8800 GTX low fps

Hello, sorry to be a bother, but my heads spinning.

I'm getting below average (way below average) FPS in games.

I ran 3DMark06 benchmark and got 6700ish marks averaging around 20-40fps.
I compared that with other benchmarks from other users, and they were getting double my score, so I was wondering if anyone can help me pin-point what it is that's possibly bottlenecking, or even if the graphics card itself is faulty...

My specs are:
Asus M2V motherboard
AMD Athlon X2 Dual Core 4600+ 2.65GHz (I overclocked by 10% originally 2.4GHz)
BFG 8800 GTX OC 768mb
2 x 1gig Kingston DDR2 RAM 667MHz on Dual
160gig SATA 7200rpm - Windows XP Professional SP2
300gig SATA 7200rpm
160gig ATA 7200rpm
page files are on the 300gig SATA and the 160gig ATA
800Watt BFG PSU

The thing which worried me the most was, people with a lower grade CPU than me were getting 11k in 3dmark06 with the same graphics card of course, any help would be great, thank you!

Oh, and I purchased the graphics card from overclockers.co.uk, I've only read bad things around the net, and know they have bad customer service, as they didn't help my mate very well when his graphics card blew up.....twice...

Last but not least, cooling is not an issue... Seriously, I noticed the amount of heat coming from the card and stuck a tube (like those you get on a tumble dryer) to the cases side intake, which goes up towards my window, nice cold british air.

Thanks again :)

hmm, have you checked your drivers? and any chance you could compare the clocks on your bfg card, even 50mhz on 3dmark makes loads, same for me.

I scored 10k something:
Intel e8400: 3ghz
2gb corsair duel channel(2x1) pc6400
BFG 8800GTS 512mb OC
Asus p5n-d
XP

I get beaten by people who have an e2100 and stuff at say, 2ghz per core and the exact same gfx card. Confused the hell out of me, as mine is obviously better :P.

Hope you get it sorted.

Are u running a second screen? cos my 3d mark score jumped up when i disabled the second screen.

Hello, thanks for the responses,

My drivers are correct, fresh install of windows too, updated bios too as the old one wasn't stable for 8800 cards. I also disabled the second monitor output, I don't use one.

Sorry, I forgot to mention my clock speeds, this is a snippet from Rivatuner:

$ffffffffff ----------------------------------------------------------------
$ffffffffff Display adapter information
$ffffffffff ----------------------------------------------------------------
$0000000000 Description : NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GTX
$0000000001 Vendor ID : 10de (NVIDIA)
$0000000002 Device ID : 0191
$0000000003 Location : bus 2, device 0, function 0
$0000000004 Bus type : PCIE
$000000000f PCIE link width : 16x supported, 16x selected
$0000000009 Base address 0 : fa000000 (memory range)
$000000000a Base address 1 : d0000000 (memory range)
$000000000b Base address 2 : none
$000000000c Base address 3 : f8000000 (memory range)
$000000000d Base address 4 : none
$000000000e Base address 5 : 0000cc00 (I/O range)
$ffffffffff ----------------------------------------------------------------
$ffffffffff NVIDIA specific display adapter information
$ffffffffff ----------------------------------------------------------------
$0100000000 Graphics core : NV50/G80 revision A2 (128sp)
$0100000001 Hardwired ID : 0197 (ROM strapped to 0191)
$0100000002 Memory bus : 384-bit
$0100000003 Memory type : DDR3 (RAM configuration 00)
$0100000004 Memory amount : 786432KB
$0100000100 Core clock domain 0 : 621.000MHz
$0100000101 Core clock domain 1 : 1458.000MHz
$0100000006 Memory clock : 936.000MHz (1872.000MHz effective)
$0100000007 Reference clock : 27.000MHz
$010000000d Thermal diode inaccuracy : 1110b


630 Core Clock
1474 Shader Clock
940 Memory Clock

Hello again, just thought i'd let you know, i was playing CoD 4 multiplayer 50 man TDM server, so obviously a good test.

All settings on full whack, 25-50 fps, I turn off shadows.... 50-80 fps what's the deal?

Hmmm faulty card? With my hd3870 i can run cod4 at full wack with about 50-60 fps

Quote:

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Originally Posted by .Style

Hmmm faulty card? With my hd3870 i can run cod4 at full wack with about 50-60 fps

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Bloody hell, it was a choice between this and the 3870X2...I did some research, it basically said the 3870X2's drivers were crap... Probably a driver issue with my card then, just ran Portal, full everything, even vertical sync, it was stuck on 60fps throughout play. I tried the new beta drivers too, they don't seem to help much, I'll keep plodding on, open to suggestions.

To be honest, I've only seen one review that was strictly negative about the X2 and it was using a driver dated 2007. And G92 GTS vs X2 would've made more sense.

That's just my two cents I had to get out of the way. Regarding your issue, have you looked at your benchmark settings compared to others? What resolution are you running the benchmark?

I guess you're right :P
I gave up on ATi a while ago... I dunno why.

It's just the 'demo' 3dmark06, 1280x1024 default, comparing to everyone else using exactly the same settings, some people get double my fps, no not some, most people. infact I'm right near the bottom, but higher than this 9fps geezer... I feel for that person.

There is however a guy with 1 stick of 1gb ram, getting the same fps as me but higher in one part...
He also has the same processor as me but not overclocked.
He's using this Driver: 9.6.8.9 God knows where that's from...

Graphics Tests
1 - Return to Proxycon (MINE)22.95 FPS (OTHER PERSON)22.45 FPS
2 - Firefly Forest (MINE)23.95 FPS (OTHER PERSON)23.63 FPS
CPU Tests
CPU1 - Red Valley (MINE)0.63 FPS (OTHER PERSON)0.49 FPS
CPU2 - Red Valley (MINE)1.01 FPS (OTHER PERSON)0.76 FPS
HDR Tests
1 - Canyon Flight (SM 3.0) (MINE)31.44 FPS (OTHER PERSON)42.65 FPS
2 - Deep Freeze (SM 3.0) (MINE)26.38 FPS (OTHER PERSON)30.24 FPS

So this makes me question my rams integrity...

I'll try removing a stick, and ask a friend if they can bring theirs sometime. Or if you think I'm off-base, let me know what you think, still confused haha, upside is Lifetime guaruntee. So I can always moan at BFG.

Little update:

Removing 1gig of RAM made no difference AT ALL to the fps...
Moving and alternating the placement of RAM made no difference at all.
Not happy.

I think this a case of the CPU bottlenecking the system.

I have a similar spec but with an older C2D (E6400 @ 2.8ghz).

My 3D Mark06 is just over 12K.

In my opinion, if the card was faulty, the symptoms would not just be unexpected low performance (and in HDR alone). Firingsquad's reviewed the GTX on A64 PCs, and came to the conclusion that the card's performance was sometime CPU bound at 2.6Ghz. Having said that, it shouldn't be CPU bound to the point that it can't reach around 9000.

Did you do a rebuild [edit: I mean OS reinstall] when you installed the graphic card? If not, then consider it as a last resort. Perhaps you might want to give the OmegaDrivers a shot? A poor HDR performance still seem something that could be driver or settings related (did you make sure that there is no AA/AF enabled at driver level?).

The only other thing I would try in your position might to try underclocking the cards/CPU. Yea, it's an odd thing to suggest, but sometime I experience oddities even performance wise after pushing my overclocks.

I think Blitzen is right.

Best bet....UNDERCLOCK the CPU and see how much the frame rates drop, in games and 3d mark, Obviouslyt the cpu tests will slow, so your JUST looking for the frame rates to compare.

I bet is scales DOWN with the clock speed.

Simultaneously you could knock the GAME RESOLUTION right down too..... but not on 3Dmark unless you've got a full version.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by St1ckman

just ran Portal, full everything, even vertical sync, it was stuck on 60fps throughout play. I tried the new beta drivers too, they don't seem to help much, I'll keep plodding on, open to suggestions.

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V-sync will limit your FPS to the same as your refresh rate (60hz on all LCD screens), that's the reason for that :)

The v-sync thing i didn't know about, thanks for that! (I meant 60fps being a good thing, without v-sync it was around 200fps, I think 25 is good enough too, it's like watching a movie, post processing fixes that in most games, blurs it out, if it goes under 20 I start to worry, Crysis doesn't drop below 25fps, but CoD4 does... That's what's confusing me)
I've tried it without a cpu overclock, and underclocking 2ghz 2.2ghz 2.4ghz 2.6ghz, no change in fps.
1gig of RAM and 2 gig of ram, dual and single, no change in fps.
Always chokes around the same place. ( check out pictures )

High point of FPS at the start:
High point fps

Low point of fps just after the start:
Low point fps

Different resolutions don't affect my fps, I would have thought it would and i've tried vista and xp, on 32 bit with this card, no change in fps, went back to xp, don't like the memory hogging vista.
Thanks for that firingsquad review TooNice, it pretty much screams my cpu is pants, haha!

I had to re-install windows xp 3 times, to figure out the FIRST problem, which was that my motherboards bios did NOT like 8 series graphics cards, so i upgraded that.
So it probably is my cpu being the bottleneck, I'll upgrade the motherboard and cpu at some time, but I feel a bit robbed of money and dignity, as I built this machine only 5 months ago and upgraded the card last week.

Maybe I should consider an Intel processor, or quad core :| ?

Thanks for all the help, I'll let you know how I get on in the future.

I still find the 26% difference in Canyon Flight when compared to someone with a slower CPU, and even the 12% in deep freeze a bit strange. But it would make more sense to go Intel, especially if you considering that you had to change the motherboard anyway. Firingsquad did a follow up evaluating the 8800 on the Core 2 platform. The jest of it is that it's mostly not CPU bound even at 1.8Ghz, and with the relatively good overclockability of those chips, you should be pretty safe. Quad-core bring little to the table in terms of gaming right now, unless you are one who would encode/fold and play games simultaneously.