CPU too Slow or 8800GTS probs with Stalker/Vista

Hi all,

I think my new 8800GTS 320mb graphics card is CPU limited when running stalker at 1680x1450 resolution. I have a smithfield dual core Pentium 4 overclocked to 4.0ghz as shown on the Toms Hardware website.

Basicaly I thought my old x1800XT ATI card was not up to the job of running stalker at high res (due to 22" monitor) so I got a nVidia 8800GTS instead. Thing is that when I go outside in stalker with mderate to high settings the gameplay goes to about 10fps.

I know there were/are issues with vista/stalker and nvidia drivers but I have the latest drivers and also 2gig of DDR2 ram running at 800mhz.

Is a core 2 duo needed or do you think I simply have driver issues? Any suggestions or comments most welcome!

Cheers for your time, Matt.

Start Task Manager and leave it running while you start up Stalker. Then, mid game when you are outdoors, hold alt + press tab to switch to task manager, and see what your CPU usage was. That should tell you whether or not its the CPU that's the problem.

I still haven't un-wrapped my copy of stalker....so only guessing here.

Its supposedly very gfx-intensive and you are running in a fairly high resolution, I think your gfx card may be having troubles with the lack of RAM. I would definitely have gone with the 640MB card for that resolution.

A good way to test would be to underclock your CPU and see if the framerate drops much or not.

Hi again,

Many many thanks for the fast posts!!! Ok, I have beed informed that the 320mb version should of been ok by the chap at overclockers, he said to save my money instead of speading £80 more on the 640mb version although I am thinking "shaithis" comments are possibly true!!!!

I have underclocked my cpu and to be honest it seems only slightly worse. When I alt and tabbed out my cpu dropped from 100% to 90% so I guess this could be the issue! BTY when I am inside at the start of the level the game runs a treat even at my native res................just like HF2, Fear and BF2 etc.

I have a 640mb 8800GTS & stalker runs smooth as at 1600x1200. Never had any type of slow down, even in intense gameplay with a lot going on. It 'should' run beutifully on your setup tbh. Odd, very odd.

Other things I'd ask are:
What drivers are you useing?
How clean is windows?

While the Pentium4 D is not the best CPU it should cope, I'd guess a metric-****-load of junk running in the background of windows.

Hi Pob255 / all,

I am using the latest nVidia Forceware 158.24 drivers with vista 32bit edition. I only have 2gig of ram and vista is a hungry bugger as we all know. My smithfield P4 is showing it's age but it is a overclocking champ at 4.0ghz, it may run quick but it will be loads slower than a clocked core 2 duo, but I still thought (or hoped) i could get another year out of it.

Windows is running on a 74GB raptor which is fairly lean, (4month since last format) and a defrag around 3 weeks ago. I don't have anything running in the background that I shouldn't and have even resored in turning off AVG antivirus....................

Cheers Matt.

In that case I'm stumped, you should be getting better reasults than that, I can only guess that there's a setting someware that needs tweeking.

but at 100% cpu usage that could be it.

You will almost always get 100% CPU usage in task manager when running a game, regardless of whether you are CPU-bound or not.

Just been reading around a bit and some places are saying that the 320MB version will not play STALKER in 1920x1200 resolution......and 1680x1050 isn't that much lower.....

Have a go with some newer drivers:

http://downloads.guru3d.com/download.php?id=32

I noticed a decent performance boost from 158.24 to 158.45, haven't tried the 160.04's yet though. Certainly worth a go!

Quote:

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Originally Posted by shaithis

You will almost always get 100% CPU usage in task manager when running a game, regardless of whether you are CPU-bound or not.

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I only get high 50%s in oblivion outdoors....

50%? I presume that an entire core at 100% then?

Well for me City of heroes from 100% usage of my Athlon xp2400+ to about 60% across both cores of my pentium D ;)

I think it could be driver related or just vista stealing ram away. I say just save and get a c2d. Stalker runs beautifully smooth on my system <------- but thats an xp machine. so vista will probably be vista.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by shaithis

50%? I presume that an entire core at 100% then?

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No, about 45% on one core and about 65% on the other