General FPS Woes

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Soldato
Joined
19 Jan 2006
Posts
4,701
Hi everyone,

I need help on how to diagnose what is causing me to have lower FPS than expected.

I can't put my finger on exactly when I started having issues as I took a break from gaming on my PC.

My spec is as follows,

Gigabyte UD3R Motherboard
Intel i7 920 D0 @ 3.8ghz
6gb OCZ Triple Channel 1600mhz RAM
Asus ATI 5850 @ 850/1150
Corsair Pro AX850 PSU

I first noticed the problems whilst playing Dirt 2, it looked a bit jittery like I was getting low FPS so I ran the built in benchmark and I got an average FPS of 23.17, with a min of 17.68, I had run this same benchmark in March 2010 and had an average FPS of 71.31, min 57.74. I didn't persue the matter too much as I don't play the game much.

Yesterday I decided to play some Battlefield Bad Company 2, and again my FPS was considerably lower than what I expected, I was running Fraps and was struggling to keep 30fps in general play but in a fire fight with grenades going off the fps would drop to 12!

What sort of tools can I run to help me diagnose where my problem lies?

My CPU is prime stable and I can run Furmark without issue too.

(Posted in general hardware too but thought this would be a better place for a response in hindsight)
 
get fraps on take off overclock go play bfbc2 start at 1680x1050

on settings put everything off

then turn on a setting or put on next one up go in game and try

come back out repeat but put next setting up

a lot of people have problems with overclocked cpus in bfbc2 .

you should be getting about 60-80 fps at 1920x1080 with your card in mp

i play at 1680 with similar set up can run 1920 but mp i always want the smoothest experience and fps is what count online. that split second of fps loss is what can matter at the vital times and if you think about it when do you need the most fps ? when your in the middle of action.
 
Something probably got a bit skewed when installing new drivers, maybe just reinstall windows or at least drivers + driversweeper
 
Yeah probs is a driver issue, either that or your card could be on the way out. What driver you running?

My old 5850 started to show drop offs in the fps's until eventually it just froze every time I started a game, corrupt on board ram according to a friend of mine who took it in to have it tested in his store.
 
Im running the latest official ATI release, just installed it last night.

I would hate to think the card is on the way out, it's not had a load of use to be honest! No way near as much as my old X1900XT which still works perfectly. It's been kept cool, using Zalman cooler, the core rarely gets over 60 degrees.

I'll try first uninstalling all the ATI Drivers, run driver cleaner, reinstall the drivers and see if that helps improve anything.
 
My old hd5850 was only 3 months old when it went with very little usage (warranty! :D) sometimes they just go.

Newest official? off their website? 11.5? some people have had issues i know, one guy I saw on here had to go all the way back to 10.2 to get good fps....

Also if you just installed the drivers and now this problem...chances are there is your prob...newer does not mean better with drivers im afraid go back to the ones you where using before and see if that helps.
 
I was having the same issues with the 10.3 drivers yesterday, that's why I tried the latest drivers from ATI.

I'm running Windows 7 x64, in power options I'm running high performance mode.

I'm just gonna go back to basics tonight, default bios settings , no overclock on the GFX or CPU and clean driver installs and see how things go.
 
Good idea. I do remember that for the short time I had my 5850 every new driver I tried just seemed to make it worse, its quite an old card...ish (still good though) and as such the newer drivers arent really made with it in mind....stick to the 10.* whatevers. I always had issues with 10.3 on mine so stayed at 10.2 i think.....
 
Heres some screenshots, this is at stock clocks and after uninstalling all drivers, running driver sweeper til clean and reinstalling the latest drivers.

BFBC2Game2011-06-1518-05-19-01_960x540.jpg


BFBC2Game2011-06-1519-39-37-82_960x540.jpg


BFBC2Game2011-06-1519-39-09-28_960x540.jpg


BFBC2Game2011-06-1519-39-02-51_960x540.jpg


I ran the Dirt 2 benchmark too, horrible FPS!

Untitled-11.jpg
 
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Maybe worth considering installing windows on another partition for testing too.
Also notice in BFBC2 you are running 1920x1080 8xAA High settings which is likely to be pretty demanding, dirt2 performance is a bit baffling though.
 
I'd guess driver, sometimes no matter what you do then you can't get rid of the corruption that caused a prob and u have to do a fresh windows install. My cousin had to do the same thing with 11.5.

Glad it all worked out well...also try 4xaa....i doubt ul notice a diff and ur pc will thanku :D
 
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