FAULTY ATI X1900 XT-X?

smids · 11 Apr 2006 at 11:17

Duel said:
Well I received my card back today and it was the same one.

There was no explanation so I had to call up OcUK to find out and I was told that they couldn't replicate the problems I was experiencing.

This leaves me wondering what could be the cause of my poor performance, and why RivaTuner got it wrong...

Don't use any third party programs. Just install CCC and try again. e.g. when I ran ATiTool with my X1800XT (no overclock etc) the card stuck in 2D mode. Make sure you just do everything stock.

Overslop · 11 Apr 2006 at 14:09

Reinstalled Windows, all drivers (latest, official), Direct X and the game. No tweaking, just everything at default settings and only the bare minimum installed on the hard drive.

Still stuttering jerky performance and way behind on what I would expect for FPS rates from this card.

However, after reinstallation RivaTuner DID now indicate that the clock speeds rose after using 3D. So that rules out the card being stuck in 2D mode...

Next course of action? :confused:

turtle3 · 11 Apr 2006 at 15:02

Hi mate, just wondering if you have tried any other games apart from farcry and AOE3??, Ive been following the thread as im hoping to get a 1900xt soon and dont want to be dissapointed again, just wondering if your expecting too much from the card, your 3d mark looks about right so the card must be ok? I know I was expecting a lot more than what my 6800sli set up was capable of. Farcry was the very first game I tried on my new setup and as everyone was saying 6800 in sli were amazing (at the time) I thought the framerate would fly, im about 19fps at the same point your reffering to all maxed out 1280x1024, All I remember about getting my new sli set up was dissapointment,, Just to add, ive also tried overclocking and found it offers no fps increase, definately not 5fps per 100mhz anyway.. Hope you get it sorted mate..

Overslop · 11 Apr 2006 at 15:13

Hey turtle,

I have also tried CS:S which can run 30FPS~ or lower when there are firefights when everything is maxed at 1280x1024.

The reason I draw attention to Far Cry is that other people with the same card are getting over 60FPS in the reference point we used, where as I have 40FPs. At the bottom of that hill it suddenly jolts when I fire my gun and hovers at high 20s and low 30s FPS. It really isn't smooth at all either. If other people are getting 50% higher FPS rates, and what is expectable from this card, then I think I should be getting those rates too.

As both me and Gregan have the same issue I wonder if our motherboards are the fault now. I can't see how the 4000+ could be repsonsible (could it?) but the mobo on the other hand...

For instance, the X-Fi XtremeMusic I have has horrible performance if you don' tinker with IRQ settings in the BIOS of my mobo. I have tried the same practice with the X1900 X-TX but all I have managed to do by switching assignments is drop performance by half. Maybe one combination could make it worth properly if I get lucky...

Overslop · 11 Apr 2006 at 15:14

BTW, just uninstalled 6.3s, cleaned and then installed 6.2s. No improvement.

turtle3 · 11 Apr 2006 at 15:32

Yeah ive just had a read up and you should be getting around 60fps allowing it to go down to 40fps ONLY in some intensive places on a x1900xt??, just out of interest what fps do you get in the tunnel section before you open the door?? Also are you playing with the HDR fix implimented?

I would have suggested motherboard bios update, but reading back youve already done that..

Overslop · 11 Apr 2006 at 15:34

In the tunnel section my FPS goes through the roof at over 100FPS. It's when I go outside or there is action that it becomes choppy...

I have updated the BIOS but I have had to revert back to the previous version as it has issues with SATA hard drives. Neither BIOS has an impact on my predicament however.

Overslop · 11 Apr 2006 at 15:47

I updated to the latest Direct X (April) and it did make a very slight improvement. It's not a solution but my FPS did go up my about 5% so I recommend the update to everyone.

megatron · 11 Apr 2006 at 16:55

Duel said:
Reinstalled Windows, all drivers (latest, official), Direct X and the game. No tweaking, just everything at default settings and only the bare minimum installed on the hard drive.

Still stuttering jerky performance and way behind on what I would expect for FPS rates from this card.

However, after reinstallation RivaTuner DID now indicate that the clock speeds rose after using 3D. So that rules out the card being stuck in 2D mode...

Next course of action?

Have you tried adjusting the video card PCI latency in ATItool or ATItraytools?

At the end of the day, if you're not happy with it, easiest thing is to sell it and get a 7900gtx. Im assuming that the card isnt playing well with the rest of your system (the motherboard as you say). Im not an nvidiot, I have always been an ATIfan; FWIW.

Overslop · 13 Apr 2006 at 04:20

Have you tried adjusting the video card PCI latency in ATItool or ATItraytools?

I haven't tried that megatron. Could you tell me how to please?

At the end of the day, if you're not happy with it, easiest thing is to sell it and get a 7900gtx. Im assuming that the card isnt playing well with the rest of your system (the motherboard as you say). Im not an nvidiot, I have always been an ATIfan; FWIW.

As a last result I might just do that but the card sounds great and I would ideally like to get it operating properly in my machine, especially having paid so much money for it.

On another forum somebody has suggested that it may be my CPU that is the problem because of the times at which the FPS drops. Does anybody have something to say in response to this? Or any other ideas?

megatron · 13 Apr 2006 at 04:38

Im using ATItool 0.25 beta 14 and I can see it under >settings>Miscellaneous. I vaguely remember that you should keep to multiples of 32 try 256.

Overslop · 14 Apr 2006 at 18:34

Thx megatron, I will give that a go.

I have a few things to try that people from other forums have suggested, and I will also have a go with the Catalyst 6.4 betas. If this doesn't work I give up, unless someone can come up with an answer.

Gregan · 14 Apr 2006 at 19:20

It seems to be Cpu issue as single cores score much less than dual cores in 3d benchmarks , and everyone reporting good FPS seem to be using dual cores , i've OC'ed my cpu upto 2.64 and installed Cat 6.4 with Directx April and this has improved FPS (about 50fps at our favourite scene in Farcry and much smoother) but a dual core might the only answer dont really know ! , can anyone tell me if i'm on the right track.

Ladforce · 14 Apr 2006 at 20:38

Gregan said:
It seems to be Cpu issue as single cores score much less than dual cores in 3d benchmarks , and everyone reporting good FPS seem to be using dual cores , i've OC'ed my cpu upto 2.64 and installed Cat 6.4 with Directx April and this has improved FPS (about 50fps at our favourite scene in Farcry and much smoother) but a dual core might the only answer dont really know ! , can anyone tell me if i'm on the right track.

i thought 3dmark 2006 was the first benchmark to utilise 2 cores? another thing you could try is checking your windows page file incase its been set to something stupidly low..i would change the min and max to 1.5gb. choppiness your experiencing is common with memory management problems/unnecessary hdd access. have you tried cat 6.4s they came out recently.

Gregan · 15 Apr 2006 at 00:03

The dual core post is just a wild guess really as i'm trying to convince my self that its not the card, just wished i'd paid the extra for the 7900gtx now, i seem to do better with nvidia.

raja · 15 Apr 2006 at 08:17

Gregan said:
It seems to be Cpu issue as single cores score much less than dual cores in 3d benchmarks , and everyone reporting good FPS seem to be using dual cores , i've OC'ed my cpu upto 2.64 and installed Cat 6.4 with Directx April and this has improved FPS (about 50fps at our favourite scene in Farcry and much smoother) but a dual core might the only answer dont really know ! , can anyone tell me if i'm on the right track.

yes that is something I touched on earlier in the thread, even if games have not been dual optimised, you tend to get a better low end frame rate when the game is under load. ATM that's the only thing I can see that the higher frame rate reports have in common, including my own, as I dropped out of crossfire and still came in at 60 fps in that scene.

turbotoaster · 15 Apr 2006 at 10:13

Gregan said:
It seems to be Cpu issue as single cores score much less than dual cores in 3d benchmarks , and everyone reporting good FPS seem to be using dual cores , i've OC'ed my cpu upto 2.64 and installed Cat 6.4 with Directx April and this has improved FPS (about 50fps at our favourite scene in Farcry and much smoother) but a dual core might the only answer dont really know ! , can anyone tell me if i'm on the right track.

on 3dmark 05 i got the same score with a 3.1 fx57 as i did with a 2.6 fx60 so dual core does make a difference

raja · 15 Apr 2006 at 10:20

that confirms the lower score, there is nothing wrong with the cards, we are all cpu limited atm even with dual cores.

Cyber-Mav · 15 Apr 2006 at 10:33

hmm, i have this card on order a powercolor x1900xt should be here next week. i will give it a try in farcry and see what it can do. i have farcry 64bit currently installed and its a bit choppy in places with my 6800 in my sig running with all details at max and HDR at rez of 1024x768. without HDR i can get a stupidly high framerate.

LoadsaMoney · 15 Apr 2006 at 17:05

Its a good job you didn't post it back to them, my mates just been told he won't be getting his £19 back that it cost him to send his faulty mobo back, and it was indeed faulty.