new GF4 4400 card...low FPS in RTCW...wtf???

[hudster]

a friend of mine just picked up a Visiontek Geforce4 Ti4400 card today, and is running this RTCW checkpoint demo available on this page. He's only getting around 48 FPS @ 1280x1024, and he's wondering why. He's wondering if he just wasted $300. He just d/l'ed the latest drivers from Visiontek's site. Anyway, Here's the RTCW video settings he's using:

>>>>
Video Mode 1280X1024
Color Depth 32 bit
Fullscreen YES
Lighting Light Map(high)
Geometric Detail High
Texture Detail High
Texture Quality 32 bit
Texture Filter Bilinear
Compress Textures Yes
<<<<

any advice?


-hudster

 

[FuManStan]

First, what computer is he running? Second, what was he getting before the upgrade? I haven't checked out the demo myself, but RTCW is one of the newer games that will stress your system more, especially at that resolution. Also, he might have anti aliasing on.

 

[hudster]

He's got a Micron machine with a Asus CUSL2-C mobo, P3 1GHz, 256MB RAM. He checked the mobo settings to make sure the AGP was set to 4x. He's running 3dMark2001SE right now and is going to let me know the results. I told him to check the antialiasing.

 

[jcmkk]

I would also suggest that he downloads the latest drivers directly from nVida's site. The manufacturers drivers are never up to date. He needs to go in and tweak his settings for best performance.

 

[serenedream]

In this day and age a P3 1 GHZ is a piece of piss so really i would'nt expect much more until you get a faster cpu like a athlon XP or P4 and as for the latest drivers, Visiontek are one of the few that posts upto to date drivers on there web site all the time.

 

[Blurry]

Tell him to go to his BIOS and set the AGP Size to 128MB.

 

[BFG10K]

The checkpoint demo is very CPU limited even at very high resolutions and that 1 GHz P3 is pretty average in terms of performance these days. Lower the game resolution to 640 x 480 and if your framerates don't jump significantly then it's your CPU holding you back.

Also make sure you have the latest BIOS and chipset drivers for your system.

 

[Blurry]

Even if my suggestion doesn't work, I would think that 48 frames on AVERAGE is pretty decent. Its very smooth gameplay and the cpu is limiting its performance.

 

[Tates]

<< In this day and age a P3 1 GHZ is a piece of piss so really i would'nt expect much more until you get a faster cpu like a athlon XP or P4 and as for the latest drivers, Visiontek are one of the few that posts upto to date drivers on there web site all the time. >>



How to win friends and influence people.

Nice first post :disgust:

 

[rgowen]

I tried that demo with all beauty maxed at 1024x768 32 bit color and got 84.1 while running some other apps in the background. I have a P4 1.6a @ 2.13 and a GF3 Ti200 using the 28.32 Dets. I am sure I could get a bit higher on a fresh boot with no apps running. Something must be a little screwed for a GF4 to score so low even with the 1 ghz difference in our CPU speeds, I would thinks the GF4 should more than make up the difference.

 

[hudster]

thanks all for all the hints/tips/comments/opinions...they are much appreciated.

rgowen, yeah, i thought the same thing, that the GF4 card would make up the difference

BFG10K, you said "The checkpoint demo is very CPU limited"...is there a better demo? is there a good source to find benchmarking demos? Like, my friend was reading the GF4 article here at AT and saw that the 4400 was hitting the 130 FPS range using the atdemo1...is that demo available anywhere?

thanks.


-hudster

 

[DaveSimmons]

<< Like, my friend was reading the GF4 article here at AT and saw that the 4400 was hitting the 130 FPS range using the atdemo1...is that demo available anywhere? >>

Keep in mind though that the Feb 26 article was testing the cards on an Athlon XP 2000+ not a P3 1GHz, so your friend should not expect to get the same numbers as an Athlon running at twice the speed.

 

[WaTaGuMp]

I run a P4 2.0 at 2.4 with a Leadtek G4, and I still drop SOMETIMES to uder 30 fps, but im on 1600 res all settings maxed out. So your friends system is about right.

 

[EdipisReks]

was he running an nVidia card before he got the geforce4? nVidia cards get really cranky when there are left over drivers, especially when the pervious card was a 3dfx card. if the last card wasn't nVidia, i would suggest going through the hard drive and registry and removing the old drivers manually, or doing a format and clean OS install. i have seen nVidia cards get 50% boosts once old conflicting drivers have been removed.

--jacob

 

[BFG10K]

is that demo available anywhere?

Yes but it only works with the RTCW network test version. On a related note checkpoint doesn't work with RTCW 1.3.

 

[rgowen]

I got Checkpoint to run on 1.3, I just had to rename the file to checkpoint.dm_58

 

[BFG10K]

I got Checkpoint to run on 1.3, I just had to rename the file to checkpoint.dm_58

Hmm, I thought I tried that and it didn't work. I'll have to try it again.

 

[CubicZirconia]

Do other games work fine?

 

[sep]

hudster,

No your friend didn't waste $300. This is an awesome video card (not speaking from experience, still running G2 Pro OC'ed). I do think more performance (resulting in more FPS) can be squeased out of his system. Yes, it's not rocket science that he'll see more performance once in a faster system (P4 or XP), but I do think he can get more with the existing system (minor tweaks or upgrades).

Serveral people have posted some good things to try.
Bios, set AGP size to 128MB. This is if he only has 256MB of RAM.
Latest Nvidia Drivers
Latest Motherboard Bios upgrade

Other Recommendations:
Shutdown any thing running in the background (Firewalls, Antivirus, Monitoring Software, etc.)
Defrag that hard drive
Clean out your temp files
*Pop another 256MB of ram in the system, the up the BIOS setting to AGP size 256MB.

Does your friend have any case temp problems (don't know if this could cause any problems or not, but worth checking in to)?

What Operating System is he running?

Also, I have a P3 1G 100FSB with a G2 Pro@220/475. I play RTCW at 1280x1024x32 with all options on and get a great response (don't know what average FPS). If you want I would be willing to run the test you provided this weekend to see where my pc stands to his. Let me know Hudster!

Found a review gamingin3d that was done with a G4 4400 on a PIIIBX setup. You might want to compare these reviews (none are RTCW).

In closing: Yes, the P3 1G is aging, but by no way is it a throw away. I'm happy with my performance for now. Also, RTCW is awesome.
-JC