Video card poor FPS

[larryiam]

Ok i ran 3D Mark 05 and i could only get 7 FPS. I kno my ATI Radeon Visionteck X1300 PCI will do alot better i have the latest drivers installed and everything. Any advice on what to do?

 

[Obi-Wan Jerkobi]

Well I've been prone to getting about 15fps at a time in '05 with just my PNY8500GT, 3DMark works the crap out of a video card and HEAVILY benchmarks it. It never goes easy on the GPU so of course you'll get low frame rates. Also you've got your current RAM speed which is DDR333 (PC2700) which is also a bottleneck (or would be if you had a more powerful card)...and then there's IDE which is like less than half as fast as SATA. Trust me, I know this stuff too, I even borrowed an XFX 7950GT from my friend and I still got crap speeds on my Pentium 4 system because of the old motherboard and slow ram and slow hard drive.

 

[larryiam]

well its like its freezing when i run the iTunes visualizer. what is a ok GPU benckmark?

 

[Obi-Wan Jerkobi]

I can't run the visualizer on my Pentium 4 either. And it has a 2.8 Ghz P4, 2GB of DDR, and a BFG 6800GT, it makes me freeze too.

For PCI GPU's I use 3DMark03 because I guess these little PCI cards are better for older games and barely any new ones.

 

[larryiam]

OOOOOHHH ok will download that and post back. Thanks man!!

 

[larryiam]

ok your right. but now i got another problem ran first test on 3D mark 03 and got 30-121FPS ok started loading second test then random shutdown/restart. so i pulled the cover off felt the GPU it wasn't hot cheched everything all was fine so what in sam hill happened?
CPU doesn't get over 50C under load. ran a video encoding software for 3hrs. straight and not a single restart

 

[Obi-Wan Jerkobi]

Keep the cover open and try it again. Might as well try again before I come up with something.

 

[larryiam]

ok trying now. will post back results.

 

[larryiam]

Did the same thing on second test. NOTHING was hot i checked. Im puzzled!

 

[Obi-Wan Jerkobi]

Maybe it might be power usage...the X1300 might take too much power from the PSU when running that test...but you said that it didn't happen in 3DMark05.

 

[larryiam]

But i didn't run all the tests. i ran the first test and my computer got jerky and unresponsive and only 7 FPS so i would just exit it. Yea my Beast Has a whopping 250w PSU in it but its the first time its ever happened to though. So got any ideas or suggestions?

 

[Tmagic650]

Your motherboard and CPU larryiam... Old/obsolete?

 

[larryiam]

Yes i kno but still doesn't answer my question. When i ran 3dmark03 the first test i got 30-139 FPS. It starts the second test and about 75% loaded and shuts off. What could be the problem? Ive not had any problems with my computer shutting off before. I am in the process of upgrading but got to save my money up.

 

[Obi-Wan Jerkobi]

I entered in your specs into a power supply calculator and it came out 284 watts under load!:suspiciou

Do you have a spare power supply to test this theory out. I suspect the power supply shutting off from overusage.

 

[larryiam]

Well im in the process of getting This one but untill then no sadly. Guess i will have to wait. What PSU calculator did you use?

 

[Obi-Wan Jerkobi]

extreme.outervision.com/psucalculatorlite.jsp
Put in all your specs including USB devices and when that's done click Calculate.

 

[larryiam]

Well the most i got was 244W. Under load. that is even OC to 2.4GHz. So im Puzzled

 

[Obi-Wan Jerkobi]

244W is still too much, as a normal PSU will only have ~80% efficiency (meaning it turns 80% of 250W into usable power for the PC) and the longer you have the PSU, the less efficient it becomes, so I'd estimate a PSU used for 4-5 years would have about 50-65% efficiency, which means your PSU might only be making ~225W of usable power.

 

[larryiam]

Well its more like 3 years. But oh i see the problem. Well i am getting a new PSU as soon as they give me my money back from that coolmax junk i returned. That thermaltake will be enough won't it?

 

[Obi-Wan Jerkobi]

For what you're doing yeah the thermaltake will be enough. You don't plan on doing any serious gaming so yeah.

 

[larryiam]

No i don't. when i upgrade to my new system it still will be ok? the only thing i will be doing is encoding video. NO gaming. That what i have my Ps2 for. lol

 

[Obi-Wan Jerkobi]

430w was enough to power my system until I got a 9600GT so yeah.

 

[larryiam]

Sweet thanks!