Where is my bottleneck?

[Brestt]

I can't seem to get the framerates I expect out of my system. Compared to friends that also play video games, I always have to use lower settings than them, and some have lower spec systems than myself.

Motherboard: Gigabyte K8N Ultra SLI
Processor: AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+
RAM: 2 GB Corsair DDR 400
Video Card: EVGA 8800 GTS 512
Power Supply: Antec Tru Power 380
OS: Windows XP SP2

My co-worker has a similar system, except Intel Core2Duo 2.4 GHZ

My best example is within World of Warcraft.
Standing at the same location, I get 24 FPS he gets 44 FPS.
At another location, I get 39-42 FPS, he gets 59 FPS.

Another co-worker has a core2duo 1.8 GHz w/ GeForce 8600 GTS and he will get 5-10 FPS more than me at same locations.

We all have the exact same graphic settings except for resolution. But I'm the low resolution at 1280x1024. they are both running widescreen 1920x1200.

Any ideas what is slowing me down? I will gladly run any tests requested.

 

[RadiclDreamer]

Im going to guess one of a few things.

Drivers, make sure you have the latest for your motherboard and graphics card.
That power supply could possibly be having an issue with the load.
Are you having these issues with other games as well?

 

[Strebor]

Processor: AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+
RAM: 2 GB Corsair DDR 400

vs a Core2Duo and DDR2 will be slower

 

[Brestt]

Originally posted by: RadiclDreamer
Im going to guess one of a few things.

Drivers, make sure you have the latest for your motherboard and graphics card.
That power supply could possibly be having an issue with the load.
Are you having these issues with other games as well?

Yup, definitely have the latest drivers for both motherboard and video card.

Would a video card "step down" if it wasn't getting enough power? That is something I could test over the weekend with someone else's power supply.

We do have access to other games (ET QuakeWars, Crysis, Oblivion) is there a way to run a FPS test or other benchmark within any those games?

 

[RadiclDreamer]

Yes, this could happen and will happen ESPECIALLY if any power connectors that are supposed to be going to the card arent (molex, pcie etc)

It will also throttle if there are problems with heat. As far as frame rate goes, grap a copy of fraps and it will tell you the frame rate of pretty much any game.

 

[RadiclDreamer]

Originally posted by: Strebor
Processor: AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+
RAM: 2 GB Corsair DDR 400

vs a Core2Duo and DDR2 will be slower

I dont really think he has a problem with his system not being powerful enough, I played WoW for a year or so and its not really a very demanding game, low fps on this tittle with a rig like his indicates a problem somewhere

 

[Strebor]

Just going from experience, friend of mine has an X2 4200+ with about the same setup otherwise.

 

[RadiclDreamer]

Originally posted by: Strebor
Just going from experience, friend of mine has an X2 4200+ with about the same setup otherwise.

Wasnt saying that they werent getting to be mid-low end parts, just saying he should be getting better performance out of his hardware

 

[Brestt]

I'll be testing power supply this weekend with a friend's 500/550 (I forget which it is).

We're all also going to do some 3Dmark/PCmark benchmarks and see what we get for numbers to compare.

It may be that my slower Bus speed for memory/cpu could not be feeding the data fast enough to the video card.

 

[Electric Amish]

For the RAM, is that 1x 2gb stick or 2x1gb stick or 4x512mb stick?

If you are using 4x512mb your RAM is probably not running at full speed.