Stupid Framerate question

[Koy]

My wife and I are both having this problem so I figured I'd ask. Maybe someone knows something. Also, since the information at Anandtech is what causes me to worry, maybe this is the best place for an answer.

I just recently installed a Radeon 8500LE in my system and a GeForce 4 Ti4200 in my wife's system.

Now, starting with good old 3dMark2001SE, my system is benchmarking what I would guess is low for this card right at 7000, give or take 50 marks. I can't tell if I'm low or not really since the 8500 and 8500LE are lumped together as one card. Her card benches in about 600 Marks over average for her system. So here's the funky questions...

My system:

AMD 1.4 Thunderbird
Radeon 8500LE
1024MB Crucial PC133
Abit KT7A Mobo
60 Gig Maxtor
20 Gig Maxtor
Panasonic DVD-ROM
Acer CDRW
350 PSU
Windows XP

Ok, so now....given that I am getting that kind of a score, which I don't assume is horrible since my voodoo 5 5500 was scoring about 1980, why am I getting such poor framerates on many games?

Return to Castle Wolfentstein is the only game I can't complain about. I don't know what the tests are that they do when they review these cards, but I get over 100FPS when I am by myself. On a busy server playing on the open beach level (usually some 30+ players) I do go between 24-90 FPS, generally sitting around 60. That seems ok to me all things considered, plus I have stuff cranked up.

Jedi Outcast. According to the CPU scaling I should be seeing 80ish FPS. Using the same settings and doing the same test, the most I have been able to produce is more like 52 fps (a whopping 4 fps better than I was getting using my voodoo 5 without having updated my motherboard with a 4in1....ever, until I upgraded my card).

Worse still, UT and Rune (based on UT engine) now load amazingly slowly. I mean, minutes to load to the first screen. Once they're up, UT runs well, but Rune at 1024x 32 bit textures and everything else set conservatively (blob shadows and etc) produces an average of 40ish fps. Should I really be getting that low a framerate? As with every other card I've ever had (Voodoo 2, 3, and 5) turning things down, 32bits to 16 bits, 1024x to 800x etc, rarely increases the performance by more than 2 or 3 fps. This is also happening to my wife's system and she has an Intel based Dell that has nothing at all in common with my system.

Neverwinter Nights is plodding along for me at around 35-40 FPS and extremely choppy, I haven't reinstalled GTA3 yet but I'll probably repost on that one.

I'm actually scared to install older games like Heretic II or Soldier Of Fortune (Q2 engine), if it got like 40FPS I'd go nuts, and I don't want to do that.

Tonight I'm going to reinstall GTA3, QIIIA and a few other games I suppose and see what the deal is, but the one that really bugs me is Jedi Knight II.....maybe there's something I need to know?

As a side note, I have installed the 4in1 for my mobo, reinstalled direct x 8.1 and then my card drivers. I have patched all games I am running to their most current (except jedi which I ran stock per the tests done on anandtech's Sub $200 card roundup thingy, then patched and tested with some improvement, but the timedemo is different.)

Anyway, if anyone has any ideas what would cause this, fire me anything you've got, I'll try it all. I have checked my RAM, replaced my powersupply, and done everything that I can think of short of a new mobo and RAM (which I may do soon) but anything in the intermin would be helpful. Thanks much.

 

[GAZZA]

Like you said I also wouldn't be sure on what kind of score your supposed to be getting for your setup , the only way is after the benchmarks have run is to go to the 3dmark web site and check out comparable systems such as yours.

Remember now two systems are going to be the same , the only thing I can think of that may make a difference is in your video drivers as we know how flakey ATI drivers are/have been in the past . They seem to be getting better by all accounts but still need work to measure up to Nvidia's Detonator series of drivers .

Have you tried testing out other drivers for your video card ?

Have you also check your display's advance settings for things like VSync disabled ,etc ?

With newer games taking advantage of newer video card features it's no wonder our systems are starting to slow down in the FPS game , I noticed this when running Dungeon Seige only returning 15fps or so with a G-force 2 gts 64mb on a 900 Tbird, 256mb ram.

 

[rbV5]

Are you using OpenGL for UT and Rune? I run UT at 1600X1200 with everything cranked up with my 7500 in OpenGL. Your memory(PC133) is no doubt holding you back a little compared to my rig, but it should be better than that. GTA3 is a cranky game, but I found that if I disable AGP texturing(in dxdiag) It runs very nicely at 1024X768. Check for your FSAA settings, and other quality settings which maybe hampering your framerates.

I'm using the 6118 beta drivers btw, and my rig is clocked down to 1.4GHz.