Finally got my X800 XL + PSU and........

[imported_Chubz]

......both Battlefield 2 and Half Life 2 run the same as they did on my 9800 PRO.

Wait, no.. Battlefield 2 now not only runs at the same FPS as my 9800 PRO, but at the same time, EVERY TIME I look around the game stutters uncontrollably.

It is literally unplayable - there is NO WAY to play it now.

Same for Half-Life 2. Stuttering galore....

The power supply that I installed was a 400-watt Antec btw.

The rig that I'm running this on is:
AMD Athlon 2500+ XP
768MB RAM
ATI Radeon X800 XL

Great.... now every game runs like dog. I can't play anything. It was a waste of money and a waste of time. $400 wasted on crap that doesn't perform worth a dime... heh.

Sorry, this just sucks. :cry: Does anyone have any idea what could be wrong?

[lil_jimmy_norton]

Your CPU.

[imported_Chubz]

Your CPU.

Wow... that's nice to know. That means a new motherboard..... jesus f*** christ. :laugh:

Oh well, I'm out of money so that option is gone.

[lil_jimmy_norton]

IMO, you'd have been better off spending the money on new MOBO & CPU rather than the X800XL. Live and learn though.

[Snake101]

Yeah mobo and CPU did wonders for me.

[imported_Chubz]

IMO, you'd have been better off spending the money on new MOBO & CPU rather than the X800XL. Live and learn though.

Yeah, probably... I just fail to see why it runs fine on a 9800 PRO , just with low FPS as normal.

Then with a better card it is so bad it is nearly unplayable... I fail to see why RAM and CPU should be such a big deal when it comes to powering video cards, but oh well.

Yeah mobo and CPU did wonders for me.

Did yours used to stutter as well?

[Snake101]

Get a Neo2-F with a Socket 939 Athlon 64 3000+
220 bucks :)

EDIT: Yes mine used to stutter like mad with high settings! After getting the new CPU+mobo I can play on high with antialiasing with ZERO lag whatsoever.

[DrunkenPirate]

You should notice some improvement but with your old set-up of a 9800pro and an XP2500 they were pretty evenly paired whereas now you are bottlenecking your CPU big time.
Your GFX card is a good one and wants to go faster but your CPU simply cannot process each frame and send it back to the video card to be rendered fast enough. However your RAM may also be a prime suspect too.

If you had a 64bit 3200 and a 9800pro and then upgraded to an X800XL you would have seen the difference within seconds of firing up a game.

[imported_Chubz]

You should notice some improvement but with your old set-up of a 9800pro and an XP2500 they were pretty evenly paired whereas now you are bottlenecking your CPU big time.
Your GFX card is a good one and wants to go faster but your CPU simply cannot process each frame and send it back to the video card to be rendered fast enough. However your RAM may also be a prime suspect too.

If you had a 64bit 3200 and a 9800pro and then upgraded to an X800XL you would have seen the difference within seconds of firing up a game.

Yeah, I had a feeling it would be that way.

Would an AMD Athlon 2800+ XP with 1 GB RAM power the card well enough so that it would at least be playable???? :hmm:

[lil_jimmy_norton]

Playable maybe, good, no?

[PopeBenedictXIV]

Hey man, I have a P4 2.6 ghz and upgraded from 9800 pro to 800xl.
Ive noticed a pretty good difference, but at first i was kinda feelin like you do now. I didnt notice a big difference and was kinda pissed. Then I got to tweakin around w/ the drivers and with Ram and also other programs. I completely uninstalled norton anti-virus ram hog. It worked well, I have ati 5.6 driver cuz i dont like 5.7 driver though, messes up the terrain details and water in game.
I recently put in some corsair xms 3200 ram. Now i have 1.5 gig ram. No difference there really. I still notice some lag every now and then in the game even though my settings are pretty high in the game. Next upgrade for me is MOBO and CPU. Prolly a Asus something and 3200+ athlon...

Im very curious to what exactly your video settings are in the game.

Check this site out. It helped me in deciding why I got the x800xl.

http://hardware.gamespot.com/Story-ST--2147-x-x-x&body_pagenum=1

[PopeBenedictXIV]

Now that i recall, I notice my video card is doin pretty good, but when i have lag its mostly due to the server now. I get about average 50fps when moving around in any map. and about 70-80 doing anything else. Before that and with the setting I have now, I would be at like 4 FPS with my 9800 pro. No kidding cuz I tried it.
Chubz.. what kinda ram do you have and what speed, a gig would help tremendously for the effects, especially for loading maps. Fast hard drives help for that as well..

[DrunkenPirate]

Upgrading from an XP2500to an XP2800 will yeild minimal improvements and not really financially feasable.
A gig of good RAM will benefit any system though but it's starting to become evident that 1 gig is no longer enough for todays games.

[Eddy01741]

Drivers, man drivers. Have you made sure you have uninstalled the 9800Pro Drivers, and then installed the new catalyst drivers. And after you install the drivers, update them to cat 5.7s online, if they are still 5.6. And if that doesn't make it work, get a sticka ram. A CPU Oced to 2ghz that's AMD should definetly do it, that's the equivelent to a 3000+ or a 3200+ depending on the sockets, it's definetly not the CPU, might be the MOBO tho.

[Leviathan]

Yeah, that CPU is your bottleneck, no question about it. You could overclock it (they normally reach 3200+ (2.2GHz) without any problem), but I'm afraid you won't truly get everything out of your card unless you upgrade your CPU.

I went from a 9800 Pro to a X800XL and a 3700+ SD and it pretty much doubled my gaming performance.

Some more bad news. . .on these new motherboards, CPUs, and video cards on the market right now, 400-watts may not be enough to handle everything. Antec is a good brand, so depending on the model, I'd say it likely will, but I can't make any guarantee.