Bottleneck possibly?

[ptsigas666]

Hello everyone!

ill start with the specs of my system

MoTHERboARD: Asus A8r mvp32 deluxe xpress3200

CPU: AMD Athlon 4400x2 @ 2.2 GHZ 90nm

MEMORY: OCZ 4000 Platinum XTC 2GB

GPU: ATI Radeon HD 4770 512MB (not Oc'd)

PSU: Seasonic 600W

OS: Winxp 64 fully up-to-date alongside all drivers for my hardware , including the CPU

Direct x 9C with the latest Redist

no Virus' on the pc, no crashes either.


basically my problem is performance issues with games. after i bought the new radeon certain games dont run as smooth as they used to. HL2 runs slower than it did with the 1900 Radeon i have. Mass Effect 1 runs poorly on the LOWEST settings possible (including resolutions!). even CS:S has taken a beating!

im quite sure the issue is with the card. i mean i have it fully uptodate - de-dusted and made sure there was no problem with the port/card itself.

yet i believe the card is too fast for the rest of the pc to keep up. now im thinking of installing win7 with hope that dx 10 will change all of this. i mean HL 2 ...is 6 years old almost...this pc should be blowing it out of the water but its not.

i played some other older games and they ran fine.

any input? - im going to go ahead with installing win7 - to see what happens...but before i do what would you all suggest?

i mean even HL2 on the lowest possible details runs 'ok' - with the older cards it rocks no problems AT all!

thanks for your time!

 

[Deleted member 217926]

It is true that is not the most powerful computer and the 4770 is a decent card but I have to think the main problem is XP x64. The 64 bit version of XP was buggy at best and it sounds to me like maybe the ATI driver is having issues. I doubt you are bottlenecking much.

 

[jonpaul37]

did you completely remove the drivers for the 1900 prior to installing the 4770? if not, i would suggest removing all drivers via the CCC utility, then booting up in safe mode and use driver sweeper to remove any remaining drivers, then boot back up normally with no drivers and install 10.2 for the 4770.

 

[swifty_morgan]

First thing I need to say is that XP-64 is NOT buggy. Don't know why someone would say that. Going from an "older" card to a newer one has hurt some games for me also on occasion. Driver issues. Somehow I think the people who write drivers for these new cards forget that some of us like to play older games.

 

[moody89]

XP64 is nowhere near as stable as Win7 x64 or even Vista x64. I guess as the technology has become more commonplace the support for 64-bit architecture has also become better. Furthermore Vista and Win7 were designed with 64bit in mind, whereas XP64 was more of an afterthought. See what happens with Win 7 when you have installed it. Either way it does sound like a driver issue.

 

[enzo matrix]

That isn't how "bottlenecking" works. It is more a deficit of a certain part that isn't allowing the rest of the system to perform aswell as it could with a better version of that part. There is always a "bottleneck". I hate using that word. Having a better card and keeping the same CPU should not reduce performance or put more load on the CPU. I agree that it could be a driver issue with the xp 64-bit driver. Also, just to double check, you did install the driver for window xp 64-bit from ATI's website for the 4770?

 

[ptsigas666]

hey wow thats quick responses hehehe

oh yes i did use DCPRO to remove ALL ati drivers in safe mode before installing the new ones.


i UsedDcpro
restarted to safemode
installed latest 2010 drivers
then restarted again


to no luck. im now in Win7 and im pretty winxp64 was the issue. BUT i just finished installing all drivers and updating my OS , win7 Ult 64bit is installed and fully updated!

now dont worry im not expecting crysis 2043xwhatever at 100+fps lol ..but with hope i can ATLEAST play hl2 again not with 40 fps 🙁 , with the older cards i was playing that game at 100+!! maxxxed out - no jokes!

OH and i do NOT OC this pc.

but hey ill get back to you guys and see what happens with this. only slight issue- um...chipset drivers dont seem like win7 (as expected) gonna find them somewhere on the net! checked ASUS.com but to no avail!

thanks for the responses and ill get back to yall asap!

 

[kyosho]

Just a thought for you. Try going into CCC and locking in the stock frequencies. It it's a driver/ccc issue it may not be "ramping up the throttle" from idle. Also make sure your pci express power plug is firmly seated in the card.

 

[geofelt]

I suspect that your 2gb of ram may be part of the problem. Ram is cheap, can you install 4gb?
http://www.corsair.com/_appnotes/an804_gaming_performance_analysis.pdf

 

[ptsigas666]

i can - but im saving cashola up for the new pc hehe - i already bought the MOBO next week im picking up a CPU. so really no point to add more ram to this. once that gaming system is up im simply gonna use this pc for storage/work.

update on the drivers issues though i installed WIN7 Ult 64bit and fixed everything! ofcourse i cant lash out at crysis with 100+fps on AA+AAA+AF maxxed out lol BUT games such as cs, bioshock 1 ran WAY BETTER

pretty darn sure it was the drivers for winxp64. so for now im pretty happy!

i also did make sure its not a physical issue (ie dust on the gpu fan etc) - no problems found thankfully!

thanks for all the help.

take are everyone! glad to have joined TH!

 

[ptsigas666]

oh yeah Bioshock 2 was running garbage - but that game unfortunately is a little screwy on its own (been all over many many forums!)

ugh for some reason 2k games decided to force VSYNC - bah! im still using the kick arse CRT! WooohoO!!!