my framerate is still poor on fx6800gt

[Strapt]

Can someone advise me here, please.

I just bought a few things which I assumed would help me play GRAW, mb, cpu etc. My setup is now:

athon xp 64 3200+

geforce fx6800gt 256 mb

200GB HD

1 GB of RAM

audigy 2 nx

and STIll my gameplay is poor I'm only using medium/low settings, x4 and 1024 for my res. In single player I can play up until theres some major action, then it goes all slow. In fact slow is an understatement... I get better framerate on my cheap logic webcam.

*****Dont get me wrong, I absolutely love the game apart from this.*****

The way you have to do the missions suits me down to the ground! 2hrs of creeping

In desperation I took the two 512MB sticks of RAM off my old motherboard and put them in the new setup to take it up to 2GB or RAM. It seemed to make no difference whatsoever. Its as if I may as well have not made any upgrades at all... Bear in mind that I got the 6800gt so i could play GRAW and my prevous setup with an fx5200 so i could play the "2nd installment" (ahem), so I can't afford to go and splash £200 on just a cpu alone and then another £200 on just a graphics card.

In the game, I'm up to the carpark bit and its as if I'm trying to play the game in frame by frame advance on a video I aborted, set all my settings to low except medium sound. i switched off EAX cos it doesnt work anyway, I even lowered the resolution to the lowest it would go with the lowest refresh rate. Then i reloaded from my car park save.... Same thing happened, must be 2 FPS at best.

Surely, with the above setup I should be able to get some half decent gameplay. Online coop is completely out of the question at the moment, I can barely move 5metres. What i dont get is that domination was very smooth (albeit with only about 4-6 players), but I'm not keen on it. If I wanted that kind of thing i'd play BF2

[=WO=TekHousE]

Mate that sounds like your RAM is not good..

But the obvious would be to defrag the HDD. It must be slowing down when swapping textures out to system RAM??

I have a 6800GT 256MB card and most settings are on medium and a few on high. I am playing at 1024X768 @ 75Hz refresh and getting mostly mid to high 20FPS consistently, with alot of times momentarily going into the high 30's to low 40's (I tweaked the render_settings XML)

<render_config>

<d3d_device

adapter = "NVIDIA GeForce 6800 GT"

driver = "nv4_disp.dll"

resolution = "1024 768"

windowed = "false"

refresh_rate = "75"

/>

<render_settings>

<variable name="aspect_ratio" value="0"/>

<variable name="brightness" value="1"/>

<variable name="dynamic_lights" value="true"/>

<variable name="effect_quality" value="high"/>

<variable name="max_anisotropy" value="8"/>

<variable name="post_effect_quality" value="low"/>

<variable name="shadow_quality" value="high"/>

<variable name="texture_managed_backdrop" value="true"/>

<variable name="texture_managed_buildings" value="true"/>

<variable name="texture_managed_buildings_low" value="true"/>

<variable name="texture_managed_characters" value="true"/>

<variable name="texture_managed_default" value="true"/>

<variable name="texture_managed_effects" value="true"/>

<variable name="texture_managed_ground" value="true"/>

<variable name="texture_managed_lightmaps" value="true"/>

<variable name="texture_managed_no_lod" value="true"/>

<variable name="texture_managed_plants" value="true"/>

<variable name="texture_managed_player_vehicles" value="true"/>

<variable name="texture_managed_props" value="true"/>

<variable name="texture_managed_props_bump" value="true"/>

<variable name="texture_managed_props_high" value="true"/>

<variable name="texture_managed_silhouettes" value="true"/>

<variable name="texture_managed_sky" value="true"/>

<variable name="texture_managed_vehicles" value="true"/>

<variable name="texture_managed_weapons" value="true"/>

<variable name="texture_managed_weapons_third" value="true"/>

<variable name="texture_quality" value="high"/>

<variable name="texture_quality_backdrop" value="high"/>

<variable name="texture_quality_buildings" value="medium"/>

<variable name="texture_quality_buildings_low" value="high"/>

<variable name="texture_quality_characters" value="high"/>

<variable name="texture_quality_default" value="medium"/>

<variable name="texture_quality_effects" value="high"/>

<variable name="texture_quality_ground" value="medium"/>

<variable name="texture_quality_lightmaps" value="high"/>

<variable name="texture_quality_no_lod" value="high"/>

<variable name="texture_quality_plants" value="medium"/>

<variable name="texture_quality_player_vehicles" value="high"/>

<variable name="texture_quality_props" value="high"/>

<variable name="texture_quality_props_bump" value="medium"/>

<variable name="texture_quality_props_high" value="medium"/>

<variable name="texture_quality_silhouettes" value="medium"/>

<variable name="texture_quality_sky" value="medium"/>

<variable name="texture_quality_vehicles" value="medium"/>

<variable name="texture_quality_weapons" value="high"/>

<variable name="texture_quality_weapons_third" value="high"/>

</render_settings>

</render_config>

Edited May 7, 2006 by =WO=TekHousE

[Brettzies]

Did you try the latest nVidia drivers? 84.21 made a huge difference for me. Try setting your sound to software mode as well, see if that helps. I noticed the "audio" keeps resetting on mine. I have to turn off eax and reset it to software every time I run the game.

[Strapt]

Mate that sounds like your RAM is not good..

But the obvious would be to defrag the HDD. It must be slowing down when swapping textures out to system RAM??

I literally bought the HD on May 1st, man. It doesnt need defragging. I don't know if the RAM could be the problem... I had the same problems in the demo when I was using my old setup. Every time I got to the square it would slow down. The same old RAM didnt give me problems in BF2 with most settings on medium and effects on high.

[Strapt]

Did you try the latest nVidia drivers? 84.21 made a huge difference for me. Try setting your sound to software mode as well, see if that helps. I noticed the "audio" keeps resetting on mine. I have to turn off eax and reset it to software every time I run the game.

Yeah I did. Got the latest drivers and update the aeiga thing even though I dont have the PPU.

I've just edited the xml thing, so i'm have to see if that works. Changing the the settings in video sometimes makes the screen start to flicker very very badly like a strobe I have a headache now so I'll have to try more later in the week.

Thank you everyone for your replies so far.

[rossiski]

You could add a different hardware profile to your and use it to turn off a bunch of the standard XP options (like printing). It saves me a bunch of my RAM.

http://www.ghostrecon.net/forums/index.php...=profile&st=38#

[DisgruntledArchitect]

If you haven't done so already, turn Ageia off. I was (stupidly) under the impression that it needed to be installed and activated (even if you don't have the hardware) in order to play GRAW and left it present in the system tray.

After playing through the first two levels with sub-20 FPS with every option on its lowest possible setting, I turned it off on a lark, and now find the game quite playable at 1024x768 low/medium. I'm not sure if it was the app's RAM usage or what, but of all the tweaks and adjustments I've been making to eke playable framerates out of GRAW, that has been by far the most effective.

My specs are different than yours, but probably perform similarly: P4 3.0GHz, 1GB DDR 400 RAM, X800XT AIW 256MB, 74GB Raptor.

[Logos]

This is cross-posted from another thread, but I thought it might help:

System Specs again:

Athlon64 Winchester @ 2.56 GHZ

2GB System Memory @ DDR513 3-4-4-8

6600GT 128MB clocked @ 520MHz-proc & 1.1GHz-mem

Drivers 84.21

Creative X-Fi

Okay, accdg to FRAPS, with my lowly single 6600GT, with all my same current tweaks listed below:

800x600@75Hz -- 50-60 f/s with occasional dips into the 40's and spikes into the 70's

1024x768@75Hz -- 30-40 f/s (30-35 about 80% of the time) with a few dips into the high 20's and a few spikes as high as the mid 40's.

Tweaks and Driver settings:

resolution="1024 768" windowed="false" refresh_rate="75" />

- <render_settings>

<variable name="dynamic_lights" value="true" />

<variable name="effect_quality" value="medium" />

<variable name="max_anisotropy" value="8" />

<variable name="post_effect_quality" value="false" /> (low = Mexico, false = Switzerland plus no nightvision with false)

<variable name="shadow_quality" value="disabled" />

Also, all texture_managed values set to true to take advantage of 2GB system memory.

In video drivers :

AA -- Application Default

AS -- Application Default

VSync -- OFF

Max pre-render = 2

[Freshmixture]

If you haven't done so already, turn Ageia off.

Do you mean turn it off or uninstall it completely......?

Fresh

[Strapt]

Do I have to start the campaign again from the beginning for these changes to take efffect, or should I be able to just continue from where I left off? I make the changes and then load from my carpark save point and it seems to make hardly any diffenence. By the time i struggle to get to the roof I'm back to video freeze frame-type gameplay

My system is more or less the same as what someother people in the "post your rig here" thread have got and they seem to be getting mauch higher frame rates.

AMD 64 3200+

2GB RAM (ive added 2x512MB to my 1GB stick just to see if more RAM helps)

6800GT 256MB

Audigy 2 NX

So far I'm one of those people where it doesn't matter whether i play on the lowest settings or auto detect to the highest with my system. The the game becomes unplayable in firefights. I can either have the game looking half decent or downright nasty, but the slowdowns happen either way.

As for that EAX thing. there is no way I would think ive got my speakers set to 5.1 bit only have two connected, do me a favour! Disabling EAX is the ONLY way I've found that ensures that I get the sound of my own gun.

Just used FRAPS and i get betweem 4FPS and 9FPS... Now you know how I feel. 20-40 FPS would be a godsend

[theWalrusKing]

man i feel ur pain, i have a 6800gt 256 too, wonderful card, but i have a slower cpu. an AMD 2500+ Barton, and 1gb of 333ddr, I dont play it the high like id love too, hell even on low i get down to the teens on oocassion but i never go below that. so i can say its deff not game.

you said u switched out ur ram from ur old Computer, well what speeds were those, i mean if they were old DDR with like a 2100 speed or lower technically ur processors front side bus speed would go from the 3200 to what ever they are. this would deff hurt. also maybe they are bad maybe u replaced them slightly wrong.

first dl a memory tester from like Majorgeeks.com, or somewhere let it run like 5 times, see if has alot of errors. also just try taking them out and then putting them back in to see if they werent seated wrong. i dont think its anything else unless u had some driver issue. did u use something like Driver Cleaner to remove ur old vid drivers? try that. also there is a way to disable sound in one of the .XML files (or somewhere) have a go with it disabled that would pretty much rule out the sound card. otherwise try reinstalling the game. but my money is on a mem issue or a driver, issue. remember try the mem test, and check the old mem speed. and look for driver updates for the sound card too.

i just cant wait till the day i get a pc that can play this thing at like 40FPS so i feel ur pain.

[Logos]

Do I have to start the campaign again from the beginning for these changes to take efffect,

Edit the render_settings.xml file with Notepad and make the changes manually. Save. Game then plays with those settings.

If you haven't done so already, turn Ageia off.

Do you mean turn it off or uninstall it completely......?

Fresh

I installed the AGEia with the demo. I uninstalled the demo and the AGEia completely before installing the full version. The full version never asked me to install the AGEia again, so I'm guessing the necessary drivers are present, only without the running app.

Uninstall it completely. The requisite drivers will remain.

[element11]

Mate that sounds like your RAM is not good..

But the obvious would be to defrag the HDD. It must be slowing down when swapping textures out to system RAM??

I literally bought the HD on May 1st, man. It doesnt need defragging. I don't know if the RAM could be the problem... I had the same problems in the demo when I was using my old setup. Every time I got to the square it would slow down. The same old RAM didnt give me problems in BF2 with most settings on medium and effects on high.

I think 2 Gigs of RAM would be a very effective upgrade. When you said you had 2x 512 to make it 2 gig, did you mean 4x 512? or 1 1gig and 2x 512? Either way, RAM dosent work as good if you dont have the same sized chips, or if all your ram slots are full.

[Logos]

Strapt, what sort of motherboard do you have?

[snakebite1967]

I literally bought the HD on May 1st, man. It doesnt need defragging

Sorry that just made me laugh, no offense meant but as soona s u instal anything on a hd it will need defragging heck even starting a game will frag a HD.

I go a tad overboard myself but i run voptxp every night and defrag all my hd's takes 2 mins for each, but for sure right after u instal a game id defrag before u run it.

[Strapt]

Thanks for the reply, but I was getting the 4FPS anyway. I only put the RAM in as an absolute last resort to see if more RAM would stop the slowdown and it's made no difference.

The RAM from my "old" PC (Barton 2800+ it was good enough to run the demo) was ddr 3200 400mhz, but it was two sticks of 512MB. My newer PC has one 1GB stick. I have 4 slots on my new MB and they are in two pairs, a brown pair and a blue pair. If I put another 1GB stick into slot 4 (currently have one in slot 3) then I will "activate dual core mode" unforftualtely I only have the memory from my old PC.

I think I'm gonna try moving the memory from slot 3 into slot one. The guy at the PC fair put it in slot 3 not me. My two 512mb sticks are currently occupying the other pair of slots. May as well take them out while i'm in there

So if its not the card, not the cpu and not the RAM thats preventing me from getting at least 30fps, what can it be??

I'd like to hear from someone who has a similar setup to mine and has done the carpark part of the mission and maintained 20-40FPS. I could hardly aim my gl at the tanker to blow it up let alone run through the alleys to the carpark. Now that i'm at the carpark, with the APC, tank and chopper on the roof, my setup is being tested and this is where i get 4fps. The same thing happens during any major firefight, though.

I've even checked to make sure I've connected my vid card properly with the power cable in the right way. It's xactly how it is in the manual.

June can't come quickly enough for me!!

I'd just like to add that I installed the demo on a Dell P4 3GHz with the integrated creative audigy extreme and geforece 7300cards. The game autodetected to everything on high. I put it to 1024 and it STILL was slowish. But way smoother than mine. Funnily enough the bit that I tried it on (ie the streets just outside the start point after the insertion) ran only a bit smoother than on my 2800+, but looked a lot lot nicer.

Are the GRIN people back from holiday yet?? Cos if there are so many probs the patch is gonna get delayed as well, while they "get it right"

[Logos]

but for sure right after u instal a game id defrag before u run it.

Worse than that, it sounds like no defrag since the OS install. However, while SB is right about you needing a defrag, that's not your problem.

What is the brand and model number of your MOTHERBOARD

[Strapt]

AS Rock 939dual-sata2 with athlon 64 3200+

If it's the motherboard I may as well take the whole thing back and go back to using my a7v8x-x with the barton 2800+. Then maybe I'll find better parts an build myself a better one.

The reason I got that MB was because it can do AGP and PCIe. I only bought the 6800GT in the last few month, so I didn't want to go and but a new card yet, but wanted to leave the option open for PCIe at a later date.

[Logos]

AS Rock 939dual-sata2 with athlon 64 3200+

If it's the motherboard I may as well take the whole thing back and go back to using my a7v8x-x with the barton 2800+. Then maybe I'll find better parts an build myself a better one.

I don't know if it's the mobo or not. It's possible, but not likely. I have never used Uli core logic. I've found where some people have gotten some very impressive overclocks with that board, which indicates that it's a sound board.

Is the memory running dual-channel? Can it run dual channel with 3 sticks? Some older NForce2 boards could, but I'm not sure about Uli chipsets.

[DisgruntledArchitect]

If you haven't done so already, turn Ageia off.

Do you mean turn it off or uninstall it completely......?

Fresh

I have simply turned off the Ageia application in the system tray and that has done the trick; apparently, the version of the Ageia software that shipped with GRAW contained a memory leak, which explains why my game would become more and more unplayable as time went on. I have not bothered to turn it back on, even though I've updated the software. Until I actually own an Ageia card, I'm not going to have some big A staring at me from the system tray, and possibly occupying a few MB of my RAM. I'll probably see if the updated Ageia software still hurts my game performance in the next day or so.

[Strapt]

Well I guess you learn something new everyday. Nobody has ever said defrag teh HD as soon as you have installed windows. I'm fairly new to this whole PC building thing and always aske people what I should/shouldnt be doing. All the stuff I've read/seen says defrag the HD every month or so.... not right away. I've done it now :-D was a lot quicker than I thought i'd be considering its 200GB.

Thanks, but it this solves my probs i'll be very very surprised.

To the person who was talking about RAM. Yeah I'm meant to put the same time of RAM in and the same size, but I was detting desperate! I'd like to state again that i had these probs BEFORE I put the extra 2 sticks of RAM in and the game was slow (ie the demo) BEFORE I bought the new mb, ram and cpu. The full game runs slow on the new system in the same places that the demo ran slow in the old system. In other words each time there's some major action, the game slows down.

Just to claify things a bit more. I ran the demo on my barton 2800+. It ran slowly so i bought an athlon 64 3200+ and its still slow. I've spoken to Crowman (who has a good setup ) and from what i can tell, the only sure way for me to get out of this mess is to upgrade to a 4000+ and get a 7*** card. That's another £400-£500 and it's just not possible.

All thats going throught my ming now is maybe I should've got a 360 heaven forbid!

[DisgruntledArchitect]

I wouldn't lose hope, quite yet, Strapt; your system, while not cutting-edge, should be able to run the game relatively well. If you've updated all your relevant drivers and confirmed none of your hardware is broken, maybe you should run some kind of spring cleaning/tweak regimen on your machine, etc. run antivirus, norton, that sort of thing.

I ran a test last night and the Ageia software that shipped with GRAW was the main culprit for my slowdowns; updating the software seemed to fix it.

[Strapt]

AS Rock 939dual-sata2 with athlon 64 3200+

Is the memory running dual-channel? Can it run dual channel with 3 sticks? Some older NForce2 boards could, but I'm not sure about Uli chipsets.

No I it can't run in dual channel in the way I have it set up. I'm about to take the 2x512 out now anyway cos it made no difference. I've tried the xml settings suggest and they made no difference either. I've also disabled EAX and put the sound setting to generic software (I was suing generic hardware because my audigy 2 nx doesnt show up). Guess what... no difference.

Please remember i'm testing these settings by loading at the carpark savepoint with FRAPs running. It starts off at 11fps then as soon as I move or turn on the spot it goes down to 4fps.

[Sartori]

Heya Strapt

Dont lose faith, I had exactly the same problem.. also on a 6800gt.. I can now play at 1280x1024 smoothly (havent frapped it yet)

It took a while and a clean windows build but it runs great. What made a big difference was following the game and nvidia tweaks on tweakguides.com. When I get on my home PC I will post my set up if you still need it.

Sartori

[ROCO*AFZ*]

I have a 6800 GS (replacement for the GT versions) with a 3.0ghz p4 and 1GB of ram dual channel and it runs fine with all settings medium and high 30 to 35FPS at 1280x1024

Make sure AA and Anti is set to application controlled in your video settings. makes sure you have the latest creative drivers (for audigys) Nvidia drivers and one everyone forgets... the latest Chipset drivers for your mainboard by whoever makes the chipset, not the mainboard.

Make sure your hdd if not serial ata is not jumpered to channel select, put it at master and located it on the end of the cable.

What else you have running? Windows antispyware or MS? if so disable them when playing (they LAG you) and turn them on when done.

Any antivirus?

Any websites or such open when playing?