Vista, Dimension 9100 & Geforce 7950GT

Nev

Hey im having a problem and woundering if is there anyway around it or am i looking at having to get a new motherboard and processor. My system specs are as follows.

OS: Windows vista ultimate
Processor type Pentium 4
Clock speed 3 GHz
RAM installed 2GB
RAM technology DDR SDRAM
Cache MemoryCache 2 MB L2 cache
250 GB HD + 150 GB
GeForce 7950GT 512 MB onboard memory PCI-Express

I got the card to play games, mostly im playing css at the moment and i had a x1600 SE radeon but i was only gettin 40 - 60 fps etc now the new card has come the the fps havent changed, but the funny thing is i can play on all high settings or all low settings and my fps will be from 40 - 100 depending on where i am action etc, in fire fights its like 40 - 50 and quite iratic, Ive heard it is a decent card and that it could be my cpu letting me down and was lookin for any feedback or ideas etc.

Also im pretty sure ALL my drivers are up to date.

8T8

v-sync could be enabled which limits the FPS to the refresh rate of the screen which is typically 60Hz on an LCD display so it wont ever go over 60fps. Try turning off v-sync within the games control panel, forcing v-sync off in the NV control panel wont work under Vista.

{Turning off v-sync will introduce the tearing visual effect if you have an LCD display nothing you can do about it side effect of the tech}

Also try the 101.70 driver which is supposed to be pretty good for Vista & NVIDIA cards 32-bit or 64-bit.

An official 158.14 driver release for Vista is due very soon as well.

Nev

sadly i tried that and im having still no luck ....

8T8

I think of heard of something similar like this a good while back but it was under XP not Vista however I cannot recall the thread in question or if anything was resolved.

You did remove the ATI display drivers before installing the GeForce card and it's drivers ?

The 158.18 drivers are also out.

What score do you get in 3D Mark with the 158.18 drivers ?

Nev

No actually i didnt uninstall all the ati drivers before i might get rid of them now and the geforce ones and reinstall both ill let u know, Thanks for the help

8T8

Nev wrote:

No actually i didnt uninstall all the ati drivers before i might get rid of them now and the geforce ones and reinstall both ill let u know, Thanks for the help

Ah funnily enough somewhere in my memory this is jogged as I think that was the cause of the last person switch brands of GPU and HL2/CSS performance was very irratic.

If the ATI drivers are listed in the installed programs section uninstall them.

If they are no their then the only software I can suggest is Driver Cleaner but it is no longer free 10 bucks and the old free versions do not work in Vista.

Nev

i think i might just do a clean install its worth a shot, nothing worked.
ill try the driver cleaner and if not reinstall is in order

Nev

I did a clean reinstall just installing css now i did a 3dmark test and got 15313 is this good ?

8T8

What version 3D Mark ?

Try the Half Life 2 benchmark program as well.

Nev

doing that benchmark thing now, still with fresh install im gettin same fps no matter what res or what settings. I dont think its my pc cos i see other people with lower specs and better fps. It was 3dmark 03.

Nev

The benchmark started at 25/04/2007 14:51:10

System Information
Operating system: Windows Vista (TM) Ultimate
System memory: 2.0 GB
CPU: Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 CPU 3.00GHz
CPU speed: 2990 MHz
Sound system: Speakers (High Definition Audio Device)
VGA Information
Graphics card: NVIDIA GeForce 7950 GT
Memory: 1000 MB
Current GPU speed:
Current memory speed:
Driver version: 7.15.0011.5818 (English)

---

Resolution: 1280×1024
Demo: HardwareOC - Highway
Detail: Maximum quality
High Dynamic Range: None
Heapsize: 64 MB - default
Antialising mode: None
Filtering mode: Bilinear
Fast Z: Disabled
Score = 45 FPS
Score = 45 FPS
Average score = 45 FPS

8T8

Hmm well although the HL2 test seems to have fallen a foul of the problem it did give us a clue take a look at the system RAM 1000MB ???

In your specifcation you mention you had 2GB of RAM present in the system, did you upgrade the RAM recently at any point or mix different brands ?

Nev

well spotted, yeah i recently just bought a new 1 gb of ram ...... ill have a play around but any ideas ?

Nev

Half-Life 2 Benchmark


The benchmark started at 25/04/2007 22:01:43

System Information
Operating system: Windows Vista (TM) Ultimate
System memory: 2.0 GB
CPU: Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 CPU 3.00GHz
CPU speed: 2990 MHz
Sound system: Speakers (High Definition Audio Device)
VGA Information
Graphics card: NVIDIA GeForce 7950 GT
Memory: 1000 MB
Current GPU speed: why is nothing here?
Current memory speed: why is nothing here?
Driver version: 7.15.0011.5818 (English)

---

Resolution: 1280×1024
Demo: HardwareOC - Highway
Detail: Maximum quality
High Dynamic Range: Full (if available)
Heapsize: 1024 MB increased this go few more fps
Antialising mode: 8×
Filtering mode: Trilinear
Fast Z: Disabled
Score = 49.0 FPS

8T8

Okay just in case I linked to an old version of the benchmark thought Guru3D's was up to date but it's not so here is the latest version try that.

These where my results on a 7800GTX SLI setup at 1680x1050 with 16xAF and 4xAA, seems kind of low to me 69FPS but during the game the FPS counter was all over the place and it was well over 100FPS at some points.

System Information
Operating system: Microsoft Windows XP
System memory: 2.0 GB
CPU: AMD Athlon(tm) 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 4400+
CPU speed: 2220 MHz
Sound system: SB X-Fi Audio [AC00]
VGA Information
Graphics card: NVIDIA GeForce 7800 GTX
Memory: 256.0 MB
Current GPU speed: 460 MHz
Current memory speed: 1300 MHz
Driver version: 6.14.0010.9381 (English)

Resolution: 1680 × 1050 (Custom)
Demo: HardwareOC - Highway
Detail: Maximum quality
High Dynamic Range: None
Heapsize: 64 MB - default
Antialising mode: 4×
Filtering mode: Anisotropic 16×
Fast Z: Disabled
Score = 69 FPS
Score = 69 FPS
Average score = 69 FPS

Try the newer version and see if that changes anything it could be the program was reporting the wrong amount of RAM on the GPU.

Here are HL2: Episode One Benchmarks as well
Demo: PC_Space demo
Detail: Maximum quality
High Dynamic Range: Full (if available)
Heapsize: 64 MB - default
Antialising mode: 4×
Filtering mode: Anisotropic 16×
Fast Z: Disabled
Color Correction: Enabled
Score = 88 FPS
Score = 88 FPS
Average score = 88 FPS


With 8xAA it actually runs faster as SLI has more work to do.
Resolution: 1680 × 1050 (Custom)
Demo: PC_Space demo
Detail: Maximum quality
High Dynamic Range: Full (if available)
Heapsize: 64 MB - default
Antialising mode: 8×
Filtering mode: Anisotropic 16×
Fast Z: Disabled
Color Correction: Enabled
Score = 105 FPS
Score = 106 FPS
Average score = 105 FPS

Benchmarking Source is a bit of a weird one there must be better tools out there. Try 3Dmark06 as well or Call of Duty 2 if you have it to benchmark with.

Anti

Just wondering, What psu have you got?

Is it a standard dell one?

Nev

yeah standard dell one

8T8

That is a possibility the PSU in the machine cant drive the 7950GT as it was intended for an X1600SE which is a low power GPU.

According to the specifications it has a 375W PSU in it which should be enough for a 7950GT unless they PSU is poor quality.

It is only source games affected have you checked the 3DMark Orb database to compare against similar systems your test scores ?