Computer? Do me a favour and do your job?

Taylor Hood

Yeah, hey, Taylor here. I've kind of got a problem with my damn pc which I didn't expect.

Specs (can be found in numerous threads. Haha)
4gbram
GTX 260
Windows 7 64 bit
Quad core 2.6ghz

I'm really pissy today because I was running Dawn of War 2 - A game that I really wanted to play - and turns out that I've got a max of 37fps on ultra settings, 40 on high..60 on low, screen tear with vsync on. To summarize, this is NOT what I expected from my PC. Even the marquee tool in dawn of war was a bit laggy. I know that sounds picky but it really ran with low performance. I'm really...confused and a bit bewildered to be honest. I bought this PC to PLAY games at high settings. That I could not do.

IT'S RUNNING ALMOST LIKE MY 9600GT, 2GB RAM setup : (

Extra bit - The fan is crazy warm when running games for even 10 minutes.

MoP

Maybe go and ask this question on an actual computer hardware forum, where people will be more likely to be able to help you?

DrunkShaman

Exactly why I wouldnt upgrade from windows vista to windows 7.......for the moment atleast.

Go to Settings / Control Panel and find your Nvidia GTX 9600 driver icon and check what settings its running on?

Along with your plug and play settings for your fan.

oXYnary

How are you able to assume this is Windows 7 fault... I do not know. Especially with as little information as being presented.

Is this a new machine out of the box? Is this a custom build or an upgrade? Is this a retail PC, and what brand and model number.

Etc. etc.

DrunkShaman

Because the other spec shouldnt give any problems while game play, but windows 7 would..If you scroll down you should be able to find 4-5 threads related to 3d graphix problem using windows 7.

oXYnary

Yea.... No. I use windows 7. And those graphic problems? Are in windows Vista as well. When they aren't its usually because of a botched bloatware install from a new system from a manufacturer.

Please. give me a link showing im wrong.

Marine

you're not forcing aa really high in your card properties are you? i remember you were setting it to 16x and overriding other apps.

Taylor Hood

Sadly, I have indeed tested the game with AA on low settings. Only a slight improvment.
Oh dear.



Any problem here? Even for idle?

oXYnary

again. We need more information. See above. Its not our job to search through a variety of threads to find all the specs. Your asking us for help.

DrunkShaman

@ oXYnary: I didnt say you were wrong. Actually neither of us are wrong, I just happen to read soo many graphix problem threads related to windows 7, in this very section.

Ben Apuna

What's up with Temp3 under the GPU reading -128C!? that seems a bit odd to me. Though I'm not a expert SpeedFan user by any means. Maybe try another diagnostic app CPU-Z.

Also:

Taylor Hood wrote: »

Extra bit - The fan is crazy warm when running games for even 10 minutes.

Maybe it's a overheating issue. Are you sure you're cooling that system down enough? High spec games and some 3D apps can tax the GPU/CPU causing them to get mighty hot, which would naturally cause some slow FPS at the very least.

MoP

I'm on Windows 7 and have no issues running any games or graphics-intensive applications, on a similar-spec PC.

More likely to be a hardware problem, driver issues, or user error when tweaking settings.

Taylor Hood

I'm not sure either. Worrying since I've only had the PC for... 2 weeks?
Not surprised since I'm prone to computer problems.

Ben Apuna

Yeah cooling can make a huge difference, try open up the case and blow a big strong fan directly onto the components while you run Dawn of War 2 to see if that makes a difference.

A word of caution though don't do this (or be very careful) if you're CPU cooling system is one of those duct type systems and doesn't have it's own dedicated fan right on top of the CPU's heatsink. I take no responsibility for any burnt out components resulting from doing this.

oXYnary

So is this a custom system or a main brand? If custom, you might check your venting, if brand, they can sometimes try to use the same interior over and over again without taking into account a newer systems cooling needs.

Either way... Say your GPU is getting that hot in 10 minutes. Since you havent mentioned the FPS getting slower (us fraps if no built in one) in the 10 minutes, I would assume then the heat is not the issue. Unless its already damaged the component.

Mark Dygert

Taylor Hood wrote: »

I'm not sure either. Worrying since I've only had the PC for... 2 weeks?
Not surprised since I'm prone to computer problems.

I think MoP might be onto something. It sounds like you know enough to be dangerous but not enough to fix it =P

Check the native resolution your monitor prefers to run at and make sure your games are running at that res also. This doesn't mean the resolution you're running at on the desktop but the resolution the manufacture suggests.

Also make sure to double check what Marine said and stop forcing AA at the video driver level, let the apps chose the AA settings. This will almost always kill performance.

Caleo

Ben Apuna wrote: »

Yeah cooling can make a huge difference, try open up the case and blow a big strong fan directly onto the components while you run Dawn of War 2 to see if that makes a difference.

Cooling isn't going to change anything about the performance of a game. The only things I can think of are opening task manager (ctrl+shift+esc) and setting the game's affinity to one core and running the game in windows mode (which can often be done by hitting alt+enter).

Other than that, google for stuff like "dawn of war 2 running poorly" etc.

Caleo

Ben Apuna wrote: »

High spec games and some 3D apps can tax the GPU/CPU causing them to get mighty hot, which would naturally cause some slow FPS at the very least.

Ben Apuna wrote: »

Yeah cooling can make a huge difference, try open up the case and blow a big strong fan directly onto the components while you run Dawn of War 2 to see if that makes a difference.

Heat isn't the issue here. I haven't played dawn of war 2 but 37fps on ultra doesn't sound absurdly low or anything, especially if he's forcing a high amount of antialiasing. Do me a favor:

1. Go into your nvidia CP (right click desktop-> NVIDIA CP)
2. Change settings to advanced mode (usually via the view menu)
3. Set Anisotropic filtering to 8x (good balance between visual benefit & performance), and Antialiasing - Mode to "Off" and try to run the game like that.

Now, not having played Dawn of War 2 I can't tell you what my rig gets on specific settings, but the GTX260 isn't exactly king of the hill as it is, so expecting >60fps from fairly new games on max settings is somewhat unreasonable. It could just be that DOW 2 isn't terribly well-optimized.

Also, you're getting 60fps on low settings because vsync is on. Oddly enough though, sometimes games don't really vary much between minimum/maximum graphics settings performance wise. Best of luck to you.