Poor performance from 9800 pro...

[EnFoRcEr!!]

My friend has a decent pc at his house. AMD XP 2400+, Soyo KT-400 Lite, 1gig PC 3200(not sure who by), ATI 9800 pro, onboard LAN/sound. He bought his 9800 pro 2 weeks ago, and has been having trouble with it ever since he got it. He'll get decent frames I guess most of the time, but a lot of the time, he'll get horrible spikes in his fps, down to 40's and such. Also it will lag his pc for a second or so in game quite often. This is with all of the settings almost all of the way down, 800x600 in-game res, 16-bit color, and on counter-strike(not a very demanding game as it is). Does anyone have any idea as to why this is happening? We've reinstalled all of the AGP drives, 4-in-1's, cat's, everything. Even tried the omega drivers. I cant seem to figure it out. His pc runs a little hot, but his GeForce 3 Ti 500 ran just as well most of the time as this 9800pro. Any and all help will be appreciated. He's getting desperate.

 

[DV8]

My friend has a decent pc at his house. AMD XP 2400+, Soyo KT-400 Lite, 1gig PC 3200(not sure who by), ATI 9800 pro, onboard LAN/sound. He bought his 9800 pro 2 weeks ago, and has been having trouble with it ever since he got it. He'll get decent frames I guess most of the time, but a lot of the time, he'll get horrible spikes in his fps, down to 40's and such. Also it will lag his pc for a second or so in game quite often. This is with all of the settings almost all of the way down, 800x600 in-game res, 16-bit color, and on counter-strike(not a very demanding game as it is). Does anyone have any idea as to why this is happening? We've reinstalled all of the AGP drives, 4-in-1's, cat's, everything. Even tried the omega drivers. I cant seem to figure it out. His pc runs a little hot, but his GeForce 3 Ti 500 ran just as well most of the time as this 9800pro. Any and all help will be appreciated. He's getting desperate.

I'm not sure that I've got a solution for you.... but I'm gonna take swing.

Questions first: Are there any artifiacts..?

I've got a buddy here at work who has a 9800 pro that runs a little hot.... He could not even touch the back side of the card while it was on. The 9800 pro has a number of memory chips on the back of the card ( top ) of the card that is not cooled by the on-board fan.

He took a PC fan.... The 7 dollar special put some of those little rubber feet you can get from home depot on it. He then set it on the back side of the card ( that part that not cooled by the on-board fan). It just sits there and blows on the top side chips all day long. He can touch the mem chips and they are just a little warm to the touch. Now he's got it OC'ed to the speeds of my 9800 xt.

He was explaning why it worked.... I'm a mechanical engineer and he changed majors from Aerospace engineering to Mechanical engineering at the end of his third year in school. So he knows fluid mechanics a lot better than I do....

Maybe this will work maybe it will not.....

Best regards,

DV8

 

[EnFoRcEr!!]

Well, he orignally didnt even have it OC'd, and it didnt seem to run too hot, although it wouldnt be a bad idea to check it as its actually running in-game. We've OC'd it now though to around 420/370(somewhere near that mark). Anyways, it didnt seem to be an issue, as no artifacts were found in testing. He has been thinking of trying a new heatsink though, that may work as you said. Thanks for the advice. Any other possible solutions are more then welcomed. Thanks again.

 

[Vermicious Knid]

Your getting the same issues at both STOCK and OC speeds?

you say his pc is running a lil hot, does it have adequate airflow?

my 9800 used to have similar issues when it was overclocked, never saw any artifacts it would just pause for a few secs if i pushed it too far=heat or oc issue for me.

 

[Yonkec]

might it be network lag? i get some temporary freezes with my shitty cable that look like graphic lag

personally ive never had a card overclocked or not that would just drop in fps randomly that much, are you running opengl? that might cause some problems as the current ati ogl driver sucks, as in 15fps in tribes2 in opengl, and 150 d3d for me

 

[jackkoho]

Also never run ATI cards in 16 bit color. Thier 32 bit perf. is actually way better.

-jack

 

[EnFoRcEr!!]

Well he runs 16-bit in-game because in Counter-Strike you can see through smokes better that way, lol. No, its not network lag, he still gets poor fps on a LAN game even if he creates it without anyone else being in the server. I'll let him know to try and new heatsink.

 

[Optimummind]

The freezing or sudden drops in fps during gameplay sounds like a heat-related issue. However, I don't think it's the GPU but rather the CPU. I don't know about AMD CPU's but newer Intel CPU's will automatically throttle down its clock cycles into blank cycles when the temp hits around 75 C. This effect has been documented in one of X-Bit lab's articles.

Usually, if an OC is too high for a GPU, the effects of it are seen through either popping textures on the screen or white dots that are scattered across.

I know that a GT with a thermal throttle sensor will also cause freezes and sudden stops if the temp goes too high.

How hot is his computer room? If his room is pretty warm, adding all those HSF's won't make a big difference since the surrounding air is already warm and hot.

In my personal case, I saw the largest OC jump when I installed a windows AC in my room last summer along with a water-cooling unit for both the CPU and GPU.

 

[EnFoRcEr!!]

Yea, his AMD runs idle at around 43, and after 5mins or so of Prime95 at full load, it hits around 54, which isnt TOO bad for an AMD. It didnt used to run this hot though. Im thinking maybe some of the extra heat generated by the card is adding to this. I personally think its the CPU as well rather than the GPU, as you said. Since I've heard the same suggestion by numerous people, it seems as though he'll just have to get a new heatsink and maybe drill some holes for another fan or 2 on his case. Thanks for the help everyone.