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Very poor performance with Radeon 9800 Pro - SOLVED

revnja

revnja

Platinum Member
Hey guys. I recently replaced my GeForce FX5200 card with a Radeon 9800 Pro. Ever since then (I've reformatted the HD and reinstalled Windows XP), I've been getting terrible unplayable framerates in these two games which utilize the Source engine. I haven't tried any other games, but I should be getting better performance than I am now. I ran the video stress test at very low settings (800x600, every detail on low) and at higher settings (1024x768, everything on high, as recommended), and I average about 19fps on both. Same goes if I'm actually playing the games. I averaged at least twice that with my pitiful FX5200.

To recap, I reformatted my HD, fresh install of Windows, and fresh install of HL2 and CS:S. I installed the ATI Catalyst drivers from their site (card didn't come with CD), and reinstalled all of my system board drivers, etc.

My specs are as follows:
Pentium 4 2.4GHz
640MB DDR PC3200 RAM - Edit: Upgraded to 1024MB
2x40GB Maxtor HDs (7200 RPM)
ATI Radeon 9800 Pro with ATI catalyst drivers.

Yes, DX9, etc is installed. It gave me bad performance before and now after the total reformat. Is there an option somewhere I'm missing?

Any insight would be appreciated.

Thanks!
Adam

A new Thermaltake 420W PSU solved the first problem. Then I would freeze in-game after a while. Apparently, my uncle, an electrician was over and took inventory of what I had going on. Come to find out the wall outlet was a tad overloaded (didn't really seem that way to me), so I unplugged everything except the monitor and machine, and I ran CS:S in spectate mode all night long! Problem solved! YMMV
 
Yep, fresh install of both games, and freshly updated through Steam.

Forgot to mention the card is running at 8x AGP
 
in case you don't know how to do that, (it's taken you long enough)

right click on the desktop,
click on properties,
click on the settings tab,
click on the advanced button,
and then check openGL and Direct3d and they should have the sliders to adjust the performance.
 
Yeah, I knew where it was, I was just checking some other things. AA and AF are being controlled by the application already.
 
And, make sure fast writes are TURNED OFF! It's very important. Also, go to omegadrivers.net and download the newest drivers for ati radeons there. Their drivers are tweaked and run faster than normal and have served me very well in the past. I'm also using a 9800pro and am getting good results.
 
alright, thanks for the info gorcorps. i'll try that out and report back.

fast writes were turned on. guess it's that way by default.
 
with the omega drivers and FW turned off, I was doing excellent pushing 50-60 frames on average on my first round of CS:S, then as SOON as the second round started I was back to 5-7FPS. This problem is really starting to annoy.
 
Been playing CS for about two hours off and on between my brother and I. Didn't experience any more FPS problems. My brother did tell me that in the middle of a round, the monitor lost it's signal, and we have to reboot it using the reboot switch. Odd. Other than that, the Omega drivers are working a lot better than the official ones.

BTW, the new cs_assault map in source = awesome.
 
Well the 9800P is first gen DX9 hardware. I think you'd be alot happier with a 6600GT or even a 6800GT. The AGP 6800GT goes for $180 on newegg.
 
I don't have the money for those. I just upgraded from a FX5200 to this 9800. It's a good card for HL2 from what I hear. I don't care if it is first gen, I shouldn't be getting 7-8FPS.
 
Ya, some people can't afford those cards man. I upgraded from a 9600 to a 9800pro and there was a huge difference. Then w/ extra cooling and some overclocking, I'm doing better than XT speeds! It's more than enough to run @ 1280x1024 w/ 8x AA and AF at +60 fps.

Nice to hear the omegas worked for ya adam, they did the trick for me too!
 
Well, they kind of work. I just started up CS:S again after a reboot, and I start out running 7-8FPS in cs_assault. The Omegas just got me to the point where I can sometimes play.
 
That's just odd. Every once in a while I get a little slowdown at the very beginning of a map, but that is for 2 seconds and it happens only once per week or so. Have you tried the new drivers on just straight HL2? Maybe ur net connection isn't working w/ CSS well. My firewall was pretty picky with it and only let cetain ports though, but not all. So I had really bad slow down on some servers, but none on others.
 
No, it works fine sometimes, others it doesn't. I just played for about forty five minutes, and then out of nowhere, i hit 7-8FPS. I know for a fact it isn't my net connection, as I have direct access to check everything at my ISP. This is just a total headscratcher for me.
 
Same behaviour with Half-Life 2. Could this be an overheating issue? I don't see how sometimes it's already overheated when I first start the game, and others how it 'overheats' 45 minutes into the game. There's no temp monitor on it (the video card), but the fan on the heatsink is running, and my temps on the other components (CPU, etc) are normal.
 
There must be some kind of conflict or SOMETHING. You should just NOT be getting that poor of performance from a 9800 Pro. I was using an Athlon XP 2700+ and a gig of ram with a 9800 Pro and was getting great framerates in both games.

Is your motherboard AGP 8X? I don't even know if that'd make a difference.
 
My mobo is AGP 8x and the drivers are installed, and the card is running 8x as well, as the ATI Tray Manager reports. I'm thinking this could be a PSU problem. I'm running a 250W PSU, should I try something a little more powerful? I'm only running 1 HD and 1 DVD-ROM, and that's it -- next to the card.
 
Originally posted by: adambooth
My mobo is AGP 8x and the drivers are installed, and the card is running 8x as well, as the ATI Tray Manager reports. I'm thinking this could be a PSU problem. I'm running a 250W PSU, should I try something a little more powerful? I'm only running 1 HD and 1 DVD-ROM, and that's it -- next to the card.
Click to expand...

It could be. If you have a chance try out another PSU. W/ only 1hdd and dvdrom, a 350w should be fine so spring for that. I'm running 2 hdds a dvd +- rw and a 9800pro on a 350w PSU and am doing fine. Plus, I have a much bigger fan than stock, so it's suckin even more power.
 
I'm gonna take a guess here and say its the PSU. According to ATI, I need at least 300W. I'm gonna try and get a new PSU today from the local computer store, and see if that fixes it.
 
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