gainward gtx550ti and a very annoyed consumer!

Tsar_debean

Howdy folks,

sorry if this seems like a winding tail but there will be a piont so press on reading please :-)

hoping you guys can help i'm pretty sure this falls under the remit of this form so any feed back or help would be great

well first i was an active boards user but my old account is linked to an email address that is older than the sands of time so when i tried to retrieve the details i couldn't log in to it(davie_b)

my previous pc was built at a time when i was in full time employment and money wasn't too much of an issue about 4 years ago(maybe more)

Amd 6400+ black edition
Abit fatal1ty mobo
4 gig of ocz platnum ddr2 ram
xfi fatal1ty sound card
and a most importantly a nvidia 7900gt(was an oc version from evga)

now i like to run games at a nice frame rate so the 7900gt
was replaced about a year later with a 8800gts(think it was the 640mb version before they changed the ram type and released it as a 256mb and 512mb versions) really nice card cost a packet at the time made by gainward and had some nice little mods made to the stock version

about 18months or so again when i noticed fps drops with some new releases,i was so happy with the gainward version of my old card i went with them againand picked up a 9800xt2 for what i thought was a bargin,
again i loved the card played all i wanted on high settings looked shiney etc etc started getting fps issues with new realeases and decide that a whole new over haul was need on the pc(only so much a 4/5 yearold mobo ram and cpu can do) but like most people in ireland money was a lot tighter than in previous years so i tried to buy on a budget i didn't want high end but i wanted something newer wanted to get win 7 and have some fun with directx11

so i purchased a intel core i3, motherboard and 8gig of ram and win7 64bit for under 300 euro of a reputable site based in england with an irish website(not exactly cutting edge technology but a definate improvement on the old stuff) put my old graphics card in it and i noticed an improvement straight away i could run any of the games i wanted to at mid to high settings at about 40fps happy days!!!

anyway i got a few hundred euro back from a previous pension policy from an old job i left and i thought to myself i desrve a GFX card upgrade as well as clearing of some of my monsterious credit card bills after looking at price piont(that being my biggest limiting factor) and comparing clock speeds i thought the gainward gtx550ti was enough of an upgrade to merit paying 140euro for(roughly i'm not trying to sell here so thats a rough estimate)

and i gave my old gfx card to my sis who's an avid gamer and was using my old 8800gts, her rig is a am3 4800+ 4gig of ram and my 9800xt and she now gets higher fps then me. Granted i play on a 22" monitor and she plays on a 19" one, now before you say update drivers, bios make sure pcie is up to *12 i have done all that

the fact is even playing games in a windowed mode at 1024 *768 my fps is still at 8-15 whilst my sises at 1280*1024 full screen is at 40-60

attached is my GPUz stats

all i really want to know is, is the gtx550ti really that bad a card? have i got a monday morning model? or should i have payed the extra near €200(they are about 300 compared to the 140 i paid) for one of the higher end 500series ?

or is it just a case of you got what you paid for tough look

kind regards as always
bean

5uspect

So.. you give us your irrelevant life story but fail to tell us what games you're having difficulty with?

Have you checked any online benchmarks for this card? Try the card in another machine and if it's still acting up RMA it.

Tsar_debean

well in relation to games i would be talking about all games!!!

it struggles on most modern games, starcraft 2,wow(i raid 25man content so thats where the fps is important),CoD black ops and mw2 and assians creed 2

the 9800xt2 runs them at 40fps on mid settings at my monitors native settings 1680 *1050

hence why i was asking
in relation to benchmarking/stressing i used furmarks stress test it and it seems to run fine

5uspect

You say you've updated your drivers, did you clean out the old ones. Also is it getting enough power, the card needs a 400W PSU at least. You really should test it in another machine.

When I mentioned benchmarks I'm talking about measured FPS for a selection of games usually found in card reviews. Here for example.

You can also compare your old cards to your 550ti here. The 550ti should give much better performance.

Tsar_debean

on relation to the drivers i uninstalled the previous graphics card drivers before installing the new card

the psu is a Corsair tx650w, and the power consumption is less on the modern card

thanks a million for the links i did read toms hardware before purchasing
i will swap out the card with the sises pc later this evening and see what the jive is then

thanks again

Tsar_debean

card swapped out and it ran like a dream in the sises pc at 1280*1024 res swapped my old card back in and it seemed to run ok on a full load at low settings


me thinks its just the card itself isn't powerful enough to run on my monitors
1650*1024 native resolution with full/mid detail on so i suppose it's time to save up for a higher end card

5uspect

Tsar_debean wrote: »

card swapped out and it ran like a dream in the sises pc at 1280*1024 res swapped my old card back in and it seemed to run ok on a full load at low settings


me thinks its just the card itself isn't powerful enough to run on my monitors
1650*1024 native resolution with full/mid detail on so i suppose it's time to save up for a higher end card

Nonsense, any modern card like that won't break a sweat running at 1080p. 1650 x 1024 isn't exactly a high resolution any more. There's something wrong with your setup that's causing the problem most likely. Install RivaTuner or something and check that it's switching from 2D clock speeds when you run 3D games. You'll at least see if it's being maxed out.

Overheal

I'm just impressed this story involved an 8800 AND a 9800 and not a single instance of failure in either card. You sir are one of the lucky ones, and I tip my hat to you for having the cajones to keep giving that brand your earned monies.