TheAscension

I upgraded my vid card about a year ago to a 6800gt with the expectations that my frame rate would be flawless. This is not the case. My overall frame rate has increased significantly but in certain situations in game I'm dropping down into the 15 to 25 FPS range.

1. in areas of maps where there are long draw distances
2. fire fights that include more than one player close by with guns firing and explosions (especially when C4 detonates)

My system should be be able to handle this game fine and I really believe that there should not be any problems with frame rate. So what is causing these "situations"? Is there a bottleneck somewhere?

System info:
Win XP pro
Nforce 2 chipset
AMD Athlon XP 3200+ 2.2GHz (full copper heatsink)
1024 MB RAM
GeForce 6800GT (with latest drivers) AGP 8x
DirectX 9.0c (I believe its the latest update)
Gigabyte GA-7N400 pro2 mobo (IDE RAID on system drive)
1152 x 864 resolution (in game and out of game)
SoundBlaster Live 5.1 PCI
on-board LAN
300W Antec supply
DVD burner
Floppy drive
2 80GB HDD in IDE RAID
1 300GB HDD SATA
3 80mm Case Fans
Approx. 3 USB attachments using power

Any help would be really appreciated...

ChaosMinionX

Wait so it ran fine for a year? And now you are experience low frame rates? Or it has been low all along, and If you could what GPU were you running prior to the 6800GT (which by the way could very well be the culprit).

If you have the money, I would really say but a X1950 AGP card and you will see significant increases in your graphics.

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Dyre Straits

It definitely would help to know if there was satisfactory improvement at first and then this 'situation' developed over time.

If it developed over time, how long has it been since you did a Disk Check and Defrag?

And, too, I think there may be a possibility that game patches may cause some older cards to struggle more as the patches try to optimize for newer video cards. Have you tried using various video card drivers? Sometimes the older one do work better as they were made for the older model video cards.

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TheAscension

I've always had low frame rates (in those situations) since I got the new card a year ago. Before I had a Ti-4800se and breifly a 9700pro but I've reformatted since I've gotten the new card avoiding a potential driver conflict.

I somewhat regularly defrag but I've actually tested out if that would help and it doesn't seem to. Another weird thing I noticed is resolution change. I tried going down in resolution and then going up in resolution and I get worse frame rate either way.

niceguyrichy

sounds like a problem with software to me.
try rolling back to a previous incarnation of your chosen gfx driver, see if that helps.
that card should be handling cs:s way better than that.

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TheAscension

I've tried that before and it didn't seem to help much. So I'm not sure if its a software issue. I can't help but think that maybe its a hardware issue which is why I ask it its maybe a bottleneck issue. Is my mobo poorly designed? Is there a bus bottlneck? I've got good RAM, GPU, and CPU so it must be the mobo?

Dyre Straits

Is your RAM set to run optimally?

On one system I have here, I discovered that the RAM was designed to run at 500MHz but the mobo was defaulting it to 400MHz.

Also, depending exactly on what RAM you do have, you may be able to reduce the timings on it. One that makes a good deal of difference is changing from 2T to 1T. You might also try dropping the other settings one notch. Example: 5-5-5-18 and try 4-4-4-16. If the system won't boot back up, you may have to reset the CMOS if your motherboard isn't designed to auto reset on a failed boot. That's a fairly easy thing to do if you have the manual handy. If not, simply unplug it, remove the CMOS battery for a few minutes and then restart. You'll have to go back into BIOS and reset anything you've changed from Default as well as reset the time and date.

Good luck!

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TheAscension

well I'm 100% positive that I'm running 400MHz RAM and, of course, my bus speed is 400MHz. The timing stuff I'm not sure about. How would I drop it from a 2T to a 1T? how would I adjust the other timings? BIOS?

Do you think the RAM would affect my frame rate that much? I always figured it was more about vid card and CPU regarding frame rate.

Dyre Straits

I was actually quite impressed with the performance increase when I made a few small adjustments to the RAM.

Yes, you'll find those settings in the BIOS. Not sure exactly which BIOS version you've got without looking it up. But, look for a way to set things to Manual and look around in the Chipset section would be a good start. But, just looking around should get you where you need to go.

Good luck!

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TheAscension

After reading the thread above this one I realized that I forgot to mention that my PC is overclocked. I have a native 2500+ barton (333MHz) that I've overclocked via FSB to 400MHz (increasing bandwidth). Now, as I've mentioned before, my RAM is native 400MHz (that I was running downclocked) so there shouldn't be any problem with clocking up to that speed...I think.

Does that maybe shine any more light on the subject?

Dyre Straits

Definitely so! But, it all depends on whether you increased voltages to anything in the steps to overclocking. If you left the voltages at defaults, some of the overclocked devices may not be getting enough juice.

Also, if you failed to lock the PCI/AGP bus to 33/66 MHz, that is a very well documented cause for trouble in the video department. Increasing the FSB of the system without locking AGP (especially) to 66 MHz is very troublesome. It's something that most newer motherboards do by default. This is because the AGP Bus just doesn't handle the overclocking well at all.

Soooo...does THIS shed any light on your troubles?

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TheAscension

Now we're getting somewhere!

I took your advice and set AGP bus speed to 66MHz (couldn't find a PCI setting in my BIOS), saved, and rebooted. Went into CSS and played for a while but didnt notice any performance gain. Then I decided to try a 5% voltage increase on the CPU and that really seemed to help a lot. It was very noticable as my overall FPS were about 15+ higher than before and my lowest dip was about 28 FPS. However, (not to be greedy) I think I can do better.

I do have some overvoltage settings for my RAM and AGP, is this advisable? Now that I think we're on the right path here, any other tweaks I can do?

I've also had some thoughts in the past (especially since my 6800 upgrade) that my power supply is not big enough. I believe its a 300W powersupply, maybe a 350...but I'm not sure.

niceguyrichy

holy cow man. there's a sticky in a few of the forums you should read
could've saved a bunch of time if you'd told us your system specs/info from the off..

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TheAscension

I did give you my system specs on the first post. However you are right, I did not give my PS info because that is info people don't normally give out or think of unless the conversation leads to power issues.

So, while we're on the coversation of voltages and what not, I thought I would bring up my PS specs.

ChaosMinionX

Better to make new posts in the long run with System specs rather making an edit to your original. That way people who have been following it will see that post, most times we look toward the end of the post to see new answers, and since we had already read the original post/problem we would be less likely to refer back to it for system specs. If you were going to add specs to the post, I would do both.

When you say a 5% increase on CPU voltage, have you run any stability tests? I would give Orthos or Prime95 a shot at priority 9.... CPU voltage increase shouldnt increase FPS at all.... something is very wrong with that scenario. An undervolted processor would not boot/run at all for any length of time if it didnt have enough power, I would highly recommend running Orthos/Prime95 for 12hours or so and see what happens.

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TheAscension

Sorry I haven't responded in a while...been busy.

Anyway, I ran 3DMark 03 (I know its old, but so is my system) and I got really good frame rate during the first few "game tests". Now, if I'm not mistaken, these "game tests" work the GPU more (if not totally). What is interesting is when I get to "CPU tests". My frame rate really dives big time on those tests and I wrote down the results of three runs of the test.

CPU test1: 67.2, 67.1, 66.7
CPU test2: 11.3, 11.3, 11.3

TheAscension

So I've decided to re-visit this topic. After some research I think maybe my PS could be a very likely culprit of my framerate issue.

I have a Antec 300W PS that is running probably more than it should (read first post). I checked out the system requirements for my 6800 and its says that I should be running a 350W or better PS and that's just from the vid card mfg.

What I'd like to do is hookup an additional PS to my system and run the vid card and some other drives off of it to load balance the system.

Question is:
How do I get the secondary PS to turn on? I'm assuming that the supply gets some sort of signal from the mobo to turn on with the power button. I know people have dual PS systems so I know its possible but I'm just not sure how the secondary is activated.

temeteus82

To do that you need a lot of knowhow on how PSU's work. And you need to figure out how to mount it on to your case. So I think you are better of with new PSU...

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Grace

Actually your Antec 300W unit should be adequate if you don't have many disk drives. If your unit was by any way inadequate, your system would crash or shut down. It doesn't affect the performance of the system in any other way.

There is a way to start two units simultaneously, however a) you need to find room for a second PSU inside your case and cut/solder wires and b) that would probably cost nearly as much as buying a new 400-500W unit. I am absolutely certain that your PSU has nothing to do with your problem, however if you insist to know how to modify two PSUs in order to work together I can write a small guide for you.

tcman

Just buy a new power supply for a reasonable price: the easiest and also the safest (when compared to the "fusion" of two power supplies). It's even better if you choose a power supply that's good enough for your future upgrade.

I can recommend the Corsair VX450 psu which is actually a Seasonic oem with high quality components (e.g. Japanese capacitors etc.), active pfc, high efficiency and alot of amps for a 450W psu (33 amps on the 12V). It's the cheapest quality psu with active pfc which can easily power any high-end system with a Core2Quad with one Geforce 8800/9800 gfxcard. You may find a 500+ Watts psu for a similar price, but you won't get the same quality psu (especially with active pfc) as the Corsair VX450 with Japanese caps (normally you can only find Taiwanese caps in most psu's from wellknown psu manufacturers which are ofcourse not as good as the Japanese ones). The Corsair VX450 psu is good for your current pc and future pc (if you decide to built a new pc in the near future).

TheAscension

Sounds like quite a task, I think I'll pass on doing that. I appreciate your assurance that it's not the PS, but I think it's worth trying anyway. What can it hurt? We never know unless we try, right?

I think what I'm going to do instead of buying a new PS is find someone with a 500+ watt supply that I can borrow and use test my system. It wouldn't be a good idea to buy something so expensive that, if it doesn't make a difference, would not be fully utilized. Especially considering how fast this stuff depreciates and that I won't be upgrading for a while.

TheAscension

So it looks like the ATX connector for power supplies has changed. I've read some reviews and I guess I need to watch out for a missing pin on the ATX connection. Seems like the newer supplies are omitting this pin and my older motherboard uses it.

(don't know why the image is showing up so small)

What is this connection and why are PS manufacturers omitting it?

temeteus82

24-pin ATX connector and it came to market with ATX 2.0 standard. So if you get new PSU from store it will have it.

ATX - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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Grace

It can't hurt anything I guess, it will just make your wallet lighter. You'll be able to carry it around with less force too.

It can't be the PSU. There is no way the PSU can ever affect the performance of the system. The stability, very likely, but never the performance. Knowing before trying (paying money) is the way of the engineers. May the force be with you and all that.




The missing wire is the -5V source. No motherboards are using this since the stone ages and it is not in ATX 2.01 standard, so almost every manufacturer omits it.

TheAscension

Thank you both for the replies.

If you're absolutely sure it's not the power supply, then I have no other option but to blame the motherboard again. Maybe crappy architecture? I don't know. Outside of replacing the supply and/or motherboard I have tried everything.

tcman

What Antec psu is it actually (type and model)? The Smartpower series with the shoddy FUHJYUU capacitors?

anyway, you are using a Nforce 2 motherboard and what motherboard (including agp driver; make sure you also install the agp driver otherwise you will get poor performance in games) drivers are you using at the moment? The nforce remix drivers or the original nVidia nforce drivers (or the beta drivers) for the Nforce 2 motherboard?
Try out the original and remix drivers and see if you can see any performance boost. Some versions remix drivers can cause performance lost and some other versions don't. Make sure you clean up the older drivers with Driver Cleaner each time you install an other version of the original nforce drivers or the remix drivers.

Also try disabling or enabling agp fast write and see which settings give you the best performance; another setting you can tune is the agp aperture size memory - set it to 256MB or higher and see if there's any difference in performance.


Good luck!

TheAscension

I've got an Antec SL300S SmartPower. I'm not sure how to look up what current chipset drivers I'm running, advice? I'm pretty sure I'm running the original drivers, not remix. Are the remix drivers available on the Nvidia website?

When I go to uninstall Nvidia drivers it says nothing about AGP drivers. This is what shows up:
1.Audio driver
2.Display driver
3.GART driver
4.IDE driver
5.Memory Controller
6.PCI system management

I've installed the latest chipset drivers from the nvidia site (still no AGP driver noticed) but I didn't find the "remix" drivers you speak of. I also can't seem to find AGP fastwrite or aperture size. I don't think my mobo supports those settings.

temeteus82

i think that it's the GART driver. Does you device manager show AGP bus driver installed?

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Mousey

If your'e in doubt about your current chipset just install the newest drivers you can find anyway is what i do lol, That way it fixes any corrupt files with the current ones if they're the newest ones, and it updates any old ones

This is certainly turning into an odd problem :|
I'm beginning to think it's the source engine that doesn't work very well with your hardware.

And yes, i would definately recommend changing the motherboard if the chipset drivers don't work. Because of the industry being like 95% PCI-E now AGP support is dying out, very quickly. Developers can get away with being sloppy on AGP Drivers now so i'd definately recommend switching to PCI-E as fast as possible, especially since components are as cheap as they are atm

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tcman

I case you want to try out the unified remix nforce drivers, here's the link for it:
nForce 9.35 Unified Remix (x32) download from Guru3D.com


And I see you are using a Soundblaster Live 5.1. Which driver version are you using at the moment? Make sure you have the newest driver for the soundcard? But then again Creative Labs haven't updated their Soundblaster series drivers for a long time, so there's a chance that the Soundblaster may not work well with newer games like Half-Life 2 (even you have installed the latest driver update for the soundcard). Also make sure you do not have enabled EAX effects in the EAX console etc. because it can cause problems for you, e.g. stutters, low performance etc.

There's also one thing you have to check is whether DMA is enabled for your ide devices like harddrives and other optical drivers; if these devices are in pio mode, you won't be able to play any games with acceptable performance.


Good luck!