Curse

Witchblade · Aug 28, 2008, 12:51 AM // 00:51

Heya

Just bought a couple thingies and made a new comp a while ago, after some tests and tring a few games, i noticed average/bad perfs on most of em, this being really not satisfying at all imo.

Antec P182
Intel Core 2 Duo E8400
Asus P5Q Pro
2x1 Gb DDR2 PC8500
PSU Corsair HX 620W
2xSapphire Radeon HD4870
2xSamsung Spinpoint F1 SATA 1Tb
Creative SB X-Fi Xtreme Gamer
Asus DRW-2014S1T
Win XP 32Bit SP2
(Screen is Iiyama Prolite B2403WS)

Most of the time i get to play without AA/AF or at low level.

Some of the games i tried and what happened:

-The Witcher: even at reduced resoltion, no AA/AF, massive stuttering, game being far from playable. The Only alternative i found is Crossfire Off+D3D Overrider to get Vsync+3Buffering. The game now runs ok even at AA2x, but still, could be more fluid, even at non-native res.

-Mass Effect: FPS are 50-ish, not really fluid as well, AA2x at best, dont have the feel of having a recent rig and a second GPU.

-Crysis (lol y): Playable (did the 2 first levels, prolly get crappy later) 40 ish fps, no AA/AF ofc at 1920x1200, does not make u wanna play much.

-CoD4: Finished the game, a couple lil stutter here and there, 's pretty good at 1920x1200 mid AF/2xAA

-HGL (doesnt rlly count, this game is a mix of bench+trial imo) Lotsa slowdown in some areas, mostly in streets and some passageways in station where fps go down to ~35 easily, happens randomly: massive fps drop like ~2-5FPS a few secs after eack kill for a while. Settings: mix of High and Med, no very high AA/AF low again

-Devil May Cry 4: Runs almost perfect (from what i played) AA4x/AF8x

-Lost Planet: Cant keep it at 60FPS, drop at 35-40 if a huge boss shows up or to much snow effects around, no AA here either

-GRID: Looks awful at 2xAA

A big stutter show up somtimes (once per race+- )

-GW: Without VSync it's a flickering mess, fixed with it but when tiurning around it's far from fluid, blurry and annoying. The D3D+CF off trick fixes this a bit (Seems unstable though, alt-tab can make it crash)

Enough Crappy Perfs:

So, i ran some benches as well

3DMark03: 89k
3DMark06: 11k-ish
3DMark06 (Cf ON): 14-15k only

Notes:

-No O/C, every bios stuff being on auto, except Speedstep being turned off, the 333x9 and 1066ram speed entered manually.
-Win Xp 32 Bit, SP2, uptodate except SP3
-Bios updated to 1104 thru EZflash Utility
-Chipset driver uptodate (900.1009)
-Direct X uptodate (9.0C ofc)
-Catalyst Driver 8.8 Official (all this was the same when i was running 8.7 or 8.6+fix at that time)
-Crossfire active (used the Shader Test to check) displayed as disabled in GpuZ, but seems to be a common bug So,

with all this i'd like to know about my next move

I know the P45 is 16x -> 8x/8x with Cf setups but still, i cant believe the perf drop can be that enormous, especially with Witcher, where turning it off makes it playable (supposed to be improved cf in 8.8 Cats, duh)

Atm, i have the X48 change in mind but i could use some pointers before changing something in there (i'd rather skip the part where i have to get rid of those cards for a single gpu)
Also maybe i could use some O/C for the E8400, i guess that could reduce a possible bottleneck for 3Dm scores, but that wont fix my perfs i guess.

Thx for helping me fixing this nuisance

(/hopes Rahja is around

)

edit: fixed, noscript ruined me post ^_^

amutsch · Aug 28, 2008, 02:09 AM // 02:09

I would check your power draw, that is a fairly small power supply for that hardware setup. Your vid cards might have scaled back due to insufficient power.

Tamuril elansar · Aug 28, 2008, 09:15 PM // 21:15

i think the PSU isn't strong enough. however it could also be that your to cards are next together and they get to hot, what are the actual temps of your cards?

Witchblade · Aug 28, 2008, 09:32 PM // 21:32

temps are 50-60°C-ish, i'm using the dynamic tweak at 45%