Old school video card issue

[novadaemon]

I'm trying to run Transformers: War for Cybertron on an older rig, and I'm running into some issues.

Video cards:

Radeon X1650xt 256mb
Geforce 7800gt 256mb
Geforce 7800gtx 256mb

Nforce 4 motherboard
Athlon 64 3700+ @ 2.4ghz

The radeon has the smoothest framerate which never drops below 10fps.
The geforces have a bad stutter often dropping around 5fps, but in theory they should crush the x1650xt.

In 3dmark05 this is what i get

x1650xt: ~7k total, ~5.8k cpu score
7800gt: ~6.9k total, ~6.8k cpu score
7800gtx: ~7.4k total ~7.1k cpu score

Why is this system getting over 1k lower cpu score with the radeon than with the geforces?

I'm using the latest nvidia drivers, and i have tried the built in radeon drivers along with the vista cat 9.1's (the latest ones that work with the card).

I'd like it if someone could help with this issue. I'm aware the CPU is terribly lacking, and the video cards suck.

Back in the day the 7600gt and the x1650xt traded blows, so I don't understand why it's crushing the geforces now and why the cpu score is lower with it.

 

[snefan]

try older drivers, or 3rd party tweaked

 

[skruideli]

man, looking at the thread title and clicking it I was thinking by "old school" you meant something like the voodoo series or at the very newest, the FX and radeon 8000/9000 series.

I feel old.

As for your problem, I definitely agree with trying a different driver.

 

[4330thgink]

man, looking at the thread title and clicking it I was thinking by "old school" you meant something like the voodoo series or at the very newest, the FX and radeon 8000/9000 series.

I feel old.

As for your problem, I definitely agree with trying a different driver.

I feel your pain.. I too was expecting some 3dfx or something else that is actually old. ...something where I might have actually been able to help out. lol

 

[evilsofa]

May I suggest the rolling back to the Nvidia 188.xx drivers? 191.xx and later introduced serious stuttering issues in some games, particularly Fallout 3, and whatever that issue may be might apply here. Though it would probably be easier and simpler to test with the 186.16 WHQL drivers.

 

[novadaemon]

I ran driver cleaner and tried fresh installs of cat 9.1's and nvidia 186.18's. catalysts are still smooth, and the 186.18's reduced some stutter but it's still there.

on the menu screen I get 20fps with the x1650 and 15fps with a 7800gt. no stutter in game with the x1650xt.

I can only assume this is due to lack of shader power since the 1650xt has around 70% more shader ops than the 7800gt...

Edit:
Solved.
It's the shaders. Apparently the 1650xt can blow out the 7900gs in shader intensive tasks so it would be no problem to defeat a 7800gt or gtx. Transformers is based on Unreal Engine 3 so it's a no brainer.