Advice needed from those who know better!

[Renegade99]

Hi, I need some advice from people who know more about graphics cards than I do. Last week I upgraded my cpu from an AMD 64 3200+ to an AMD 64 X2 3800 (socket 939) and my graphics from a Sapphire X800XL to a Sapphire HD 2600 XT, both purchased from OcUK. My fav game is NFSMW and I was fully expecting to be able to turn up the resolution and game settings a lot from my old setup which was running at a lowly 1024 x 768 at min settings. I was disappointed therefore to find that I could only run the new card at 1280 x 1024 and any attempt to turn up the settings caused major frame rate slow down and frame stutters. I tested the new card under 3DMark06 and got a score of 4213 which seems just about average. I also tested my old card under 3DMark06 and got a score of 1856. As I was not getting the performace increase I expected I had pretty much decided to send the card back for a refund. Today I've been running NFSMW on the old card with the new cpu and to my surprise and frustration, I am now able to run this card at 1280 x 1024 with the settings pretty much maxed out. My question is, how can this be? Why am I getting such a poor performance from a card which is (supposed) to be so much more powerful than the old one? If anybody with more knowledge than me can shed some light, I'd be mighty grateful.
Thanks,
Renegade

 

[Th3D0n]

the x2600 **** have been faster by a bit but the x2600 is limted due to it only havin a 128bit memy bus if u up grade your gfx and dont have much money get the x1950

 

[Renegade99]

Thanks TH3D0N, I had considered exchanging the 2600 for the 1950 Pro. However, I would like to keep DX10 capability as well as getting a good performance increase. I might be able to spend more money. Would a 8800 GTS be a better bet?

 

[Th3D0n]

yeh the 8800 gts is double the performance of the x1950pro and the x2600 mite have dx10 but wont run it well