Windows System Performance, expectations and perspective

Hi all

I’m posting this because I need some perspective.. This isn’t just a boast thread... I need some opinions.

I'm a member of many game forums and have seen many a post regarding people systems and what they can do are capable of.
I have what I consider to do a fairly brutal system, however compared to some of the performance levels reported I feel slightly disheartened.

Here are my current specs:

Intel i7 930 over clocked to 3.80 GHz

Asus P6X58D-E

6.00 GB corsair dominator ram

Windows 7 64bit Home premium

1TB Samsung Spinpoint F3 Hard Drive

Corsair 550W PSU (CMPSU-550VXUK)

1GB EVGA GTX460 SC PCI-E graphics card

I run all games in 1080p on a 24" monitor.

I keep up to date with drivers and patches.


I hear a lot of people saying I should be able to run most games in max setting with everything on full. However the reality I face is much different.

Some scenarios.

Crysis - Crysis: warhead. I hear many people with lesser systems saying they can run it at full with x8 AA & AF. However I can barely run it on "High" or "gamer" settings with no AA or AF at all, it plays well here and there but generally splutters along from beginning to end

Call of duty 4: Modern warfare. I can’t play this on any setting, it so jumpy and slow. When I turn it all down it looks awful and still plays nasty.

Stalker: Shadow of Chernobyl. I have general scaling issues here, turning on AA destroys any playability also unusually AF causes me problems here, loss of frame rate is sporadic either way.

Farcry 2: plays ok without AA and AF until something like fire or gun fights are brought into the equation, fairly slow when driving too. Which is annoying as the varying quality over the AA and AF decrease is dramatic but not a massive improvement in performance.

Call of duty: black ops. This is weird I know most people have issues with this but I can play about 70% of the game flawlessly and with everything RIGHT up, AA and AF at max, only in certain sections and levels with lots of foliage does frame rate drop out.

Battlefield Bad Company 2: I can play this online all textures and AF at full, things get nasty when I introduce AA but I expect that. However in single player frame rates are pretty low and performance is pretty poor.

Medal of Honor: This runs very well with marginal settings at full resolution and about x4 AF and x2 AF. Of course it gets choppy above that.

Anyway, there’s probably not enough info there for accurate diagnosis, but if people could give me a ball park idea if this performance is normal for my system I may feel a bit better about it. Although I get an immense amount of joy out of my new system I still feel concerned about its performance and if there is an issue.

I'm not sure I understand how In game settings merge or work with the Nvidia display panel settings.

If I benchmark what are the frame rate ranges I need to look for, or should be acceptable for my machine??

I'd be grateful for some perspective on this.

 

Should I have posted this in tech support????

 

I would say this section is fine, as its a gaming question. But tech support would fit too, because we will be discussing your hardware.

A gtx 460 won't max out every game. Its aimed at the mid range market. If you had 2 of them, you'd see some nice improvements though!

Have you tried to OC the card?

 

Sounds like a driver issue to me.

 

In what sense? In that they need updating? Or are conflicting? Or are inherently unstable in themselves?

Nealieboyee: In terms of your point, would x2 460's in sli give me the performance i'm expecting, am I aiming too low with dual 460's??

 

2x GTX 460's in sli scale extremely well and are close to a single 480 so you would definitly get better performance.

 

Something is wrong for sure, you should be able to play cod4 on a system for a third of the price.

 

Wow i didn't even see COD4 on the list. Yeah if that doesn't run smoothly on a 460, you have a problem!

Did you let windows install your graphics drivers for you?

 

Nope, I install my drivers myself, I DL them from the nvidia site. I am on the latest version.

 

I use a free program called Driver Max to make sure everything is as up to date as possible.

 

Thanks Mike

I looked into your suggestion and indeed there is a host of out of date drivers.

I updated my Nvidia HD audio and Realtek drivers etc and a couple of other items.

Here are the remainder of the drivers I cannot yet get drivers for...

Storage controllers
Marvell 91xx SATA 6G Controller 1.0.0.1034 1.0.0.1045

System Devices
Intel(R) 82801 PCI Bridge - 244E 6.1.7600.16385 9.1.1.1012
Intel(R) ICH10R LPC Interface Controller - 3A16 9.1.0.1013 9.1.1.1004
Intel(R) ICH10 Family PCI Express Root Port 1 - 3A40 9.1.0.1013 9.1.1.1004
Intel(R) ICH10 Family PCI Express Root Port 3 - 3A44 9.1.0.1013 9.1.1.1004
Intel(R) ICH10 Family SMBus Controller - 3A30 1.0.0.2 9.1.1.1004


Universal Serial Bus controllers

Intel(R) ICH10 Family USB Universal Host Controller - 3A34 9.0.0.1005 9.1.1.1012
Intel(R) ICH10 Family USB Universal Host Controller - 3A35 9.0.0.1005 9.1.1.1012
Intel(R) ICH10 Family USB Universal Host Controller - 3A36 9.0.0.1005 9.1.1.1012
Intel(R) ICH10 Family USB Universal Host Controller - 3A37 9.0.0.1005 9.1.1.1012
Intel(R) ICH10 Family USB Universal Host Controller - 3A38 9.0.0.1005 9.1.1.1012
Intel(R) ICH10 Family USB Enhanced Host Controller - 3A3C 9.0.0.1005 9.1.1.1012
Intel(R) ICH10 Family USB Enhanced Host Controller - 3A3A 9.0.0.1005 9.1.1.1012
Intel(R) ICH10 Family USB Universal Host Controller - 3A39 9.0.0.1005 9.1.1.1012
NEC Electronics USB 3.0 Host Controller 1.0.19.0 2.0.26.0

being as some of these relate to PCI - E, I imagine these drivers may be my problem???

 

ok

I signed up fully for that program, I have updated all listed drivers on the list and as yet there is no improvement unfortunatley. I am using COD4 to test this as I guess its the least intensive and problematic.

Any more ideas anyone??

 

Ive gutted my start up and processes menu too, a minor improvement in performance.


Detailed sytem info.....

Windows Experience Index (Windows Vista Ratings)

System score 5.90

Memory score 7.80
CPU score 7.60
CPU SubAgg score 7.60
Video encoding score 7.70
Graphics score 7.60
Gaming score 7.60
Hard Disks score 5.90


Processor
Processor name Intel(R) Core(TM) i7 CPU 930 @ 2.80GHz
Processor speed 3800
Processor vendor GenuineIntel
Processor count (cores) 8
Processor ID Intel64 Family 6 Model 26 Stepping 5


Other info
RAM size 4.00 GB
DirectX version 4.09.00.0904
HDD - Windows partition 971 GB
HDD - Largest disk 1000202273.28
Video RAM 1 GB
Windows version Windows 7 (6.1.7600)
Regional settings English United States
Windows language English United States
Last check for driver updates Dec 6 2010 12:11AM


Computer
1. Computer name (blanked)
Description AT/AT COMPATIBLE
Model System Product Name
Manufacturer System manufacturer
No. of physical processors 1
OEM string To Be Filled By O.E.M.|To Be Filled By O.E.M.|To Be Filled By O.E.M.|To Be Filled By O.E.M.
System type x64-based PC
Total physical memory 5.99 GB
Infrared supported False

Base board
1. Name Base Board
Manufacturer ASUSTeK Computer INC.
Product P6X58D-E
Serial no.
Version Rev 1.xx
Is hosting board True


Processor
1. Name Intel(R) Core(TM) i7 CPU 930 @ 2.80GHz
Caption Intel64 Family 6 Model 26 Stepping 5
L2 cache size 1.00 KB
Manufacturer GenuineIntel
Processor ID
Address width 64

Bios
1. Name BIOS Date: 05/25/10 14:39:27 Ver: 08.00.15
Manufacturer American Megatrends Inc.
Version 052510 - 20100525
BIOS Date: 05/25/10 14:39:27 Ver: 08.00.15
BIOS Date: 05/25/10 14:39:27 Ver: 08.00.15
Release date May 25 2010
SMBIOSBIOSVersion 0303
SMBIOSMajorVersion 2
SMBIOSMinorVersion 5
Bios features ISA is supported
PCI is supported
Plug and Play is supported
APM is supported
BIOS is Upgradable (Flash)
BIOS shadowing is allowed
ESCD support is available
Boot from CD is supported
Selectable Boot is supported
BIOS ROM is socketed
EDD (Enhanced Disk Drive) Specification is supported
Int 13h - 5.25 /1.2MB Floppy Services are supported
Int 13h - 3.5 / 720 KB Floppy Services are supported
Int 13h - 3.5 / 2.88 MB Floppy Services are supported
Int 5h, Print Screen Service is supported
Int 9h, 8042 Keyboard services are supported
Int 14h, Serial Services are supported
Int 17h, printer services are supported
Int 10h, CGA/Mono Video Services are supported
ACPI is supported
USB Legacy is supported
LS-120 boot is supported
ATAPI ZIP Drive boot is supported

 

Can a mod please move this to Tech Support. I think the poor guy will get more help there.

 

lol, thanks Nealieboyee!

 

maybe a bad cpu overclock?

 

what are the symptoms of a bad overclock???

 

Scales from instability like glitches to full on system crashes. What temperatures are you getting on your GPU and processor? If drivers are sound the I would say throttling due to too much heat build up. theres no way that system should struggle with any of those games.

Check online for a GTX460 benchmarks for each of those games. Look at mins and averages and compare to your own. Theres no way the processor should be bottlenecking the card to unplayable levels. If your processor was bottlenecking then adding more graphics options such as AA would not decrease frame rates.

hardOCP tested it against the 580. Apart from lower mins 2x460 SLI was pretty similar to it.

Link

 

a 460 should still smash cod4... there's something a miss here...
also, should really be in tec support really

 

It says in your opening post that you have 6GB Ram but in your detailed info post it says you only have 4GB. You should look into that. However if those 4GB are working your system should not be behaving as it is. You should check in Display Settings > Advanced Settings and see how much total available graphics memory you have. Have you changed page file settings ?

Check your temperature with something like Speedfan and download GPU-Z and look at temps and all clock speeds. If temps exceed 70-80 C° under load you should look into reducing temps in some way. Check in task manager to see if you have any memory or CPU intensive tasks running. You can do this by opening task manager, find select columns in under the view menu and make sure that CPU Usage and Memory - Working Set are selected and see if any tasks are using an unusually high percentage of your computers recources.

Hope some of that helps.