Thread: Racking my brain!

So this will be a little long winded but I really am at a loss here.

So I have a 9800 gx2 card that I purchased - a PNY..

I put it in my system (DEll XPS 700) and it doesn't work. I found out of course that my power supply on that Dell XPS 700 only has 6 pin power adapters and the 9800 takes a 6 pin and an 8 pin. So I went and purchased a 6-8 pin converter and presto - it works.

My problem is I'm getting around 20 - 30 fps on fire fights (CSS) and avg. probably 80 fps in non-combat movements. This is about the exact same numbers I was getting with my 7900 gtx. Which I still heard was low for that.

I have put more memory in and am running at 3GB - Win 32 bit XP. I have updated all drivers. My only thought now is it could either be that the mother board in the xps 700 is whack (which ive heard b/c they had to do a recall) maybe that is the bottle neck, or possibly that the 9800 isn't getting adequate power - because of the 6-8 pin converter. I'm leaning more towards the mb bottleneck b/c of that recall and the fact that the 7900gtx ran the same fps and should have got more from what i've heard.

The Dell xps 700 has its own version of the nvidia 590 sli chipset. Could this be the problem?

I have requested dell send me the upgrade MB (the mb in the 720) so I can install it in the 700. It is a NVIDIA 's nForce 680i SLI.

Any thoughts - Im banging my head.

Download the latest drivers for your card. The latest drivers for the 7xxx series is different than the 9xxx series.

Download the latest version of DirectX:
http://www.gamesforwindows.com/en-US...rectX10-a.aspx

Get Driver Cleaner:
http://downloads.guru3d.com/download.php?det=745

Install and run Driver Cleaner. Remove your nVidia drivers. Reboot
Install drivers. Reboot
Re-install DirectX. Reboot.

Then see if things work any better for you.

Originally Posted by wildsrv

could it be his processor is the bottle neck?

very possibly, but it would have to be fairly older and slower chip to where there was basically no improvement. Something in the single core, sub 2.0ghz range or worse.

the 9800 gtx can pump out well into the 100+fps range in high resolutions with high levels of AA and AF enabled. At 1280x1024 it should push 200 with 8aa and 16af enabled. So being stuck down around 40 strikes me as pretty odd and would work over the drivers like wile suggested and then move onto hardware like the mobo.

Thanks guys -

My processor is a Core Duo - PROCESSOR..., PENTIUM D PRESLER..., 940, 3.2G, 2X2M, C1

Heres what the 9800gx2 can do with Half Life Ep2, which should be very similar to CSS:
http://techreport.com/articles.x/14355/7


Thats with a Core 2 Extreme X6800 2.93GHz - but you shouldnt be all that far behind those numbers.

The Core Duo is far inferior to the Core2Duo, but I would have to agree that you should have seen SOME improvement even if not much. I went from a dual 7800GTX setup to a dual 8800GTX setup and my 3dmark score went up about 4000 points with just video card upgrades. The cpu is a bottleneck for me but the video cards themselves will still show a good increase in speed.