Performance Problems

[Jimmy255]

Hi All,
I'm new to these forums, I've been reading the site for a while and thought this the perfect place to help me fix some current issues.

It seems that the performance of my pc is just not what is should be. I have:

Athlon xp 3500+
1 gig DDR ram
Geforce 6800 GT 256meg (agp)
K8N Neo2 Platnium Mobo (onboard ac97, nvidia lan and realtek gigabit lan)
200gig SATA western digital HDD

I have just installed Quake 4, COD II and Rome - Total War (and old fav). The problems I'm having is that Q4 runs like a total bag of poo, COD II seems to run fine and Total War plays for about 3 minutes then crashes.

I have the latest drivers for the videocard, and have just done a 100% clean install of windows, DX9.0c installed too.

Basically I think that my system, especially my video card, should be able to handle quake 4, however I am getting serious chugging even on the lowest possible settings whenever there is a little action on the screen.

Does anyone have any tips for that game, and my system in general, to get me working a bit better?

Thanks,

Jim

 

[amdskip]

Just out of curiousity, what power supply do you have?

 

[Jimmy255]

Antec 350w

Model SL350

 

[spherrod]

Maybe the PSU is a little underpowered considering your hardware - you should also run memtest and the usual virus/spyware scans to rule out other problems

 

[ZoomStop]

May not hurt to try running 3D Mark and posting your score to see if it is in line with other similar system scores.

Could just be a unique problem with Quake 4 and a patch needed for Rome TW seeing as how COD II runs fine and that is a pretty graphic intensive game.

 

[Jimmy255]

Total War seems to run ok now that I uninstalled and reinstalled on the C drive (normally put games on a seperate partition) and didn't put the patch on.

Ran 3DMark, everything on default. Results were:

3DMark Score 4871 3DMarks
GT1 - Return To Proxycon 21.3 FPS
GT2 - Firefly Forest 14.0 FPS
GT3 - Canyon Flight 24.8 FPS
CPU Score 4003 CPUMarks
CPU Test 1 2.2 FPS
CPU Test 2 3.2 FPS

These results look pretty low to me...what do you forum-goers think?

 

[ZoomStop]

No, actually those are pretty good for a 3500+ and a 6800 GT. Pretty much right where they should be.
You can check peoples scores here: http://www.hardwareanalysis.com/content/topic/32591/ to get an idea of what others are getting.
Don't forget to get the latest drivers for your card and directx but 3D Mark seems to be chugging along pretty well.

 

[Jimmy255]

Cool thanks for that it's a pain when I didn't have any resources to check my own scores, as my friends PC's have quite different configs.

I got the latest nforce drivers, which I forgot about, and that seemed to have helped with the stability of Total War. I played it for a whole 5 minutes last night and it didn't crash

I had a feeling it may be the new 8 series nvidia drivers but I'm not sure.

Just gives me the irrates that I can't play Q4, coz it looks so fuuuuuun!

At least I know that the system is not fsked! thanks for that!

 

[imported_Gunhoe]

Ya, thats about what your scores should be. I have not tried Q4 yet, but make sure it's up to date, and in the video card settings turn AA and AF off, and try turning off vertical sync.

 

[Jimmy255]

Here is an interesting one that surprised me.

I used the clock frequency setters in the nvidia settings to overclock my videocard. I ran tests with 3DMark again, no AA or AF, with AA and with AA and AF, and all 3 tests came up slower than without the overclocking!

wtf??! that doesn't make the sense

 

[Blake]

I think that power supply is rated at 16 amps on the 12v+ rail. You should use a power supply with at least 18 amps for a Athlon xp 3500+. The Geforce 6800 GT 256meg uses about 65 watts, more power drain.

I have the same motherboard with a Athlon xp 4000+ and use a Antec Neo Power 480 watt with dual 12v+volt rails rated at 18 amps on each rail.

Dual 12v+ rails actually saves energy over a unit with one 12v+ rail. The single line to the processor is a more energy efficient technology.

Using off-brand and sub standard power supplies is a major cause of reliablity problems and can cause damage to other electronic parts over an extended period of time.