6600GT performance problem

[DiGitalThor]

I recently bought a new system. Unfortunately, the boost in gaming performance I was expecting is basically non-existent. My 6600GT is being outperformed by my friends 9600XT and completely dominated by my roommates 6800. Its barely giving me any performance over my old 9700pro.

Heres my specs...

AMD 64 3200+
MSI 6600GT 128mb SLi
1 gig of ram
350watt antec PSU

Please help me out. I cant stand the thought of blowing all the money on this computer for nothing.

 

[PUTALE]

it's understandable that 6800 outperforms your 6600gt. Now the peformance of 6600gt should be much better than the 9600xt (http://www6.tomshardware.com/2005/07/05/vga_charts_vii/page4.html)

did you have the latest driver installed? what's your setting of the game? 6600gt has only 128bit memory interface so if the setting is too high, you may notice the slow performance compare to the 256bit card(such as 9700 and 6800)

 

[luvhuffer]

Which version driver are you using? I found that my 6600GT benches best with the 7.7.7.7 drivers. What kind of performance issues are you having? Are you OCing the card?

 

[Vaerilis]

Try installing the latest drivers (81.98) from nVidia, it's probably an old driver that's giving you a hard time.
Just to see how low the performance is, please run a benchmark in 3DMark 2003 or 2005 and post the results here.

 

[DiGitalThor]

I'm running the 81.98 drivers and even tried Omega drivers to no avail. I have been running my games such as BF2 and CS:S on low settings and still getting crappy FPS. I just found a thread on the boards where a guy had almost the exact same system and same problem- his was drivers, but I've tried that. He said HE ended up pushing 160 FPS on CS:S, whereas I'm in the neighborhood of 40. Could it be I'm not getting enough wattage from my 350w? Anyways I'll run a 3dmark test as soon as I get a chance. Thanks for the help so far.

 

[Vaerilis]

Wattage is not an issue, depending on your power supply, the card either will or will not run in 3D mode (yours does).

 

[flavin]

what type of motherboard do u have?

 

[DiGitalThor]

The motherboard is an Abit AN8-SLi

Heres the results from 3dmark:

Game Tests 3D mark score: 7232
GT1- Wings of fury: 149.5 FPS
GT2- Battle of proxycon: 58.9 FPS
GT3- Trolls Lair: 46.5 FPS
GT4- Mother Nature: 45.8 FPS

CPU Tests CPU Score: 487
CPU test 1: 54.1 FPS
CPU test 2: 8.7 FPS

Feature Tests
Fill Rate (Single-Texturing) 1642.1 MTexels/s
Fill Rate (Multi-Texturing) 3792.0 MTexels/s
Vertex Shader: 20.7 FPS
Pixel Shader 2.0: 119.2 FPS
Ragtroll: 30.8 FPS

Sound Tests
No sounds: 36.8 FPS
24 sounds: 29.1 FPS
60 sounds: N/A

 

[luvhuffer]

Those scores are low. especially the CPU. You should compare your results against some others that are similarly equipt to see where you SHOULD be. I'm looking at one AMD64 at 2.2GHz with a 6600GT and a gig of RAM and his score is over 16000. Something needs to be tweaked on your system to get you up to speed. Your card amy not be good, but if so it's not because it's a 6600GT but maybe a problem with that particular card.

 

[DiGitalThor]

BTW, this is 3Dmark 03. Dunno if that makes a difference.

 

[luvhuffer]

I guessed that from the names of the tests, and based what I said on it being Mark '03 scores. Which core is on your 3200?

 

[PUTALE]

it makes a huge difference

the cpu is definitely way too low. it seems like your cpu is not running at the right speed.

 

[DiGitalThor]

I'm not sure what core I have. What can I do/check to see what might be wrong with the CPU?

 

[luvhuffer]

Download Everest. open the program and hit motherboard/cpu. It should list the core as cpu alias. something like Winchester (that 3200 runs at 2.2 GHz) or Venice (that 3200 runs at 2.0GHz) etc. Then look and see what the current speed the CPU is running at. That will be listed under CPU type as well. Then look down and find the original clock. That will shoew the default speed for that core.

 

[MaXtor]

Just to share a bit of knowledge, sorry if this is not perfectly acurate, I'm only writting what I remember from well whatever. The 6600GT should definately out preform the 9600XT, the 6600GT has the same Core speed but the memory is 200MHz more than the 9600XT and the 9600XT has four less pipelines than your card. Um I believe that the 6800 has four more pipelines and the colordepth is much better than your 6600GT, so it is understandable.

My guess is that the problem lies either in your CPU, its too slow for some apparent reason. Or you have a problem with your card... Good luck...

 

[DiGitalThor]

Its a venice. As for the speed...

CPU Type: AMD Athlon 64, 1005 MHz (5 x 201)

It also says...

Max clock: 3000 MHz
Current Clock: 1810 MHz

 

[DiGitalThor]

Problem fixed... went into the bios and discovered I was in fail-safe mode... I have no idea why. I switched it to optimized mode. The processor is now operating at 2000 MHz and the "Current clock" is at 2010. My 3Dmark was up to a little over 8000, my processor at ~850. My framerates are now way higher. Thanks for all of your help guys.

 

[MaXtor]

I'm glad that you were able to fix your problem. That 3Dmark is up a lot more now than it was before, good.