9800GT to HD4890 no improvement

[insanecat]

Hi,

Looking for advice as I just finished my latest upgrade and it's turned into a sideways step more than anything else.

I replaced my 9800GT with an HD4890 expecting to see notable gains in frame rates but this has not happened.

Running games like CoD4, UT3 and Aion I'm getting mixed results.

CoD4 seems ever so slightly quicker but still getting 50-90fps on max settings at 1680x1050 4xAA. I was expecting to see min 100fps.

Aion if anything is performing worse. Areas that would see min 60fps on the 9800GT are dropping to 40fps with the 4890.

Also running 3DMark06 and getting around the same scores as before ~12500

Just tried FurMark which scores ~2400 @ 1280x1024 noAA when I'm seeing people with similar rigs and 4890s getting 12-16k.

So something is definately up.

FYI at the same time I upgraded my mates 8800GT to the same card and he's seeing similar results.

Both upgrades done with clean OS installs and using latest 9.7 drivers.
Tried various settings in catalyst control panel from lowest to highest quality with not much impact of scores.
CPU seems to be loaded from 50% to 80% in many of the tests so don't think this is bottlenecking.

Could it be that the PSU is not supplying enough juice? I've never experienced a system being this stable before with an inadequate PSU (no hangs, crashes, artifacts etc) and the only symptom being lower than expected frame rates.... is this possible?

My PSU is a (not a top branded admittedly) 650W with 30A on each 12v rails, using one standalone 6-pin PCI-X connector and also one via a 2x4pin to 6-pin adaptor, with each 4pin connected to a separate line from PSU. I've tried disconnecting all unnecessary devices to minimise draw with no change.

My friend's PSU is an Arctic Power 500W.

I'd be really p***ed off if I forked out wadsacash for a branded PSU and saw no improvements so I wanted to see if anyone can confirm if simply lower performance could be a symptom of not enough power first.

Thanks.

ps. watching the Overdrive page on CCC the GPU utilisation does go up to 850MHz (99%) when under load, and sits back down to 240MHz on idle. (would have thought it wouldn't get to full speed here if not getting enough power?

Looking forward to all useful suggestions/advice

[Blaineoliver]

This is wierd, have you maxed all settings? Because higher res it comes into it's own, for instance my CPU was at 50% usage in counter strike, but after my pc upgrade, same gfx, quad core instead, I am getting so much more performance, I'm pretty sure it's a CPU bottleneck.

[Mazzle]

Hey,

Right need a few other bits of info, can you give us the model and brand of PSU and also when you say on each rail how many does your PSU have?

Your Friends Arctic Power is a bit of a dodgy PSU in terms of running a high end GPU, I say this because I had the 700w one and it was absymal running a older and hungrier 79500 GX2. I got myself a Corsair 850 and there was a massive difference, the only thing limiting it was the fact the card I had was a P.I.T.A lol. But I digress, you should have seen improvements but at frames of 60-70 + there is no difference in gameplay so it's the benches that are an issue but I understand that when you spend money on a hgih-end card that it should at least run with the rest of the pack score wise! Also some games perform better/worse on a ATi or a Nvidia as games are usually designed with a favourable GPU.

Give your full spec and your mates as well to see if there's anything the guys here can do, more info is always easier to investigate problems be it your PSU the card or any other factor. Hopefully you'll get help, been here a week and they know their onions!

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Arctic Power are not a good brand of PSU.

No brand PSUs often have false power ratings and at best they are peak ratings not continuous ones.

Companies which you should look at:
1.)Antec(not all their PSUs though)
2.)FSP(not all their PSUs though)
3.)Be Quiet!
4.)Enermax
5.)Tagan
6.)Corsair
7.)Silverpower(budget)
8.)OCZ
9.)Silverstone
10.)PC Power and Cooling
11.)Xigmatek(some models)
12.)Coolermaster(only a few models)
13.)Zalman
14.)NorthQ(only a few models)
15.)Seasonic
16.)Chieftec(only a few models)
17.)XClio(some models)
18.)Delta Electonics
19.)HEC(some models)
20.)Shuttle branded PSUs(tend to be server units)


Hiper used to be good but are not considered that great anymore.

Anything else I would stay clear off generally unless there is a good professional review.

Also make sure that you uninstall the old drivers completely and use Driver Sweeper before installing the new drivers:

http://www.guru3d.com/category/driversweeper/

[Hicks12]

You forgot Xclio there cat . Are chieftec PSU's that good? I had one with my old beasty case and it blew up when i pressed the rear switch off xD, now got a steady xclio 700w stable as a beast and onpar with an enermax (look at reviews and my finding!)

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

You forgot Xclio there cat . Are chieftec PSU's that good? I had one with my old beasty case and it blew up when i pressed the rear switch off xD, now got a steady xclio 700w stable as a beast and onpar with an enermax (look at reviews and my finding!)

The Delta made Chieftec PSUs are quite good - the Sirtec ones not so much! Ok,I will edit the list!!

[insanecat]

Thanks for quick replies so far

I just checked the label and it says "COLORSit" 650u
It was sold as "Extra Value Titan 650W Neon PSU" see http www ebuyer.com/product/139865

Like I say though after the upgrade and clean OS install everything seems to be running perfect. Not a single crash, hang, screen freeze or corruption/artifact to be seen. These are the typical symptoms I've seen in the past when my PSU has not been good enough for my graphics card.

But could upgrading a PSU alone give an increase in frame rates?

[Hicks12]

Id say, smash it to pieces and get a new decent PSU. Even if it doesnt sort the gpu problem it would be saving you hassle in the future when that cheapy one blows and takes everything with it!(and the gpu!).

[Sheriden9]

I agree with everything that's been said so far. It seems to be that your PSU is the most important part of a PC nowadays. The only other thing I would check is any program running in the background that might take some of the CPU time away or is the CPU too slow.

I'm just getting back into the hardware side of things so I'm sorry if you think it's like teaching your granny to suck eggs

[Jasp]

Im just wondering if it could be down to your motherboard being PCI-E 16x and the card supporting the newer PCI-E 2.0, though it would also be worth checking your power profiles are set to max performance and trying other driver versions.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

I would take a guess at it being your motherboard, a 4890 is PCI-E 2.0 your board only supports PCI-E 16x so its basically running at half the speed of the card.

I don't think a PCI-E 16x generation one slot is going to make a massive difference TBH.

I run an overclocked HD4830 in my 975x based motherboard and the PCI-E slot runs at 8x and yet there is no discernible performance difference from a 16x slot IMHO. The same goes for an 8800GTS 512mb which I had before.

[sadbuttrue]

To backup CATs findings, my overclocked 4770 gave almost identical 3dmark scores when running in the 4x slot.

[Jasp]

Just a thought more then anything, toms hardware did a review a while back with a 9800 GX2 using a PCI-E 2 slot in 16,8,4,1 in COD4 at max settings it showed a drop of 9fps going from 16x to 8x basically PCI E 1.1 16X, a GX2 only has half the memory bandwidth of a 4890 so it could be a factor. But yer mostly the other stuff was the same lol. http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/...0,1915-10.html

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Dual GPU cards such as the HD4870X2 perform better in PCI-E 2.0 16x slots than PCI-E 16x slots but for single GPU cards this generally is not so pronounced. Considering that most people who had the 8800GTX and 8800 Ultra ran them in PCI-E 16x slots it should be not a huge issue for an HD4890.

[arthurleung]

I guess the "clean OS" involves either Vista or Win7? Tried disable aero glass? I've had 50%~80% performance hit using aero glass in conjunction with some encoding plugin that use direct3d. Might be remotely related.

I doubt it is a PSU problem though. HD4890 is designed to underclock significantly when idle so the behavior you saw is normal for the card. The 4890 doesn't use much more power than the 9800GT, and hence should have no extra strain on the PSU.

[jimborae]

Id say, smash it to pieces and get a new decent PSU. Even if it doesnt sort the gpu problem it would be saving you hassle in the future when that cheapy one blows and takes everything with it!(and the gpu!).

Never a truer word spoken!!. Get shot of that psu ColoursIt psu are in the same legendary category as Qtec ones, in fact they look so similar they're proabably the same psu.