performance

[icksol]

hello my system is

500 watt power supply
2 gb of ram pc 3200
XFX nvidia geforce 7800 GS AGP
intel p4 @ 3.4ghz with HT Socket 478
300 gb harddrive

with those specs

dont you think i should be getting very good performance?

but when i run games such as Oblivion at settings like 1280x1024 with most of

the settings maxed it still dosent get that great of fps.

what can i do to tweak my system or is there any suggestions?

is it becuase of agp?

[werty316]

Oblivion is a big performance hog for video cards so I am not surprised you are getting slow gameplay even on a 7800GS. I have a 7800GTX and it runs slow at times with everything maxed out with HDR on and at 1280x1024 resolution. Try out the newest nVidia display drivers here (http://www.nvidia.com/object/winxp_2k_91.31.html) and see if that helps. You could also give the newest betas v91.33 (http://www.nzone.com/object/nzone_downloads_winxp_2k_32bit_91.33.html) a try too. Disabling HDR helps get more frames. You could also try some tweaks from TweakGuides here. (http://www.tweakguides.com/Oblivion_1.html)

[Kougar]

Yes, you should get good performance. But not good enough to play Oblivion at 1280x1024 with all the eye-candy...

I've come across a good explanation as to why the switch from AGP to PCIe... apparently there are indeed some AGP limitations for powerful cards, that your 7800GS is probably running into to some degree. PCIe will always have an edge for very high-end cards performance-wise. But as Werty said, even a full 7800GTX or 7900GT will have some problems...

For Oblivion tweaking, you might try this how-to guide, or google up some others :) http://www.tweakguides.com/Oblivion_1.html (http://www.tweakguides.com/Oblivion_1.html)

[werty316]

AGP is gonna bottleneck bandwidth big time.

[icksol]

well like also with other games it seems to not really be up to par what should i do?

[icksol]

is the answer overclockin? this is really disapointing. this cost alot of $$$ also.i can run most games at 1024x768 with all the eye candy turned on but not that great of fps. shouldnt my system be more than enough to run the games of today. i also installed the latest nvidia drivers. please somone help!

[Kougar]

is the answer overclockin? this is really disapointing. this cost alot of $$$ also.i can run most games at 1024x768 with all the eye candy turned on but not that great of fps. shouldnt my system be more than enough to run the games of today. i also installed the latest nvidia drivers. please somone help!

Well you're not going to like what I say, then! I'm fairly sure your 7800GS card you have is only a few steps above a x850XT PE graphics card in performance. I'm afraid it simply does not have as much power as you think it does.

If you want to be playing all the games with the full eye candy at 1280by1024 then you would need to upgrade your system to at least a full 7900GTX or x1900XT card. For 1024by768 I'd say a 7900GT or x1800XT minimum, as some games just need that kind of power. Because these are PCIe cards that'd mean building a completely new computer from the ground up... I have a very similar computer to your own with the same limitations, and that is why I finally decided to not buy a 7800GS card myself, it just isn't the best option. Instead I waited, and plan to be making the upgrade to a PCIe system within a few months with that money I didn't spend. Sorry I can't be of help to ya... :(

[xfxsupport]

Dear Icksol, Everyone is giving good advice and direction for you here. APG does have some limitations but, in the case of Oblivion this truly is one of the most graphically demanding games on the market at this time. Playing with all the bells and whistles will place huge demands upon your GPU and slow the performance. Please make sure to use the latest drivers from here: http://www.nvidia.com/content/drivers/drivers.asp and checking for any game patches that my smooth out some of the errors. Try lowering a few settings or as Werty316 suggested also turning off HDR lighting will improve the frame rate. Also you can make sure the video card is on its own power dongle and not sharing with any other high power demanding device like the harddrive. Please do not consider overclocking as you will not get that much improvement and can result in severely damaging the video card and voiding your warranty.

[werty316]

Oblivion takes a video card to its limits so don't feel bad that your 7800GS does not perform well. Its actually an alright card. I am sure if you try other games you won't have slow frames.

[icksol]

its not just oblivion its games like cod2 and bf2 also css it really makes me mad these games shouldnt be that difficult for this card.

[Scott]

http://www.bjorn3d.com/read.php?cID=872

You can read this review, you can see the card is faster than a 6800 Ultra but not alot faster. My system that I tested in is equal or a little faster than your system as far as CPU and drives go.

[ToXic_WaSTe]

Well it should be able to play CSS easy.... I have a 9800pro and i have no problem with CSS, so i vote hardware problems...

Lets start with the basics, is this a new problem or...?
Update the driver.
Run 3dmark and post, it might just be a hardware incompatibilty problem, even though that would be strange.

You shouldnt expect that great preformance from a AGP, but it should be able to run CSS.

[Kougar]

I've played HL2 Episode one with a 6800 Ultra, and it wasn't up to the task of playing with full eyecandy and just 2AA/4AF at 1280by768. Even at 1024by768 HL2.1 I couldn't play with the full enchilada.

If you are having problems with CS:S, then I'd like to ask exactly what AntiAliasing and Anisotropic Filtering settings you are trying to play it with, and at what resolution. I assume you enabled HDR for it too...

[ToXic_WaSTe]

I've played HL2 Episode one with a 6800 Ultra, and it wasn't up to the task of playing with full eyecandy and just 2AA/4AF at 1280by768. Even at 1024by768 HL2.1 I couldn't play with the full enchilada.

If you are having problems with CS:S, then I'd like to ask exactly what AntiAliasing and Anisotropic Filtering settings you are trying to play it with, and at what resolution. I assume you enabled HDR for it too...

Well you really cant expect it to run it fluid with all eye candy turned on, so just lower the settings... My card can play CS:S but now with eye candy... Maybe you need more RAM, works wonders with BF2 i would think...

--EDIT--
re-read your first post, probably not a ram problem, so just post your settings
--EDIT--

[werty316]

He has 2GB of ram so the 7800GS is what is holding him back. If you want high resolution gaming with AA and/or HDR you have to go with PCI-E.

[xfxsupport]

Dear Icksol,
All of this advice is very good in helping you resolve this issue. I have a few suggestions and they are going back to the basics when trouble shooting. You may have done a few of these but, I like to cover them just in case we missed something. The first is to make sure that your mainboard has the latest chipset drivers and BIOS.

Second, please make sure to have a clean install of the newest drivers from nVidia here: http://www.nvidia.com/content/drivers/drivers.asp . If necessary please use a driver cleaner in safe mode to clean the older drivers out before installing the newer ones. You can get a freeware version at www.drivercleaner.net --use the professional version (1.5Mb download)

Third please make sure to verify that your spyware and antivirus software is current and that your system is clean. Defragging and a disk cleanup can always help with file management and could not hurt here.

You have 2GB of RAM so automatic downloads through Windows updates should not hamper your performance but it is always good to turn it off when playing games.

Lastly please check your task manager and turn off any applications that are not needed when playing. I know some of these are basic but, I live by an old axiom and that is to start at the beginning.

Please keep us appraised of your situation.

[icksol]

all this help is really great but now i have run into yet another problem my friend and i were lanning and he got a pretty bad spyware virus and i am usually pretty good at keeping my system clean of that crap and stuff but now i have run adware and deleted the spyware but it just keeps coming back its so annoying any suggestions?

[werty316]

I had the same situation where an anti-virus app did delete it but the virus repappeared after a reboot, I had to do a format to get rid of it.

[Kougar]

all this help is really great but now i have run into yet another problem my friend and i were lanning and he got a pretty bad spyware virus and i am usually pretty good at keeping my system clean of that crap and stuff but now i have run adware and deleted the spyware but it just keeps coming back its so annoying any suggestions?

Go here and run the scan for viruses: http://housecall.trendmicro.com/ (http://housecall.trendmicro.com/)

Then download both of these and run them to remove the spyware. If you're lucky, this will be all you need to do. ;) Ad-Aware (http://www.lavasoftusa.com/software/adaware/) and Spybot Search & Destroy (http://www.safer-networking.org/en/index.html)

[ToXic_WaSTe]

all this help is really great but now i have run into yet another problem my friend and i were lanning and he got a pretty bad spyware virus and i am usually pretty good at keeping my system clean of that crap and stuff but now i have run adware and deleted the spyware but it just keeps coming back its so annoying any suggestions?

try these

EWIDO
AD-AWARE
SPYBOT S&D
As antivirus and antimalware try NOD32, low on cpu and gets more then any other antivirus

Also try a registry cleaner, i like registry mechanic, but it has limited funktions unless you buy it... :(

P.s Run these programs in Safemode... remember always FUll system scan:P hope it helps...

[werty316]

NOD32 is da best but I think he is screwed and has to do a format like nerve and it sounds like they both suffered the same problem

http://www.bjorn3d.com/forum/showthread.php?t=9155