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?
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?