Ati X1950 Pro Agp

[almighty]

My card has just arived and it installed with out a hitch, BUT it literaly performs the same as the Geforce 6600 it replaced Now while i was thinking about why i put it down to 2 thing's and they are :

1. The PSU, ATI recomened a 450w supply for the 1950 PRO and i think my PSU is rated at about 300w ( Not 100% sure though )
2. Memory, i have 2gig of RAM on the way and it will be here in the next few day's. Now because i have a new GPU im running every game maxed out at the moment with only 512mb of system RAM, will this cause the GPU to have a low framerate due to thrashing the system memory?

Any other possible cause's that i havent thought about??

 

[Skrying]

Did you remove your old card drives and install the latest drivers from the ATi website?

 

[almighty]

Did you remove your old card drives and install the latest drivers from the ATi website?

Yes i unistalled them from the control panel, removed the nvidia card, put in the new card then when my comp detected the new GPU i just inserted the driver disk. When that was done i download'd the lastest version of the drivers from the ATI site.

 

[digitalwanderer]

What are the rest of your system specs? What CPU?

 

[almighty]

What are the rest of your system specs? What CPU?

3ghz P4
1x120gb HDD
2xDVD-Drive's
512mb system RAM ( Soon to become 2gb )

 

[Ateo]

I would state that 512MB RAM is simply to little...a MAJOR bottleneck(swapping)
Wait and see what happens when you upgrade to more memory.

 

[Skrying]

Its a bottleneck, but he should certainly notice a difference.

Make sure there are no remaining Nvidia files, try driver cleaner or some such.

 

[digitalwanderer]

try driver cleaner or some such.

http://www.drivercleaner.net/

Seconded, I always use Spike's toy.

 

[Pete]

I dunno, a X1950P and a 3GHz P4 on a 300W PSU might be pushing it, though I say this just guessing that the X1950P draws more power than a 6800GT. If you're on a budget but find that the PSU's holding you back, Fry's/Outpost may still have the Antec Neo 550 for $50AR. It's not exactly silent at full load, according to SilentPCReview's review, but it's pretty quiet at normal loads.

I'd wait for the RAM before you start worrying and/or changing things. Windows is almost certainly thrashing with just 512MB in recent games. In the meantime, this seems like a perfect case for 3DMark as a ballpark measure of system health. Get '03 and maybe '05 to see if your scores match up with other X1950Ps (keeping in mind that your CPU will hold you back some).

What games are you playing that you haven't seen an improvement with? What resolution and AA/AF level are you using?

And don't forget to enable HQ AF.

 

[almighty]

Once again thanks for all your replys guys

Ive been out this morning and brought a new PSU, its made by trust and its rated at 570w , now in the past i tried looking for any powerlabels on the current PSU to give me any indication of the power rating and i could not find anything, until i fully removed it this morning. The old supply was rated at a horrible 250w, 50w lower then even i though it would be. Any how the new PSU is in and its fixed all my problem's as shown below

CS:Soruce : 1440x900 ( My montiors max res ), HDR on, 6XAA and everything else maxed out was clipping along at ~37FPS with my old 250w PSU. Now the same setting on my new PSU and its running at 73fps, so the PSU has made a big difference. I also expect another small performace increase when i upgrade the RAM

Once again thanks for all your help

Regards

almighty

 

[hey69]

well, isnt that strange pure on a powersuply you got different speeds??

 

[almighty]

well, isnt that strange pure on a powersuply you got different speeds??

Not really, i meen the box recomends a power supply of 450w with 30a on a 12v rail, and with my old supply it was getting less then 250w and only 12a. So you could say the card was getting less then half the power that it required to run at its fullest potentional. And then there the current rating of the old box. I brought the PC very cheaply so i supose all the compnets even the power supply were just cheap rubbish. It makes me wonder if it even starved my old Geforece 6600 of power aswel.

 

[see colon]

what games/benchmarks are you testing?

 

[almighty]

what games/benchmarks are you testing?

I only really play HL2:2 and CS:Source, im just getting into PC gaming hence the upgrades ive made

 

[karlotta]

not possible, for a PSU to speed up your framerate. Sounds to me that flacky XP finnaly hooked the drivers. you could pull it out(PSU) and try the old one to really see if you get double the frames with double the amps......depending on how many drivers you installed with your NVDA card, you still have that many regkeys in your registry, and it can be problematic for a card change. Sometimes XP doesnt "bite" with the first boot/reboots of a card change. Changing settings in the CCC can reset the display/driver to work. And how the AGP/chipset Gart is "hooking" up with the new card will make a huge difference. All of which could have happend with the mucking around on the MB with the replacement of power connecters/Bios changing.

 

[almighty]

not possible, for a PSU to speed up your framerate. Sounds to me that flacky XP finnaly hooked the drivers. you could pull it out(PSU) and try the old one to really see if you get double the frames with double the amps......depending on how many drivers you installed with your NVDA card, you still have that many regkeys in your registry, and it can be problematic for a card change. Sometimes XP doesnt "bite" with the first boot/reboots of a card change. Changing settings in the CCC can reset the display/driver to work. And how the AGP/chipset Gart is "hooking" up with the new card will make a huge difference. All of which could have happend with the mucking around on the MB with the replacement of power connecters/Bios changing.

Ah i see, so there could of been some old Nvidia drivers interfering with my new ATI one's and when i unplugged everything the PC fully locked onto the ATI one's improving the performance?

Cool

 

[see colon]

I only really play HL2:2 and CS:Source, im just getting into PC gaming hence the upgrades ive made

what kind of framerate were you seeing before, and what are you seeing now? also, what resolution are you playing at, and what settings (FSAA and AF)

 

[Zaphod]

not possible, for a PSU to speed up your framerate.

Sure it is. AFAIK, many cards requiring external power ever since the GeForce 5800 have circuitry severely underclocking the card to prevent damage to it or the system if the proper current is not detected. Just as they may boot without the external power but won't work at their potential.

 

[digitalwanderer]

Really? Interesting, I thought it was either enough and it ran or not enough and it wouldn't even boot.

 

[Zaphod]

Really? Interesting, I thought it was either enough and it ran or not enough and it wouldn't even boot.

Well, at least nVidia cards used to pop up a warning in the driver stating that the card had detected that it didn't have a sufficient power supply and had downclocked itself to prevent damage. Not sure how current A(TI/MD) cards (or post GF6800 cards with recent nVidia drivers for that matter) handles such issues as it's been a while since I had to troubleshoot these things.