I'm using an EVGA GTX280, e8400@ 3.6ghz along with 2GB 1066 RAM. I'm posting this because it seems like I'm not getting the performance I should with this system and I want to find out if I'm right. I've overclocked the card to the highest settings I can while still maintaining stability, and yet I feel like my fps in games should be better. In COD4, with all settings max except for AAx2, vsync off, and specular and normal map res to high, I'm getting 40-60 frames for the most part in multiplayer while it sometimes dips to 20-30 in spots. Based on what I've read from other GTX280 owners, it seems like my fps should be higher than that. Crysis is barely playable on high where I'm between 20-30 fps and under 20 fps frequently. AOC is a complete joke with 20-30 fps in most areas and often dipping down to 10. Are these frames what I should be getting in these games? If not, what could possibly be hindering my performance? I've done a clean driver sweep and install, so that's not the problem.

whats your power supply?

What resolution are you playing at? You should also double check your PSU. I don't think its the problem, you should have received a warning about power issues.

When Toms tested the 280, they get a score of 61.2 @1900x1200 for COD4. They were probably playing with 4GBs of ram however, I'm not sure if thats the issue or not. I wouldn't worry about AoC, from what I hear thats a buggy game. Same with Crysis. What do you get for single player COD4? Multiplayer can cause to many issues.

I have a corsair 650 watt psu which is pretty top quality so it's a non-issue there. I'm not sure if the frames I'm getting are actually lower than what they should be, I just was suspecting they were. Maybe more ram would help like you say, but a lot of sources I've read say there really isn't much of a difference between 2 and 4 gigs gaming-wise.

What driver version are you using? The driver's which come with the card on the disk are not sufficient. 177.41 from Nvidia's site are the better drivers - there is also a leaked 177.66 driver which i'm using, but i've seen little difference in fps.

I don't think RAM will make a big difference in CoD4's fps.

Last thing, GTX200 cards have a known issue with "downthrottling" (going into power-saving mode while the gpu is actively processing) - you can combat this by downloading "rivatuner" and then enabling: "EnablePerfLevelForcing" = 1.

This setting is found under the "Power User" tab - and then by using "Rivatuner\Nvidia\Overclocking" - the PerfLevelForcing option is found in this area.

Anyways, you can tell if your graphics card is doing this by checking EVGA precision while paying CoD4. If the gpu clock is at 300 mhz or some other ungodly low figure, then you will know something is up.

The power-saving fix is being looked into apparently; if this is the problem you have, then register on the EVGA forums and submit any details to their thread so that they have more info for the QA process.

What resolution?

I'm using the current 177.41 drivers, also I always use 1400x900 which is my monitor's native res. I'll try the rivatuner downthrottling thing ovaltine, thanks for that info.

I am getting 80+fps in Age of Conan with my 8800gt max settings 1280x1024..... maybe your card is turning itself down? gtx280 should smoke aoc no problems...

No problem, let us know if you come to a solution because i'm 100% positive you should be getting much higher FPS; so something must be up.

Well just by reading your post, when you overclock your card you will loose FPS. I've noticed this with my 8800gt when i tried to oc'd it, it was giving me issues (online only). The Drivers are fine, maybe if that you have a bad card, just like what i was going through until i downloaded ATI tool. That helped me understand the artifacts. Try that and see what your card can handle, if it's giving you too much artifacts @ oc'd settings, put it to default settings and see what you get. If it still gives you issues, then you need to RMA the card and exchange it with a Factory OC'd card. That's what i've done in the past. Never had any issues after that. but any way back to the subject. I've noticed as well you've OC'D your CPU. That could drain some watts overall. I could be wrong about this please don't judge me. Oh BTW did you download the DX9 or @ 10 update for June??? sometimes that could be an issue? I have a 8800gts(g92) on a Samsung LN40a550 TV running on DVI/HDMI. I play COD4 @ 1600*900 with max setting and no AA. Plays great and no lag at all. I know it's overkill but it looks amazing.


Yeah, good luck I hope this helped..

I'd think that the 52amps from the TX650W Corsair PSU he is using would be enough even for an oc-ed card - I guess I could be wrong though.

It is worth looking at the non-oced performance and seeing if there is a glitch present in that.

Yea it is a great PSU. I actually just picked one up myself for the system you see in the sig (adding IceQ 4870 soon). It should have no problem at all running his system as long as it is not faulty. The problem must be elsewhere, but I am unsure is to what it could be.

@ OP: How stable is your CPU OC? Have you checked your memory for errors? Do you have ample airflow in your case? Have you tried stock clocks on the 280? Reinstall drivers? Defrag hard drive? If you have checked/done all of those things then I would point at the card as being faulty in some way.

Best,

3Ball

Just curious if that's WinXP 32bit? Hard to tell with drivers nowadays.

The main issue if you're under XP would be the address space chunk taken out of that remaining 2 GB process space, Vista dynamically changes the size reserved for GART allocation and I/O back space (for textures/info re-send, etc), but XP does take a bigger chunk (can't rememebr if it's 256MB or 512MB) and even VISTA running DX9 takes some, but not sure what it is now after SP1 changed things a bit. It's noweher close to the full 1GB but in XP it may be a big chunk of that 2GB you have for gaming, and even in Vista might be sizeable especially with such a large VRAM size and setting everything to high.

Anywhoo, not sure if that's it, but with such large sizes, could be a problem, but would need to check COD4 memory usage in general.

Just an update guys, seems i fixed whatever the problem was and my fps is now boosted massively. I did the little trick in rivatuner that ovaltine mentioned, and I also clicked on force constant performance level with performance 3D in the main overclocking window (not sure if I should have done this). I also got rid of my overclocking settings and changed speeds back to default. Rebooted my system, and getting between 150-200 fps in COD4 now, and about a double performance increase in crysis as well. Only problem now is that my card's idling at 60 even with fan at 100% and geting into the low 90's under load. Thanks for the help on this one

Interesting bug. I'm guessing its what Oval told you. And people complain about the heat/temps from the 4870...

well glad u got urs to work i still havent got mine to work consistantly in sli yet! i got about 20 min of it properly tho it was amazing. did the crysis bench under 50 sec with avg of 48 fps 80.38 max with realism mod aa-16q, all very high, and res 1680x1050. i got several bench marks just fine then it went back to like max 26 lost 20fps on the exact same settings such bs. i tried driver sweaper multiply drivers, rivatuner with forc1 just about everything. multimetered my 12v rails all say 12.18 on digital multireader including 12v to the mobo. also psu is a 1200w as well. i am straight up lost with these things!