X1900XT - Underperfoming?

[Racingralph]

Just run a fraps test on my rig and got really poor result in comparison with recent publications running a very similar machine. Ran NFSMW at 1280x1024 with everything fully on and got an average of just 31fps, recent reviews suggest a min of 44fps.

My rig:-

AMD 4200+ @ 2 x 2.6ghz
2gb OCZ EB Platinum @ 3-3-2-7 (ddr 474) HTT = 237
Tagan 480w psu
DFI Ultra-D
HIS X1900XT - std freq.
Samsung 250gb SATAII

Performance just seems totally rubbish. My previous X850XT PE wasn't much worse.

I'm very weary to suggest this as many people jump on the psu bangwagon at the first oppurtunity but does anyone think I'm down on power? Again reviews suggest the test PC used a total of 298w whereas mine @ 70% efficiency would give me 336w - maybe a little close but I've forked out for psu's before unecessarily. Latest drivers and bios are all installed.

For reference:-

3dmark 03 - 18058pts.
3dmark 05 - 11224pts.
3dmark 06 - 5719pts.

Any ideas or am I expecting too much?

 

[MeatLoaf]

Hmm, thats more than my XTX gets on an identical CPU, apart from the 06 test

 

[Naffa]

I'd be happy if that was me.

And if thats the IceQ3 X1900XT, then why the hell is it at stock?

 

[Racingralph]

Another thing - in the CCC the frequencies are 500/594 with the enable clocks for 3d apps greyed out. Does this mean that it throttles itself back until you run a game or benchmark?? I used to run this checked on the previous gpu so it wasn't working as hard at desktop.

Looks like you cannot change this option???

 

[PinkFloyd]

Have you installed the dual core AMD patch? that greatly effect Need for Speed most wanted in my experience. It may not have been such a problem with the X850PE as it was the bottleneck rather than the processer.

The card seems to be fine with great scores on the 3dmark tests.

 

[Racingralph]

It runs at stock because it runs stinkin hot! During Quake 4 the heatpipe gets that hot you can't touch it and the exhaust tunnel gets pretty hot as well. I have the TT Armor super tower case with good cooling which helps but I don't have any temp monitoring software whilst in games, only CCC when you alt-tab.

I will try the patch but I didn't think it made any difference - will find out.

 

[lay-z-boy]

Have you installed the dual core AMD patch? that greatly effect Need for Speed most wanted in my experience. It may not have been such a problem with the X850PE as it was the bottleneck rather than the processer.

The card seems to be fine with great scores on the 3dmark tests.

i hear that, i got some seriously strange problems without it installed.

The game ran 3x faster than it was ment to
I got 25fps constantly
It crashed after exactly 24 mins.

 

[titaniumx3]

I'd recommend you either install ATI Tray Tools or just install the latest Omega Drivers which come with ATT. This will allow you to run temperature/frequency monitors whilst gaming so as to ensure everything is working as it should.

As for NFSMW, I play comfortably at 1280x1024 with all the in-game settings maxed out and I get about 35 min/55 avg. I just get occasional stutters on the first load of a race because I have 1gb of ram and I do have a slower processor (A64 3500+ @ 2.2ghz). With your rig, you should be getting 60 avg easily.

 

[Semiskimmed]

3dmark scores seem fine. i wouldnt be worrying.
and NFS is a crappy made game mate, no amount of gpu power will improve things. you need to mess around with the settings to get the FPS up.
for a start turn off visual treatment (or similar iirc) that causes a massive slowdown when enabled but offers no benefits.

 

[PinkFloyd]

NFS is a crappy made game mate, no amount of gpu power will improve things. you need to mess around with the settings to get the FPS up.
for a start turn off visual treatment (or similar iirc) that causes a massive slowdown when enabled but offers no benefits.

Dunno what your talking about here mate.

I ran on full settings at 1280x1024 on my X800XL. Visual Treatment makes the game look groovy and I didn't notice any huge performance hit (still ran smoothly)

 

[Racingralph]

Surely my rig should wipe the floor with that game! I'm gutted that it stutters like mad @ 1280 x 1024. Installed the dual core hotfix but not tried it yet - have to wait till I get home tonight.

 

[squiffy]

NFS MW has shoddy coding, at least with a dual core it did stutter every 30 seconds or so (haven't run it recently with the newly released cats/amd cpu driver/dual core fix)

Your 3dmark scores look fine.

 

[Racingralph]

Just for intrest I clocked the gpu up to XTX speeds using CCC and it added another 400pts to 3dmark 05.

 

[Semiskimmed]

Dunno what your talking about here mate.

I ran on full settings at 1280x1024 on my X800XL. Visual Treatment makes the game look groovy and I didn't notice any huge performance hit (still ran smoothly)

i was just going off what i read elsewhere, i cant link to the site as they dvertise for other places, but they basically said if youre having problems with performance on the game then turn the visual treatment down and the bloom effect up instead as its similar sort of look but does better with some cards. the x800 you were using wouldnt be doing HDR either in the game only the bloom effect, so that would improve its performance slightly