Duff gfx card?

[shiato storm]

right. Following on from the thread here: http://forums.hexus.net/showthread.php?t=39002&page=2
I've run into a few technical hitches :groan:
I've recently been having frame rate issues with UT2004, which for my set up should be no challenge really but apparently its become one. It was working fine over the past weekend (which howard will never let me forget ) then for no apparent reason in the last few days fps has dropped off the bottom of 'playable' and has become a bit of a joke.
i've been messing with the settings in the display tab (right-click on desktop>display properties>advanced>perfomance and quality settings) in attempts to rectify the problem and no matter what I do I still end up with low 30's mid 20's fps!! wtf?
meaning with AA/AF wacked right up it seems to make no dent in performance - I tried AA/AF settings all over the place. interestingly I even put them back to where they were as default and the fps went down further still...?! At the very high AA/AF settings fps seemed marginally higher but I could not believe this as it shouldn't be.
I have thought that there could be some sort of bottle-necking effect occuring that if settings are too low it will underperform...and thus needs a bit of AA/AF etc. to set it right. [this could of course be all wrong]
in UT2004 screen res is at 1152 x 864 but even going down to 1024x768 it still went slow, slower perhaps than at 1152! I left all the settings (not in-game ones) at defaulr and tweaked the in-game ones...no appreciable difference, appart from fps going down all the time.
i'm waiting for "slide-show UT2004" when I hit 1fps or lower, lol

i'm wondering if its doing this since the recent updated patch for UT2004 came out. anyone else had this yet? i've not noticed it before I enstalled it but now game noticably hangs - I saw 22 fps pop up numerous times. I have no Idea whats going on all of a sudden, it just doesn't want to play right.
i checked the AGP temp and its 39 resting, 49 under load - no real panic there.

...oh cr*p, I just ran 3dmark03 [i went to get something to eat as I pondered how to further continue in this posting] and its over 1500 marks LOWER than before...no settings changed at all. previous mark was around (just under) 7700, now its 5962. so scratch the idea about the UT patch doing anything funny

So... How on EARTH do I lose over 1500marks, by doing NOTHING to any settings? could the gfx card be faulty causing this periodical decline in performance? - if so is there a definite way to tell, a test I can run etc. [like memtest] that will show up any potential problems?

all of a sudden this hugely expensive thing has become a chain dragging me down - its sad how something like this can affect you but when you spend your hard earned cash (and quite a lot of it) on something thats meant to be top notch...you kind of expect it to be

and just so everyone knows specs are:
AMD64 3000 (90nm winchester, non-o/c'ed)
MSI K8N Neo2 (939, nForce Ultra)
XFX 6600GT (non-o/c'ed)
1 gig corsair ram
2x HDDs (160g 'cuda and 40g Western digital)

[shiato storm]

i might bang the drivers and re-install them...I'll let you know how that goes!
edit: i have been using 66.93 drivers

[ANZAC_ELITE]

What drivers are you using, I had 4-5 second black screen issues with the 71.80 when opening programmes.
in the end I dropped right back to the last release at Nvidia (66.93 I think, not on my pc right now to check)

My sympathies on your plight, as you state, paying good money you expect things to work

Good luck

edit: lmao you edited your post to insert driver version while I was typing

[iranu]

all of a sudden this hugely expensive thing has become a chain dragging me down - its sad how something like this can affect you but when you spend your hard earned cash (and quite a lot of it) on something thats meant to be top notch...you kind of expect it to be

Do not fret my child, the community that is the almighty Hexus shall; ease thy worries, slay the demon that riseth in the form of un-playable frame rates and finally restore peace and tranquility, such that master shiatostorm may continue the frag fest unabaited.

[shiato storm]

...i hope so...i shall now retire to my bed, happy in the knowledge someone somewhere out there will have a plain easy to follow solution that involves a sledge hammer and an empty, poorly lit multi-story carpark..

edit: man, i just had another quite shimmy on UT and its down to - wait for it - 17fps.

yup you read correctly, 17 frames ... I was hitting 60 only a couple of days ago!

[ANZAC_ELITE]

ummmmmmm I don't want to appear to be kickin ya while ya down but out of curiosity I loaded UT2004 (no patch, fresh install), running at 1280x1024 with all options at max I'm getting 195 - 200 fps average (160 to 220 more on the 200 side than 160) on the 66.93 driver too

I'm seriously starting to think you may have a bad card or have you mistweaked something ??

I just can't imagine 17 fps, it must look like sh*t

[Curly]

go to start, run, type dxdiag in the box see if that shows any problems...... only other things I can think of is to uninstall drivers for mobo and gfx, use driver cleaner then re-install both sets of drivers, leave gfx drivers at defaults, re-set ingame settings to defaults, and enable them one at a time to see if a setting in the game is slowing you down

Curly

[shiato storm]

go to start, run, type dxdiag in the box see if that shows any problems...... only other things I can think of is to uninstall drivers for mobo and gfx, use driver cleaner then re-install both sets of drivers, leave gfx drivers at defaults, re-set ingame settings to defaults, and enable them one at a time to see if a setting in the game is slowing you down

Curly

oh, its going to be a long day...I'm not going in to work today cause I'm not feeling well so i'll see what I can do with all this uninstalling melarky!

edit: dxdiag brings up no problems at all.

[shiato storm]

right, well its been interesting to find out this :

that happened after I reinstalled the drivers. its gone up 100 from my original test I did when everything was installed as new! so at least THAT part is sorted.
I still get really low fps whilst playing tho ...i changed the max desired fps up a bit but still not going that high.