Overclocking huge problems with 8800gts 320

here is my system to start out with ----
Nvidia 7950gt 512mb ----
2GB corsair XMS DDR @ 400mhz ----
amd athlon x2 3800+ ----
Antec neo he430 PSU ----
My motherboard is a so so ECS, but has done alright for me.

Ok so after some research I go out and buy the 8800gts 320 made by evga.

I get it home, install the drivers, load up crysis and world of warcraft, and im not seeing any differences from the 7950.

In WoW, in a populated city on 1280x1024 medium/high settings im getting under 30fps at times.

Pardon my language but WTF? lol

I couldnt imagine anything in my system bottlenecking it that much, does anyone have any ideas?



Also, I have tried turning up my graphics settings to full and the res to 1600x1200, and im getting the same framerate, so this tells me its something elsewhere in my system limiting me?

Ive also tried lowering the res down to 1024x786 with no increase in framerate.

 

No, thats about right. You have less RAM and a much lower clockspeed, with only a 1 generation gap. You've bought a midrange card to replace a high end last gen card. You'll get only slightly better performance. An example is the 7600GT vs 6800 Ultra. The 7600 is next gen but not much more powerful.

Sorry man.

 

wow is more cpu limited... but if you try to disable vsync you might see higher avg fps.

have you got crysis? i'm sure if you have crysis, you can see the difference between 7950 and 8800 running in windows vista since 8800 supports dx10 and meant to show more physic/particle effects... but since crysis still hasn't released the driver you have to run crysis isn't optimised yet and this could be a factor that you get low fps...

AMD X2 3800+ and DDR 400Mhz setup isn't really fast... core2duo plus DDR2 800Mhz or above is the way to go for gaming rig. tho you should see the difference between 7950 and 8800 in most games in either system!!

Harry

 

Yes I do have the crysis demo, which chugs along at about the same speed. Im installing windows vista as we speak, so I can try it out with DX10, but I literally cant see increases in these other games.

If it stays like this I may just have to return it and wait until I can upgrade my whole pc, but from what others online have been telling me my system now should be able to handle that card.

Do you guys think WoW could really be being limited by an x2 3800?

 

if you compare 8800GTS 320MB to 7950GX2, 8800GTS is slower; but if you compare it to 7950GT, i think 8800GTS should be faster!! another thing is, 320MB shouldn't be much slower than 8800GTS 640MB in many games (see http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/video/display/msi8800gts-640.html), tho it is known that 8800GTS 320MB has driver bugs that it performs poorly at high resolution + high quality settings. (this is said to be solved in the lastest nvidia driver but there is no review using this driver to prove this yet)

Harry

 

myself I use core2duo e6300 @ 2.8Ghz with DDR2 800Mhz CL4 RAM plus 7600GT gets very good gaming experience at 1280x1024. I could even enable 2x AA. but when it comes to a large group raiding, busy scenery will slow my computer down a bit...

if you can overclock your cpu, may be you can confirm if it's ur cpu limiting ur 8800GTS in wow... but i don't wow is a good game to show the gpu performance since it's more cpu limited...

Harry

 

WoW runs like **** on the 8 series really... games like fear demonstrate the cards power much better imo.

 

Does anyone have a comparison chart between those cards ie. 6xxx-7xxx-8xxx range so we can see the performance increase?
wonder if that would be a good database to have here on bit.

 

Definitely. It'll be interesting to compare just how much of an improvement each generation was over the last, so that we can spot lemon architectures quickly (Imagine having such a chart, then adding the Geforce 5 to it and thinking 'Actually this aint so hot'

 

Try this one (http://www.digit-life.com/articles2/digest3d/index0707.html)

Harry

 

These are the exact same type of results I was seeing when I figured the upgrade would be worth it.

So im pretty sure something is bottlenecking my system now.

In all the charts the 8800gts is almost double the performance in most settings.


So does anyone know what the next logical thing to test would be?

I dont want to have to return this card today already.

 

Also, MY last card was a 7950gt 512mb.

I know from other peoples systems with LESS hardware that wow should run flawlessly on even the 7950, so I cant fathom how my8800 is still chugging along.

Im considering getting a Core2duo and a new mobo/ram.

Would I see a big performance jump from DDR to DDR2?

 

Try reinstall your mainboard and graphic drivers to see if any improvement made.

If not, I guess it'd be your RAM limiting your gaming experience. DDR2 800Mhz gives nearly double the speed of DDR 400Mhz...

CPU shouldn't give much bottle neck with 8800 cards (see http://firingsquad.com/hardware/geforce_8800_gtx_gts_core_2_performance/page5.asp & http://firingsquad.com/hardware/geforce_8800_gtx_gts_amd_cpu_scaling/page10.asp)

Harry

 

7950GT 512MB is a very fast graphic card. What games do you find it slow? May be you should look at that particular game to decide which card is better to go for...

8800GTS 320MB isn't really a good choice if you have a 7950GT tbh.

Harry

 

Well im mainly playing World of warcraft, but now im playing Bioshock and Crysis lately.

The problem is, even the 7950 was not running WoW over 30fps in cities, which is rediculous, since that card is supposed to be so fast.

Im thinking I may need a new core2duo and ddr2 ram

 

check if your PCI-E is running at 16x... (www.cpuid.com) if your PCI-E is running at 1x, dat could be a problem...

Harry

 

PCI express link is running @ 16x with max of 16x

 

Is your 3dmark score similar to the others?

Are you running the lastest driver (mainboard chipset and graphic card)?

Harry

 

Well I just installed vista to do some testing so i will let you know. My old 3dmark06 scores were around 6k if i remember correctly so im gonna compare that next.

im almost ready to go out and buy a new AM2 setup with ddr2 and a nice processor and see how my numbers turn out.

 

i would recommend to go for core2duo system if you need to get new mainboard, cpu and ram anyway...

good luck with your benchmarking in vista!!

Harry