6600GT card - measure performance?

Just installed my 6600GT card with help of my friend (actually my friend installe dit... :O ).

It seems to work right, but I'd like to know if there is some way to measure the performance. I can play Beyond Good & Evil now on 1280*1024, at highest quality settings and 85Hz refresh rate, and all is smooth except there are noticeable (sometimes really bad) slowdowns in fog-heavy areas. Is this normal?

Then, I installed the demo of Splinter Cell, Pandora Tomorrow, at 1024*768 and highest quality settings. It looked great and played very smooth.

I just was wondering how I can make sure to get the most out of the card (without overclocking it )

 

install the latest drivers.
is your graphics cards power cable plugged into it? usually they need an extra power cable to be plugged into it
also its proberbly normal for it to slow down in fog, especially on maximum settings.
i would of thought you would of been able to play splinter cell pandora tommorow on 1280*1024 reseloution aswell :s

 

Actually, I didn't really try that resolution for SCPT yet... too little time. When we were finished installing the PSU and card, it was already late in the evening...

And yes, the cable is plugged in.

 

ah ok, well s long as you've got the latest drivers installed, the lag in beyond good and evil, properbly will just be normal.

what are your specs?, put all your specs of your computer either in your signature, or in My Computer (on dark blue nav bar at top)

 

Okay, I did as you said! It's updated now.

 

good good, well on games your 2.4ghz p4 cpu will be holding you back in games aswell, AMD is the way to go for gaming

 

Hmmm... just had a thought: maybe it's also because of the hyperthreading? That has caused problems for many (especially older) games in the past. Maybe I could try disable that, but how do you do that again... ?

 

to disable it, you have to go into BIOS, and there should be an opton somewere, i dont see why hyperthreading would cause you problems, becouse hyperthreading usually helps in apps and games that take advantage of it, but usually it should never cause and performance loss.

Have you got Dual Channel mode enabled for your ram?

in my old rig i have a 3.0ghz pentium 4 pressy, that never causes performance loss in games with HT.

 

Not performance loss, rather, crashes in old games.

How do you turn on dual channel mode?

 

for Dual Channel mode, there should also be an option in bios, but on your motherboard, i gater there is 4 slots for ram? 2 or which are different colour to the other 2, i belive for dual channel, both sticks of ram have to be inserted into the 2 slots of the same colour, i dont know exatly were abouts in bios it is as your motherboard is different to mine, i have an DFI 865PE in my old computer, i will take a look.

oh, if your ram is placed in slots of the same colour, then Dual Channel mode sahould automatically be enabled

 

Sounds to me that you've just got your settings too high.
The GT is a great card but it can't play all games at max settings.
Try lowering your texture resolutions, make sure soft shadows aren't on
and tweak you Forceware a little, especially turning the VSync setting off.

 

He, yeah, but BGAE isn't really a very recent game... the recommended system requirements for it are:

- CPU: Intel Pentium IV 2.4 GHz
- Memory: 256 Mb RAM
- Drive Space: 200 MB
- Operating System: Windows 2000
- Video Card: Geforce 4 or ATI 9500 64 Mb, DirectX 9 compatible
- Sound Card: EAX Advanced HD compatible
- DirectX version: 9.0b

These aren't very high so I wonder why I can't run it max? Maybe it's just because of the high resolution?

 

If the info is correct that you're listing as your computer specs, there's no Pentium 4 Northwood core with HyperThreading below 3GHz. Some of the Pentium D Socket 775 chips have that option I believe, but HT is not available for Northwoods.

Games:

Doom 3
Quake 4 (same engine as Doom 3, but slightly better graphics)
FEAR (but this will probably crawl on your system)
FarCry
Half-Life 2: Lost Coast

That and 256MB of RAM probably isn't helping either. I would bump it up to 512MB, although 1GB is probably more ideal.

 

No, no, in the above post those are the recommended system requirements from the box, that's not my system. I actually have 1GB of Ram in my PC (see 'my computer').

The 'Northwood' may just be a wrong diagnose... I got that by running a hardware info tool. I'm sure it's 2.4Ghz and has some form hyperthreading though, I had to disable that once to get Thief TDP to run.

 

you still have a 2.4ghz pentium 4 though, which appears not to have HT

I think its your cpu thats just holding you back now

 

Well, sorry for my persistence, but I think this still might be a processor with hyperthreading.

I think that either:
- it is a Northwood model with hyperthreading (which apparently do exist, see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentium_4 , P4C model)
- the hardware tool misdiagnosed it and it's actually another model with hyperthreading

But yes, it's not the greatest CPU... I miss my old AthlonXP CPU...

 

I can play the rest of the game (BYGAE) fine on 1280*1024 ... seems it's only that one sequence at the start that gives troubles.

I also tried Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow at 1280*1024, all stuff on high. Works fine, very smooth too!

BYGAE had to have Vsync on though and for SC I had to set the Vsync to application controlled, otherwise I got a weird white polygon-like box on the screen.

 

As I've said before: no Northwood CPU has HyperThreading below 3.0GHz. The 3.06GHz Northwood did. I had a 2.4B Northwood P4, and I can assure you that did not have HT. Not all P4's have HyperThreading either, BTW.

 

Okay, I don't doubt your right. So if I've got something else, how can I find out what exactly I do have?

 

Okay, as far as Northwood's go you have the 2.4 with a 400MHz FSB, then you have the 2.4B with a 533MHz FSB. The last one, the 2.4C has an 800MHz FSB.

Open up Task Manager (Ctrl+Alt+Delete or right-click on any open area of the task bar and hit Task Manager) and go to the Performance Tab. If you see two graphs under CPU Usage History, then you do have HT. If you see one, you don't.

Also, if it's an option, your BIOS will allow you to toggle it on or off.