Upgraded from TI 4200 to 6600GT, no improvement??

[grandnat]

I just upgraded from an MSI TI 4200 AGP video card to an evga 6600GT AGP card in my system. The system is an Asus A7n8x, AMD 2100 thoroughbred and 1 Gig corsair PC3200 xms memory. I primarily use the system for playing the Papyrus Nascar Racing 2003 game. When I ran the game on the old video card I got 72 fps. After installing the new video card I repeated the same test in the game and got 70 fps. I'm wondering why there was no noticable improvement with the new video card?

I uninstalled the Nvidia drivers for the video card and installed the latest drivers from their website and still saw no noticable change. I also ran the 3Dmark demo and got a score of 3600, but I do not have a score with my old card to compare to. So far I'm pretty dissapointed in the new card seeing as I got no improvement from it.

I'd appreciate any thoughts on why there was no change and any advice on what I may be missing?

Thanks,
Rob

 

[Eureka]

Sounds like the Ti4200 already maxed out Nascar... 72 seems like your monitor's refresh rate is holding it there. Same with 70.

Norm

 

[kurt454]

Test both cards with Antialiasing or Anisotropic filtering. You may be cpu limited at your current resolution. The 6600GT should spank that old Ti card. You are a little low on cpu power.

 

[ElFenix]

is vsync on?

 

[grandnat]

Originally posted by: cevilgenius
Sounds like the Ti4200 already maxed out Nascar... 72 seems like your monitor's refresh rate is holding it there. Same with 70.

Norm

I'm pretty sure I can go higher than 72 fps in nascar. Plenty of people have seen over 120fps... When you say the refresh rate is is holding it there, do you mean a refresh rate of 75hz will limit me to 75 fps? I never thought about something like that. I'm actually pretty sure I have the refresh rate set to 85 hz currently....

Also, if it's a cpu limitation, should I be able to turn on Antialiasing or Anisotropic filtering and maintain the same fps? I'll have to playu around some more today after work.

V-sync should be off but I'll double check later.

Thanks again,
Rob

 

[Eureka]

It might be that or something else, I don't know. I do remember my fps in DoD being locked at 70 when I got a 6600GT, I blamed it on vsync or refresh rate being maxed out.

But 3600 in 3dmark05 seems perfectly fine for a 6600GT... so your card is fine. I think it's more of a software or cpu limitation. Ram is fine too, 1gb of 3200.

Norm

 

[grandnat]

Originally posted by: cevilgenius
It might be that or something else, I don't know. I do remember my fps in DoD being locked at 70 when I got a 6600GT, I blamed it on vsync or refresh rate being maxed out.

But 3600 in 3dmark05 seems perfectly fine for a 6600GT... so your card is fine. I think it's more of a software or cpu limitation. Ram is fine too, 1gb of 3200.

Norm

One more thing I should mention, when I get the 72 fps I'm sittting in the car alone on the track in the game. When I start a race with 36 other cars my fps drops to about 50. I had the same drop to 50 fps with the old TI 4200 card also, so it's actually not an issue with it being maxed out at 72fps. It seems i get the same performance from both cards....

Any other advice would be appreciated.

Thanks,
Rob

 

[Eureka]

Hmm, I don't know about that then... try and find 3dmark scores for the Ti4200.

Norm

 

[kurt454]

What resolution are you running at? This sounds a lot like your old XP 2100 is bottlenecking you a little bit. You have a much better video card than did. Do you have any other games you play?

 

[moonboy403]

cpu limited?
what resolution r u running at?

 

[moonboy403]

i remember my p4 1.7 was bottlenecking my 9800 pro <-- (my first real video card besides my 4mb trident and integrated graphics)

 

[grandnat]

I'm running at 1280x1024 @ 32bit. I'll have to try and OC the cpu and see if it helps the fps in the game any. I used to have this setup running at 2075mhz or so and it was pretty stable, but I set everything back to stock speeds since I didn't need any more at the time. Unfotunately, with the A7N8x MB I have I'm pretty limited in processor upgrade options. I have an older revision of the MB that won't support the Sempron processors...

-Rob