PNY Verto 7900GS runs like shit through a funnel

Okay, that's an exaggeration, but I'm VERY disappointed in the
performance of my recent modestly priced upgrade. I went from an Abit
Socket A system to an Asus Socket 939 A8N-SLI with PNY Verto 7900GS
video because I wanted to play LAST YEARS games, let alone the latest,
with decent speed at 1280 X 1024 (native resolution of my LCD) and no
choppiness. I fired up games like Gothic 3, NWN2 and The Witcher, and
boy was I surprised! Even Titan Quest runs kind of stutterry under
Windows XP SP2. Crappy performance not much better than my old ATI
9800 Pro, but with worse image quality (what a shock going from ATI to
Nvidia in that department). I'm using the latest DirectX, latest
nforce drivers (169.xx), but only 1 GB DDR400 (CAS3) Crucial
Technology sticks (single data rate) and older non-SATA hard drives
(Western Digital 5,400 RPM 160GB). Could this be my problem?

I just wanted to run last years games smoothly and thought this would
be a significant upgrade that would allow me to do this. Is something
possibly wrong with my video card? I ran Passmark Performance test
which showed my system running on a par with other similar systems
except one video test, which scored low. My 3dMark06 score is between
4000-4200. Is this abnormally low? Any help or tips on how to get
good speeds on the aforementioned games would be appreciated.

joe

 

Post your full system specs, something doesn't add up. The 7900GS is
not the fastest 7900 series card, but you should get performance roughly
twice as fast or more as your 9800. A 6600GT beat a 9800 in older DX9
games. Check out Toms VGA charts for reference:

http://www23.tomshardware.com/graphics_2007.html?modelx=33&model1=712&model2=722&chart=318

Overall game scores are a better indicator than one specific test. As
you can see, a few 7800's can still beat the 7900GS handily, and
definitely the 7900GT. The 7950/GX2 was widely considered the pinnacle
of the 7xxx series.

What really concerns me is your image quality comments. Ever since the
GF6 and 7 series, NVIDIA cards provide IDENTICAL image quality to their
current competitors. Take a 1950 Pro for example matched up against a
7900GT; aside from minor differences, IQ should be absolute REFERENCE
quality. In fact both companies match their IQ to Microsoft's reference
rasterizer. Small differences occur in gamma, antialiasing, and texture
filtering distances, but mostly just gamma correction.

If yours doesn't, then that should be a red light for a defective card,
badly configured set of drivers, or some misconfiguration (such as
monitor color or ICM profile). If what you're saying is mostly
subjective (as in preferred), then it really doesn't matter.

 

You need to lay off those 2girls1cup videos...

You need to have a realistic expectation of the 7900GS' performance. Just
because the games were released last year, doesn't mean they will run well.
The games you mentioned have particularly unoptimized engines. The best way
to improve framerates, in fact, is to apply the latest patch for each game.

NWN2 is slow if shadows are enabled:
http://www.gamespot.com/features/6163248/p-2.html

Gothic 3 is expected to be slow:
http://www.gamespot.com/pc/rpg/gothic3/player_review.html?id=502657

Running one stick of RAM in single-channel mode incurs about 10% speed
penalty. A slow hard disk makes load times longer, but shouldn't hurt
framerates.

Go into the nVidia control panel. I think a few mipmap and texture filtering
sliders are by default set to max performance. Set them to max quality and
image quality should be equal to ATi's.

Make sure AA and AF are set to "application-controlled".

3DMark 06 score is about right. Back in May 2006 my single Radeon X1900XT
and A64 3200+ scored 4600 3DMarks.

 

Full system specs:

Athlon64 X2 4200+ cpu

Asus A8N-SLI Deluxe (rev.1.02, latest 1805 BIOS)

PNY Verto 7900GS 256MB video

2x 512MB Crucial Technology DDR400 sticks running in single channel
mode (motherboard won't allow them as Dual Channel)

160 GB Western Digital, 5400 RPM EIDE HDD
160 GB Seagate 7200 RPM EIDE HDD (I should switch my games directory
over since it is slightly faster than the WD)

Onboard Realtek ALC850 sound using the audio driver in the Nforce4
chipset driver package (latest version)

Nothing is overclocked.

See anything amiss or that can reconfigured/optimized? Thanks for the
help. btw.

The image quality might be more of a preferebnce thing. I just feel
the ATI felt "brighter" "warmer" than the Geforce. I felt the same
thing years ago going from a Voodoo3 to a Geforce2, but after a while
never noticed it.

joe

 

LOL.

joe

 

You imply you just upgraded to this set-up? None of those components are
new, certainly not new enough to be considered a robust platform for
"last years" games. In fact, you have to go out of your way to find an
s939 board, new or used. So let's assume you got it 2nd hand.

That said, that mobo is an nforce4 board, a robust choice that can
actually handle today's games. I know, I use one. It is also designed to
run dual channel RAM in dual channel mode. That you can't get your 2x512
sticks running in dual channel is a serious problem, and a likely
performance killer.

Also, you say you are running the onboard realtek audio solution,
another performance killer, you lose at least 10% of your top end by
using that horrible chip. I also bet you are using the built in NIC,
another dodgy and draining chip.


Get your RAM working dual channel and at CAS2, like it should. Make sure
you have the proper AMD X2 cool-n-quiet drivers loaded, make sure your
BIOS is set just-so (i.e. for performance disabling everything you
aren't using). Disable those awful onboard integrated solutions, get an
X-fi, get an Intel 1000MT NIC, and you will assuredly see a remarkable
difference.

While you are at it, get 2x1024 for your system ram, 1G is inadequate
for gaming and the IQ if nvidia cards today is indistinguishable from
ati cards, once set properly. But, it must be set properly, install
ntune for access to these settings. Get to work!