WillC

Hey,
So I recently upgraded from a GTS 450 purchased from a friend to an HD 6950. The problem I'm having is that I didn't see much of a performance boost at all, if any. I may get +5fps in Rift but that's the greatest increase in performance I've seen. The only reference I have to how well/poor my system is working is my FPS in Rift which is usually around 26-31 FPS on ultra; which isn't far off from what I was getting with my GTS 450.

I'm using 8Gb ram on windows 7 with a Phenom II X4 as well as the HD6950 GPU. I'm pretty sure my PSU is powering it fine as I haven't had any crashes yet, it boots up fine, and it's a 700W. I bought a sapphire card without the dual-bios switch which is kind of a let down because I can't easily 'unlock' it to a 6970 or something.

Are there any things I can do to increase performance of my CPU/GPU? It seems like they are limiting themselves with low speeds if that's possible. I know overclocking is possible but I have limited knowledge and I'd likely mess something up without the know-how. Also are there any programs I can use to increase performance or do benchmarks to see if they are actually under performing?

Drowningshrimp

Make sure you have all of the latest drivers installed, and the setting configured to your liking. If you think you wasted your money on that HD6950, your wrong. The HD6950 is a great card indeed, do some benchmarks like 3DMark 11, It might run at the same speeds (FPS) as your GTS 450, but i bet you the HD6950 can run a lot of other games that the GTS 450 cant.

IvanV

Without getting into any ATI/AMD vs Nvidia debate, it's safe to say that 6950 has significantly more gaming power than a GTS 450.

A clean Windows install may be in order, according to this article, your results with the 450 were pretty much where they should be (it's not in the chart, but it should be significantly below the level of 460 since a 450 has 336 SPs vs 192 on a 450), but you should be scoring much higher with a 6950.

Another possibility is that your FPS is a bit lower because of your Internet connection, which can affect framerate significantly in online games, so you shouldn't base the comparison on that one game alone.

As for the lack of dual BIOS, you should have checked before purchase, but you needn't be too disappointed. Unlocking itself rarely gives you more than 4% boost, overclocking can give you significantly more, especially if you got a custom cooled model.

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blibbax

Plus one for all of what Ivan said.

What model of Phenom are you running, and at what clock speed?

If it's one of the lower clocked low wattage versions, that could well be a bottlekneck.

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steves6403

Ive been in your situation aswell and noticed no performance increase but after a week or so it came good not sure why but thats my story .Try the cleaner and if all else fails reinstall a fresh copy win7 64.

Takaharu

Reset your BIOS to defaults then try again. Works wonders for me when I have a component change.

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Judas

i'd be leaning on the whole nvidia driver residue possibly causing some grief.. and some games detect when first started to see what gpu you have and set it up for it...

sometimes these games are poorly coded to not change when a video card has been changed.. specially to another manufacturer.. (brand)

Rift isn't exactly a great way to compare.

actually online RPGs.. MMORPGS ..... genereally do not favor video cards at all.. and see little to no advantages from moving from a mid range card to a top of the line card..

i've seen this repeatedly throughout the time of having WoW/Lineage 2/etc.... And i've personally had complaints from some people that insisted on getting a new better video card for these games at which point i had stated.... "it's not going to make that big of a difference"

The thing with MMORPGs is that amount of video ram seems to make the most significant improvement if your riding that edge..

Lineage II for example loves 1gb cards.... 512 is fine too.. but anything less and it starts to fall apart quickly... Specially if it has to use physical ram for it's "video ram"..

I would suggest firing up some other games or running a few paces with alternative benchmarks like Heavenmark or futuremarks latest...

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WillC

Yeah I uninstalled all nVidia drivers before installing the most up-to-date ATI drivers but yes I might clean install windows when I get time this coming week.

All I know about my CPU is that it's a Phenom II X4 @ 3.4GHz, I just bought it last summer I think, not too long ago but it was only about mid range at that point.

The main reason I bought the 6950 was mainly for the 2GB of ram it has, I went into the store thinking about a 6870 or maybe even a 5770 to crossfire later. I tried playing L4D2 with it and didn't notice a huge difference but that game isn't very demanding and the difference between GTS450 and HD6950 was barely noticeable. It does seem to be able to handle AA and AF better however.

blibbax

L4D2 and other Source games are notoriously easy on GPUs. Did you take any benchmarks on the old card that you could repeat?

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