New gaming PC preforming poorly

Computer Forum General Hardware
1

Hello
This is my first post on this forum, I generaly try to figure these things out for my self by reading other posts and information in general. Unfortunatly I have not been able to solve my current problem.

I recently bought a new PC for gaming and such. At first everything seemed to be working, however any game that pushes the hardware in any way tends to preform poorly.
Games like Rainbow 6 Vegas and NFS Carbon run ok if I turn of AA/AF and set the details to medium. (Ok means 30FPS average)

Other games, including my favoritte: Supreme Commander, are almost unplayable even on “low”. I realize these games require a strong PC, but I was expecting better ressults.

P.S The settings in “Nvidia Controll Pannel” are all sett to “preformance”

My PC:
Mobo: Asus P5W DH Deluxe
RAM: 2GB Corsair Twin2x 6400 DDR2 (2x 1024)
CPU: Intel E6600 @ 2,4 GHz
PSU: Fortron/Source Epsilon 700W
HDD: 2x Samsung Spinnpoint T133 400GB SATA2 16MB 7200RPM
Monitor: Samsung Syncmaster 204B 1600x1200
GPU: Gainward GeForce 8800 GTX 768MB GDDR3

I have ben using Windows XP Pro SP2, but switched to Vista a few days ago hoping I would see some change. As expected though, nothing changed. (I did get a nice big headache when I tried to install drivers though…) I will probably be switching back soon.

I have atempted several solutions with little effect:

  • Updated/Reinstalled drivers for the GPU.

  • Ran Orthos and Memtest, no problems detected.

  • Swaped out one of the PCI-E power cables with an “Y-adapter” in order to force the PSU to draw power from another rail (I do not quite understand this, it was suggested by a man that seemed to understand these things).

  • Updated BIOS, official and BETA

  • Ran 3D mark 06. The score was around 9800. (I belive this is about right for my PC).

The 3D Mark ressults seemed a little odd, considdering the poor preformance in games. The only thing I can think of is that 3D Mark seems to test each component seperatly, therefore it would seem that the problem arises when several components are working hard. (My understanding of these things is limited, I could very well be dead wrong here).

Any help you could offer to shed light upon this issue would be greatly appriciated.

(Please excuse any grammar/spelling errors, English is not my primary language :smiley: )

2

This is the suspect I believe because VISTA is still lacking drivers support in many cases..

3

Did you do either of the following when you upgraded?
1.)Clean install of Windows XP
or
2.)Remove everything in Device manager before shutting down and swapping out?

Did you do a clean install of Vista? or just an upgrade?

How much memory are the background processes taking up under XP? Under Vista?

Did you install the latest chipset drivers?

4

The whole computer is new, I did not upgrade my old syste.

It came with XP MCE, I have also tried XP Pro SP2 (Left over from my old system) and Vista Ultimate. I always do a clean install when changing my OS. (I never liked upgrading the OS, I feel it leaves too much of a mess).

I will have to get back to you on the memory usage when I get home.

As for drivers I have installed the latest GPU and Mobo drivers. (I use the built in
Audio device so the Mobo drivers aply to that aswell).

I apologize for the late response, I have been busy.

5

It looks mostly like the games themselves are the issue.

What resolution are you running these games at?

6

I am running games at 1600x1200 (the native res for my screen), I have tried lowering the res, but it had little to no effect (FPS increced by 1-2).

As for the problem beeing in the games, the games I listed are examples. I have tried a large number of titles, only a few seem to work corectly. I have also seen
several games run about the same on my friends PC (1 GB ram, P4 2,8 GHz and a Geforce 6600).