Ati 4850

[watforddude]

Got one of these the other day but when i look at benchmarks on websites i dont get anything that they do,

i downloaded the call of duty 4 demo

and with 1280x800 res, no AA and i turned everything off just to see the result i get around 40 to 100+ fps when i turn eveything back on it drops to around 30 to 60/70fps

is it just becuase im using the demo, and im using the most recent cataylst drivers 09.9

is this correct? or should i use a older version of the drivers?

[kungpo]

Perhaps your CPU is not juicy enough?

[watforddude]

Its a E1400 @ 2.45 (oc'd)

[Zak33]

Its a E1400 @ 2.45 (oc'd)

that'll be partly it it then. Most reviewers use stuff at over 3gig.

but it;s also an average fps... not the maximum.... so don't beat yourself up over it...

[watforddude]

well on some reviews the avarage is over 100+ and im deffo not getting that.. can the CPU make THAT much difference to this card?

and i think the multiplyer is switching between x6 and 10 when playing games, dont know if thats got anything to do with it? any way to keep it at x10?

[Pob255]

Other factors are hard drive, motherboard and the big one is of course windows itself.
Most reviews are run off a clean install of windows with an utter bare minimum of stuff running, not having any antivirus software can make a big difference.
Keeping windows clean with as little running in the background or cached is important.
Things I reguarly find myself scrubbing are thing like, quicktime, java, adobe acrobat and dvd players.
All of these things run cache exe's and/or auto-updaters to help speed up the time they load when you actually use them, the load up speed gained is generally under a second or update to a new version reguardless to weather it's needed or not and they use a couple of meg of memory each and a couple of extra threads and handels.
While it's not a great deal of resources it does mean the cpu still has to check them on each pass just to see if they are doing anything or are needed to be called, on top of this is that your antivirus software will also run checks on them to make sure they are not doing things they shouldn't.
Stack enough of them together and it all starts having an effect.

Other things include defragging your hard drive, make sure your swap space is a single contained block, making sure you've not got any virus/trojans/malware running and other general clean ups and windows performance tweeks

[watforddude]

Well i have never defragged my hard drive becuase when i tried to i left it over night and it was still doing something so i just left it and assumed it just wouldnt work.

And do you think going back to XP would make a large difference to it?

When i get home from college today i will close down everything on the side bar like AVG, and a few other antivirus stuff that is running (3 i think)

Do you know of any programs that i can use to give my system a general clean i used SystemUtilties 2009 but the trail has run out

[jim]

Well i have never defragged my hard drive becuase when i tried to i left it over night and it was still doing something so i just left it and assumed it just wouldnt work.

And do you think going back to XP would make a large difference to it?

When i get home from college today i will close down everything on the side bar like AVG, and a few other antivirus stuff that is running (3 i think)

Do you know of any programs that i can use to give my system a general clean i used SystemUtilties 2009 but the trail has run out

Never defragging is always going to hurt performance - from personal experience third-party solutions can be a lot better than Windows in terms of speed, I have always used auslogics disk defrag for free.

Going back to XP isn't going to make a worthwhile difference imo.

Three? Which three are you using, again that's extremely important.

I wouldn't bother with "general clean" software, 9 times out of 10 it makes no difference and it always has the chance to wreck something, albeit with good intentions.

[watforddude]

the three are

AVG

Iobit security 360

and the other one i cant remember but they are running most of the time. never thought to close them down

[watforddude]

And also i was reading through other peoples FPS problems and one of them was the CPU still swtiching between multiplyers even on games, i went on CPU-Z started call of duty 4 demo and it was switching between x6-x10 and is there a way to check what percentage the GPU is running at in games and then maybe thats the problem.

And on the crysis demo with everything on High i get around 10-40 fps. mainly in the low to mid 20's

and on call of duty 2 i get around 180-350 fps but that is normally sticking around the 250 mark, sounds quite low for a old game.

[Arthran]

Do you know of any programs that i can use to give my system a general clean i used SystemUtilties 2009 but the trail has run out

CCleaner, without a doubt. wont go into removing programs etc, but its great to spring clean regularly

[watforddude]

CCleaner, without a doubt. wont go into removing programs etc, but its great to spring clean regularly

Already have that, good little program but makes no difference to FPS.

[watforddude]

Oh and another thing, i noticed and its happened twice as far as i know on Stalker and CoD2 when i put it in DX9 it wont really go above 45fps even when i look at the sky, closed the game and it went back to normal again ( only tested that with cod2, i have no checked stalker to see if it is still doing that) wonderd if that might give a clue to something

If i reformat will i have to reinstall vista again? or will just give me a fresh copy like when i first installed it?

[Phage]

Well i have never defragged my hard drive becuase when i tried to i left it over night and it was still doing something so i just left it and assumed it just wouldnt work.

And do you think going back to XP would make a large difference to it?

When i get home from college today i will close down everything on the side bar like AVG, and a few other antivirus stuff that is running (3 i think)

Do you know of any programs that i can use to give my system a general clean i used SystemUtilties 2009 but the trail has run out

What you said here looks like most of the problem.

1) Only run one AV product. You can cover alternives by using non-resident scanners like Spybot. You are using a ton of resources there.

2) Defrag your hard drive. Let it run as long as it wants. Or use a defragging tool. I think there were some threads on this recently.

3) CCleaner and/or fresh install of windows.

If all of that doesn't work, you will need to look at whether your CPU is really up to the job.

[ahoyhoyhoy]

And also i was reading through other peoples FPS problems and one of them was the CPU still swtiching between multiplyers even on games, i went on CPU-Z started call of duty 4 demo and it was switching between x6-x10 and is there a way to check what percentage the GPU is running at in games and then maybe thats the problem.

The multiplier switching is an energy saving feature. It usually kicks in when your pc is idling and I generally leave it enabled. However if you want to disable it you can do so by visiting your bios. look for 'EIST' (Enhanced Intel SpeedStep) and disable it.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

IIRC,the motherboard watforddude has in his computer only has a PCI-E 1.0 4x slot IIRC which does not help things.