Some questions, regarding my game proformance.

Priapus · 4 Jul 2007 at 07:51

Good morning guys,

Well, after my ATi X800XT died on me, I got a replacment card, X1950Pro. Which I was sure I would see an improvement in my games. Can't say that I have, infact, in some games it seems worse. But I have a sneeky feeling that it's to do with Windows Vista playing a role here?

Here's my system specs:

AMD A64 3400+ (2.4Ghz)
2GB DDR Memory,
2 x160GB SATA HDDs.
X1950Pro 256mb.

So, from this I expected some reasonable proformance from my games. This is what I found.

Games:

Flatout 2 - Running 100%.
FarCry - Running 100%. (But I thought the SM3.0 was meant to make it look better, no?)
Doom 3 - For some reason it won't run at full settings, it keeps setting itself back to lowest settings?
NFS - Carbon - Running, but I can't turn on AA or AF and it's not running 100% smooth.
F.E.A.R - Doesn't run very smooth at max settings. Low FRPS.
S.A.L.K.E.R - Obviously on my system won't run full settings, but would it be better on XP?
NFS - Most Wanted - Can anyone get this game to run on Vista? Because I can't.

I will be trying more games tonight.

So is the above correct for my system, or is something not quite right? My X800XT played Carbon full wack!

.
Using latest 7.6 Cats as well.

Thanks guys.

snowdog · 4 Jul 2007 at 08:04

FEAR:
Are you running xfire? Set xfire to disable itself in fear, it caused massive problems with fps for me in it...

Carbon ( im not sure) uses sm3.0 i think, wich is harder than sm2.0 wich your x800 used to run, my 6800gs anyhow, wich is not that much worse as ** old card, but has sm3.0, can't run carbon maxed at all, no idea on the aa/af thing...

Stalker is just poor coding, turn down dynamic lighting or turn it off and you'll be fine, but the dynamic lightning is a killer even for 8800's

Cant comment on the rest, I just run them in xp, cos got dualboot...
Could be vista, myself have experienced very few problems or most problems fixable in vista, but then again, I've only run my most used games in vista, not any of them you have listed. My advice would be go dual boot too and see if its better in xp.

Priapus · 4 Jul 2007 at 08:09

In F.E.A.R I don't have Crossfire. Card is AGP.

Carbon - It never ran smooth in Vista even on X800XT but XP did. I think I will try dual boot tonight.

Okay, I will turn lighting off on S.A.L.K.E.R.

snowdog · 4 Jul 2007 at 08:29

With xfire I meant the app that intregrates itself into games so you can chat ingame and records game history

(as per sig).
But ok I get it, you ddon't even know the app.

Well another ea game that dislikes vista then

.
Shame really, vista is a nicer OS to use than xp imo, but for gaming, xp is still the way to go.

Priapus · 4 Jul 2007 at 08:59

Will give XP a try tonight then, and see how it does.

OzZie · 4 Jul 2007 at 10:17

I have an almost identical system and i've gone back to XP for a while because game performance was quite hard hit in Vista, and although it has a lot of decent features, i don't think that i'll be re-installing until i have a better PC.

Priapus · 4 Jul 2007 at 10:57

OzZie said:
I have an almost identical system and i've gone back to XP for a while because game performance was quite hard hit in Vista, and although it has a lot of decent features, i don't think that i'll be re-installing until i have a better PC.

What games did you try. Would you say my system should be able to run FEAR at full settings as well as Carbon and a few other games?

I'm going to try a dual boot, I had it before, no idea why I removed it. Wish I hadn't now.

OzZie · 4 Jul 2007 at 12:03

This is what worked more or less the same as XP:

Source based games (CSS, HL2)
Pro Evo
Driver 3 & 4
Mafia
GTA:SA
Tomb Raider :Ann

These are the games that ran slower:

STALKER (roughly 10-15% less FPS and longer loading times)
CMR: Dirt (Sub 20fps with the same setting on XP that gave around 35fps average + longer loading times)
FSX (Similar FPS, but lots of stuttering and much longer loading times)
CoH (Similar FPS also, but more jerkiness and stuttering)

That's why i believe that with a new PC with a good 2GB or more of RAM and better driver support that this wont be the case anymore.

As for FEAR, i couldn't run it MAX on my system at 1280x1024 on XP let alone on Vista as it is very memory dependant, so i would say absolutely not. Carbon however should run on max apart from possibly shadows and other misc visual features that can slow performance. When i last tried Carbon most settings were at max and that was with an x800xt too.

Priapus · 4 Jul 2007 at 13:19

Well I have 2GB of memory, so will try with XP tonight.

zytok · 4 Jul 2007 at 14:08

Ice On Fire said:
Good morning guys,

Well, after my ATi X800XT died on me, I got a replacment card, X1950Pro. Which I was sure I would see an improvement in my games. Can't say that I have, infact, in some games it seems worse. But I have a sneeky feeling that it's to do with Windows Vista playing a role here?

Here's my system specs:

AMD A64 3400+ (2.4Ghz)
2GB DDR Memory,
2 x160GB SATA HDDs.
X1950Pro 256mb.

So, from this I expected some reasonable proformance from my games. This is what I found.

Games:

Flatout 2 - Running 100%.
FarCry - Running 100%. (But I thought the SM3.0 was meant to make it look better, no?)
Doom 3 - For some reason it won't run at full settings, it keeps setting itself back to lowest settings?
NFS - Carbon - Running, but I can't turn on AA or AF and it's not running 100% smooth.
F.E.A.R - Doesn't run very smooth at max settings. Low FRPS.
S.A.L.K.E.R - Obviously on my system won't run full settings, but would it be better on XP?
NFS - Most Wanted - Can anyone get this game to run on Vista? Because I can't.

I will be trying more games tonight.

So is the above correct for my system, or is something not quite right? My X800XT played Carbon full wack! .
Using latest 7.6 Cats as well.

Thanks guys.

Ok Far Cry is only gonna look any better if you manually add HDR or go into the advanced settings.

Doom 3 requires a 512MB card to do Ultra, try high instead.

Carbon runs badly on Vista.

FEAR runs badly on max settings. Try turning down lighting and shadows a notch.

STALKER runs badly, especially in Vista.

NFSMW seems to run badly in Vista as well. Try with vsync off, makes a big difference.

Bear in mind that your CPU is maybe bottlenecking a bit as well.

Mindriot · 4 Jul 2007 at 14:17

Ice On Fire said:
Card is AGP

Am i right in thinking that even a x1950 will run slower on agp than with pci-e?

zytok · 4 Jul 2007 at 14:20

Mindriot said:
Am i right in thinking that even a x1950 will run slower on agp than with pci-e?

I doubt there's much in it. Don't think any card makes full use of the bandwidth available.

jaykay · 4 Jul 2007 at 14:30

The clocks are the same for both agp and pci-e.

Priapus · 4 Jul 2007 at 15:03

PCI-E and AGP cards are around the same speed.

Okay, to recap here:

FarCry: How do I manualy add HDR to the game?

Doom 3 - Won't go to any settings, other then low default. It ran on my X800XT full setting, Ultra, and it was a 256mb GFX card. So, no need for 512mb GFX card.

Carbon: Yes, I know that now.

Most Wanted: Doesn't even load on Vista.

FEAR: Okay, however my friend with a 7800GT plays it max settings?

STALKER: Yes, that seems to be the case now.

Thanks for all the help guys, appericated!

zytok · 4 Jul 2007 at 15:12

Ice On Fire said:
PCI-E and AGP cards are around the same speed.

Okay, to recap here:

FarCry: How do I manualy add HDR to the game?

Doom 3 - Won't go to any settings, other then low default. It ran on my X800XT full setting, Ultra, and it was a 256mb GFX card. So, no need for 512mb GFX card.

Carbon: Yes, I know that now.
Most Wanted: Doesn't even load on Vista.

FEAR: Okay, however my friend with a 7800GT plays it max settings?

STALKER: Yes, that seems to be the case now.

Thanks for all the help guys, appericated!

Far Cry - Can't remember the setting off hand, need to enter something into the command line in the game. Doesn't like AA at the same time though.

Doom - there's little difference in image quality but a massive difference in performance between ultra and med-high. Maybe Open GL support is still carp in Ati's drivers?

Most Wanted - do you get an error message?

FEAR - Depends what you mean by maxed. The soft shadows take a big hit on most systems. Had it drop down to 15fps at 1280x1024 on my rig recently quite near the start.

Just trying to say that you can't expect to run everything on max so try turning the settings down a bit.

ps. if you want to get really depressed, try TDU, DiRT or R6 Vegas

snowdog · 4 Jul 2007 at 15:32

Fear max isn't hard at all, getting 25 fps with soft shadows on here, 1024x768 , 4x aa, 16x af, all maxed rest gfx, and maxed effects, dx9, NO pixeldoubling, this, on a 6800GS &dualcore cpu & 4 gig of ram, in xp though.

zytok · 4 Jul 2007 at 16:01

snowdog said:
Fear max isn't hard at all, getting 25 fps with soft shadows on here, 1024x768 , 4x aa, 16x af, all maxed rest gfx, and maxed effects, dx9, NO pixeldoubling, this, on a 6800GS &dualcore cpu & 4 gig of ram, in xp though.

Depends whether you're talking about 25 minimum, 25 maximum or 25 average. 25 is gonna be too chuggy for most people. Most people like to aim for 50-60 in first person stuff. Most people also game at more than 1024. Surprised you're happy with that. Why not turn a couple of things down a notch and get smoother gameplay?

Priapus · 4 Jul 2007 at 16:29

Well, I can play Dirt at high settings.

Will see what happens tonight.

Thank you.

OzZie · 4 Jul 2007 at 16:40

That on XP yeah?

I can't play it on with with any AA or AF. On low settings it was just about playable at 1280

zytok · 4 Jul 2007 at 17:04

snowdog said:
Fear max isn't hard at all, getting 25 fps with soft shadows on here, 1024x768 , 4x aa, 16x af, all maxed rest gfx, and maxed effects, dx9, NO pixeldoubling, this, on a 6800GS &dualcore cpu & 4 gig of ram, in xp though.

Does XP support 4GB of RAM?