9800GT Lagg, Possible bottleneck?

[Smiddey723]

hey all, i have recently bought a 9800GT. i was very excited to get a card that can actually play Arma 2 with decent GFX for once. However what i found when i installed and ran it was quite the opposite, i saw very little increase in performance. I cant even play PR:BF2 on anything higher than low and i know that this is not normal for a card like the 9800GT (unless im mistaken?)

Now i have been trying to solve the problem out by asking diffrent people and they have suggested that it could be a bottlneck in my system. now i have very little experience when it comes to solving hardware issues .

so i would be greatful if somone could answer these questions for me:

1. What is a bottleneck
2. What components is the between
3. What do i have to do to fix it
4. How can i tell if new hardware will not bottleneck for future reference

Thank you in advance

[Jigsaw]

Please post your full system specs.

I use a 9800GTX+ 512mb and it works pretty well on high graphics settings for the majority of games including PR. I am replacing it soon though as it is getting slightly dated. How much did you pay may I ask?

[whatshisname55]

Yes, system specs are needed.

A bottleneck in terms of PC's is when one or more components cannot perform their duties quick enough to keep up with other parts of the PC. Afaik it doesn't cause problems it's self but is a form of reference to see if any components are outdated or ineffective.
In this case I would hazard a guess that it could be your processor, but that may not be the problem. There are all kinds of things that could cause framerate drop.

[SnipingCoward]

Performance may also depend on your drivers. Aside from what already was said I suggest you get the latest drivers from nvidia.com .
I am not a fan of using windows default drivers when it comes to gaming components.

[Smiddey723]

Sorry dont know why i didnt post these as i planned on doing in the OP

Processor: AMD Phenom(tm) 9550 Quad-Core Processor (4 CPUs), ~2.2GHz
Memory: 3326MB RAM
Hard Drive: 249 GB
Video Card: NVIDIA GeForce 9800 GT
OS: Windows Vista 32bit

and jiggy it was around 90 pounds (Yes i know i could have got it cheaper but whatever)

[Q2M100]

Sorry dont know why i didnt post these as i planned on doing in the OP

Processor: AMD Phenom(tm) 9550 Quad-Core Processor (4 CPUs), ~2.2GHz
Memory: 3326MB RAM
Hard Drive: 249 GB
Video Card: NVIDIA GeForce 9800 GT
OS: Windows Vista 32bit

and jiggy it was around 90 pounds (Yes i know i could have got it cheaper but whatever)

I have no idea what your problem is. Most likely a driver issue though.

I have a less powerful system and I can easily run PR on max for most maps. The only lag I ever have is from slow servers.

My System Specs:
Processor: Pentium Dual Core E2140 (My BIOS is locked. )
Memory: PNY Optima 4 1GB PC2-5300 DDR2 DIMM Memory
Hard Drive: 300 GB
Video Card: NVIDIA GeForce 9500 GT
OS: Windows 7 Ultimate 32bit

[Smiddey723]

I have no idea what your problem is. Most likely a driver issue though.

I have a less powerful system and I can easily run PR on max for most maps. The only lag I ever have is from slow servers.

My System Specs:
Processor: Pentium Dual Core E2140 (My BIOS is locked. )
Memory: PNY Optima 4 1GB PC2-5300 DDR2 DIMM Memory
Hard Drive: 300 GB
Video Card: NVIDIA GeForce 9500 GT
OS: Windows 7 Ultimate 32bit

It's possibly drivers or bottleneck, I've narrowed it down to that

[darth3pio]

It's possibly drivers or bottleneck, I've narrowed it down to that

yay for onboard graphics cards

[whatshisname55]

I don't think it's a bottleneck. Unless your hard drive is like 2000rpm or slower, I don't see anything in your system that would slow down the game. Just update your drivers for now and test. When you do that come back and give us the results.

Find your drivers.

[Atkinson]

Smiddey, install Everest or something similar that allows you to log cpu/gpu/ram/hdd/whatnot usage and temps and etc... This log will help you a lot when figuring out what is going on inside your pc when you play.

[Smiddey723]

Smiddey, install Everest or something similar that allows you to log cpu/gpu/ram/hdd/whatnot usage and temps and etc... This log will help you a lot when figuring out what is going on inside your pc when you play.

This help?



EDIT: sorry about the size, might have to squint

[whatshisname55]

Well, that gives us info on your system. What Everest does though is monitor the usage of those specific components and you can run it while idling, browsing, or gaming. When you're done with any activity you can check the program to see how your computer performed, usually given in a percentage. This would be very useful if determining what part is causing trouble if you indeed have a bottleneck.

[ConscriptVirus]

i would try reinstalling your video drivers and using driver sweeper (after uninstalling the old ones) to clean out everything. since you switched video cards, it might have some issues adjusting to the new card?)

[Psyko]

Sorry dont know why i didnt post these as i planned on doing in the OP

Processor: AMD Phenom(tm) 9550 Quad-Core Processor (4 CPUs), ~2.2GHz
Memory: 3326MB RAM
Hard Drive: 249 GB
Video Card: NVIDIA GeForce 9800 GT
OS: Windows Vista 32bit

and jiggy it was around 90 pounds (Yes i know i could have got it cheaper but whatever)

xp32 wont utalise moar than 2 gigz of ram

[Smiddey723]

xp32 wont utalise moar than 2 gigz of ram

no its 3GB, thats not the point though...

[SnipingCoward]

At times like this I would resort to looking into the bios and considering a firmware update (flash bios).
Reverting the bios to "Optimized Defaults" might fix your problem. But be aware that fidling with the bios can also cause the system to stop booting normally.

[Smiddey723]

Update

Recently i haven't had much time to get on this problem. However since then i have found that when shutting my computer down, it takes a very long time (somewhere around 15 mins) and after the 15 minutes i get a BSoD with "DRIVER_POWER_STATE_FAILURE" error message on it.

Now i have researched this but haven't had any clear direction in which direction to go in any more help would be appreciated

to its taking a long time to shut down (approximately 15 minutes) and it will restart if it fails to shut down.

PS: Thanks for all the previous responses

[Pedz]

Did you have an integrated GPU before? If so, make sure in the BIOS (press Fx when loading, varies between systems) that the on-board GPU is disabled completely. It may still be taxing that rather than your actual GPU as 46degrees is not normal for a 9800.. ( I had an 8800GTX which ran in the 80's on load, idled 50's).

Also the 9800GT performs only marginly better than the 8800GT (so the 8800GTX would outperform it) Gigabyte 9800GT Review Page 9 - Testing: Call of Duty 4 - Overclockers Club . As I had to run pr on low settings, I'm not suprised you have to as well, be sure to upgrade to the latest drivers however, found at Welcome to NVIDIA - World Leader in Visual Computing Technologies


Edit: I just looked at your everest screenshot, and well 333mhz ram is probably the bottleneck.

[Sgt.North]

Dont forget ARMA2 is a very demanding game, It humbles even NEW systems on Top graphics,

Disable post processing at least.... sorry, but this game needs a DAMN good PC to run at High Quality!