Radeon HD 5770 being outperformed by GeForce 7900gs?

I just bought a radeon 5770 that runs sc2 worse than my old geforce 7900 gs..

I have a dell dimension 9150:
Intel pentium D 940 dual core processor
motherboard= DXP051
psu = 600 W by OCZ streamx
ram= 2 gig DDR2 533 MHZ

running windows 7 x86.

Question is, what is the bottleneck? I know other people are playing this game on ultra with this card and i can barely play it on medium settings... could it be the driver compatibility or something? because I do hear ati drivers have issues with windows 7

Here is your problem.
The 5770 is even stronger than the 7900gs, and your processor can't handle it.
I'd expect performance to be about similar, but it's conceivable that it could be worse.

oh ok. thanx for response. Do you think if I get a video card that is not pci express 2.0 it will run better since i have support for pci express 1.0? I find it hard to believe its my processor since i looked at minimus specs for sc2 and the video card and i meet both criteria. i dont want to waste any more money on cards i cant run. thanx

I would suggest running benchmarks to compare the two cards, something like futuremark would be good. The 5770 is definitely a much faster card than the 7900 but your CPU is going to be a bottle neck for the 5770.

alright now i understand my cpu is bottleneck. do you think overclocking it will help? say to 4.2 ghz. i have never done it before but i am willing to learn and do it. or is it my fsb speed that is shooting me in the foot

Upgrade your CPU to at least a Intel Celeron E3300. and a new motherboard and your 5770 will performed much better. At newegg the intel celeron e3300 review talks about a 5770, playing games at ultra settings with ease.

Your cpu is holding you back big time

I had a Intel penitum d 805, ran games ok, but upgrading to a intel e3300, a big difference.

if i was gonna buy a new video card, psu, motherboard and cpu i would of tried building a new computer. all i wanted to do was by a descent gpu so i can play sc2. Is there a strong enough gpu that is compatible with my processor to run sc2 on medium to high settings? thanx for the feedback

I never said buy a new PSU, just buy a new CPU and MB or buy a new cpu, the intel e3300. There is no point in downgrading. Your cpu is a low to mid computer, i had a intel pentium d 805, it was good, but using a card like a 5770 is going to cause trouble.

On another note, i use my PNY 9800gt 512mb green edition card with my intel pentium d 805 for months, no bottleneck at all.

Also bare in mind, using XP plays games about 30-40% faster better over win7 depending on your cpu or overall in general imo.
In your case , you have a 5770, your best choices are to use XP sp3 professional, or buy a new cpu, the intel celeron e3330 being the best choice.

oh i meant to say i bought a new psu for the video card anyways i will try running it on windows xp sp3 and see if i get any results. thanks alot for the idea

Am I the only one that thinks that this could be driver issues. I understand that the "bottleneck" issue is just one that we love to hears ourselves recite over and over, "bottleneck, bottleneck, bottleneck, ad naseum.

The fact remains that if the CPU was "bottlenecking" the ATI video card, the performance should at least be equivalent to the 7900GT.

The only actual bottleneck seems to me would occur if the video card was not not capable of handling the total output from the CPU. IE, an 7300GS hooked up to an overclocked E8400.

He's hit a ceiling for how well the game can perform, and the ceiling is there because of his CPU, not his GPU. If he upgraded the CPU, he would get the benefits of the powerful GPU. This is certainly a bottleneck case.

Yes, the combined might of several other forum posters have concluded that it must be a bottlenecking issue.

I did mention in my post that I'd expect performance to be the same.
However, the OP only said "worse", which could be well within the margin of error.
In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if the 5770 performed a few FPS worse consistently, as I said, its not a long shot the the 5770 could be harder on the CPU.


Either way, SC2 isn't very demanding graphically, and is CPU intensive, and an pentium D just won't cut it no matter what card/driver issues the OP may have.
If it turns out that the OP replaces the processor to something decent along with a 5770, then we'll consider software issues.

So the dell bios is where i overclock? I thought I download a program that helps me do it? Also, if so can i put a different bios that is overclockable? And what does OP mean? really sorry for the dumb questions but I am very new at this, as you guys can see.
Also i noticed in my system the gpu is running directx 10 even though when i put dxdiag it says i have directx 11?

Ode to the Semantics of Slang.......

Well, only in some geek vernacular. A classic use of the slang term "bottleneck" would be on a multi-lane highway, that has had one or more lanes closed. Traffic is then "bottlenecked" as the vehicles must merge into perhaps the one passable lane, stifling traffic flow, and causing a backup. My interpretation of the CPU issue is quite different, to draw the traffic analog, the CPU is the generator of traffic flow, and it is merely generating insufficient flow.

So, obviously you are correct, that if the CPU were upgraded then more information would be delivered to the GPU. My argument is with the (IMO) misapplication of the term "bottleneck", it isn't altogether appropriate when applied to the situation at hand.

If I might offer this alternative, "the Pentium D CPU in this case, has insufficient "throughput", or if you prefer, "insufficient output".

@HeWentToJareds

OK. So I can't contribute anything to this thread.. but just wanted to say i cracked up when i saw the user name :haha:

But the OP asked for a bottleneck .
OP means original post or poster.

No, its where you would overclock if Dell were more kindhearted.

Because your GPU doesn't support DX11.

The HD 5770 is a DirectX 11 card

I'm Going to Shorten your Name.........

Shall I call you "He", or "Jared"...?

Well then, I suppose the customer is always right, bottleneck it is.

OK, to put this into perspective, you have Windows 7 (32 bit ?) installed in this old Dell?

If you do, you could use the " Windows Experience Index" to compare relative Video card performance.

Did you remove the old Nvidia driver and reboot before you installed the ATI driver? There might be a problem if bits and pieces of the old Nvidia driver are still floating around in there somewhere.

just download to xp and see if you get better performance. if not, all you need is to upgrade your cpu.