Would you upgrade?

[J0s3e]

Hello people, let me get straight to the point. I love playing BF:BC2, but on my current system (Q9650 @ 3.6, 4GB 1066 DDR2 Dominator 5-5-5-15, Asus P5Q, GTX 285- tiny bit OC'd, about 7 percent all frequencies) the game does sometimes drop under 30 fps. I play the game on DX9, with medium settings, 1680x1050. Also, I am running Vista x64 Home Premium, always the newest drivers from nVidia.

I just managed to buy Asus STRIKER II NSE, with nv790i chipset for a very good price, and already have Dominator 2x2GB 1600 8-8-8-24 DDR3's. Also, I am going to move onto Windows 7 Ultimate. Do you think the latter changes will make the game run a bit smoother? For me, 30 fps is just on the edge of non-playable, as I am used to perfectly smooth 100 fps from playing CS for years. Also, I want to play the game with DX11 OR 10, and any time I try to set it to DX10, the game wont boot. Weird, as my 285 is supposed to be DX10 graphics card... But it can also be the system, running for over 2 years (although it has been properly looked after)

So - question of the day - If I get Gainward GTX 460 GS GLH and sell my ageing 285, will I get better performance? I definitelly will in terms of power consumption, system temperature and noise, as my card runs hot'n'loud

But is there going to be any performance increase? I am going for a week of deserved holiday now, and want to start with the build as soon as I get back, but still didn't figure out whether to keep my extra-long 285 or go for extra - beautiful 460.

Anyone to help me decide will get a cookie (virtual, of course.)

Thanks

 

[AMDFTW]

your proc is fine so is your RAM the mobo is fine.

the 285 is a good card IMO so i dont see why you are getting such low FPS,i would rund driver sweeper in safe mode and then re-install the drivers for the card.

460s are good but it might be a waste of cash as it may stop help the issue.

re-install the game aswell,CS is not a heavy graphical game fella so yer expexct 100+ fps in that.

deffo move to windows 7 it is the shizz

what HDD do you have

 

[nepas]

You should be getting better fps than that.I get much better than that and my rig is weaker than yours:

Q6600@3.8

4GB 800 ddr2

4890@stock

And I avgerage over 50fps

As for the game not starting when you select dx10,how are you doing it?also have you tried re installing the game?I had a problem where it would not play at my native res(1680x1050)it would only play at 1440x900 no matter what I set in the ini file,but after a reinstall it works fine.

 

[alienware]

Some games do not respond well to overclocks. I don't know the reason for that, but it could be that they are set to see a limit on cpu speeds?

Try setting your CPU and ram etc to stock speeds (as stupid as it sounds).

 

[J0s3e]

Thank you all for input, I know I should be getting better fps, it is just sometimes it droppes for a few seconds under 30, otherwise the game runs smooth at 60 - 70. here are settings : Width=1680

Height=1050

Fullscreen=true

RefreshRate=60

VSync=false

[Sound]

Quality=low

VoipEnable=true

SpeakerCount=0

[Graphics]

Effects=medium

Soldiers=medium

Vehicles=medium

Overgrowth=medium

Undergrowth=medium

StaticObjects=medium

Terrain=medium

Shadows=medium

Bloom=true

HSAO=true

MSAA=0

Water=medium

MainQuality=custom

Texture=medium

DxVersion=9

Aniso=0

Detail=medium

RenderAheadLimit=2

Fov=55

If I switch to DxVersion=10, the game won't boot or I get BSoD

I am running Eset Smart Security, plus weekly clean-up with tune-up utilities.

My hard drive is WD VelociRaptor 150GB, defragmented every week, I only keep system plus games there. The other is Caviar green, for backup.

I think there might be a problem with installation, as I bought this game on DVD and had to install twice... Will try to buy from Steam and give this copy to my brother.

Maybe I am just tempted to get 460, rather than keep my long hot monster.. If I check this http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/166?vs=180 It doesnt seem to me like wasting cash, 460 is well in my budget and I can still sell my 285.

Decisions, decisions..

 

[AMDFTW]

well if thats the case then yes get a 460 it runs cooler and its a gooc OC er plus it folds awsome

the asus or the gigabytes are the best tho

 

[alienware]

If I switch to DxVersion=10, the game won't boot or I get BSoD

Indicating either a severe driver problem, or, a hardware failure. Run a memtest, run Furmark, reinstall Windows.

I am running Eset Smart Security, plus weekly clean-up with tune-up utilities.

Which may I ask? because TBH? most of them are utter cack. They simply ruin your install. As I say, do a reinstall, fresh wipe and start again. If the problem persists then run some diags again like Furmark, memtest, Prime 95 ETC. If any of those fail? then you have your answers. If not? then it's a software/OS issue.

My hard drive is WD VelociRaptor 150GB, defragmented every week, I only keep system plus games there. The other is Caviar green, for backup.

I think there might be a problem with installation, as I bought this game on DVD and had to install twice... Will try to buy from Steam and give this copy to my brother.

That sounds to me like either your optical drive is failing (dirty lens possibly) and corrupt data is being sent to the hard drive, or, you have a memory problem. Data you copy and install all goes through the RAM dude. You copy and paste a file, into ram, into the destination. As I said, run some diagnostics on your hardware, rule that out and then look at software. Infact, your 'tune up utlilities' sound like a main culprit to me.

Maybe I am just tempted to get 460, rather than keep my long hot monster.. If I check this http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/166?vs=180 It doesnt seem to me like wasting cash, 460 is well in my budget and I can still sell my 285.

Decisions, decisions..

Or maybe you could throw money away on a new GPU only to find you still have the problem?

If you want a 460 get one for the right reasons, but whatever you do make sure your machine is working before you waste money on what could turn out to be the wrong thing.

 

[J0s3e]

wow... thanks dude. I am going to reinstall Windows anyway, as I said, it's been 2 years since I was running those Vista's so I reckon it's about time to give it breath of fresh OS..

Hope this will help a bit, and will see how is it with my card..

 

[J0s3e]

I am going to give that older 285 to my brother, take from him his even older 9800+ for my backup PC and get myself a new 460. Thank you all for the time you spent with me, will definitely let you know about my new rig, and run couple of those stress tests + never use tune-up again (even though it looked good to me, always found some errors and cleaned my drives..) Now, what is your favorite make of 460? I always loved Gainward cards, and this GS GLH just looks awesome to me... But there is also Palit Sonic platinum, running the same clocks, and few more cards.. It just has to be quiet, because i hate loud cards and the rest of my system is very quiet (I even swapped the fan inside my Corsair PSU for Noctua)

Which one would you buy? Budget is £200.

Cookie for all of you.

 

[alienware]

wow... thanks dude. I am going to reinstall Windows anyway, as I said, it's been 2 years since I was running those Vista's so I reckon it's about time to give it breath of fresh OS..

Hope this will help a bit, and will see how is it with my card..

Vista?!?!?

It wouldn't happen to be a 64 bit Vista would it?

What motherboard are you running?

I have a VERY strong suspicion what's going on here. Give me a bit to dig through some mags but I think I will have the solution to your problems...

I actually thought your problems were to do with the Striker II, but if you're not using that already then I would strongly advise getting the bios up to speed before you do. 790i is a notoriously bad chipset. Infact, some have hailed it as the worst Nvidia have ever produced. And that's saying something after the catastrophe that was the Nforce 3.

This probably isn't your issue then, because you're not using the SII yet, but have a read of this. Do not mix it with Vista X64. Your actual problems highly likely stem from a bunged OS. Vista is poo and even when they fixed it it was still a mess. It was almost as bad as Windows ME (Multiple errors). However you will notice a stark familiarity with this article and your problems now.

Sorry for the quality, cameras dont make good scanners...

 

[AMDFTW]

Now, what is your favorite make of 460? I always loved Gainward cards, and this GS GLH just looks awesome to me... But there is also Palit Sonic platinum, running the same clocks, and few more cards.. It just has to be quiet, because i hate loud cards and the rest of my system is very quiet (I even swapped the fan inside my Corsair PSU for Noctua)

Which one would you buy? Budget is £200.

Cookie for all of you.

Asus or gigabyte are the top makes fella they both use custom cooling,i have a gainward that i am taking back due to coil whine and weard temps and anothe chap took back his MSI cyclone due to the same reason,i am thinking this is something to do with batches.

but i do no at scan they have just got another batch of asus 1gb 460s and they way under budget

 

[J0s3e]

So, until now, I have been running : C2Q9650 @ 3.6 GHz (400 x 9 @ 1.265 V) Dominator 1066 5-5-5-15 2x2GB, Asus P5Q P45 mobo, Corsair HX620 Modular PSU, WD Velociraptor 150 GB, Asus GTX 285 TOP (this was one of their first releases, factory overclocked that they stopped making after they had many of them returned - including my first one - for overheating and bad stability - second one is, after applying AC thermal paste and an extra fan underneath, so far ok, with temps at around 60 in games) all in SilverStone Kublai midtower with 1 1200 rpm noctua blowing air at harddrives and one 800 rpm pulling air from CPU cooler. My system was very stable, low temps (MAX 40 on chipsets, 55 on CPU), but there were random BSoD appearing once in two weeks, sometimes less often, all depending what games I've been trying to play. I onlz decided to upgrade mz system due to lack of ability to play games in DX10 mode, even though Vistas (yes, home premium x64) should support it - I just couldnt make it work.

Therefore, I got myself very nice and cheap Asus STRIKER II NSE (with chipset nV 790i SLi), pair of 2GB Dominators 1600 8-8-8-24, will keep my C2Q, as I think it is powerful CPU, also bought W 7 Ultimate (IMO this will make the biggest difference) and now just have to buy new, bigger case, PSU and GPU.

Before installing anything I will definitely flash BIOS to the latest (no-beta) available, as I always do that (or at least I always read comments on a certain BIOS versions and pick the one with least problems - my way worked always so far

) and then I hope my DDRs will be compatible (on Corsairs website they were in list of supported sticks for my mobo).

After all that, I want to buy GTX 460 (hence my post in this category) to make the system more stable, colder and quieter.

I know nothing is as easy as it seems and maybe if I have just upgraded to W 7, I didn't even have to go through all this hassle, as it might have been Vista's causing all the troubles after all. I remember when playing Borderlands, I had to manually download some sort of drivers for Vista's, had to do it for about 10 times until it worked, my brother on his W 7 just downloaded from Steam and all worked.

Even though my GTX 460 won't give me that extra performance it would be worth paying for, I want to give my 285 to my brother so he can enjoy playing games at higher resolutions and I want shorter, cooler and quieter card (as I said before) and I think GTX 460 is the best choice at the moment

note - I am not limited bz budget, just dont want another LONG HOT AND LOUD monster in my PC (470, 480), and if the performance is not good enough (I doubt it will be a prob on my 1680 x 1050 monitor) I can alwazs get another 460 to run in SLi

Thank you all for your help, you made me worry a little bit about the final result (is it going to work or not, with that bloodz chipset?

)

 

[alienware]

A 285 is faster than a 280. I had a 280XXX (OC) with a Core 2 E4500. Yup, my CPU was 2.2ghz stock speed and shoved up to 2.8ghz. It would have been more but the EVGA I was using was utter curry pumps.

However, my PC ate games. Crysis was totally playable with everything on max, it just stuttered in badly coded places. It does that on *any* hardware I have seen it running on tbh.

Need for speed shift? maxed, no stutter. ETC. It was a very fast and very capable card. It was hot and it was loud, but it chewed through games.

Vista is, and always was, a bucket of mud. The first two releases were just absolutely broken to bits. One of them even killed hard drives (Raptors mainly) due to a problem with the reading and writing of the drives. Talking about that, reading and writing in Vista was *awful* and file transfers took forever.

It was just completely broken, completely bugged and beyond repair. Now what they should have done was apologised and refunded every one who bought it. They didn't do that with ME either, which was also a dog of an OS.

They did their best to patch it up with the service packs, but it was too late. The underlying foundations of it were just crap. Now 7? Well, it's another XP.

ME was a disaster. They tried in vain to fix it but it was just a complete car wreck. I don't know why they managed to chuff it up so royally, because all it was in theory was 98SE with the 2000 front end on. But, at that time they had removed the underlying DOS shell and ripped lumps out, so it was probably down to that. They ditched the FAT32 base after that, using 2000 back end for XP. So XP was basically 2000 with a nice front end on and NTFS gaming support (for things like Direct X etc).

And then Vista came and was terrible. And then 7 came and ripped off Vista's head and took a dump down its neck.

I wouldn't use Vista if you gave it to me free. Infact, I have two genuine licenses here. One is stuck to the inside door of my Alienware (basic) and I have one for Home Premium from a computer I got that blew up in 2008. Neither are used.

 

[Diablo]

I generally use vista on most of my new PCs...until my student upgrade to Win 7 arrives and I can upgrade. I can back Alien up on the 790i, don't try to overclock the RAM or take it above 1333, I've realised that's where a lot of problems stem from. You may be lucky with the chipset.

 

[SiN]

My friend upgraded from a GTX 280 to a GTX 460, and he thought that was a formidable upgrade. The 285 isn't that much better than the 280, so I would think the purchase is somewhat justifiable in that manner. He also made it worthwhile because he overclocked his 460 nearly to the max which increased his performance a lot.

 

[Diablo]

That and the lower heat output is definitely better, my pcs with 280s in them run pretty warm and coolers are in no way quiet.

 

[alienware]

My friend upgraded from a GTX 280 to a GTX 460, and he thought that was a formidable upgrade. The 285 isn't that much better than the 280, so I would think the purchase is somewhat justifiable in that manner. He also made it worthwhile because he overclocked his 460 nearly to the max which increased his performance a lot.

The 285 was a faster clocked core with better faster memory. That was it. Same core, but better all round. No, it wasn't that much faster than a 280 (esp one like mine).

I don't know how it pipes up with the 460. Maybe some one here could provide a Vantage score (Steve has one IIRC) and then get some one with a 460 to do the same.

 

[SiN]

The 285 was a faster clocked core with better faster memory. That was it. Same core, but better all round. No, it wasn't that much faster than a 280 (esp one like mine).

I don't know how it pipes up with the 460. Maybe some one here could provide a Vantage score (Steve has one IIRC) and then get some one with a 460 to do the same.

I could ask my friend, but he is very satisfied with his upgrade. Plus, 460s scale really well in SLI, probably the best card for it, EVER.

 

[alienware]

All Nvidia cards scale the same (I think). It's all about drivers on them IIRC. Like, 100% drivers. And Nvidia are getting better and better at it

Mind you, so are ATI with their profiles

 

[SiN]

All Nvidia cards scale the same (I think). It's all about drivers on them IIRC. Like, 100% drivers. And Nvidia are getting better and better at it

Mind you, so are ATI with their profiles

Well, of course it is all about the drivers!

That is the only reason they scale, or even work at all!

Nvidia made their drivers for the 460 damn near perfect, it is such an excellent card. But, it's all too bad they came to the game late.