Dissapointed with Performance

[yamangman]

I have the following system:

Athlon XP 2500+ @ 3200+ (200*11)
Sapphire Atlantis ATI Radeon 9800 PRO
512MB Kingmax PC3200 SUPERram (200 Bus, 400MHz, c lat 2.5)
Leadtek K7NCR18D PRO II Deluxe Limited
Creative Live 5.1 Digital
2* Western Digital Cavair 80GB 7200 RPM 8MB cache.
Windows XP Pro sp1a

My performance in games such as Far Cry and Unreal Tournament 2004 is not what I would expect. A friend has a system with a 2100+, Radeon 9600XT and 768Mb PC100 SDR Ram and his performance in these games is far greater than mine. Also he has a huge number of background tasks running (over 25), and often has other programs running and still has better performance, and I only have 14 background tasks running (in the processes window of task manager). There is only a few things that I can think of that can cause this. Either his 768Mb RAM is responsible for the better performance; I have shut down a necessary task that would lead to detrimental performace (unlikely); I am not giving my processor enough juice for it's overclock (1.728 Vcore, read in windows); Don't like my memory timings (7 - 4 - 4 - 2.5). The strange thing is, 3D Mark 2001 SE gives me a score of 16329, and my mates system gets a score of 9500. My power supply is giving enough juice and I have no heat problems at all (processor at 38C idle, 49 Max load).

One other thing is my hard disk allocation, this is shown in the shot below:



The unknown file types are Linux Swap and System partitions. I have a swap file size of 512MB in all system partitions, is there a better way of organizing my hard disks?

So, does anyone have any ideas? I would be very grateful! Thanks for listening

[blockers]

Maybe another 512mb stick of RAM?
The motherboard maybe a slight limiting factor, dont know enough about leadtek to say really.....probably not.
Is this a fresh format? if not the old drivers maybe infering with the new r9800pro drivers.

[mike_w]

How do you mean that performance is worse? Lower framerates at identical settings?

Might be worth a defrag if you haven't done it in a while, or even a reinstall of Windows.

[BUFF]

More than 512Mb is certainly worthwhile on Far Cry but he is running what should be a considerably slower system.
Are you both running the same settings or is he running with less detail etc.?

[yamangman]

Yup same settings, in some cases in Far Cry his system outperforms my system on higher settings, same driver version (4.3, I am using 4.4 now, exactly the same) and I have defragmented recently, i use driver cleaner 2 to remove anything unwanted. I know a windows reinstall may work but thats not really somthing I want to do . Do you think i should increase vcore??

Actually, the game Halo is where I see the greatest difference between our systems, with all the settings on their highest, and no AF or AA, my system slows to as little as 15 FPS during scenes of high action, the partical density makes a large difference here, could anyone with a comparable system tell my how Halo performs on their system?

[steve threlfall]

Something is very wrong here

I have a simmilar spec to yours 512ram 9800pro 2.2GHz overclock and my performance is excellent- the system btw


Is it possible some of your ram is faulty? And do you have the latest cat4.4 drivers for you 9800?

[Furton]

Your timmings are pretty poor. Try and up the volts to 2.8 and use 2.5 - 3 - 3 -11
Maybe a re-install of WinXP?

[LayZeh]

Not suggesting you get stuttering issues in-game but you could read my guide as some of the things mentioned may help you find a solution? Links in signature.