Need help with 8800 gt

[froggyluv 2136]

Ok guys I need some real help on this one. My trusty 7900 gs 256 finally died after years of good service and I rarely had slow FPS while playing Arma with average rates of 30-45 except in the thickest of woods with many mods running. After lengthy review reading I settled on the 8800 GT 512 and expected at least slightly better results in regards to Arma as that's pretty much all I play.Brimming with anticipation I fired up Arma and was filled with shock, horror and a creeping depression when I noticed my FPS in the most basic of missions, Delivery Boy was struggling to get to 22 and dropping to as low as 6! I updated driver to 169.21, slightly Oc'ed my card, turned v-sync off- same result.

I've always used the same settings:

Terrain-very low

Object-very high

texture-very high

shading-normal

shadows-normal

aa-very high

blood-high

view distance-3000-5000 depending

After lowering obj+tex to "high", shading+shadows to "low" and VD to 2000 I now get between 20-33 FPS in Deliver Boy and between 15-20 in Dynamic War  

I really don't know much about the 8800 series so if anyone knows any tips to sort this out please reply

Specs: Core duo 6400 oc'ed to 3.2

           2 gigs ocz ram 800

           8800 gt 512

           psu-750

           commando mobo

[oChaos.DNJ 0]

Did you forget to plug in the power for the card?

Try turning down the Anti-Aliasing.

Other then that I dunno.

[Heatseeker 0]

Could you really run those very high settings with the 7900gs card? I honestly doubt it .

Increase shadow detail to high, somehow it runs better than normal (and looks better too).

Antialiasing, textures and object details no higher than high.

If you experience any stability problems put shadder detail to low. Those fps cant be wright..

You o'clock and swaped video card, maybe you forgot some bios setting? Your previous VC died... did it die alone?

You shouldnt have o'clocked the card so soon, if you got a bad card you might face some dificulties getting a replacement.

[killswitch 19]

Terrain-very low

Object-very high

texture-<span style='color:red'>very high</span>

shading-normal

shadows-normal

aa-very high

blood-high

view distance-3000-5000 depending

I've highlighted a possible reason - a 512 MB card has too little memory to cope with that texture setting and the AA setting you're using. Lower the texure detail to medium or at a stretch, "high" and see if things improve. Next tweak is the AA level.

(I have a 640 MB 8800GTS and use "medium" and no AA with good results)

[Dudester 0]

Ok guys I need some real help on this one. My trusty 7900 gs 256 finally died after years of good service and I rarely had slow FPS while playing Arma with average rates of 30-45 except in the thickest of woods with many mods running. After lengthy review reading I settled on the 8800 GT 512 and expected at least slightly better results in regards to Arma as that's pretty much all I play.Brimming with anticipation I fired up Arma and was filled with shock, horror and a creeping depression when I noticed my FPS in the most basic of missions, Delivery Boy was struggling to get to 22 and dropping to as low as 6! I updated driver to 169.21, slightly Oc'ed my card, turned v-sync off- same result.

I've always used the same settings:

Terrain-very low

Object-very high

texture-very high

shading-normal

shadows-high

aa-very high

blood-high

view distance-3000-5000 depending

After lowering obj+tex to "high", shading+shadows to "low" and VD to 2000 I now get between 20-33 FPS in Deliver Boy and between 15-20 in Dynamic War  

I really don't know much about the 8800 series so if anyone knows any tips to sort this out please reply

Specs: Core duo 6400 oc'ed to 3.2

           2 gigs ocz ram 800

           8800 gt 512

           psu-750

           commando mobo

I have the same card Geforce 8800GT and it best set like the following:

Terrain-high

Object-high

texture-high

shading-normal

shadows-low

post processing low

aa-normal

blood-high

view distance-1500-2000

The AA set to very high is killing it in your case. Also look out for "post processing" wich needs to be set to low. Are you using the nvidia control panel to adjust these settings? I ask this because some setting may need turning to applicatication controlled if you are.

[froggyluv 2136]

@oChaos.DNJ

                   lol-yes it was plugged in but I switched from default mobo plugin to the attachments that came with card just in case.

@Heatseeker

                   I promise you those were the exact settings I had always been playing on. I was always baffled by others FPS/texture issures until now as I never had a problem keeping my AA/Object/Texture on very high with a 5000 vd- maybe that 7900 was the Golden Card. I did have the 7900 pretty well OC'ed as well which may have led to her 2 year lifespan

@Killswitch

                I see what your saying but my 7900 was only 256 so I guess I expected at least the same results if not some improvement.

@Dudester

               Yep me PP was always set to low as I don't like the glossy look.

One thing I noticed after switching the VC's power plug was that my FPS would now go as high as 46 but erratically drop down to as low as 8 with my initial Very High settings. This concerns me as my previous card only seemed to move around about 10 points up or down.

I just ran 3dmark05 and got a score of 10,750 but i have no idea what that means. Can anyone confirm if that seems about right. I have to do all my component shopping through international shipping so if I got a faulty card I'd really like to know.

[Mudpigs 0]

I have a 8800gt card, performance improved with ForceWare Beta Release 169.28, go here http://www.nzone.com/object/nzone_ut3_downloads.html.

performance for me is good, though I have strange slowdown when zooming with sniper rifle. other than that ARMA runs smoothly

[froggyluv 2136]

I have a 8800gt card, performance improved with ForceWare Beta Release 169.28, go here

performance for me is good, though I have strange slowdown when zooming with sniper rifle. other than that ARMA runs smoothly

Thanks, will give it a go

[-Puma- 2]

I have a 8800gt card, performance improved with ForceWare Beta Release 169.28, go here

performance for me is good, though I have strange slowdown when zooming with sniper rifle. other than that ARMA runs smoothly

Thanks, will give it a go

download rivatuner or coolbits 2 and change render frames ahead to 0, if u havent allready done that. it should help with low fps when zoomed. that card should do 12 000 3dmark 06, but backround procs running while doing the test can drop ur points alot.

u can allways try another game and see how ur new card handles that.

[froggyluv 2136]

Thanks for all of your help folks

I've tried just about all of your suggestions and tweaks except for the 'render frames ahead' as I couldn't find where that option is with rivatuner. I'm noticing a quite drastic disparity in FPS in both Arma and others while using the exact same settings that leads me to believe something is up with the card itself so I'm going to ship it back. One note is the company I bought it from snookered me on the price by over 100 bucks by bundling in some really useless extras which would put my return exchange closer to the 8800 gtx so I was wondering if this card has good results for Arma.

[-Puma- 2]

actually 8800gt is very close performance wise to 8800gtx. U allready shipped the card back?? if not try updateing directx files.

if u have x86 operating system download coolbits2 and it should allow u some hidden options like render frames ahead.

gt is a very nice card and i wouldnt get GTX, u would just waiste alot of money.

[froggyluv 2136]

actually 8800gt is very close performance wise to 8800gtx. U allready shipped the card back?? if not try updateing directx files.

if u have x86 operating system download coolbits2 and it should allow u some hidden options like render frames ahead.

gt is a very nice card and i wouldnt get GTX, u would just waiste alot of money.

No I'm going to wait till the weekends over and I've tried every tweak possible before returning it. I'll try updating directx but I'm pretty sure I already have 9.0c. I did install coolbits 2.0 which I used to use to OC my 7900, but I'm still not seeing that option, is it under Nvidia Control Panel/3d Settings?

I hear what your saying about the GTX and I'm usually not one to go out and by the overpriced/top o'de line item when a similar spec'ed item at a lower price is available. But it got pretty depressing playing Dynamic War last nite with an average FPS of 7-13  Is it possible it's something besides my VGA causing this?

[Heatseeker 0]

I doubt it... your system is pretty good and if the 8800GT comes that close to GTX's performance you should be experiencing decent performance.

Either the card is bad or you have some setting screwing her up. (power, fanspeed, etc). If i were you i would check your power cables, get rid of unoficial tweak tools, reset bios, monitor temperatures and try out a few other games.

If all fails ship it back, tweaks wont solve your problem.

These cards deliver good performance at a reasonable cost, they must be selling like crazy and when that happens... you know .

[froggyluv 2136]

Hmmm... Heatseeker you might have been on to something with re-setting Bios. I killed all of the overclocking, and set everything to standard which gave me a 12,000 on 3dmark and held my FPS at a much stabler 38-70 on Delivery Boy and 10-30 on Dynamic War (may be effected by Dac for short increments). Now I have lowered most settings to Normal that were on very High and VD to 1800 but that didn't help much before the re-set. I'm gonna hold off a couple more days to see if it holds stable.

@Puma, could you please stear me to where that 'Render Frames ahead' option is in Rivatuner?

Edit- It seems that the problem lied somewhere with my Bios settings perhaps my overclock which I've used for years. My FPS are faster than ever in all my programs now and holding pretty steady. Thanks a million Heatseeker, I was literally minutes away from making that call

[-Puma- 2]

Quote[/b] ]If you go into the Direct3D settings in Rivatuner, the frames to render ahead is under the Vsync tab, its called Prerender Limit. One of the biggest arguements for changing the Prerender Limit is Oblivion. A lot of people have found that changing the prerender limit to 0 or 1 improves any stuttering you may have in Oblivion. However in my own tests I found reducing the prerender limit to 0 had a negative effect on most games, but with it set to 1 most games seem to run pretty good.

clad u solved the prob dude 12 000 is the score u would expect

with that card. just play with in-game settings and u will find a balance. I use normal settings, with AA low and shadows low, wich gives me balanced perf. FPS never goes below 25. allso make sure that all the AA and AF settings are application controlled in NVIDIA control panel.

allso check temps while playing. u might need to adjust the GFX fan speed to keep temps down.

[froggyluv 2136]

Thanks Puma -found it

Yep, I noticed my card running around 77 deg. when playing and I think that's considered pretty high so I'll look into fans next.

[Mr_Tea 0]

@Puma, could you please stear me to where that 'Render Frames ahead' option is in Rivatuner?

Use coolbits to take full control over the official Forceware drivers.

Than you can set "Render frames ahead" directly in the driver settings.

[-Puma- 2]

Thanks Puma -found it

Yep, I noticed my card running around 77 deg. when playing and I think that's considered pretty high so I'll look into fans next.

77 is not that high. ppl have been playing with temps around 100C with gtx, and had no problems. I myself like to keep the card under 85C just to be safe

[anc 0]

Thanks Puma -found it

Yep, I noticed my card running around 77 deg. when playing and I think that's considered pretty high so I'll look into fans next.

Use RivaTuner and set fan to 60% or 70%.

The ambient temperature here it's about 31C. With the fan at 70% , the card idle temperature its 55C and full 72C.