11 réponses à ce sujet

[SoulConstrictor]

All of the sudden today Dragon Age is running choppy, even with the graphic settings turned down. It seems to get worse the longer I play. Two things that have changed in the past day:

1. Installed new nVidia video card drivers

2. Installed new 1.04 patch

System specs:

Windows XP
Intel Core 2 Quad 2.66GHz
3 GB RAM
2x EVGA GeForce 8500GT, running SLI
Just DA:O, no mods

Also, a few days ago I started using my 46" flatscreen TV as my monitor. I'm sure this isn't the cause because it ran fine the day I set it up, but I still feel I should mention it.

but now today after doing those two things above it's running kinda sluggish. When it bogs down even the mouse cursor starts jumping around.

Anyone have any ideas?

[Gorath Alpha]

You need different drivers, not necessarily new ones.  Your video card is bare minimum, and under a strain, so it will need all the help it can get.  It may need the fan speed increased to deal with heat. 

The "practical minimum" for medium textures is the 6800 GS, and your card can't run with that one.

www.gpureview.com/show_cards.php

For SMALL textures, giving up eye color and blood splatter, you can run with better frame rates, but really, you have a video card intended for business, not for games, and you should be running small textures, low resolutions, and low image quality settings, in order to keep the FPS zipping along speedily. 

Compared to that "Practical Minimum", the 8500 is able to match it on one of three shared performance numbers, but it trails behind it at only 40% and 70% of the other two. 

G

[SoulConstrictor]

Ok, thanks for the input but what you're saying doesn't really address what I am talking about. Remember that I said these issues just started happening today, after I updated the drivers and downloaded the new patch. Before that the game ran fine, albeit at low graphics settings but it still ran fine and was playable. I don't need super-high graphic settings to enjoy the game.

Two days ago, at the same in-game video settings I have now, the game ran smoothly. Now, it doesn't.

Modifié par SoulConstrictor, 20 juillet 2010 - 04:52 .

[Gorath Alpha]

nVIDIA's drivers frequently screw things up for owners of their 8n00 cards.  You need your older driver back again.  Wasn't that the very first sentence I wrote in my comment?  OK, OK, I didn't phrase it that way after all.  Do a rollback now, and in the future, until you get a decent video card, you can expect still further driver foolishness from nVIDIA. 

Modifié par Gorath Alpha, 20 juillet 2010 - 04:58 .

[SoulConstrictor]

Gorath Alpha wrote...
You need your older driver back again.  Wasn't that the very first sentence I wrote in my comment? 

Ummm..no it wasn't. You said "different drivers", not "older drivers back again."

No need to get testy. Sheesh.

[SoulConstrictor]

Gorath Alpha wrote...
 Do a rollback now, and in the future, until you get a decent video card, you can expect still further driver foolishness from nVIDIA. 

Ok, will do. Is that someting I can do through the nVidia Control Panel or do I do it through the Device Manager?

And would I have to do it for both video cards? I'm running two identical ones SLI'd together.

Edit: nevermind that question, I found out for myself.

Thanks for the help though, that website you posted will come in handy as I have been thinking about getting new vid card(s).
I see on tigerdirect.com they have the nVidia 9500GT for $50. If I got two of those and used SLI, would I see a good improvement over where I'm at now? Or perhaps you can suggest a good card? I'm not really an avid gamer, so I don't need anything too crazy powerful. I guess I'm always looking at cards with SLI in mind, but if I got a good enough card would I really even need to do that?

Modifié par SoulConstrictor, 20 juillet 2010 - 05:16 .

[Gorath Alpha]

SoulConstrictor wrote...

Gorath Alpha wrote...
You need your older driver back again.  Wasn't that the very first sentence I wrote in my comment? 

Ummm..no it wasn't. You said "different drivers", not "older drivers back again."

No need to get testy. Sheesh.

I've earned a certain amount of leeway for being crusty / curmudgeonly / testy.  It comes with the territory at my age, you know.  But I rechecked, and remembered it incorrectly, so I edited just seconds later.  Personally, I run the BARE drivers, and either ATI Tray Tools for Radeons, or Riva Tuner for Geforces, not the fancier stuff from either ATI or from nVIDIA.  I do hate the way that anything other than my quote is hidden when I am in the edit window --  I feel like you'd asked more than I've come back with . .

OK, now I'm editing.  I hadn't seen the SLI'd aspect of two 8500s, at the very beginning, if it was mentioned from the start, which really seems a case of getting some bad advice.  Two 8500s cost more than one 8600 without being a bit better, while adding complexity, noise, and heat.  The single 8600 GT would have been a far better choice, really. 

There is one point at which either Crossfire or SLI becomes a valid choice, in my book, and that's when one card of the highest performance available just isn't satisfactory, then you go with two of that very top card. 

The Geforce 9n00 cards are essentially three years old, just like the 8n00 cards.  nVIDIA changed to a thinner die wafer and renamed the 8n00s as 9n00s, but they were the same designs, just more efficient, and with some of the weirdness about overheating and running their fans in screwy ways fixed up.  The 200s were the new cards two years ago, then they missed having new cards last summer / fall. 

Therefore, a Geforce 9500 is just the 8600 GT for its second year, and two 9500s aren't as good as one 9600 GT.

Tell us what screen resolution you want to use, and what image quality you want, and add a budget, then we'll be in a better place to offer advice (myslef and others here). 

Gorath

Modifié par Gorath Alpha, 20 juillet 2010 - 05:34 .

[SoulConstrictor]

Gorath Alpha wrote...
Tell us what screen resolution you want to use, and what image quality you want, and add a budget, then we'll be in a better place to offer advice (myslef and others here). 

Gorath

Well, since I'm now using my flatscreen TV as my monitor I'll need to run the games in a lower resolution than I would with my other smaller monitor (because I'm sitting farther away and need the text to be big and easily readable). So someting like 1280x720 or thereabouts, proabably.

Maybe I'll play more games now that I have a big TV monitor, so I might be interested in a card that can run games at high graphics settings. I'd be willing to spend probably $100-150.

BTW, the driver rollback worked. Thanks again.

[Gorath Alpha]

If you are somehow committed emotionally to Geforces, you want a GT250 now, I think, or a 260 if it is available at a low enough price, because it definitely requires a decent $70 power supply with it.  A GT 250 might get by with a less beefy power supply, maybe $60 worth (quality brands, no generic crap). 

ATI has had the edge on pricing for a year and a half or more at most of the price / performance points, so that an HD 5750 is a bargain in the high part of the mid-range, and the HD 5670 holds down the middle of mid-range very well.  The 5750 needs more than what a stock PSU can offer, but a 5670 runs fine on as small of a PSU as a name- brand 350,

G

[ncknck]

looking at some web benchmarks the 8500gt appears to be 2-4 times slower than the ancient X1900XT, which is the one used in the xbox360. As such DA is unplayable, SLI or not. You probably started noticing because of that new big 46" display. Download www.fraps.com and measure fps you get in the game. I have some generic ati 4650 which came preinstalled with my rig and it plays DA just fine with everything maxxed and 4xAA on a 42" with 1360x768. Costs like 50 bucks (cant handle 900p or 1080p though)

[Gorath Alpha]

Actually, I believe that the Xbox 360 video is more closely related to the X800XT than to the X1900XT, with the exception that the XBox360 video has the full SM-3 pixel shader functionality, while the X800 only had SM-2 plus "part" of SM-3. 

Modifié par Gorath Alpha, 20 juillet 2010 - 11:03 .

[ncknck]

x800 =r400+

x1900, xenos(xbox360)=r500+



x800 thats HalfLife2 graphics, at best.