Performance problems, please help!!

[dknippe2]

Well, you guys are my last resort. I've contacted Asus and Seagate and they can't/won't help me out. I just put $1100 into a new machine, built it from the ground up. It's an AMD Athlon 3500+ on an Asus A8R32MVP Deluxe, with an ATI x1900xt, Seagate SATA II 3 g/s HDD, and two 1gb sticks of G.Skill ram with heatspreaders.

First problem (from whence I think all others are stemming...) is that my HDD is only showing up with an Ultra ATA 133 transfer rate, now isn't that about a third what it should be!? Secondly, I'm getting about 20-25 fps in FEAR and Oblivion. What makes me think that it is related to the HDD thing is because initial loading makes fps drop to the single digits. I'll walk outside in Oblivion, and until I shake the mouse around a few times I get about 5 fps.

I've updated my bios, which helped a bit and I have the lastest Catalyst drivers, but the only way I could tell was my 3dmark06 score went up about 400 points...to a whopping 4400...everyone else's tests I've seen on a very similar system have been at least 6500, what did I do wrong?? It was even with no anti-aliasing! And the reviews from anand of my board with a 4000+ put it at a score of 9000!!! Any and all help/advice is greatly appreciated, I've been tearing my hair out over this for about 3 weeks now, and I'd just like to get the most from my investment!!

 

[OSX]

ATi sucks.

 

[Ika]

Originally posted by: OSX
ATi sucks.

die.


anyway, are you sure you're comparing the same 3dMark score? I dont think it's even possible to score 9k on 3DMark06...

you might want to check your settings to make sure you're testing at the same settings that the other people are.

btw, some people have more luck with older Catalyst drivers than the newer ones...

 

[GrammatonJP]

I would suggest posting in the mobo section... sometimes those guy dont check here..

its probably some driver issue with mobo and your hdd..

I wouldn't say ati sucks but I wouldn't go out and buy their chipset w/o letting other beta test it first...

dont know how much toruble shooting ur willing to do..

use the non silicon image sata controlers
reinstall windows and test the mobo before and after each driver install
you can probably isolate which driver may be causing your problem

i would bench everything, especially the HDD if you think it's giving you problems, right after a clean windows install and go from there..

 

[dknippe2]

I think you're right, I'm gonna have to do a clean install of windows...Ehh I think I can handle that, I'm gonna go ahead and post in the mobo section too and see what they think, thanks guys.

 

[LOUISSSSS]

go for a clean install of windows. install mobo drivers. i'm using bios 0311. and its fine right now. then update windows. then install ati drivers i'm using 6.5. then install other drivers and stuff.

osx: your face sucks. thanks.

 

[Bobthelost]

First problem (from whence I think all others are stemming...) is that my HDD is only showing up with an Ultra ATA 133 transfer rate, now isn't that about a third what it should be!?

Could you explain this a bit more. You do know that a SATAII 3.0gb/s drive won't work any faster than the same drive with PATA? The 3.0gb/s refers to the bandwidth of the connection, which is not a significant bottleneck since the fastest 7200rpm drives around can't saturate the ATA channel. Of course you may have a real problem, if so more details would help.

 

[JEDIYoda]

Well, you guys are my last resort. I've contacted Asus and Seagate and they can't/won't help me out.

I find that statement hard to believe.
I never had any trouble getting ASUS support to help me.
As far as Seagate is concerned I have never dealt with them.

From listening to your description of what is wrong....
You might be right about ASUS not wanting to help you.
But it could be due more to you not exactly having even a remote clue of what is wrong with your system.

As far as your harddrive is concerned......I would check my bios settings .

Now you might read some of the comments here concerning transfer rates--
http://bbs.pcstats.com/showthread.php?t=33503


The term SATA-II has become a misnomer for the 3Gb/s transfer rate. The term 'SATA-II' is actually the old name of the organization brought together to define the SATA standards.

http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=961434

As far as the framerates you are getting in those games again....
I can remember from being an avid gamer that usually there are several ways to test your FPS and several ways were highly inaccurate....

Also its just a plain fact that again from one video card to the next the same exact drivers behave differently that older drivers.
Its not always a good idea to upgrade your drivers.
You might roll back to an alder driver version.

Finally its nice to compare your sytem to others of like make and hardware.
But plz understand just becuase your not getting exactly or even close to what others are getting does not mean your system is screwed up.

Could mean you just need to hit the internet and learn how to tweak what you have to get maximum performance.

Good Luck!

 

[dknippe2]

Ok, I've been trying to read up, and I read the articles a few of you posted. So I went out and dl'd HD Tach real fast, and I got an average read time of 60mb/s with a top burst of about 213 mb/s after a few tests. So from what I've read this actually looks to be a bit above normal. So, apparently its not a HDD issue...I considered what you guys said about rolling back the driver, but as fasr as I know, Catalyst 6.5 is the earliest and only driver set for the x1900xt. So that brought me back to my 3dmark, my CPU score was 850, my graphics was about 2090 and my sm 2.0 was 1450. So, can someone tell me what that means??

 

[dknippe2]

bump!!

 

[dknippe2]

I've been looking at system configurations and other 3dmark scores...could it be that my processor is bottlenecking performance?? Its an athlon 64 3500+

 

[PurdueRy]

Install your chipset drivers? You are running 3dmark on the defaults right?

I dont' see anything wrong with your score looking at this

You should be a bit above a 1800xt and you are

also here shows you should be getting around 30 FPS assuming you are running whatever settings they are running

 

[bob4432]

highly doubt the 3500 is bottlenecking. let me d/l 3dmark06 and i will run it and see what i get. also, what resolution are you gaming at?

was this a fresh install or a m/b switch? have you verified that your machine is prime95 stable, memtest stable and 3d stable by torturing the p!$$ out of it for a good 12hrs? that is what i do whenever i build a new rig, beat it up with prime95, a 3d looping app and memtest.

also, is the card running at the right speed? i think you should be a gpu of 650MHz or something like that.

good case ventilation?

why is oblivion such a resource hog? is the game coded that bad?

3dmark06 - stock gpu speed - 3942, 675/780 - 4138 fwiw

i just think oblivion is that resource hungry....

 

[dknippe2]

Hey Purdue thanks for those two articles makes me feel better...I went back rechecked some of the settings I have going, ran through fear a bit and oblivion. and it looks like you guys are right, I think I overlooked the fact that I have Oblivion going with HDR AND 2x anti-aliasing and 16x anisotropic filtering. bob I'm running at 1280x1024, I think I'm gonna add a fan or two..or maybe I could just move the tower over by the air conditioner in the window lol.