New Graphics Card not working as well as expected

[kesava8@hotmail.]

I recently purchased a Nvidia Geforce 6500 512 mb graphics card. and although I realised that it would not be extremely powerfull, as it was only a 6500, I didnt expect it to be this lousy. Virtually any game I play has to have the graphics set to minimum to ensure that it doesnt "skip" all the time.

Battlefield 1942 recomends an 800 MHz or faster Intel Pentium III or AMD Athlon processor
256 MB or more RAM
64 MB or greater video card which supports Transform & Lighting

But I have
3.4 Ghz Dual core processor
512 mB RAM
512 MB graphics card
and i still have to run it on minimal graphics.

Is there anything I can do to improve the graphics capabilities?

I have been thinking that as I have a 350w power supply, which is the minumim reccomended for the graphics card, maybe it needs more to run properly. Could this be the problem?

Any help would be greatly appreciated,

Thanks,

 

[J_D]

This might be a stupid question, have you installed the drivers for it. Otherwise windows will use its standard set of drivers which, well basically will make the Graphics card behave like crap.

www.nVidia.com

I have a 6600 256Mb and i'm sure when i last had BF 1942 installed it ran on highest settings, so somthing is definatly up.

have you checked that the core and the memory clocks are running at the correct defalts?

 

[kesava8@hotmail.]

Yes the newest drivers are installed. how do i check the core and memory clocks?

 

[J_D]

Well I use Everest home edition, which really is just an info utility about nearly everything inside your computer.
You can download it from here
http://www.majorgeeks.com/download4181.html

Once installed open it up and navigate to |Computer|Overclock|

Under the Graphics Processor Properties, GPU clock and Memory clock should be stated. (On my computer I have to wait a few seconds for the graphics processor properties to appear)

http://www.gpureview.com/show_cards.php?card1=371&card2=

That link contains lots of information about your card and you can compare it with the value you have been given by Everest.

 

[kesava8@hotmail.]

I went to that site and it says the the core should be 400mz and the memory 333mhz. In everest it says core 351mhz and memory 166mhz. So the memory is significantly lower than its supposed to be. what might be causing that? also the bandwidth is supposed to be 5.3 gb/sec. in everest its only 2.6 gb/sec.

 

[kesava8@hotmail.]

I just downloaded the latest drivers just in case mine werent up to date and it seems to be running a little bit better. also i was browsing through the nvidia control panel on my computer and found that i can select whether to optimize the graphics for best performance or best graphics. so i put it on low and put the bf1242 settings on maximum and it ran quite well.

but that still doesnt explain why the memory clock isnt at what its supposed to be. and even though the graphics are loooking nice in bf1942, the graphics card still isnt performing at its best...

any more ideas?

 

[elitehacker]

lol, you must have activated AA and AS as well you other settings that increase quality and decrease performance, not even my Super Clock 7900GT with a Core 2 Duo X6800 can run Battlefield 2142, on MAX settings at a resolution of 1600X1200 with AA and AS set to the MAX. The problem is really your graphics card which is mid to budget range, so you will have to turn off the eye candy if you want playable framerates.
Also, about clock speeds, some manufacturers overclock their cards, so maybe you are comparing your card to an OCed one.

 

[kesava8@hotmail.]

sorry. I ment BF 1942.
I am thinking to overclock the card. But im not sure how exactly.
Any information on that would be helpful

Thanks,

 

[elitehacker]

LOL, Battlefield 1942 is ancient man. Well I really think you should overclock it. You can use coolbits, or alternatively you can use a third part overclocking program like powerstrip and rivatuner. You can reach higher speeds with the third party ones.

 

[elitehacker]

You just have to google riva tuner and power strip to get the softwares.

 

[kesava8@hotmail.]

I overclocked it a by about 50mhz on the core and memory with coolbits. I dont want to do too much as i dont know much about overclocking and its not necessary for me to play games with full graphics on. Quake 4 runs ok now so Im happy. thanks for all you help. also if you think it would be safe to overclock it more, please let me know. i just dont really trust the test that nvidia provides cos it doesnt seem too advanced. Thanks

 

[elitehacker]

There are alot of safeguards that prevent your card from stuffing up just because you overclocked it. The technique that I deploy to get the sweet spot is, increase it by 50Mhz until I get artifacts on screen or crashes, then I ease back at increments of 20Mhz until I get to a safe frequency then increase again by 5 until I get the fastest possible clock speed without any artifacts.

 

[kesava8@hotmail.]

OK. ill try that. Also, my graphics card always seems to run on about 28-33 degrees celcius. This seems very cool to me and a sign that its not working very hard. If it cant handle the graphics of a game properly and is working hard then it shouldnt be so cool. what do you think?

Also, I just overclocked my card from what was originally 350 mhz core and 666mhz memory to 445 mhz core and 789 mhz memory. That isnt that much better but coolbits wont allow me to go any further as it says the card will be unstalbe

 

[v0lten]

If you're desperate to keep that card, try upping the memory to at least 1 gig. My brother had a similar setup and adding some more RAM smooth out his Battlefield 2. He has an Athlon XP 2800+, 1 gig ram, 7600gs 512. He plays Battlefield 2 at moderate settings.

 

[kesava8@hotmail.]

Do you know of the cheapest place to buy ram? A site that ships to Australia? If
I cant find a better place ill just buy it off ebay.

 

[elitehacker]

Yeah ebay would be the best way to go, or you can try Umart. RAM is really cheap anyway, so they are about the same.

 

[kesava8@hotmail.]

Just another question. When I overclock my graphics card. Do I want to up the mhz evenly, or try and get the core as high as possible?

Is one more important? or should I increase the memory and core by the same amount?

 

[Martingale00]

Just another question. When I overclock my graphics card. Do I want to up the mhz evenly, or try and get the core as high as possible?

You can try and get the core as high as possible but sooner or later you'll hit that dead end and it will become unstable. You'll see weird stuff on the screen, have screen freezes, ect. If you clock it too the moon it might crash immediately... I've done that a few times When you start seeing signs of instability you want to start backing off. How much you back off can either be done by common sense or much yet using a benchmark program like 3DMark06 to "test and tune" your settings until you get that sweet spot.

Although I don't think the problem lies in your GPU or overclock. In that link your card's memory was listed as 333MHz but you said Everest was reading 166MHz. I think that's why you're experiencing lag. I don't know if your card is glitching or if Everest is giving you a false reading though. Either way you most likely have DDR as opposed to DDR2 commonly used in some 6xxx series cards. I have a 7300GS with 512MB of DDR and it's slow, sometimes the 512 cards sacrifice speed for size when in reality you'd be better off with 256MB of faster memory. You should look into why Everest is reading 166MHz because if that's your true memory clock that's why it's lagged. Have you tried Nvidia's monitor?

 

[kesava8@hotmail.]

I use coolbits to O/C. and that tests whether the card will be stable with the new settings. If it thinks that it will be unstable it wont let me do it. I have managed to Increase the core clock by 120mhz and the memory clock by 86mhz. So would it be better for me to leave the memory how is was and try and get the core clock as high as possible?

 

[elitehacker]

I like to overlock one component at a time, so I will find the sweet spot of the RAM first and then the GPU or the other way around. Also, I wouldn't just rely on the test in riva tuner or coolbit, I would run a benchmarking tool or even a game just to make sure.