Problem about my Geforce 6800

[Wolfuk]

Just bought a Geforce 6800 (plain) trouble is that when i put up the options in any game to high detail/models ect the card seem to struggle very sticky at times,my AGP is 4X and i have a xp18+ with 512 of ram i have read on the forum about overclocking the card will this help or is it that my pc is not up to the job.

And if i wanted to overclock my card how you do it ?

[icehot]

hmmm maybe ur mobo and cpu isnt quite up to the job mate, also make sure you have a good 12v rail on your PSU

[noah]

ive got a similar setup with an xp2600 and just upgraded to a gig of ram, that helped me a lot, high res and detail all the way now

[Peyres]

ive got a similar setup with an xp2600 and just upgraded to a gig of ram, that helped me a lot, high res and detail all the way now

yep if you're getting a high end card with a mid range XP then buying more RAM is a neccessity.

[exAndrzej]

Sorry of the following seems really obvious to the experts - but I am hoping that some of the readers will find it useful !


Regardless of your graphics card preferences, balance is vital in any system

When we launched the X800 class products back in May, the UK press found out just how important the core of the system was for serious graphics testing

Any journalists running with a 3.2GHz CPU or less found that they were hitting a serious bottleneck in their benchmarking

I knew because I had a 3.4Ghz system running with the first X800 XT PE in the country and (when running at 1600x1200) I overclocked the board/CPU slightly...

...my 3D scores went up again !

You will know when you have hit the limit of a card's ability to deliver 3D performance when you make your system more powerful - and none of your 3D scores change

Graphic cards chew through tons of geometry every second and if you can't keep them fed - then you really are holding them back... and you can see this yourselves when you benchmark the product

You don't need to benchmark loads of games to see the effect - sometimes a single game can be enough

If you notice, when Hexus get an advanced product for only a few hours, they run a reduced set of tests

Mostly theoretical - but they always include something very graphically demanding like Half Life 2 at the highest quality settings to check real world performance (HL2 has some very heafty shaders and is a great test for any card)

I'd suggest that Wolfuk benchmarks HL2 at 1600x1200 (or 1280x1024 on a TFT) with 4x/8x - then borrows a 512 module off a friend and runs the test again

You will quickly see if you are memory limited

If you are not sure how to benchmark HL2 - then post back on this thread and I will see if we can help

Also, on a lot of games, you will really feel the issue of being CPU bound (up to around 3000+) so, if you want mega gaming performance, you might want to consider upgrading your processor at some stage...

...but the increased RAM is a simple test to run first !

Note: Just so you know, the easiest way to see if you are hitting a bottleneck during testing is when changing resolution/quality settings has no impact on your scores. If you move from 1024 -> 1280 -> 1600 and you record a steady decrease in frame rate, then things are probably balanced and what you are seeing is the effect of increased load on the GPU. A performance line that is almost horizontal at (say) 90fps as you increase the 'pressure' means that the graphic card is sitting there twiddling its thumbs