What is my bottleneck?

[branomojsej]

Hi there,

My PC specs are:
ASUS m2n7.. am2+
memory corsair ddr2 2x2gb 553mhz
amd phenom quadcore 3.00ghz
psu ocz coolermaster 700watt
hdd WD Caviar black
GPU gtx470
monitor LG flatron 20" 1600x1200

dont know what is wrong, the card isnt performing well.. when playing games like gta4, tdu2, even fallout new vegas and many others i see fps drops, specialy when there is much stuff going on...playing on 1600x1200 res, mostly high settings...but very often i reduce graphics settings and still no good.......please help, as i dont know what to do?? new ram? pcu?
thanks

 

[badb0y]

Which AMD Phenom Quadcore are you using?

 

[branomojsej]

its phenom II 940 3.01GHz.

 

[branomojsej]

overclocked it to 3.2GHz lately but still no difference;(

 

[BFG10K]

overclocked it to 3.2GHz lately but still no difference;(

Of course not given it's only a ~6% overclock; you probably won't notice that outside of benchmarks.

Drop your resolution to the lowest you can (I’m talking 640x480 or 800x600 here). If performance goes up then you need a faster GPU. If it doesn't then you need a faster CPU/platform.

 

[branomojsej]

ive tried that, on low settings and low resolution it was actually running slower than higher sett. and res.....so it honestly means, that phenom is not good enough...i thought its quite a good one and is still not the cheapest...oh well thanks for your advice anyway;-))

 

[beginner99]

Sure it is a phenom II? defective ram?

No idea sounds funny too me and you should be able to play well with this config and resolution. Mobo seems old. maybe that's an issue?

What about browsing or other non-gaming stuff?
-> maybe re-install windows if also bad performance? (yeah a real PITA)
Virus/Spyware?

Are you running BOINC (eg.like seti@home) or something similar?

Are you playing online and are using p2p software at the same time?

 

[Arkadrel]

phenom II 940 3.2ghz doesnt seem so bad... on the other hand neither does the 470.
4gig of dual channel ddr2 @ 1100+ mhz seems okay too.

You shouldnt have a problem running those things to your satisfaction.

".but very often i reduce graphics settings and still no good."

hmm... check ram timeings/what speed their running, try to squeeze out performance that way. Consider getting a SSD for games, and make sure swapfile is on another drive as well, might be load times if you experiance small "dips" in fps every now and then when you need to load something.

 

[cusideabelincoln]

Reinstall and update the drivers for your video card is my first suggestion.

What kind of motherboard are you using? Looks like an Nvidia chipset. My next theory is it's possible this chipset, along with the slow RAM you're using, is not getting the full speed out of your processor or video card. Even then, though, technically speaking, you should still be getting decent performance.

Going along with this Nvidia-themed chipset, it looks like your board has integrated video, from Nvidia, and the board is from a pre-built company like HP? If so and you installed the 470 without updating video drivers then you are probably using the wrong or outdated drivers, which will give you bad performance. Updating them should solve your issue, because the issue you described does sound like one I've heard before where someone installed a card and didn't update drivers, especially for Fermi. Now if you did install the latest drivers then perhaps you need to do a clean sweep, as there are conflicts between the new and old versions.


Update the BIOS as well as install the latest drivers for the motherboard, including sound drivers, after you try reinstalling the video drivers.


Your video card and processor aren't going to set the world on fire in terms of performance, but you should be getting playable framerates in the games you listed.

 

[fire400]

cpu and ram.

get i7 with 8gb ddr3 on asus mobo and OC.

move 700w psu and gtx470 over.

then upgrade video card later.

 

[tweakboy]

If there is any bottleneck its in the CPU .... but dont worry too much about it. Your not going to get all the frames per second the 470 can dish out since your CPU is bottlenecking. Try OCing your rig more take the CPU to 3.4 or 3.6 if possible. gl

 

[nyker96]

I don't really see much of a bottleneck here, but try push the cpu toward 3,6ghz just to be sure, your system should perform quite well w/ the gtx 470.

 

[Powermoloch]

With those specs i would expect no bottlenecks...just make sure your drivers/patches are up to date.