Unbelievable performance problems!

[Trevortt]

No, i just suspect your not telling the whole truth. People like to big up their own hardware beyond it's own abilities sometimes

But, who am i to say

We'll these boards aren't here for me to 'big up' as you put it on my hardware.

BYE

[The Laughing Man]

Berren you said you used to run an SLi set up but have removed one card and are now running just a single GPU. I dunno what motherboard you're using, or at least didn't notice it in your sig, but some of the older Sli boards run the second GPU lane at half speed. Now that may or may not be right, I used to own an NForce 4 Sli board and I am sure I remember reading that the second PCIe lane runs at half speed.

Assuming that's so have you checked to make sure your GPU is plugged in the the correct PCIe slot. Also does the lack of graphical grunt only affect BF2?

[Berrern]

Update your gfx, sound & motherboard drivers, update PB manually, scan your pc for viruses, malware, adware & any other malicious code, defrag your hdd.

I've already done all of this - but I do have a question regarding gfx drivers. Seeing as I'm having an "aged" card - should I still use the very newest nVidia drivers? Or would I be better off with older ones? I'm currently using the same as I did when I was playing regularly about a year ago - IIRC it's the 93.9x something drivers.

It might be a resource issue. Next time this happens try ATL+TAB run task manager and see if your CPU is taken over by any processes and terminate the program . I've had a problem like this myself.

I already checked this, but there are no other resource-consuming processes running.

Berren you said you used to run an SLi set up but have removed one card and are now running just a single GPU. I dunno what motherboard you're using, or at least didn't notice it in your sig, but some of the older Sli boards run the second GPU lane at half speed. Now that may or may not be right, I used to own an NForce 4 Sli board and I am sure I remember reading that the second PCIe lane runs at half speed.

Assuming that's so have you checked to make sure your GPU is plugged in the the correct PCIe slot. Also does the lack of graphical grunt only affect BF2?

I didn't know about this at all! I have a DFI nForce 4 SLI-DR motherboard, and I'm not sure if it has such a "feature". I'll try to look into this (changing the slot should do the trick, no?).

The only game I'm playing is BF2, so I wouldn't know if it's only for BF2 or not. I'll try to run 3DMark and see what the results are.

Thanks for your posts.

[BPCrusher01]

That video driver was released in November 2006, so it's pretty old. That could be a reason. Try updating.

Didn't you say that you tried everything in the Community FAQ sticky though? This is one of the recommended fixes.

[Berrern]

Didn't you say that you tried everything in the Community FAQ sticky though? This is one of the recommended fixes.

Yes, I've tried the newest drivers, right after I formatted (about a month ago) - and after doing some reading, I saw that people had problems with old cards and new drivers - so I tried rolling back to the ones I used back in the days (when I had no problems). And yes, I did it thoroughly - with the use of DriverCleaner.

I couldn't see any difference, so I kept the old drivers.

[Metalbolt]

As long as the lane is still running at x8 there should be no problem. I have a crossfire board that runs each single PCIe slot at x8; I'm running an ATi 1600 pro and can run BF2 with all of the graphics settings on high. Your card is much faster than mine, so the lane speed should not be an issue.

[BPCrusher01]

PCIe should be running at x16 for full bandwidth.

[Metalbolt]

Yup, but older dual slot boards run each, when run in single slot mode, in x8. Anything below a 7900 or 1900 isn't using anything over x8 anyway.

[camper.]

Because a higher refresh rate puts a great strain on graphics cards as they have to draw the picture more times a second....

Vsync puts the frame rates at the screens refresh rate. So, it's forcing it to draw the picture more, hence lag.

So, before you go calling people out, do your research please Trevortt

Vsync will cause problems because there are only two frame buffers, not because of the refresh rate itself - meaning, if the in-game framerate can't hit/exceed the monitor's refresh rate, framerate is halved (i.e. the same buffer is sent to the DAC again until the other buffer is ready) target or quartered to meet the 15fps target and so on. Enabling triple buffering solves that somewhat.

And refresh rate is handled by the monitor's circuitry and also the video card's RAMDAC and more or less every single onboard DAC runs @ 400MHz from the crappiest integrated cards to the most l33t. So again, refresh rate depends really on two things alone - the sync rates of your monitor and the resolution you want to run it at.

In any case, high refresh rates are very good for your eyes and brain in general, and if you disable vsync, they'll work independently of your actual framerate (hence tearing occuring when the two rates are out of sync).

[Berrern]

PCIe should be running at x16 for full bandwidth.

I just had a look on my motherboard's manufacturer homepage, and downloaded the manual. What I had totally forgotten is that there's a physical jumper on the motherboard that has two settings; SLI and Normal.

When I removed the second card, I didn't change this!

The manual states that when in SLI mode, the PCIe ports will each have 8x bandwidth, while in Normal mode, they will have x16 (PCIe1) and x2 (PCIe2).

In other words, this means that my 7800GT is currently running at x8 speed, whereas if I change the jumper setting, it will run at x16!

I suppose this could be the answer? I'll try it first thing when I come home...!

One more thing. No-one really gave an extensive reply to my query about drivers. What is more advantegous for me, since I'm running an "old" card; to use the newest drivers, or use drivers that are slightly older?

[BPCrusher01]

That could be it.

Even though your card is "old", nVidia still routinely updates the Forceware for it. Plenty of people still game on "old" cards. The newest drivers usually contain fixes and optimizations. The newer drivers will be useful if you play any relatively new games. Although not a necessity, it sure won't hurt to use the newest certified (official release, non-Beta) driver. I recommend it.

[Berrern]

I changed the jumper settings, and updated the drivers - but it still doesn't help.

There is something restraining my system somewhere, but I can't figure it out

I have ordered a new case, that should arrive right over the weekend - which will finally allow me to use both my video cards again :yay:.
Hopefully this, as well as a full re-install of all hardware and another format will help solve the problem...

EDIT:
After a closer look in the BIOS, I noticed that my chipset temperature is 76 degrees celsius! I took a look inside my case, and the chipset-cooler isn't moving, it has simply stopped working.
Could this extreme temperature be a factor in the performance?
I've ordered a new fan, but I don't think it'll arrive until Monday/Tuesday.

[The_Mad_MoShah]

If the chipset is overheating this will cause problems, but it may not be the root cause.

[Trevortt]

What PSU have you got and how much power does is have?

[Natt]

76 degrees celsius is quite high, especially if the PC is just idling.
I think with a fault like that, your game would get steadily worse the longer you play and the PC would eventually reboot. I guess you will know when you replace the fan.
If that doesn't fix it, I would start looking at other causes, like soundcard drivers, bad memory, etc
If your hardware seems ok, update bios, reinstall and update OS and use all the latest drivers for your hardware.