GX2, Crysis, and X48 problem?

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skypine27

Gawd
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Apr 18, 2008
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A little help here...

I recently switched from a PNY 8800 Ultra Factory Overclocked to an EVGA 9800 GX2 Factory Overclocked (KO Model)

The 8800 ran everything I could throw at it maxed out, with the obvious except of Crysis. I was hoping the 9800 GX2 would help out Crysis, but here's what happened...

I've had a problem with Crysis ever since I switched mobos from a 680i (Striker Extreme) to an X48 (Rampage Formula). The 680i, and 8800 Ultra, would give me an average of about 30 FPS with my settings using the built in Crysis_64 GPU benchmark. Then, I switch my system over to an X48 mobo (see sig), and even though 3D Mark 06 scores stay the same (within 100 points of each other), now the Crysis benchmark drops to an average of 19FPS!! I am told there is no way a motherboard swap can account for a 10FPS drop in a game (using all the same settings, both in game, as well as system, ram, cpu, etc... as before). People have said there must be a problem somewhere, but I can't seem to find it.

So now, I switch to this GX2, and the Crysis benchmark goes up to 25 FPS, still 5 FPS LOWER than the 680i w/ the 8800 Ultra. Is there a problem with the X48 chipset/drivers/PCI-E 2.0 slots that I don't know about?? I'm running nvidia forceware 174.74.

Any suggestions from you experts out there? The mere fact that the GX2 is SLOWER than my 8800 Ultra was in Crysis (which is a game the GX2 is supposed to excel at) tells me there is some kind of problem with my X48 setup. I used all the system parts from my old setup, so I have no idea what could be doing it.

Anyway, heres some 3D Mark 06 pics on the X48 w/ the 8800 Ultra and then the GX2:

8800 Ultra:



9800 GX2:



GPU-Z pic of both 9800 GPUs:



And a pic of the beast:

 
Please post what resolution you are playing Crysis in, and a screen shot of the Crysis settings.

Without knowing these there is nothing to go on.

Also are you using any Custom INI's ?
 
Crysis 64 Bench:



Avg FPS, about 23 (this is with the GX2 of course). Used to be avg FPS was 29 with 8800 Ultra and 680i mobo. Got as low as 19 FPS with X48 and 8800 Ultra.

I could not figure out how to take an ingame screen cap of the Crysis system settings, my usual CTRL Prt Scr and then paste to paint did not work.

Anyway, I am playing at my native res 1680 x 1050 (Samsumg SyncMaster 215TW) with AA 4X.

If you look at the Crysis graphics/advanced page, the left "column" reads (top to bottom):

Very High
High
VH
VH
H

the right column reads:

H
VH
H
VH
VH
VH
Custom (Motion Blur, set to mid setting)

Again, the Crysis benchmark runs MUCH choppier than before on the 680i with the 8800 Ultra. It is very easy to see the worse performance with the naked eye.

Something is definitely wrong with my X48 setup. Intel does not seem to put out drivers as often (chipset, that is) as nvidia, unless I just cant find the download location. Im just using the chipset drivers that came with the mobo CD.

I also tried nvidia drivers 174.85 from Guru 3d, and the 3D Mark 06 score went up slightly, but the Crysis bench was equally terrible:



Thanks for all the help guys!

(PS. I am not using a custom ini. I only do that with my laptop to allow new drivers to be installed)
 
Nvidia Mobo's are much better with the memory, I got the same 3dmark scores at 3.6ghz q6600 on EVGA 780i as I did at 3.8ghz on ip35-pro that could be part of the issue. The other thing is do you overclock your cards? I don't know the specifics of it but from what i've read around the block it seems like Nvidia mobos somehow overclock Nvidia video cards through the PCI bus. If you are overclocking though you should be able to achieve the same performance because you should be able to overclock your graphic cards further without the pci overclock on them. All a wash in the end. With a good amount of tweaking you should get close to the same performance on both mobos but without any tweaking the performance will be better on the Nvidia board.
 
Neubspeed:

I only over clock my CPU, and its an extreme edition so all I do is change the multiplier. The stock multipler is 9, 9x 333 = 3.0 ghz. I was running it at 11, giving me 3.66 on both boards, totally stable. Per your suggestion, I put the multiplier back down to 10, for 3.33 ghz and ran the Crysis bench. Still slow. Got an average FPS of 23, same as with the CPU set to 3.66, so I dont think thats the problem.

Bluehaze:

No, I never overclocked either video card, the 8800 or the GX2. However, both cards came factory overclocked, via a hard-bios change. However, I was unaware that nvidia mobos might have an added benefit via some sort of mysterious PCI slot overclock.

As far as memory goes (system memory), Intel chipsets are supposed to be quite a bit better than nvidia boards, especially for people who run all 4 DIMM banks filled. For example, on my 680i, I could not get my 8GB (4 x 2gb dimms) to run at anything higher than 800, even though they are quality/expensive and rated to 1066. However, when I thossed them into my X48, they booted and ran no problem at 1066.

I will look at my BIOS some more and see if there is anything I can do on the X48 board as far as PCI-E speed goes. There is a setting in my BIOS called PCIE Frequency. Its default is 100, though I can raise it to a very high amount. I'm unsure what this setting does yet.

Thanks again for the advice.

(Still very frustrated at Crysis. Everything else works great on the X48)
 
At 1680 x 1050 and most settings on VH and 4xAA, 23FPS average seems about right. Can't believe a single 8800GTX got higher, with respect i think you have turned up the IQ and not realised it.

Ah here we go
http://enthusiast.hardocp.com/article.html?art=MTQ3NSwzLCxoZW50aHVzaWFzdA==


Not exactly the same resolution but there 1600x1200 Crysis setting are distinctly lower than yours and average 28FPS(no AA for a start), so unless I am missing something, you are missing something and are suffering a slight case of paranoia :)

Turn down your settings they are nuts even for your card, start with AA.
 
I did not turn up any of the settings on Crysis. When I reinstalled Vista for the X48 swap, I backed up my full documents directory, which included all Crysis save games as well as settings.

So when I reinstalled Crysis next, my old profile name, complete with graphical settings was right there, unchanged. And I know it was getting 29 FPS before. Not with an GTX, but with a factory overclocked Ultra. (Though I understand an Ultra is simply an overclocked GTX, so my Factory Over clocked Ultra must be like a very very overclocked GTX).

I'll turn down the AA from 4x and see if that helps.

Thanks for the tips.

Edit: I turned down the AA from 4 to 0, and turned the shadows from Very High to High. that did it. Now I get an average of 46FPS when running the Crysis benchmark. However, I know I had AA set to 4 with the Ultra, it must simply handle AA better than the GX2. Kind of sad.

Thanks for the info.
 
Raising the pcie freq will overclock the card but it's usually better for stability to just bump the freq to 101 then overclock the cards with a utility like rivatuner. As far as the memory you are correct there are less problems with an intel board because the compatibility is better but part of the tradeoff is that the memory will be slower when compared to an Nvidia board using linked and sync'd mode and using cpu multiplier to get the frequency close to the same via fsb.
 
skypine27 said:
I did not turn up any of the settings on Crysis. When I reinstalled Vista for the X48 swap
Click to expand...



Your Ultra could not have been running that fast with the stated Crysis settings, you are missing "something". Have a close look at the link I gave you.
 
Thanks for that link Battleneter.

When I get home I'll mess with Crysis settings some more, as suggested by the configs in that link for 1680x1050 and a GX2.

It's amazing to me that with that setup, you STILL cant turn ANYTHING on Very High and get a playable game.

Hope FarCry2 aint like that!
 
with everything at very high, no aa, 16x10, i get about exactly what you get, with a sort of equal system. i think you may have had some settings different, because 30fps is kind of steep for an ultra. also, i was running g92 gts sli before this, and only got around 23-24fps.

crysis 64bit dx10 all very high, no aa, 16x10 1x 9800gx2

==============================================================
TimeDemo Play Started , (Total Frames: 2000, Recorded Time: 111.86s)
==============================================================
TimeDemo Play Started , (Total Frames: 2000, Recorded Time: 111.86s)
!TimeDemo Run 0 Finished.
Play Time: 83.22s, Average FPS: 24.03
Min FPS: 17.54 at frame 1051, Max FPS: 30.00 at frame 982
Average Tri/Sec: -16346115, Tri/Frame: -680195
Recorded/Played Tris ratio: -1.35
!TimeDemo Run 1 Finished.
Play Time: 82.76s, Average FPS: 24.17
Min FPS: 17.46 at frame 1955, Max FPS: 31.18 at frame 68
Average Tri/Sec: -16113966, Tri/Frame: -666789
Recorded/Played Tris ratio: -1.37
!TimeDemo Run 2 Finished.
Play Time: 84.49s, Average FPS: 23.67
Min FPS: 16.47 at frame 1955, Max FPS: 31.18 at frame 68
Average Tri/Sec: -15778023, Tri/Frame: -666547
Recorded/Played Tris ratio: -1.38
!TimeDemo Run 3 Finished.
Play Time: 93.82s, Average FPS: 21.32
Min FPS: 13.86 at frame 1950, Max FPS: 31.18 at frame 68
Average Tri/Sec: -14235449, Tri/Frame: -667777
Recorded/Played Tris ratio: -1.37
TimeDemo Play Ended, (4 Runs Performed)
=======================================================
 
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