New build, ok but far from great.. help needed

Jono · 18 Mar 2006 at 01:00

Here's what I have just bought and put together:
AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 3800+
Sapphire ATI Radeon X1900 XT-X
[size=+1]Asus A8R32-MVP Deluxe Crossfire
SB Audigy2 (from old PC)

I really don't get what's going on, maybe you could help me - I put it all together and installed whatever drivers I think I could find on the CDs that came with the mobo/gfx cards.
It's running on XP Pro (32bit edition)

I'm NOT sure it's set up in the bios correctly, nor am I sure I've configured it via whatever it'll let me mess about with in windows (graphics stuff)

I upgraded from a P4 3Ghz and a Nvidia 6600. Fresh new build on reformatted Hard Drive.

Games I'm trying to play:
World of Warcraft
F.E.A.R
Battlefield 2
Richard Burns Rally (Came free with gfx card)

WoW works fine - no issues there, can turn everything up to full detail - looks great, plays great. Cool.
F.E.A.R. 94% above 40fps according to the little flythrough test. Great. This is with all options set to maximum, yay.

BUT - I'm getting little stutters, like it's swapping to the hard disk every couple of seconds. Really really annoying ..

Battlefield 2 - similar to F.E.A.R if I just set the video options to "high" and leave stuff that's not defaulting to "high" to whatever it is. Swappy kinda thing - and also, the shadows (dynamic?) look awful - REALLY REALLY blocky... I'm sure they're not meant to look like that. Played better on my old machine at slightly lower details (medium I think), but surely the hardware I now have can cope...

Richard Burns - what a sodding joke - hardly runs at all - stuttering all over the place, practically unplayable and that's just driving around the basic driving course (A car park). Urgh. Nice showcase..... :rolleyes:

Ok, here's the other thing - I didn't have any RAM of the new kind - I've ordered 2gb of mushkin xp4000 stuff, which should arrive tomorrow morning if the postman's feeling nice.
It has 1gb (2x512 sticks) of crucial 3200 nothing special DDR from my old PC in it at the moment. Could this memory be causing the problems?
Could it be the Audigy card? - the onboard one's disabled in the bios

I just installed the drivers for the mobo/gfx from the cds that came with the hardware - should i get some better ones off the net?

Please help because there's gotta be something wrong with the way I've set this up for it to run worse than my old pc

Cheers[/size]

benjo · 18 Mar 2006 at 01:03

Hi there

Try downloading the latest Catylist Drivers (6.3).

Not really sure what else... But as for BF2 and shadows.. I have the same problem on my X800XT-PE

Tom|Nbk · 18 Mar 2006 at 01:04

i have exactly the same mobo as you, and i have heard that these boards actually suffer from some stuterring issues, try to upgrade your bios with asus updater, as you can see from my other post i have even been able to switch my new rig on yet! :mad:

Naffa · 18 Mar 2006 at 01:05

well a lot of people are adament about games like FEAR and bf2 not running well without 2GB memory.. i however believe this to be rubbish as i run both at max with 1GB.. however my OCZ Value could just be ub3r 1337.. but it maybe your ram (but i doubt it).

Jono · 18 Mar 2006 at 01:15

naffa said:
well a lot of people are adament about games like FEAR and bf2 not running well without 2GB memory.. i however believe this to be rubbish as i run both at max with 1GB.. however my OCZ Value could just be ub3r 1337.. but it maybe your ram (but i doubt it).

We'll see what tomorrow brings I guess...
I'll try catalyst drivers, or how about omega ones? never had problems with them when i had a 9800pro....

And bios flashing scares me

markyb · 18 Mar 2006 at 01:19

Try also updating the Creative Audigy 2 from the creative website, they have a auto update.

I have a Creative Audigy 2 ZS and noticed a huge difference between drivers, in terms of performance & quality.

powned · 18 Mar 2006 at 02:00

naffa said:
well a lot of people are adament about games like FEAR and bf2 not running well without 2GB memory.. i however believe this to be rubbish as i run both at max with 1GB.. however my OCZ Value could just be ub3r 1337.. but it maybe your ram (but i doubt it).

not rubbish at all :rolleyes:

and i doubt your running those games at max, maybe you should check your settings again. if you check how much memory fear/bf2 uses it is above 1gig...i have known it many times where people say there running a game at max settings and i wonder why my similar pc runs crap at maximum, then out of curiosity i check there settings to find they have aa or dynamic lighting or somethin turned off. if your happy to run with your setting on minimum then it wont be an issue. I have had 2 friends and myself encounter issues with bf2 and fear being laggy and 2 gig of ram has sorted it for all of us. for modern games 2gig is a must imo.

try updating the bios if you havent already.. the latest update fixes stuttering issues on that board.

i upgraded from a similar system to what you had, to pretty much whay youve got now but i have an opteron [email protected].. whilst im loving it i think i would wait longer before i upgrade again as the difference in performance is not as great as i expected. maybe im just hard to please

BigDom · 18 Mar 2006 at 02:10

I'd drop the audigy, the onboard sound is just as good, if not a little better.

Naffa · 18 Mar 2006 at 02:25

powned said:
not rubbish at all and i doubt your running those games at max, maybe you should check your settings again. if you check how much memory fear/bf2 uses it is above 1gig...i have known it many times where people say there running a game at max settings and i wonder why my similar pc runs crap at maximum, then out of curiosity i check there settings to find they have aa or dynamic lighting or somethin turned off. if your happy to run with your setting on minimum then it wont be an issue. I have had 2 friends and myself encounter issues with bf2 and fear being laggy and 2 gig of ram has sorted it for all of us. for modern games 2gig is a must imo.

all i know is.. i run BF2 @ Max.. as in textures @ max 8xAA 16xAF... and only i have my pc

so good luck proving me wrong

powned · 18 Mar 2006 at 02:36

naffa said:
all i know is.. i run BF2 @ Max.. as in textures @ max 8xAA 16xAF... and only i have my pc so good luck proving me wrong

ahh, u must be runnig 800x600 rez

Naffa · 18 Mar 2006 at 02:38

powned said:
ahh, u must be runnig 800x600 rez

nope

no_1_dave · 18 Mar 2006 at 09:36

definatly not enough ram

Jono · 18 Mar 2006 at 10:22

no_1_dave said:
definatly not enough ram

I'm inclined to agree. 2 munchkins in there makes everything run lubbly

Cheers all.

ichabod crane · 18 Mar 2006 at 11:03

i run BF2 with just one GIG on full settings and it runs perfect all i have is on my first game of that day for about 2 minutes my memory has to catch up then all is fine... it can be done... plus hope you get your pc up and running that beast should be rockin them games

fulcrumer · 18 Mar 2006 at 11:10

See the Asus A8R32-MVP Deluxe Crossfire thread in the Motherboard forum. I think that will help.

leezer3 · 18 Mar 2006 at 11:20

Yup- RAM

I upgraded from a gig to two gigs of RAM, and this has slammed my loading times down, and allowed me to crank everything upto max on 1024x 768 in BF2 instead of a slightly stuttery almost max (Shadows off I think) at 800x 600.
The stutters are more than likely your PC using the pagefile as it runs out of RAM.

-Leezer-

AMDX23800+ · 18 Mar 2006 at 17:10

get another gig of the same memory

2gb should be fine , pc3200 is fine also.