Hey guys,

Recently I've added 4gb of G.Skill DDR2 memory to my system in hopes to boost my performance in games but it's not doing the trick, I thought only having 2gb of memory was my problem but I guess it wasn't. My next guess is my video card. Currently I'm using this: EVGA 640-P2-N825-AR GeForce 8800GTS 640MB 320-bit GDDR3 PCI Express x16 HDCP Ready SLI Supported Video Card. Is their a card I can upgrade to that will dramatically increase my performance in games? If not then I have no idea why I'm having fps issues in games. I get fps issues in World of Warcraft, Crysis, and Call of Duty 4. I also would like to upgrade possibly in preparation for Dead Space and the new Doom games. Thanks for the help!

Quote: Originally Posted by NiSm0 Hey guys, Recently I've added 4gb of G.Skill DDR2 memory to my system in hopes to boost my performance in games but it's not doing the trick, I thought only having 2gb of memory was my problem but I guess it wasn't. My next guess is my video card. Currently I'm using this: EVGA 640-P2-N825-AR GeForce 8800GTS 640MB 320-bit GDDR3 PCI Express x16 HDCP Ready SLI Supported Video Card. Is their a card I can upgrade to that will dramatically increase my performance in games? If not then I have no idea why I'm having fps issues in games. I get fps issues in World of Warcraft, Crysis, and Call of Duty 4. I also would like to upgrade possibly in preparation for Dead Space and the new Doom games. Thanks for the help!

List your entire system specs, don't know what is bottlenecking your PC.

And, unless you're running a 64 bit os you aren't using all of that RAM.

the 8800 GTS 640 is still a decent card, but you havent listed any FPS scaores you are getting in games for us to really tell you if the card is bad or not.

WOW with Vsync on you will only see 60FPS

Crysis and COD4 i wouldnt expect to see high FPS in either of those games.

as for cards to upgrade to..

depends on your budget.

im currently running a ATI 4870 with a ATI 4850 ( just CF-ed them)
i havent tested my FPS in WOW.

in TF2, with just the 4870 i would get 130 FPS. crossfired i get 170ish FPS.

either one of those cards will be good, and if you have a CF mobo, then i would recommend for $300 budget to get 2x 4850's. for high budget the 4870x2 card is out now.

for Nvisia cards.. i had a 9800 GT card for a bit was not overly impressed with it coming from a 8800 GTS 320.
only got slightly better FPS with the 9800 GT

i had a 9800GX2 that was massive FPS increase. i just didnt want to pay the $650 i paid when i bought it, so i returned it. now tho, you can pick the card up for $275ish. other than the fact this card is discontinued, and is a old gen card, it is still a monster powerhouse card that holds it own against todays high end cards.

other Nvidia cards woth buying are the GT260 and GT280.
the 260 being the low end and the 280 the high end.

personally havent had one to test, but the 280 is king right now, only beaten by the 4870X2 or 2x 4870 in crossfire.
a single 4870 does perform on par with the GT280, and in most tests does stomp the GT260. But the 280 does out score teh 4870 in most cases.

the $850 is on par with the GT260, and msot cases comes in on par or just under the 260.

there is a ton of benchies out there that will lean towards the ATI card or the Nvidia card. just pick which ever one makes you feel good.

i know there are other people here who can provide better details than i can.

my opion,

if i had a budget of roughly $300.

for a single card solution i would buy a 9800GX2
for a CF mobo, i would pick up 2x 4850's and crossfire

I am going to agree with Master Yunk here in that we need way more information on your computer if you want us to help you out. Beyond the internal hardware we also really need to know the monitor size as well and what resolution you are playing these games at and what OS you are running.

Since you are talking about getting low frame rates posting actual numbers along with the settings that you are using would also help us to determine if those are about in line with what you should be getting on your current setup. FRAPS is a great little utility that can help you get in game frame rates if you didnt already know about it. As just a heads up though Crysis is notorious for giving people really low frame rates though WoW really shouldnt be a problem on most hardware (depending on your in game graphics settings).

My fault, here is the whole system:

Newegg.com - EVGA 122-CK-NF68-A1 LGA 775 NVIDIA nForce 680i SLI ATX Intel Motherboard

Newegg.com - EVGA 640-P2-N825-AR GeForce 8800GTS 640MB 320-bit GDDR3 PCI Express x16 HDCP Ready SLI Supported Video Card

Newegg.com - PC Power & Cooling Silencer 750 Quad (Black) EPS12V 750W Power Supply 100 - 240 V UL, ULC, CE, CB, RoHS

Newegg.com - Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 Kentsfield 2.4GHz 2 x 4MB L2 Cache LGA 775 Processor

Newegg.com - G.SKILL 4GB (4 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory - Retail

Newegg.com - Thermalright Ultra-120 Extreme CPU Cooler

Windows Vista Ultimate 32

I also have a 22" Samsung monitor and I play at 1680x1050 resolution.


The main game I play is WOW and my fps while raiding gets down in the single digits, the game also like freezes slightly in Shattrath and big cities. I play with all settings maxed and terrain distance half-3/4 visible. I don't have any components overclocked, my memory timing is 4-4-4-11 @2.1v.

do you have the v-sync disabled in the video settings in WOW?

basicly, check your FPS in WOW, if it goes above 60 FPS it is turned off.

if the FPS is that bad to cause it to freeze up some in busy areas, i would turn it back on. this will limit your FPS to 60, but that is by far playable on any system.

with my old 8800GTS 320, i wasnt getting extremly great FPS, but they werent bad either.
when i did have Vsync off, i did notice alot of stuttering in busy areas, but nothing ever froze up on me.

on my new cards, i get great FPS, but i leave Vsync on. ill test it out tonight what i get in CF with my 4870 and 4850

Quote: Originally Posted by NiSm0 My fault, here is the whole system: [snip] The main game I play is WOW and my fps while raiding gets down in the single digits, the game also like freezes slightly in Shattrath and big cities. I play with all settings maxed and terrain distance half-3/4 visible. I don't have any components overclocked, my memory timing is 4-4-4-11 @2.1v.

That sounds much more like a network issue than a graphics card issue ... certainly not a RAM issue, though Vista eats more RAM than XP.

Still ... single digits during raiding parties or in high-traffic areas tells me the servers might be too heavy ... from what I know of WoW (which admittedly isn't that much) the graphics aren't too intensive.

Check your firewall settings ... check your internet connection speed ... are you on cable? What time of day is this happening? Etceteras.

-godling

Well as far as networking is concerned I have a standard 3meg dsl connection bandwidth varies between 2500 and 3200kbps. I run Open DNS, that helped me with my ping a lot. Also some of my registry settings are changed for prioritizing certain things in wow. My ping in game is like 60-90ms. I do run with Vsync on. My fps is 35-60 in Ironforge (60 being vsync limit). In raids it gets down to like 6 to 7. And I notice severe issues / actual slight freezes at certain times. Also I have a lot of fps issues in Crysis on medium settings. It feels like I'm being held back by something but I'm just not sure.

Quote: Originally Posted by NiSm0 Well as far as networking is concerned I have a standard 3meg dsl connection bandwidth varies between 2500 and 3200kbps. I run Open DNS, that helped me with my ping a lot. Also some of my registry settings are changed for prioritizing certain things in wow. My ping in game is like 60-90ms. I do run with Vsync on. My fps is 35-60 in Ironforge (60 being vsync limit). In raids it gets down to like 6 to 7. And I notice severe issues / actual slight freezes at certain times. Also I have a lot of fps issues in Crysis on medium settings. It feels like I'm being held back by something but I'm just not sure.

Well, Crysis holds down lots of cards unless you want to drop $500 on a 280 ...

Unless something drastically changed in WoW, I have a hard time believing that the 8800GTS is your problem ...

On the other hand, you've got the SLi motherboard, you could pick up another 8800GTS and see if that solves the problem. Certainly cheaper than picking up a $300 card to upgrade your performance, and 2 8800GTS in SLi should be quite capable of handling whatever you're playing.

-godling

I'd check the video card temperature. With a system like that, I find it hard to believe that it would have trouble with WoW... My best guess would be that the video chip is overheating, possibly due to the heatsink not being seated properly.

If you need a program to check temps with, try PCWizard or Everest.

Report back with the temp. If it's much above 55°C when idle, then you've likely got a problem.

Check temps during gaming as well, especially when it starts to freeze.

Quote: Originally Posted by godling Well, Crysis holds down lots of cards unless you want to drop $500 on a 280 ... Unless something drastically changed in WoW, I have a hard time believing that the 8800GTS is your problem ... On the other hand, you've got the SLi motherboard, you could pick up another 8800GTS and see if that solves the problem. Certainly cheaper than picking up a $300 card to upgrade your performance, and 2 8800GTS in SLi should be quite capable of handling whatever you're playing. -godling

Not really worth it, as SLi only shows gains at 1680x1050 and above, and at that res, the 320mb of frame buffer quickly becomes saturated.

I agree with the general consensus of the thread though, something is amiss. The GTS 320mb is hardly cutting edge but it should be capable of running modern games pretty well, other than Crysis, which kills everything.

Video card is running at 56c idle right now, it gets between 62-67c in WoW.

The other thing to think about is that a lot of nvidia chips have been having problems lately, I dont know if this may be one of the cards that is or not but something that might be worth looking into. It does seem that with those specs you should have no problems with WoW or most other games. Try just turning down the graphics settings to see if that really is what is holding you back. If you see a good increase with lower settings then it may truely be time to upgrade your graphics card.

You shouldn't have any difficulty with WoW. The game looks like arse.

It's also unlikely that the card is affected by Nvidia's recent troubles as it's a G80 core, which were released a while ago.

Quote: Originally Posted by NiSm0 Video card is running at 56c idle right now, it gets between 62-67c in WoW.

I couldn't say for sure if that's your problem but it is definitely running a bit warm. My 6600 GT runs 59°C idle and 70°C load or better. It has always been mildly laggy, I'm just too cheap to do anything about it.

If some other members think that's too hot then you might consider a custom cooler.

Something like this would probably work great:

Newegg.com - ZALMAN VF1000 2 Ball VGA Cooler - VGA Cooling

However, don't take my word for it and buy it, expecting results. Just guessing.

you could download evga's precision and bump the fan speed up.

my system runs the same ram(4-4-4-10) and a samsung 223b.using my bfg 8800gts oc 640, i could run crysis on xp with high settings and tweaked ini file.

what you might want to do is run memtest on the ram and see if there is an issue.at one point gskill was having issues with bad sticks.

yes that would be a great idea.....