Underwhelming gaming performance

[JMurphy]

Hi all,

I just built my first gaming desktop and I'm a little surprised that the performance isn't better. I'm trying to see if there are obvious problems I may have overlooked. Here are the specs:

AMD Athlon II X4 640 @ 3 GHz
Patriot 4GB DDR3 SDRAM 1333
BIOSTAR A780L3L Motherboard
MSI Cyclone GTX 460, 1 GB, Factory OC
ANTEC EA-500D 500W PSU
Samsung HD502HJ 500GB HD
Windows 7 Home Premium, 64-Bit

I've been trying a bunch of demanding games since I made it. As a few examples:

Crysis, High-Very High settings, 1360x768 res, ~20-30 FPS avg
Metro 2033, DX11, Max Settings except AAA not MSAA, 1360x768, ~25-35 FPS avg

Both games are playable at these settings, but in comparison to benchmarks I've seen online where much higher resolutions are used, I'm surprised that my average FPSs aren't higher. Is there an obvious reason my performance isn't better, or am I just expecting too much?

Thanks!

[pam123]

Do you have recent drivers downloaded and installed?

The ones on the CD may be out of date.

[JMurphy]

My graphics card drivers are up to date. I haven't updated drivers for anything else. What other parts should I look for driver updates for?

[David M]

Crysis 2, Metro and perhaps Just Cause 2 are the most graphically demanding games out there. Your GTX 460 is also a generation old. I think your graphics performance for those two games with your hardware is about as much as can be expected. For those games in particular you want to be running a higher end 500 series card with a minimum of 1 gig of memory.

If you want an idea of where your rig benchmarks with other similar rigs then run 3DMark06 so you can see how your computer compares. I don't remember if 3DMark11 does the same machine for machine comparison.

[JMurphy]

Thanks for your replys.

I ran 3DMark06 and my system falls into the most populated bin in the histogram of comparable systems, but on the low side. In the report it says it is low compared to other systems and that there may be a problem, but recommends no solution. The one thing that jumped out at me in the report is under memory:

Memory
4096 MB
Module 1
4096 MB Micron Technology 9 @ 667 MHz

It says the speed is at 667 MHz, but the actual rating is 1333 MHz. Does this mean the RAM isn't configured properly, or is there a multiplier that needs to be applied to the 667MHz figure to get the actual speed?

[glc]

The ram is DDR (double data rate) and 667x2 is essentially 1333. HOWEVER - I just checked mine that uses DDR2-800 and 3DMark06 reports it at 800. You probably need to review your bios settings.

Anyway, you should be running a matched pair of modules - you lose performance only running in single channel.

[JMurphy]

Thanks for the input. I checked by ram speed with cpu-z and it says the DRAM frequency is 666.7 MHz. I'm not sure whether cpu-z is quoting the doubled data rate, or just the single. Does anyone know? (I also checked in the BIOS but it wasn't immediately clear, just that it was on some kind of auto setting.)

And thanks for pointing that out about single vs. dual channel. Another stick of RAM will probably be in my next upgrade now.

[pam123]

Read the March 2011 issue of MaximumPC here : PDF Archives | Maximum PC
They review the GTX 460 on a more powerful system then yours with more ram.
In Crysis lesser resolution may not give you more frame rates with every thing else maxed out.