8800GTX Not Impressed With My New Card

[AWPC]

Please can someone help me out here.

Got an EVGA 8800GTX from OCUK yesterday. Only been playing around for a few hours but so far not impressed as:

1: Using a DVI to HDMI cable to my HDTV the picture is not razor sharp and looks murky. DVI to VGA is razor sharp. This exact same HDMI cable + HDTV on my old X1950Pro is razor sharp via HDMI so looks as though the EVGA does not contain the hardware to display a good picture over HDMI. No adjustment on the HDTV makes any difference.

2: The general image quality so far does not look anywhere near as good as the X1950Pro. Colours look washed out/dull/lifeless by comparison.

3: Performance is not what I would have expected either. Only getting another 2200 3Dmark06 points (6900 vs 4500). 03 is double the score around the 28000 mark and 05 is only another 1300 or so more.

I must be doing something wrong here so please can someone point me in the right direction as I only use it to game on the HDTV @ 1360x768 and expected it to run DX9 games very well but even Tomb Raider Anniversary stutters in places @ 1360x768 with full AA + AF which I am very surprised about. FEAR is now ultra smooth,Stalker lags badly. What am I doing wrong?? The CPU is an Intel 670J @ stock 3.8Ghz with 2GB Ram on an Asus 955X mobo I ran drive cleaner to remove all the ATI drivers etc etc.

 

[AWPC]

Thanks for the advice guys.

I have several PC's. The X6800 one is not my main gaming PC I use that more for the web and other work related stuff.

The main gaming one is an Intel 670J @ 3.8Ghz. Built it out of spare parts. I know it is 2 years old now but as it could keep up with the X1950Pro albeit with little AA on recent titles thought it would not bottleneck the 8800GTX.

Looks like I may be wrong and will have to get another C2D.

Still cannot understand the HDMI thing though and that is annoying how a £140 card has perfect DVI-HDMI yet a £400 one does not!!!

 

[AWPC]

Depends, if the CPU was getting too hot and throttling, what would the mobo clock it down to?

I think it would go for something like 40% off his clock speed, which would explain the performance loss.

After all, it's not like the prescotts run cool is it!

Not an issue as I have a Zalman 9500 + AS5 and it is never hot enough to throttle.

 

[AWPC]

Theres definately something wrong there, as said above you should be hitting 11k+ in 06, my rig in sig gets over 9k in 06, and its all stock.

How can I find out what is wrong

 

[AWPC]

I'd say your CPU has something to do with this but it could be drivers, as suggested try using driver cleaner. ATi drivers are a bugger to get rid of in my experience. Failing that maybe try it with your X6800? last but not least a format?

Yeah ran driver cleaner and did an uninstall before swapping cards then rebooted with the 8800GTX in safe mode just to make sure.

Going to be a pain if I have to swap it into my X6800 rig to verify as the case is exotic and time consuming to open as also have a lot of cable management!!

 

[AWPC]

Regarding the HDMI, you need to make sure the resolution is the excact resolution of the LCD TV so either 720p or 1080p, you also have to set the TV to 'Full Pixel' or '1:1 pixel mapping' or it might be called differently.

You do not want the LCD TV to do any scaling at all and you want a 1:1 display for maximum sharpness.

Yeah did all this as the TV does allow 1:1 on the HDMI and the X1950Pro with the exact same cable a few mins before and no setup changes to the TV was a perfect 1:1 image then the 8800GTX cannot match it no matter what changes I make to the TV setup. Suspect the DVI-HDMI conversion on the 8800GTX is an afterthought.........

Tried 4:3,16:9,Native,Just Scan,Wide on the HDMI 1:1 with or without and the image was the same or even worse then when XP loaded it just did not look right played around with refresh rates etc etc sharpness and makes no difference whatsoever just does not look good compared to the £300 cheaper X1950pro!!!!!!!

 

[AWPC]

My 8800gtx score in 3dmark06 with my two cpu's

AMD 4400 x2 CPU = 8500
C2D 6600 cpu (at 3700ghz) = 13000

About 50% extra

Thanks mate, Sounds as though I need a faster CPU then. The 670J keeps up fine with an X1950Pro but obviously the 8800GTX needs more grunt if you are getting almost double by score as despite what some people say 3d Mark can be a good benchmark in scenarios like mine where you do not know the bottleneck.

Will probably try it with my X6800 as that is unlikely to cause a bottleneck.

 

[AWPC]

The question here is, why would you buy an 8800 GTX and then not put it in your system along with the X6800?

Because I use the X6800 for work and the monitor is 1920x1200 native but only 24". I now game on a 40" HDTV and that PC is an older system put together from my old spare components but the screen size means it is better to game on than the 24. If I need to use the X6800 system to game on then I would have to spend ages transferring data across etc etc so a lot of hassle for me to do as I have several HD's and a complex multiple OS boot!!2

 

[AWPC]

Excactly, tell us the individual scores that make up the final score, that will give a much better indication.

From memory the CPU score is only 1151 or something.

 

[AWPC]

Just ran 06 and these are the results:

3DMark Score 6507 3DMarks
SM2.0 Score 2971
HDR/SM3.0 Score 3729
CPU Score 1150
Game Score N/A N/A
GT1 - Return To Proxycon 25.408 FPS SM2.0 Graphics Tests
GT2 - Firefly Forest 24.107 FPS SM2.0 Graphics Tests
CPU1 - Red Valley 0.364 FPS CPU Tests
CPU2 - Red Valley 0.581 FPS CPU Tests
HDR1 - Canyon Flight 41.750 FPS HDR/SM3.0 Graphics Tests
HDR2 - Deep Freeze 32.822 FPS HDR/SM3.0 Graphics Tests

Does that point to a CPU bottleneck??

 

[AWPC]

Yes it is.
But the situation in real-life gaming, isn't like that.
So please, take a good look here

Yeah thanks for the link mate had a look and am I right in thinking that I am CPU bottlenecked but whether or not I notice it in games @ 1360x768 depends on how CPU heavy the actual game is so it may vary from title to title?

If I want the best out of my 8800GTX then I need a faster C2D CPU than my aging P4 670J?

 

[AWPC]

At that res a 320mb GTS would be fine.

With my CPU you mean as the 8800GTX is struggling in places with Tomb Raider Anniversry on full AA + AF it stutters on the first Peru level in game cinematic!

 

[AWPC]

No, like has been said you probably need a faster CPU, but unless you're running at 1600x1200 + I would've thought a GTX is overkill.



Edit: I agree, it is worth spending the extra to get the 640mb GTS though.

Yeah but have already bought the 8800GTX so stuck with it now!!

Will just get a cheap C2D CPU + Mobo as that must be better than my oldish 670J.

 

[AWPC]

TO "OP", Have you fixed you image quality on your TV out ?

No gave up and went back to the VGA instead as it seems to be broken on DVI-HDMI as the picture looks unatural, cloudy. murky,blurry & unwatchable yet a £140 X1950Pro is perfect on the same HDTV + DVI-HDMI cable cannot be drivers as this happens before the PC even boots. Any suggestions??

 

[AWPC]

My Tomb raider Anniversry stutters on the first cinematic as well and this is at 60fps with no drops at all..(Using fraps)

But ingame is perfectly smooth so far..(I only on level 3)

I don't think this is your CPU causing this....(

If I disable AA it is smooth. Ingame anywhere it is very smooth anyway even with full AA just that cinematic.

Even Tomb Raider Legend is very smooth with next gen + AA so maybe it is just an AA issue with complex polygon scenes where there are a lot of edges to AA with supersampling.