New video card underperforming.

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Hi all,

A couple of days ago I bought a 6800GS to replace my outdated 5700FX. However, I am getting terrible FPS rates in games, by all means far lower than I should be according to all the benchmarks I've found online.

In Half-Life 2, for example, my average is around 20-30, when running on 1280x1024 (my LCD's native resolution), with all graphics options on High, and AA and AF turned off. All the benchmarks I've found show around 60-70 average on these settings for this card (and even the vanlla 6800).

I should also note that lowering graphical settings in the game / application itself doesn't always improve performance for me. It's as if the card doesn't recognize the changes that I've made.

Same thing is happening with Oblivion, which I bought a few days ago. Out of five times that I load the game up, without changing any graphical settings, four will give me low frame rates and one will give me good frame rates. Lowering the graphical settings doesn't help at all, most of the time.

My specs:

Pentium 4 3.0Ghz
1 gig RAM
500W power supply (18a on the +12v rail - should be enough)
Intel D865Perl motherboard

My graphics drivers are updated and I recently defragged. I wanted to update my motherboard chipset drivers, but couldn't find any for download at the Intel site for my chipset (North Bridge: Intel Springdale i865PE; South Bridge: Intel 82801EB ICH5).

Does anyone know what could be causing this? I'd appreciate any help.
 
Hi and and welcome to TechSpot.

Your graphic problems (lag) maybe do to settings to high. Try running at medium settings if you don't like your fps.

I think you need over a gig of ram to run bf2 on high.

Best Of Luck
 
Thanks for your response and the welcome, CrossFire. The thing is, the games automatically detect my optimal settings and they are always set to high. And they still perform as they do - the inconsistency is what worries me because the few times the games run well show me that my card is certainly capable of running them on high frame rates with a gig of RAM... it's just that for some reason it only does it once every X number of times. It feels like there's something more 'sinister' wrong here.

I wish I had the funds to test your suggestion by going out and buying more RAM, but I don't...
 
The problem is not with the RAM from 1 gb to 2gb ram there is not much difference i hear then of 512mb ram to 1gb, the problem maybe some issue with a virus or spyware, disk cleanup ur system, scan it then try the games again.
 
What kind of cooling do you have? It sounds like the CPU or the GPU is automatically slowing down due to thermal cut-off. btw, 18A is minimum for the 12V rail IMO (but this depends on the #of HDD, DVD/CD Roms and fans you have).

Can you post us your voltages, temps and fan rpms?
 
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