Better performance? Nvidia 8800GTS

[Targonis]

Originally posted by Agrajag
Well, already the above is dramatically better. I still must have an issue as the scroll isn't silky smooth. It's smooth most of the way but a busy screen will cause it to stutter just a bit here and there. No more waves and pauses thought.

Have you turned on Vsync?

[Agrajag]

As you see above it was set to Force Off and now I changed it to Application Setting. Should it be on? It's an LCD if that matters.

[Willem]

Originally posted by Agrajag
I'm running 162.18 drivers (current).

Maybe you should try an older driver. I ran into a situation awhile back with ATI drivers where the latest version was causing all sorts of lag and stuttering in the late game. When I rolled back to an earlier version the problem went away. The newest drivers sometimes have bugs in them that get resolved in the next version.

[Agrajag]

Not a bad idea. Might also solve my one FSX problem.

[Pinchak]

i always have to chuckle when i see performance threads about civ4.

It is a low end game (systemwise). My 7 year old comp runs it just fine.

So what extra eye candy are all you with vista, radeon 9999, etc... seeing?

[Agrajag]

My Civ4 spits money out of the floppy drive.

As far as performance, that's my point. This is the LAST game I expected to see issues with.

[Wittlich]

Originally posted by Willem


Not true. The 8800 series requires much more than 400 watts. The Ultra at least needs a 640 watt supply. Even my 7950 requires more than 400.

Yes, the 8800 does need more than 400watts - BUT according to the 8800 box that I am reading from it states under Minimum System Requirements, and I quote: "A minimum 400W or greater system power supply (with 12V current rating of 26A)"

So yes, the "or greater" part would indicate more watts is better; but 400W is still listed as the minimum.

[Wiglaf]

Originally posted by Pinchak
i always have to chuckle when i see performance threads about civ4.

It is a low end game (systemwise). My 7 year old comp runs it just fine.

So what extra eye candy are all you with vista, radeon 9999, etc... seeing?

What computer from 2000 could run Civ4?

[Agrajag]

I checked with a top Nvidia engineer tonight (I'm in the game industry) and he stated that my 750w supply was WELL more than enough for that card.

It is possible that I got a defective card. I don't think that's it. I suspect it's most likely a system conflict. I don't think too many people have my motherboard. I may swap it out for a different one though I had high hopes for this one. Maybe it, like some of the ASUS boards, doesn't like my X-Fi card or maybe the 8800 doesn't like my X-Fi card in this motherboard. That's next up on the list of things to try.

I tried cooling the system way off. No luck there. Found out that SiSoft Sandra and the other util I had were mis-reading the temps by a long bit. The CPU is running at 50 degree Celcius which, according to Intel, is right on the mark.

Could be a case issue still as this is a much older server/tower case (has four decent fans but could use more ventilation I suspect).

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by Pinchak
i always have to chuckle when i see performance threads about civ4.

It is a low end game (systemwise). My 7 year old comp runs it just fine.

So what extra eye candy are all you with vista, radeon 9999, etc... seeing?

C&C3 at full settings, that's what.

[Targonis]

Originally posted by Agrajag
I checked with a top Nvidia engineer tonight (I'm in the game industry) and he stated that my 750w supply was WELL more than enough for that card.

It is possible that I got a defective card. I don't think that's it. I suspect it's most likely a system conflict. I don't think too many people have my motherboard. I may swap it out for a different one though I had high hopes for this one. Maybe it, like some of the ASUS boards, doesn't like my X-Fi card or maybe the 8800 doesn't like my X-Fi card in this motherboard. That's next up on the list of things to try.

I tried cooling the system way off. No luck there. Found out that SiSoft Sandra and the other util I had were mis-reading the temps by a long bit. The CPU is running at 50 degree Celcius which, according to Intel, is right on the mark.

Could be a case issue still as this is a much older server/tower case (has four decent fans but could use more ventilation I suspect).

I would move the X-Fi to another PCI slot and see if that does the trick. In most of the motherboards I have dealt with, rather than the BIOS trying to assign an unused IRQ to each PCI card, it has an IRQ that that slot shares with another slot or on-board device. The PCI slot that is closest or farthest away from the AGP slot for example normally shares the IRQ that is assigned to the AGP card. The next one may be shared with on-board audio or the ethernet, and so on.

Creative Labs also isn't known for their driver quality, so if it shares the IRQ with your video card, that may very well be your problem.


For the person who wonders what features may be missing on an older system, the GPU in my wife's laptop just can't handle having all the features turned on. The game RUNS, but really feels sluggish on her 3 year old laptop. If you don't have a DirectX 9 supporting video card(or GPU), that is the sort of thing you might run into.

2002 was when the Radeon 9700 was released, and it took until 2004 or so before DirectX 9 was really expected from all video cards, regardless of how low-end it was(and even then there were a LOT of DX 8.1 parts floating around in the budget sector).

We will see the same thing from DirectX 10, where it will take another 2-3 years before every card in every system sold supports DirectX 10 in hardware.

[Tattila the Hun]

Originally posted by Kuciwalker


C&C3 at full settings, that's what.

My 7600gt could do that... Try Supreme Commander with few thousand units...

[Kuciwalker]

1) resolution? 2) supreme commander was meh

[Willem]

Originally posted by Targonis
The PCI slot that is closest or farthest away from the AGP slot for example normally shares the IRQ that is assigned to the AGP card.

He doesn't have an AGP slot, the 8800 is a PCI-E card.

My guess is that it's simply a driver issue.

[Targonis]

Originally posted by Willem


He doesn't have an AGP slot, the 8800 is a PCI-E card.

My guess is that it's simply a driver issue.

It was an example of how two different slots, even different slot types can share the same IRQ. If it's AGP, PCI, or PCI Express, different slots will share the IRQ with either another slot or on-board device such as audio or Ethernet.