Got my new video card... mixed feelings

[Hi Ho]

My 6600GT finally arrived. I had it installed five minutes after the FedEx man dropped it off. The first game I tried was Half Life 2. It ran noticably smoother and there were effects, especially water, that I have never seen before. Next I tried the Doom III demo. It looked and played better than ever. So far no complaints.

Then I tried the Far Cry demo. It actually looks worse! No matter what settings I use it looks like THIS (http://community.webshots.com/photo/342397658/363538686iFGhQu). It looked MUCH better before. When I click "Auto Detect Settings" it sets everything to low. With the old card it set everything to medium or high. There must be something wrong.

The biggest dissapointment was JointOps, a major factor in my decision to get a new card. It really doesn't play much better at all. :( I still get 5-15 FPS on medium settings and not much better on low. Is there something wrong here? Should I just reformat and start over? I was really excited to get a new card and was hoping for a major improvement in all of my games. I don't see that.

There's another thing. The two games that came with the card, Splinter Cell Pandora Tommorow and Prince of Persia: Warrior Within, came on DVD-ROM. It's about time I get some games on DVD instead of CD. Anyway, they took forever to install. It took 40 minutes to install Splinter Cell! During the install process the CPU usage was at 100% and the mouse moved very slowly. The DVD drive was running at full speed. Is my PC too slow to take advantage of the DVD transfer speeds or is there something else wrong? By the time I did get Pandora Tommorow installed, however, it ran beautifully besides the fact that there seems to be absolutely no anti-aliasing support. Why is that?

All in all I was hoping for more. I guess my system is more of a bottleneck than I thought? I will probably reformat and see how it goes.

[netnamakan]

Congrats on the new card hiho, I have one myself. My card has had several problems as well. These 6600gt's seem to be very picky about the drivers you use, just mess around with them and see if it makes a difference.

I have the forceware 7.1.89 now, and it seems it runs worse than what I had previously (I cant remember exactly which ones :o )

About the Far Cry thing, mine wont even play Far Cry, I dont know whats going on there. I have spent far to much time trying to figure other PC stuff out already, and gaming has taken a backseat for the summer anyway.
-I just noticed you said Far Cry demo .. it has some real problems that demo..

One thing that DOES run flawlessly is doom 3..I can play on 1024x1280 at high texture..unlike CSS were it struggles at 1024x768 on med texture, however I think that has more to do with my CPU (p4c 2.8)

Oh btw what brand did you get?

Anyways, g'night pcmech ;)

namakan

[Lamilia]

sorry to hear that well I guess I will be changing my upcoming computer's vid card :o.

EDIT: nevermind I have a 2800

[Jaggannath]

Looking at the system in your sig, Hi Ho, I really don't see where it could be bottlenecking... I have less and I don't suffer from those issues.
I especially don't understand the DVD reading so slowly and using up so much of your CPU, although admittedly my laptop sometimes does that

[David M]

I noticed you hve 768 megs of RAM. Could the fact you don't have matching sticks of DDR RAM have something to do with it? I have no idea.

[Hi Ho]

My motherboard doesn't do dual channel so I don't think the mis-matched RAM is a problem. After fiddling around with the JointOps settings I got it working a lot better. I trippled the frame rates. :) After spending more time in different games I'm really liking this card.

I'm going to reformat. It would be nice to have a fresh install anyway. Far Cry should definetly work on this card. All of the reviews show it performing very well. Maybe it's just the demo?

I have the newest drivers, same as you Netnamaken, maybe that's the problem. Which ones did you have before? THIS (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814122206) is the card I bought.

[kram 2.0]

Sounds like nothing should be bottlenecking the 6600GT. Sounds a lot like a driver problem/game software problem, even though you have the newest drivers. FarCry plays fine everything maxed out with a Radeon 9800 Pro - can't imagine a 6600GT not handling it :confused:. I'd say backup and reformat.

You did notice the water change in HL2 - the beauty of DX9.0 and the Source Engine :D

kram

[netnamakan]

I think it was the Forceware 71.84, however I am not positive.
I am DL'ing them now, I'll install and run some tests later today to see if it does better.

I'll post or PM you with the results.

namakan

[Marke522]

I totally understand your disappointments. I purchased my AIW 9800 Pro awhile ago, and the performance for Star Wars KOTOR was OUTSTANDING...until I made it to Dantooine. Oh wow was that the WORST performance I have ever seen, worse than my onboard graphics. ATI's website has a known issue with that game and with the sequal. Currenly my most game of all time. That's so frustrating spending so much money on a card and not having it do what you wanted it to.

I left my old PCI FX 5200 installed, I use that for dual monitors and I could make that my primary card to play the game, but that would defeat the purpose of spending all that money on a new card. :( Guess I'll just have to find a new favorite game.

[nocturnx]

Its probly just the Far Cry demo. There are alot of bugs in it, your issue with the demo is very common. I remember when the demo first came out it wouldnt even play on 9800 Pros.

[Tin]

have you tried the FarCry 1.3 patch that implements SM3.0? that was a huge fix for the 6800 cards, and should be as well for your card.

[netnamakan]

Tin, he's just running the demo, I don't think the patches apply to it.

Pardon me if I'm wrong.

[Tin]

Tin, he's just running the demo, I don't think the patches apply to it.

Pardon me if I'm wrong.
ahhh...i wasnt aware he was running the demo :o.

[netnamakan]

Alright, well I tried the last gen forcewares, and there was no difference whatsoever during gameply that I could notice, and 3dmark05 and aquamark reported slightly lower scores than with the newer drivers. :(

namakan

[Nuclear Krusader]

Welcome to the club of disappointed video card buyers. I got my Radeon 9600 Pro a year ago and I am totally unimpressed. My system is a Pentium 4 2.4 Northwood FSB 400 running @ 2.6 GHz, with 512 MB of RAM, a Barracuda 80 GB HD 7200 rpm, and ABit i845PE mobo. Not a very bad system if you ask me, hence my disappointment when Morrowind started lagging and I got banding effects in other 3D games. Heck, even Baldur's Gate 2 which is not a real 3D game slows down when battling dragons. It's a 2000 game for heavens's sakes! What could be the bottleneck, I know not. I even installed Windows XP Pro in a different partition and tweaked it to have the fastest performance and I'm still having trouble. 200 bucks down the drain. HAL says the system should be screaming with that card. Well, the only one screaming here is me. :mad:

[Force Flow]

Sounds like the software could use some tweaking, nuke

As for the games in question, you have to take into account the stress on OpenGL vs Direct3D. nVidia cards typically do better with games geared towards OpenGL, and ATi with games geared toward Direct3D.

[Nuclear Krusader]

Force, I'm welcoming suggestions anent such tweaking. And all these games are Direct3D games, save for Unreal 2 I think, which by the ironic way, played flawlessly.

[Force Flow]

Alright, catch me online sometime this week.

[glc]

Make sure all your drives are running in DMA, not PIO. 100% CPU use sounds like PIO.

[fudtone]

The full version of Farcry works fine at max settings on my unit. I dont remember if I have it patched or not.

[Hi Ho]

Well I have reformatted. It was a lot of work. 28 CD's worth of backed up pictures, music, and saved game info. Anyway, it works a lot better! I am very happy with it now. I definetly recommend the 6600GT!

JointOps now runs at 40+ FPS on mostly high settings. I haven't tried the Far Cry demo. The DVD drive is working a lot better. It was probably in PIO mode before. I have had problems with it reverting to PIO in the past. Anyway, I'm glad I bought the card now. :)

[netnamakan]

Good to hear, man I hate backing up lol :(

Happy Fragging :D


namakan

[Hi Ho]

Yeah I need a DVD burner. All of that stuff would fit on 3 dual layer DVD's.

[Lamilia]

I totally understand your disappointments. I purchased my AIW 9800 Pro awhile ago, and the performance for Star Wars KOTOR was OUTSTANDING...until I made it to Dantooine. Oh wow was that the WORST performance I have ever seen, worse than my onboard graphics. ATI's website has a known issue with that game and with the sequal. Currenly my most game of all time. That's so frustrating spending so much money on a card and not having it do what you wanted it to.

I left my old PCI FX 5200 installed, I use that for dual monitors and I could make that my primary card to play the game, but that would defeat the purpose of spending all that money on a new card. :( Guess I'll just have to find a new favorite game.

Sell the card on ebay or the trading post forum and buy a better one even if you don't get your money back you can get most of it back.

Yeah I need a DVD burner. All of that stuff would fit on 3 dual layer DVD's.
sony makes (or is making) these CDs that is a CD on one side and a DVD on the other, and you can buy a burner from them that burns both (I think it burns both at the same time)

[Lamilia]

I'm going to reformat. It would be nice to have a fresh install anyway. Far Cry should definetly work on this card. All of the reviews show it performing very well. Maybe it's just the demo?

Why do you just have the demo? Why not just by the full version? Do you just use it for testing things like this?

[Hi Ho]

sony makes (or is making) these CDs that is a CD on one side and a DVD on the other, and you can buy a burner from them that burns both (I think it burns both at the same time)
Dual layer DVD's are not dual sided. They have two layers on one side. Most movies you buy in the store are dual layer. Most DVD burners are now dual layer as well.

[Jaggannath]

Why do you just have the demo? Why not just by the full version? Do you just use it for testing things like this?

Maybe because he doesn't want to buy the full version at this stage. All in all, it's immaterial, he wants to play it, and he can't because it looks dodgy