My name is Josh and i just bought a galaxy geforce gtx 550ti 1GB and i play cod4 so i expected high performance but it seems i have a bottleneck my geforce 6800 gs performs the same as the gtx 550ti!! GTX BOTTLENECK!! , i have a dell dimension e520. i think the bottleneck is my cpu i have a Intel pentium D 2.8ghz (2cpu's). my specs start here Monitor: 17" HP pavilion f70 lcd I Play cod4 at 1280x1024 i get 30-50 fps low settings (avg fps:40) Operating System: Windows Xp Sp3 HardDrive: Western Digital 250gb 7200rpm Power Supply: Ultra V-Series 500W ATX12V (24amps on 12v rail) (Ram)Memory: 2gb 533mhz ddr2 sdram Graphics Card: Galaxy Geforce Gtx 550Ti 1GB coreclock:900mhz Shadar clock:1800mhz Memory clock: 4100mhz Cpu: Intel® Pentium® D 820 2mb Cpu and Video card Idle Temp: 40 Degrees Celcius Cpu and Video Card Load Temp: 50 Degrees Celcius Processes Runing During Game play: 31 What do i need to upgrade? Budget $200 usd. Can i fix the bottleneck by overclocking the graphics card? Please tell me where my problem is thanks!
Yes, the CPU is the culprit. I had a similar setup 3 years back, with a pentim d and an 8800gt. Played modern warfare on high graphics but experienced some lag. If i would have had a quad core, i would have experienced no issues. You need to understand though, there is no direct correlation in speed between a cpu or a vga. Therefore, no bottlenecking exists. It's simply a lack of better hardware. In your case, you lack a better cpu and that is why your gameplay is as good as it should be. I would definitely invest in an i5 or i7.
I wasn't sure if I had to make a new thread or post it here, but I decided to post it here in the end. Scorp, you know my build as well as I know it by now, so I'm going to ask you a few more things. I have been playing Portal 2 on the highest settings possible, and I still only get 20FPS on average. I thought my rig was well capable of running Portal 2 on max settings? Same goes for Metro 2033, been playing that too on the max settings, and yet, I still get aprox. 25FPS on average. Do you think I'd have to invest in a better CPU to get higher FPS ratings..? Oh, and my second question to you would be, what settings should I disable/lower in games to get a better FPS rate w/o noticing much quality loss? I've heard people say that you can lower or disable some settings in games to get better FPS rates without noticing alot of changes, but I have no clue what these settings are.
Well, generally there are a few settings that even with the greatest card out there, you won't get the best framerate. It's all marketing man. I remember when Crysis came out, and you needed two 8800 Ultras' to get better than average FPS! But anyway, there's still a few setting we can change to get you better results: Probably the most notorious setting of them all, Anti-Aliasing on 16x will greatly reduce fps. Turn it to 8x. Next is Vertical Sync. It's not necessary, so disable that. I'm surprised though. I'm running portal at max settings and i'm getting 60fps. I haven't seen it go lower than that. I'm running on a 260GTX and a core 2 quad q6600 processor! Are you sure you're getting 20 avg fps? Did you turn on the console and type in "cl_showfps 1" to display accurate fps? If you did and see for sure that it's averaging at that speed, get speedfan to display temps while playing. GPU temps of above 75 or so is worrisome. CPU temp above 70 or so may also indicate an issue.
I use Fraps to show me the FPS I'm running on, since I have no clue how to turn on the console in Steam games xD Here are some screenshots from ingame + the settings: http://i77.photobucket.com/albums/j72/cisko_photo/Portal2.png http://i77.photobucket.com/albums/j72/cisko_photo/Portal2settings.png I turned Vertical Refresh in the ATI control center down to 'always off', and yet, I still get these results. =S And another funny thing, with /everything/, yes, /everything/ turned to it's lowest settings in the advanced settings of video in the portal 2 menu gives me 65 FPS in the chamber where I made that first screenshot in. What the hell? ._. (I do still play on 1920x1080 res with 16:9) Also, I always play games with Skype & MSN running, and most of the time a Safari window with a few tabs open is running alongside those two. So yeah idk man :S.
I want to see what the console will give you. To turn on the console, go to Keyboard and Mouse settings, "Allow Developer Console". Enable it. Now, press the "~" key at the top left if your keyboard to open the console. Type in "cl_showfps 1". To the top left of your screen, you'll see small yellow numbers moving very quickly which display FPS. Disable the vertical sync in the game as well.
Sadly enough, the console gives me the exact same FPS as Fraps does. =/ Also, as I said at the bottom of my last post, even when I disable everything that I can disable, and put the rest on the lowest setting possible, i still only get 65FPS max in that room on the SS.
It seems to be an issue with portal 2 itself. Read this: http://boards.ign.com/teh_vestibule/b5296/202040423/r202040812/ To the bottom of the page, you'll see this guy who fixed the issue by disabling Anti-Aliasing in Portal 2, and enabling Anti-Aliasing through CCC (Catalyst Control Center). He gets 60fps (oh, which is max for portal 2 btw ). See if that works.
Nope, doesn't work either. Still hitting 25 FPS. This is so annoying man. What is wrong with my computer? Also, I dont know wether this would help or not, but here are my CCC settings: http://i77.photobucket.com/albums/j72/cisko_photo/CCC1.png http://i77.photobucket.com/albums/j72/cisko_photo/CCC2.png The settings I use in Portal 2 are 2 posts above this one.
Don't worry, your computer is fine. Its Portal or Steam. There are many who have your issue. I was one of the fortunate ones who didn't Lets try and disable Vertical Sync Refresh in CCC (lower the slide to the performance side). Also, here a guy mentioned he had to "verify game cache" and it solved his issue. Go here for the correct steps in doing so. I'm crossing my fingers buddy! If it doesn't work i would do the boring usual - reinstall catalyst drivers, disable running background programs when playing.
Why do I always have this bad luck.. ^_^''' http://i77.photobucket.com/albums/j72/cisko_photo/ValidatePortal2.png It was only one file it had to validate.. Lol As for disabling the Vsync refresh in CCC, doesn't work either. Lmfao, I'm close to giving up
Yeah I gave up too. What's funny tho; I purchased Need For Speed Hot Pursuit this afternoon on Steam, put everything on the highest settings possible (In both the game and CCC), and had Skype, MSN, and all the other programs open, and yet, I still get a constant 60FPS. It never even dropped below 59FPS. Its weird.
