6800GT + CS:S = NOT impressed!

[Mojo027]

I just bought a BFG 6800GT OC and installed it correctly (dumped old ATI drivers, booted in safemode and ran driver cleaner, then installed 71.84 drivers back in Windows).

Okay, so that's all great. Temps coming out of install were around 68C GPU and 48C Ambient while idling. After overclocking to the detected sweet spot of 420mhz GPU and 1.1ghz memory I saw a temp drop of 5 degrees on the GPU and 5 degrees Ambient.

Before overclocking I ran CS:S stress test at 1024 x 768 with no FSAA or AF (but everything else in the video tab was high, like textures, reflections, etc), while using the "Performance" setting for IQ in the Nvidia driver and I got about 133fps. Then I tried it at 1280 x 1024 with 4xFSAA and 8xAF, and I got about 108fps.

Pretty good, right? Then I went in game and using the same settings as the second test (1280 x 1024, 4xFSAA, 8xAF, etc) I started playing a Dust2 map and then an Office map and then a Chateau map. I turned on net_graph in console and I was surprised to see my framerates fluxuating between 20 and 120fps. Vsync was off, and I had the fps_max set at 300 in the console. The framerates were around 30-70 about 90% of the time, and it's just not acceptable. WTF is going on with this card??? On Xbit labs they recorded the average framerate on Chateau with a system very similar to mine as 100fps AVERAGE. Not spiking to 100fps on rare ocassions like mine.

Is this normal? Or do I still need to tweak some things?

Also, are my temps okay? Several people I've heard only have around 50C or 55C for the idle GPU temp, where mine is 63C. That's a good 8C+ more than others. Would buying a case fan to go in my case window and blowing right on the video card help? Which position should it blow on (between the AGP card and other PCI cards, right at the AGP card, or between the CPU and AGP card)?

On the other hand, my 3d Mark 2003 seems to be fine. At 1024x768 with no FSAA or AF, and Performance IQ on the Nvidia driver, I got around 11300 in 3D Mark 2003 which seems right. My aperature size is 256mb in the BIOS, and fast writes are off. I even tried flipping the fast writes on, it didn't really change anything.

Input?

 

[MisterChief]

:laugh: That's what happens when ATI collaborates with Valve.

 

[blckgrffn]

CS just sucks like that, they have a lot of optimisations to do. I've been bitching about CS performance + 6800's for a little while on these forums...

Nat

 

[perillo34]

Your aperture size is way to high, never go over half as a rule of thumb, your scores in source seem low, I get 103fps, with my unlocked 6800nu, so I would suggest a different driver thats for sure, I am using the Exetreme G 71.84. and my IQ is probably way better than yours, and this source test is running IQ at Quality, 6x FSAA, 8XAF, along with High details, and reflect world. Fast writes on only hinders my performance, and hmm. Oh an my resolution is at 1280x1024. Running a similar system, but with my Winchester oc 'ed to 2.55ghz. I definently reccomend a driver change that is for shizel.

 

[Tab]

Originally posted by: perillo34
Your aperture size is way to high, never go over half as a rule of thumb, your scores in source seem low, I get 103fps, with my unlocked 6800nu, so I would suggest a different driver thats for sure, I am using the Exetreme G 71.84. and my IQ is probably way better than yours, and this source test is running IQ at Quality, 6x FSAA, 8XAF, along with High details, and reflect world. Fast writes on only hinders my performance, and hmm. Oh an my resolution is at 1280x1024. Running a similar system, but with my Winchester oc 'ed to 2.55ghz. I definently reccomend a driver change that is for shizel.

No, Aperture size is not way to high. Aperture size is a old setting when cards didn't have enough RAM on the video card and would sometimes use the system memory. Now days this is rarely used. Even at 1280x1204 I highly doubt you'd surpass the 128MB Boundy. I high doubt a driver change is going to make a noticable difference either. Your card is working properly, leave it as it is. Chateau, Office and Dust 2 are not the same thing as the stress test, your CPU now has to deal with other variables such as the other players online and the such. Turn down your AA and AF, that'd give a very large boost.

Your card is fine, look to see if you've got any other applications running the background.

 

[Jeff7181]

I play CS:S at 1024x768 with 4XAA and 8XAF and rarely see frame rates drop below 50... I have a 2.4 GHz Winchester and 1 GB of RAM at 217 MHz 2-3-3-7 and a 6800GT @ 400/1050 using 71.84 drivers. Do you have the drivers set to High Quality rather than Quality?

 

[zakee00]

Originally posted by: Tabb

Originally posted by: perillo34
Your aperture size is way to high, never go over half as a rule of thumb, your scores in source seem low, I get 103fps, with my unlocked 6800nu, so I would suggest a different driver thats for sure, I am using the Exetreme G 71.84. and my IQ is probably way better than yours, and this source test is running IQ at Quality, 6x FSAA, 8XAF, along with High details, and reflect world. Fast writes on only hinders my performance, and hmm. Oh an my resolution is at 1280x1024. Running a similar system, but with my Winchester oc 'ed to 2.55ghz. I definently reccomend a driver change that is for shizel.

No, Aperture size is not way to high. Aperture size is a old setting when cards didn't have enough RAM on the video card and would sometimes use the system memory. Now days this is rarely used. Even at 1280x1204 I highly doubt you'd surpass the 128MB Boundy. I high doubt a driver change is going to make a noticable difference either. Your card is working properly, leave it as it is. Chateau, Office and Dust 2 are not the same thing as the stress test, your CPU now has to deal with other variables such as the other players online and the such. Turn down your AA and AF, that'd give a very large boost.

Your card is fine, look to see if you've got any other applications running the background.

Half right, half wrong. His size is fine; 256MB is about right if your system has 1GB of ram.
Aperture size IS_NOT an extention of video ram in any way. It determines what size the data chunks that are transfered from system ram to video ram are or something along those lines. It's not "extra" video RAM.

HQ over Q is a waste, and if you are running at HQ turn it to Q. 30FPS difference in some games not sure about CSS though.
My rig runs CSS flawlessly espically with the new 71.84 drivers I can run at 12x9 4x 8x w/o going below 70FPS.
net_graph might be your problem also, use cl_showfps 2 or fraps and see what they say. What is your 3D mark 05 score?

Your VST tests are totally different then in game playing FPS wise. CSS is almost completely CPU limited (except for maybe office and aztec, those are primarily GPU limited) with a 6800/A64 even with AA on, so you can't compare VST results to your in game results and expect them to be similar.
Just my experences

 

[JBT]

Originally posted by: perillo34
Your aperture size is way to high, never go over half as a rule of thumb, your scores in source seem low, I get 103fps, with my unlocked 6800nu, so I would suggest a different driver thats for sure, I am using the Exetreme G 71.84. and my IQ is probably way better than yours, and this source test is running IQ at Quality, 6x FSAA, 8XAF, along with High details, and reflect world. Fast writes on only hinders my performance, and hmm. Oh an my resolution is at 1280x1024. Running a similar system, but with my Winchester oc 'ed to 2.55ghz. I definently reccomend a driver change that is for shizel.

See the bolded part? Nvidia cards don't support that so your FSAA is really 0x not 6x that might be one reason why your getting decent FPS hehe...

 

[perillo34]

Really you may be right, I have 16xAF, but I will double check that I just did a source test again and got 106fps, with reflect all, and everything at max, at the previous res I will switch the FSAA and see what happens.

 

[perillo34]

damn fps dropped to 70fps, in source test with 4x, damn I cant even tell if its on or off from the visuals.

 

[imverygifted]

css is a really hardware stressing game thats the explanation i have

 

[JBT]

hehe then I wouldn't even bother if you can see the difference. Might aswell get those extra FPS.

 

[Blinkme323]

Ok, this will make CSS a lot smoother and give better fps. Go to, CrogramFiles/Valve?Steamapps/username/Counterstrike/CS/cfg

Delete your cfg file. Then open notepad and paste this into it:

cl_smooth 0
cl_ragdoll_collide "1"
cl_ragdoll_physics_enable 1
cl_showfps 2
fog_enable 0
fog_enable_water_fog "0"
cl_lagcomp_errorcheck 1
budget_show_history 0
cl_dynamiccrosshair "1"
cl_scalecrosshair "1"
cl_crosshairscale "499"
cl_crosshairalpha "200"
cl_crosshairusealpha "0"
dsp_automatic 1
dsp_enhance_stereo 1
snd_mixahead .1

Go to file save as. Change it to all file types. Save it to the above folder as autoexec.cfg

 

[zakee00]

he shouldnt have to do that at all. his computer should run it w/o any console optamazitions.

 

[Mojo027]

Originally posted by: zakee00
he shouldnt have to do that at all. his computer should run it w/o any console optamazitions.

Hey zake00, you have around the same comp as me. Only a bit faster CPU.

Do you experience the same issues? What drivers are you running?


PS: Blinkme I tried that, it didn't help.

 

[Genx87]

It has been so long since I even picked the thing up and played it. But the last thing I remember was I think it was 1600X1200 with 4AF, 2AA and getting ~60FPS.

This was on 61.77 drivers and a stock 6800GT.

 

[Matthias99]

Half right, half wrong. His size is fine; 256MB is about right if your system has 1GB of ram.
Aperture size IS_NOT an extention of video ram in any way. It determines what size the data chunks that are transfered from system ram to video ram are or something along those lines. It's not "extra" video RAM.

Actually, you've got it totally backwards. "AGP Aperture Size" controls how much extra system RAM is available for the video driver to use to store extra data that won't fit on the video card. It's essentially irrelevant if you have a card with at least 128MB of RAM. Please don't go blathering about settings like this if you don't understand them...

OP, did you try some benchmarks (like 3DMark03/05) to make sure you're not having any driver issues? The last time I swapped video cards, I had to reinstall my chipset drivers to make everything happy; it ran about half as fast as it should until I did that.

 

[otispunkmeyer]

its probably not your card....when theres no one on office, i can zoom round there no problem at the same settings you have. put another 39 people on the server and the game really is in the CPU/system memory's hands

 

[EXman]

Originally posted by: MisterChief
:laugh: That's what happens when ATI collaborates with Valve.

Looks great on the 9800AIW

 

[Mojo027]

Originally posted by: Matthias99
OP, did you try some benchmarks (like 3DMark03/05) to make sure you're not having any driver issues? The last time I swapped video cards, I had to reinstall my chipset drivers to make everything happy; it ran about half as fast as it should until I did that.

My 3D Marks are all normal...
2001se: ~20000
2003: ~12000
2005: ~5400
CS VST (1024x768, no aa or af, high quality CS:S video options): ~138fps

Originally posted by: otispunkmeyer
its probably not your card....when theres no one on office, i can zoom round there no problem at the same settings you have. put another 39 people on the server and the game really is in the CPU/system memory's hands

I do notice framerate declines are more people come in the server. But I already have an Athlon 64 3000+ at 2.0ghz and 1GB of Corsair DDR400 at CL 2.5... What else do I need to run this game?!

 

[wayne2456]

I have my aperture size all the way up to 2gb. And i don't have a problem with games

 

[shiznit]

the drivers you are using have a temperature isssue, high idle temperatures. for some reason the temp goes back to normal when you overclock past 400 mhz. nvidia is saying its a bug but many people on guru3d have measured the temps themselves and are saying the increase is real. revert back to 71.20(what im using now) or older drivers for normal temps. i also just bought a 6800GT, running at 400/1100 and i'm also dissapointed with performance. sometimes fps high but most of the time its aroun 30-40. i play at 1280x1024 (lcd) and ive tried playing with AA and AF setting, and its does't seem to make any difference. valve is really screwing 6800 owners by makin the card run 32bit shaders all the time.

 

[otispunkmeyer]

Originally posted by: Mojo027

Originally posted by: Matthias99
OP, did you try some benchmarks (like 3DMark03/05) to make sure you're not having any driver issues? The last time I swapped video cards, I had to reinstall my chipset drivers to make everything happy; it ran about half as fast as it should until I did that.

My 3D Marks are all normal...
2001se: ~20000
2003: ~12000
2005: ~5400
CS VST (1024x768, no aa or af, high quality CS:S video options): ~138fps

Originally posted by: otispunkmeyer
its probably not your card....when theres no one on office, i can zoom round there no problem at the same settings you have. put another 39 people on the server and the game really is in the CPU/system memory's hands

I do notice framerate declines are more people come in the server. But I already have an Athlon 64 3000+ at 2.0ghz and 1GB of Corsair DDR400 at CL 2.5... What else do I need to run this game?!

appears i have a similar set up to u except i have a 3200 (skt754 too) i play on the University of Teesside servers alot and they like to have 20 vs 20, so i see zero performance from overclocking my card. for me it runs fine, i see dips into the low 30's regular, but they never last for long, and it doesnt distract me.

CS:S is a veery cpu dependant game, youve got all those physics to sort out and when the cpu has to calculate ragdoll effects for 5 different bodies after some one naded them its gonna slow down. you'll also notice as well (if u play a 40 person server) that as the game draws to a close n theres only 5 of you left, everything is super smooth.

try overclocking your system, thats probably the only way. you need more cpu speed to keep up. so do i. but doesnt seem to bother me too much, as generally im in the 60- 100fps area.

i think alot of people will be expirencing what you are, i know i am. dont worry about it

oh extreme G 71.84's are amazing

 

[Acanthus]

Originally posted by: wayne2456
I have my aperture size all the way up to 2gb. And i don't have a problem with games

So you have more than 2GB of memory? and id love to know what motherboard you have that supports over 1GB for aperture.

 

[Mojo027]

Originally posted by: otispunkmeyer
CS:S is a veery cpu dependant game, youve got all those physics to sort out and when the cpu has to calculate ragdoll effects for 5 different bodies after some one naded them its gonna slow down. you'll also notice as well (if u play a 40 person server) that as the game draws to a close n theres only 5 of you left, everything is super smooth.

try overclocking your system, thats probably the only way. you need more cpu speed to keep up. so do i. but doesnt seem to bother me too much, as generally im in the 60- 100fps area.

i think alot of people will be expirencing what you are, i know i am. dont worry about it

oh extreme G 71.84's are amazing

I can't overclock I have ram that's only rated at 400mhz, and my motherboard has a VIA chipset on it, so there's no PCI/AGP lock.

Besides, my game never dipped into the 30s with the 9500pro card I *upgraded* from. It has to be an issue with the 6series cards and Valve. People say the January update killed the performance for all 6800 cards, but since I only got the game in February, and my card in March, I would not know this.