



Half Life: Lost Coast:

All Setting Max
4xAA 16xAnis

NO Prime running in the background:

1680*1050 = 125fps


With Prime running in the background:

1680*1050 = 99fps


So, now im on par with everyone else who is running a simlar system. I can sleep well at night.

Thanks alot apoppin for you advice and your detailed benchmark results were a great help.

 

[raad11]

I have an 8800GTS 640MB and have the same UT2004 stuttering problem. The problem goes away in Windows Vista though, but that's not of much help to me because the mouse feels laggy and like crap in Vista, so I play with the stuttering in XP anyway.

Report it to nVidia on their site, hopefully the more complaints they get, the sooner they fix it.

 

[abaez]

Just started playing WoW with a new 8800 GTS and I seem to be having the same issues. Lots of slowdown in certain fights where my 7900 breezed through it.

I also can't seem to have anything else open (like winamp for music) or it just slows down quite a bit. Also opening certain videos resulted in a 4 second freeze where I couldn't do anything (also happens when I alt tab back into WoW). Not really sure what to do at this point except try those beta drivers.