ATI Radeon x1900xt performance issues

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towely

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I agree with what most people here have said. You've upgraded a bit unevenly. You've dumped a rollys royce engine into a honda transmission.
 

sojrner

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I agree with what most people here have said. You've upgraded a bit unevenly. You've dumped a rollys royce engine into a honda transmission.

:roll: not anywhere close to a good analogy. The two car makers are not even in the same world. What you said makes no sense in this context. A socket 939/am2 is hardly the equivalent of a Rolls, nor is the 754 a Honda. One simple example: Even were it possible to mate up the Rolls engine w/ a Honda transmission (any engine-tranny combo or were you thinking of one in particular? there are many models) which it is not, if the transmission is not built to handle the engine it would simply destroy it. His computer is not broken. If you meant that a socket upgrade would make it a "luxury model" instead of the "budget model" then you are also wrong as a luxury car != performance car. You can make a pretty sweet 'rod out of a Honda that would toast any Rolls.

I could go on about how bad an analogy this is, but you get the idea. If you want to talk like you know about computers and/or cars you had better actually know about them.

His system is fine. If you upgrade a system for games, you do it to play said games and not to get the bungholio trophy. His will do exactly that.
 

fishboi

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Slightly off the topic - someone here mentioned FEAR Combat being free and online for multiplayer. Have you guys tried it out? What's the catch. Why would they provide a free online game at full version? Thanks. Dont want to get too much off the topic.
 

sojrner

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WolfensteinET was free, full and very fun.

FEAR is a great game, and that they released it free could be for many reasons. Publisher/Developer dispute (trying to spite each other), could be to get ppl hooked that have not bought it so that they will want to play the single player (more $ that way), or it simply could be that they want to make the gamers happy and be able to play w/ those that did not have the game. (like at a LAN)

I would hope it is for the last reason, but regardless... it is free w/ no strings. Free is good. Makes me like Monolith stuff even more :D
 

fishboi

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Great thanks sojrner. I thought there may be an advertising revenue stream invovled (maybe in the game itself). To be determined. Either way, THATS GREAT! Will get it tonight!
 

Eurasianman

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Slightly off the topic - someone here mentioned FEAR Combat being free and online for multiplayer. Have you guys tried it out? What's the catch. Why would they provide a free online game at full version? Thanks. Dont want to get too much off the topic.

It's great! The single player... not bad. The multiplayer, awesome! No catch! Just have a valid e-mail address and viola! If you have an XBOX 360, wait for it to come out on that unless you have a newer system. I have yet to try it on my new rig due to graphics card not in yet, but I'll let you know this, my old rig:

AMD 64 3200 @ 2.2GHz w/Zalman CNPS7000B
ASUS K8N-E Deluxe
2 GB Corsair XMS 400 @ 2-3-3-6 @ 2.7V
PNY GeForce 6800 (stock) w/ NV5 Silencer
WD 250GB
WD 200GB
Seagate 80GB
Sony CD-RW
NEC DVD-RW DL
NEC Floppy Drive
Thermaltake Shark Case

plays it somewhat fine. Graphics is on medium and in intense gun battles, my fps drop to 20... not too bad. Even without gun fights, I get b/w 20 to 60 fps. Oh yea, it's being played at 1024x768 w/ V-Sync (can't stand having the little line across the screen when playing... some of you will know what I'm referring to, others... sorry to say, GeForce 6800 128DDR AGP has met it's end life :( ) and soft shadows is enabled (this will kill fps, but oh well. i don't care... others will )Anyways, for free, you can't beat that! It's very addictive!

Make note: computer gaming and girlfriends do not go together! Choose one or the other. That or find a girl that loves games or learn to sacrifice game time for women :p
 

kamiri

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afaik socket 754 procs are all single channel, regardless of what the mobo "supports". Only w/ 939/940 (and newer) did amd have the dual channel controller in the proc that I know of.

look here on wikipedia.

Socket 754 is a budget-minded socket, for use with AMD Athlon 64 or Sempron processors. It differs from Socket 939 in several areas:

* support for a single channel memory controller (64-bits wide) with maximum of 3 DIMMs (no dual channel support)
* lower HyperTransport speed (800 MHz Bi-Directional, 16 bit data path, up and downstream)
* lower effective data bandwidth (9.6 GB/s)
* lower motherboard manufacturing costs

oh, and reading the product page on your mobo, while it says dual channel on the top list, in the details it mentions nothing about it. Things that make you go hmmmm... ;)

I never have faith a source like Wikepedia and therefore I was prepared to go home and get my manual for this motherboard so that I could find out for sure who is right. However, I did some research on the web and it appears that even though Asus claims that this mobo supports dual channel memory, the socket 754 processors are in fact not capable of this technology. I have always loved Asus mobos, but it does piss me off that Asus would promote their products with false advertisement and probably fitting that I had ordered a Gigabyte mobo for my E6600 the day before I originally replied to this post and found out about this load of crap, lol.

Anyway, just wanted to give credit where it is due and let everyone know that Sojrner was right.
 

sojrner

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you know, you will go far in life. Not many times on this forum that graciousness comes through. While I am not wanting to be right, and really do not care if others know who is right so much as knowing what is right. Still, I appreciate that post.

Incidentally, I also like Asus boards and wonder if there is some actual truth in what they say on their product spec list. "supports dual channel ram" (while misleading to us) could actually be true and meant to remove confusion to upgrader n00bs that wonder if ram that is sold as "dual channel" will work.

follow it this way: If ram is sold as "dual channel" ddr (many sticks are) and the mobo says that "dual channel" is supported then logic says they work together. Of course if the socket does not use that dual channel it can still "support" it. ;)

not really a lie, and probably simplifies things for hardware neophytes. To those of us that acutally know what "dual channel" means it can lead to agrivation. :evil:
 

fishboi

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I havent run serious diagnostics on my PC yet, and I will over the weekend, but I think that my MSI x1900xt isnt running as well as it should in certain games. When the beginnning videos of the games start (the into), it doesnt seem to be running 100% smoothly. If I look closely, it looks like the frames a skipping a little bit. Say for instand AOE3. The movie jumps if you look very closely.

Is this normal? It seems like the x1900xt should be great for a game like that. Game play is fine. Just the movies!

Thanks.
 

fishboi

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I havent run serious diagnostics on my PC yet, and I will over the weekend, but I think that my MSI x1900xt isnt running as well as it should in certain games. When the beginnning videos of the games start (the into), it doesnt seem to be running 100% smoothly. If I look closely, it looks like the frames a skipping a little bit. Say for instand AOE3. The movie jumps if you look very closely.

Is this normal? It seems like the x1900xt should be great for a game like that. Game play is fine. Just the movies!

Thanks.
 

sojrner

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agreed. videos are not a big deal.

@ th OP: I have not played aoe3 other then the demo but there are so many different codecs that could have been used for that video. Most of them do not even run on the gpu but rather the cpu so it is not really a 1900 thing at all. That is more of a system issue, but not really worth worrying about IMO, just as stranger said.
 

fishboi

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Hey thanks for your thoughts. Interesting points. I installed Nero that came with the package, and it has a video player too. I noticed that the quality in the DVDs I watched was REALLY poor. I uninstalled it, and reinstalled Windows Player 10, and it works great now.

Using the Cinema Now package too, it doesnt look that great. Windows 10 appears to be the best. Any thoughts on this.

I dont really know much about the video side of things. I just want to get my vids to run at TOP quality without any jumping/lagging/skipping. Let me know what I can do/what I should do/what I am doing wrong.

I'm sure I can get the vids and DVDs to run much better. I have a nation 1240X1028 19 inch screen (VX922) with this MSI 1900xt combo. It should be amazing, and I dont think its as great as I thought it would be. My little dell laptop with 64MB v-card has crisper DVD images.

Thanks.
 

sojrner

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hmm... If I remember correctly powerDVD is one of the few players that actually use the gpu... dunno though. I do not really watch much on my comp, and when I do I use the ati player. I have a 9700pro AIW that still gets me a license for the ati mmc so I have that installed. I have used nero though and the player just looks like a$$ compared to anything else I have seen. mediaplayer (as you said) is better.

try powerDVD though, should work well for you.
 

burntham77

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I read that the new Hitman game has some serious performance issues, so it may not be your system. You may just need to wait for a patch.
 

fishboi

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It's really hard to describe what I'm seeing, but my eye is unusually prone to seeing things like this as I am sensitive to video quality. Say for instance in CivCity - Rome, when they pan quickly across the city in the into preview, the video seems to skip a beat as it pans, appearing to be jumping from frame to frame, and my eye can actually see that little jump. When the movements are slower, you cannot notice it that much. It does make a difference and seeing though I spent a good buck on the system, I just want to get it right. If it's a driver issue and I can just fix it, then I should do so immediately right?!

The other thing is watching DVDs. The image just doesnt look 100% right. Maybe the contrast, maybe the settings, I dunno! On my laptop, it looks great. Now I'm not sure if it's because it's a 15 inch screen or what.

If this is what it is then so be it, but I was hoping my video quality would be better. Hopefully its a driver issue or a game settings issue that I can hopefully fix. The DVD setup is a mystery.

If I record a .avi and post it, will you be able to see what I'm talking about, or will your own systems handle the vids differently?
 

sojrner

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Like I said earlier, it could be the software you are using to play the movie. Nero sucks in that regard and powerDVD does well and the ati file player is great. mediaplayer is ok too.

could be you are running too many things in the background. If it is stuttering the next thing beyond better software is lack of resources. (ram, cpu power etc) Try shutting everything down and running it and see if the stuttering stops. The quality issue is more software related than resources probably.
 

fishboi

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Hi Guys,

I ran PCMark and 3DMark on my PC last night. I was using the free version. As I am not using the pay service (just not worth it for one run at $40 if you dont use it professionally), I cannot check to see how my system stacks up against others. I hit Google and the forumz, and got some data points. If those points prove true, then I think I am going to be very disappointed with the new system. Could you please take a look at my scores and let me know what you think? Please post yours too so others coming to this page can learn too. THANKS!

PCMark = 6493
3DMark = 4936

The list of detailed components are on this page:
http://forumz.tomshardware.com/hardware/modules.php?name=Forums&fi...viewtop

-Antec Performance One P180B Mid-Tower
-Antec NeoPower NeoHE 550 550W
-Asus P5W DH Deluxe
-Conroe E6600
-OCZ Platinum Revision 2, 2GB, DDR2 800
-MSI RX1900XT-VT2D512E Radeon X1900XT 512MB GDDR3
-Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 ST3320620AS 320GB
-Lite-On SHM-165H6S Dual Layer DVD±RW Writer
-ViewSonic VX922 19" LCD Monitor
-Microsoft Wireless Optical Desktop Elite Mac/Win PS2/USB
 

sojrner

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k man, not really sure what you are doing now. Hijacking a thread is one thing as long as the OP was done and your point is on track, which you were fine. But now you have jumped from one thing to the next and I am just not understanding what is going on here... maybe I'm slow, who knows ;)

First you were wondering about FEAR combat, and then about video playback quality. Now you are talking about 3dmark scores (I assume it is 3dmark '06?) What are you after here? You have yet to say if any of the suggestions for the video playback have worked...

Not wanting to come off as a jerk here, just wondering what is going on... like to know if your video playback issues are better, worse or the same. I was just re-reading about your problem and one thing I never thought about is that this:
when they pan quickly across the city in the into preview, the video seems to skip a beat as it pans, appearing to be jumping from frame to frame, and my eye can actually see that little jump. When the movements are slower, you cannot notice it that much.
sounds alot like frame tearing, which can be fixed by turning on vsynch (vertical synchronization) in the driver settings. The wierdness is that if it truly is a pre-rendered "video" and not a movie rendered in real-time in the game engine then the vsynch should not affect it. Play w/ that setting though and see.

Don't remember what my 'mark scores have been, but I think my 3dmark '06 was around 5500. (oc'd video card and cpu at that time) Again, not sure and will check on it in a few days to see. Remember that 3dMark is very dependent on the video card, and only '06 even used a score from teh cpu and yet it is a small portion of that score.