As some of you know, I recently upgraded my graphics card to ATI sapphire HD 3850, but i was running 230watts through it so my framerate on TF2 was from 20 to 40, drops to 5 to 10 at some points, i just pumped 500watts into the graphics card (It needs 450) and my framerate is now 20 to 30, anyone know what is happening here?
EDIT: The game looks smoother to me though, but this might be a placebo effect
I noticed that my PC takes longer to boot past the bios stage as well
EDIT2: Does it matter that i have two power cables going from PSU into graphics card?
A system running a 3850 likely only draws about 220W or less from the wall. It doesn’t need 450W, that number is inflated to compensate for people using no name PSUs.
What are the other specs of your system, and settings you run the game at? The 3850 is by no means a power house. It’s possible it is only able to get that many FPS is you are using an old CPU, low on memory, or running at high res with a lot of AA/AF
2.50 gig RAM
2.66Ghz Intel Pentium 4
ATI Radeon HD 3850 512mb sapphire AGP8x
Silencer 500Watt PSU
Windows XP SP3
TF2 i am running on full settings (1280x1024x32 video, DX9+, software DX10)
It has been a while since I’ve had any hands on with hardware that old, but that could very well be about what to expect. It may be more your CPU limiting you than anything (though running AGP these days is something I have to think back about so far as performance capabilities).
Single core 2.66 P4 is probably your biggest bottleneck at this point.
A 3.0GHz core2 dual core processor with a 3850 can run TF2 at about 35FPS when pumped up to 2560*1600. So the card has the umph to run the game, but your CPU doesn’t.
You really think so?
I just overclocked the GPU and it’s running even smoother but FPS seems to tell me it’s between 20 and 40…
EDIT: Portal used to go at 40-60FPS, now it’s 100-200
Left4Dead I can now run on full graphics but is at 20-30 FPS, it used to be at 5FPS on full.
So it does do something, just not with TF2
It’s sounding like CPU limitation more ever post.
Portal doesn’t have a lot of AI going on, and TF2 has like 32 players a lot of time…
Its the CPU. It cant keep up with the other hardware so its throttling your speeds.
I used to have a 2.4 pentium4, trust me if you can’t overclock it past 3.2ghz like I used to do, get rid of it and get a core2
Pentium4 plus ep2 engine games = lag. No way around it.
Pentium 4’s are dead. I have the fastest one on the market before they moved up to the next model, and it’s clocked at 3.8 ghz, and it’s still can’t keep up with my system. It’s probably itunes fault more then anything, but my music is starting to stutter when I try to open too many tabs in Chrome.
Download winamp, the latest version works fine with any iPod, just redownload your music without DRM and you’re good to go.
How can I overclock my CPU?
Take a wall clock
Start 2 wires from its battery
Plug them on your CPU, on some specific pins I forgot
The ticks of the clock will multiply your CPU’s speed.
If you really want to, you can change the gears in your clock to adjust the speed/torque ratio of your CPU
I’m sure google can help you with overclocking
With what you have?
Don’t bother.