ATI 6850 poor performance in older games

[mcdreamy]

I recently upgraded from a 9800GT 512MB DX10 card to a 6850 1GB DX11 card. I saw a slight improvement when playing BF3 but noticed horrible stuttering after a few minutes of gameplay. After downgrading my Catalyst drivers 6-7 times from 12.6 to 11.11, I found that the game now runs just as well as it did on my old card (which is just fine, but not nearly as smooth as it initially ran with the newest drivers). If anyone has any advice for that, I would really appreciate it. However, I noticed that it is a common issue and different version drivers worked for different people.

My main issue is when trying to play Call of Duty 1 (yes, I know). My old card would run the game with a constant, steady 333 fps. With my new card, I am stuck between 120-200 fps and it continues to jump from range to range. I have messed with CCC and made sure everything is application controlled and set to performance, but no luck. I am running Windows 7 x64 Ultimate.

 

[unksol]

Check your temperatures the card maybe overheating and throttling.

 

[Gman450]

What are the rest of your PC specs?

 

[geekapproved]

What cpu do you have and what resolution are you playing at??

 

[mcdreamy]

My GPU after I just launched BF3 is 52-55C, usually 44C ish when not in game. As far as BF3 is concerned, I believe it just may be the drivers because it runs fine on old drivers. CoD1 is not nearly as demanding.

Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 Wolfdale @ 3.0GHz LGA 775
ARCTIC COOLING Freezer 7 Pro Rev.2 92mm Fluid Dynamic CPU
G.SKILL 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 1066 (PC2 8500)
ASUS P5Q Pro LGA 775 Intel P45 ATX Intel Motherboard
Antec earthwatts EA430 430W Continuous Power ATX12V v2.0


I run BF3 on 1440x900 [native] and CoD1 1280x1024

 

[jessterman21]

12.7 Beta is working great for my HD 6870 in Win7 64. Also use VSync with COD1.

Also, the greatest revelation I've had this year concerning PC gaming is MSI Afterburner's OSD framerate-cap. DL Afterburner and enable OSD - then add your games one by one - then cap framerate at 60 or whatever your refresh rate is. It's as close to Adaptive Vsync as you can get without a Kepler card.

 

[geekapproved]

You should play all your games at the native resolution. 1280x1024 is putting a lot of load on your cpu, higher resolution will put more load on the gpu.

 

[mcdreamy]

I'll have to try 12.7, but as for Vsync, I am not interested in running any of the CoD games with Vsync. There are advantages to running them at 125, 250, and 333 fps. My old 9800GT card had no problem running CoD1 at 333 all the time or CoD4 at 250 constant.

Another issue I am noticing is I can no longer minimize BF3 and continue to have smooth gameplay. If I minimize and maximize the game, I get continuous stuttering until I completely restart the game. Again, it was never an issue with my much older 9800GT.


@geekapproved

CoD1 does not support widescreen resolutions as it came out in 2003. I have ran that game at various resolutions, even much higher ones successfully with the 9800GT and even back in the day with my 7800GT. I've even tried running it at 800x600 and I continue to get the same varied FPS [125-200, but not anywhere close to a consistent 333]

My main concern is that this relatively new card does not run the game any better than my old 7800GT with ~125 constant FPS. Does this have anything to do with the fact that the 6850 is a DX11 card? Afterall, the 9800GT was a DX10.

 

[geekapproved]

Then there's a problem with the computer because a 6850 is more than twice as fast as a 9800GT.

 

[mcdreamy]

I am able to run CoD4 with a constant 250 fps. It is common that people have issues running old games, specifically CoD1, and some of the newest video cards. I believe it is mostly with ATI cards but I didn't know if there was a fix for this or any other ideas..

 

[Gman450]

Could be a bottleneck issue.
Check your CPU usage via task manager while playing any of the games.