FPS cut in half

K

kaiweiler

Limp Gawd
Joined
Dec 19, 2007
Messages
314
Hey all, I previously got about 100fps constantly playing CSS.
I tried the catalyst 8.1 drivers and it dropped to around 55fps??
I figured it was the driver so I took them off and tried the 7.12 drivers again, still low fps!
I am not sure what could be causing this random cut in performance.
Any ideas?
Thanks

Card is a Radeon 3850 256mb
Oh and I'm quite sure it is not any type of thermal throttling on the GPU as it only hits low 40's while gaming.
 
Try having just one screen enabled and see if it suddenly performs as expected.
If it was working fine before with dual display switched on, maybe the latest driver has messed it up somehow.

I've had a few performance issues when using dual display mode.
for example, Guitar Hero 3 becomes unplayable as it jerks quite often.
I'm using an 8800GT.
 
Its worth uninstalling the driver, running Driver cleaner and then re-installing to make sure there are no hangovers.
 
Nenu said:
Its worth uninstalling the driver, running Driver cleaner and then re-installing to make sure there are no hangovers.
Click to expand...
Did that...
I don't think it's a driver issue anymore, but I'm not sure what else it could be...

stoney_titan said:
How in gods name are they configured?
Click to expand...
haha, 1440x900 each sorry, I guess it'd be a total of 2880x900...
 
76.76 average fps with the following settings:
csssettings.jpg
 
Take a look at your display control panel and make sure that nothing like vsync, AA or AF is being forced from there. Catalyst installs fuck with my display settings all the time...

Did you try running Driver Cleaner when rolling back to 7.12, as well as when installing 8.1?
 
AA and AF are both on application settings.
I tried disabling AI since I have not seen that on previous versions but that did not have any effect either.

And I uninstalled CCC from the control panel, restarted in safe mode, ran driver cleaner, restarted normal w/o internet (to prevent windows from automatically installing drivers for vga) and manually installed drivers.
As far as I know, this is the correct way.

I am back to the 8.1 version now though as changing back to the 7.12 did not fix anything. I am planning a format in a few days to create my RAID-0 array, so I may just leave it and see if the format cleans off the problem.
 
Turn off HDR. Also unless you where playing on a small server there is no way on earth you can get 100fps constant in CS:S, the crappy engine just can't handle it.
 
Well I was?
Could it have been an incorrect reading before perhaps? I used the net_graph 3 command in console to display FPS
And I'm only gaming on the one monitor at 1440x900, the other monitor just has messenger and stuff going on it.
 
sounds like a typical refresh rate vs frame rate issue.

the following only applies to source and the half life 1 engine.

enable writers console, if you haven't already, by going into options, keyboard, advanced, and putting a check mark in the box named "enable writers console". Hit the ` aka ~ key (the key beside the #1) and type in the following:

Code: 
fps_max 75

The next option will try to change your monitors refresh rate through steam. I do not believe steam has ever succeeded in changing the refresh rate, so I'm not really sure what this option does, but even with fps_max at 100, if steam believes your monitor can only handle 55Hz, it will display constant 55... sometimes, not so other times. Steam FPS measuring software is really pretty bad.

Open up steam, right click on the game in question, click properties, click on "set launch options" and type in the following

Code: 
-freq 75

But heres the thing, who cares about measured FPS? Is it smooth for you? Would you have noticed the drop without net graph telling you it was there? If net graph is the only thing that you're basing your opinion on, I wouldnt worry about it. Steam is brilliant software in some ways, terrible software in others ("others" including its ability to measure fps).
 
lol

Anyway, it appears my core clock is only running at 297Mhz?! Without even starting up CS:S...
Stock should be 669Mhz
Also the memory clock is only at 828Mhz, which is exactly half of what the specified 1656Mhz listed online...possibly with regards to DDR, not sure
So the question now is, why the hell is my GPU running at half speed?!
 
kaiweiler said:
lol

Anyway, it appears my core clock is only running at 297Mhz?! Without even starting up CS:S...
Stock should be 669Mhz
Also the memory clock is only at 828Mhz, which is exactly half of what the specified 1656Mhz listed online...possibly with regards to DDR, not sure
So the question now is, why the hell is my GPU running at half speed?!
Click to expand...

The source stress test might not be giving the card enough of a load to cause it to go to 3d speeds. Instead of going into 3d speeds whenever a 3d app is run the 3800's try to detect how much the application is using the GPU and then determine clock speeds from there:confused: 828mhz DDR (double data rate) = 1656mhz so theres no problem there. The memory speeds should stay the same all of the time.
 
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