Just bought a RADEON 9800pro, dissapointed

[tictac]

Bought its mostly so I could play ET and upcoming games better, but its not what I expected. I thought that when I bought this card, I would get a solid fps, no dropping to 30-40 but boy was I wrong, in open areas its allways dropping very low, in fights about the same, 30-40. Is it impossible to have solid 50-70 fps in fight and open areas? I have the latest catalyst 4.5. I thought about installing omega, but I doubt it will make much difference. I know FPS dropping have been discussed, and I checked the thread, didn't help me much anyone have any ideas? I would appreciate it alot.
thx

my comp:p4 2.6ghz, 512mb RAM, radeon 9800pro
btw, timedemo on oasis gave about 70 fps, good or bad?

[uber-noob]

I know FPS dropping have been discussed, and I checked the thread, didn't help me much anyone have any ideas? I would appreciate it alot.

A better graphic card doesn't help much when it comes to ET, this is because the "old" engine of ET doesn't even use half of the features the card offers (AFAIK it doesn't even use hardware T&L). ET does most thinks using the CPU, so to give it push you need to upgrade your CPU an maybe your RAM (if you don't use DDRAM go for it). But don't expect too much, the engine is totally quite overloaded by ET.

[defragga]

I've got a P4 3GHz @ 3,15GHz, Radeon 9800 pro, and 1gb ddr 400MHz ram

while watching a demo my fps never drop under 80, ... when I play online it sometimes drops down to the lowest limit of 50, never under 50, but usually its @ maxfps ( which I've set to ~89)

[tictac]

thats.....depressing ;p can't believe you need a super comp to play ET(WOLF) pretty old game. Still I have 2.6 Ghz and 512 DDR ram. I thought that would be enuff.

[defragga]

when I start playing et, at the beginning of this year .. I was really suprised that ET takes so much hardwarepower o_O
In other games, ut2k4 etc... I got extremly high fps ...

[Spoofeh]

btw, timedemo on oasis gave about 70 fps, good or bad?

That depends on the contents of the demo (impossible to compare unless you use a publically available demo) and your resolution/graphics settings.

[tictac]

I was just running around on oasis, alone on my own server. Started as allied and ended after I destroyed one gun.

What I don't understand is, ppl playing on high level today, are they used to 30 in fps or ? because I don't think they all got 3Ghz, 1028 ram etc, since it seems that you have to have that kind of computer to be able to play with a decent fps.

[SickBoy]

I have a XP2000+ @ 2000Mhz,512MB and a geforce 3.
I average about 55-65 fps (tweaked at r_mode 7), and I noticed changing resolution or graphics quality doesn't have that much of an effect on fps, even on my old graphics card. Except explosions maybe. So CPU sets the limit and the graphics card usually is fast enough to follow without problems.

You should definately have more fps on your system. So check for spyware/running processes/drivers/the usual stuff

[Deus]

nforce chipset ? try some old cs-driver

[tictac]

Well something is wrong, just played public on railgun. In action it drops down to 20..which is unplayable for me. Don't think I have other shit running, can't say for sure tho. But when I play I make sure I dont have alot of programs in use.

What do you mean by avarage? stays it above 40-50 everywhere? Because my fps can get up to 180 etc in rooms when there is no action..but that doesn't really matter because as soon as I leave for more open areas/action it drops down to 20-40....and thats when I need better fps.

[duke'ku]

Well something is wrong, just played public on railgun. In action it drops down to 20..which is unplayable for me. Don't think I have other shit running, can't say for sure tho. But when I play I make sure I dont have alot of programs in use.

What do you mean by avarage? stays it above 40-50 everywhere? Because my fps can get up to 180 etc in rooms when there is no action..but that doesn't really matter because as soon as I leave for more open areas/action it drops down to 20-40....and thats when I need better fps.

I've got a Radeon 9600, non-pro, non-xp, generally a pretty shitty card. But with 1GB of DDR RAM, and a 2500+XP, I manage to get 43 everywhere, no drops. 1024x768, lowest graphics settings, nothing tweaked from the console except for atmosphericeffects. If I turn it all on high, I get 5 fps lower when in large firefights, but it isn't all that much. You shouldn't be having that much of a problem.

[Balthazar]

yeah I have the 9800 pro and it runs like a champ but I guess that has to do woith my pc power as well I am running 2 gigs of ram and dual (2) p4 2.8ghz Xeon Chips with hyperthreading. SO maybe thats why I dont have this problem. But I will be getting the x800 very soon I heard this card is awesom so Im going to give it a shot.

[SickBoy]

Well something is wrong, just played public on railgun. In action it drops down to 20..which is unplayable for me. Don't think I have other shit running, can't say for sure tho. But when I play I make sure I dont have alot of programs in use.

What do you mean by avarage? stays it above 40-50 everywhere? Because my fps can get up to 180 etc in rooms when there is no action..but that doesn't really matter because as soon as I leave for more open areas/action it drops down to 20-40....and thats when I need better fps.

I never go below 43 fps, which is my usual cap.
I've heard of lots of ATI owners with performance drops, with some drivers there OK but with the next it's all fucked up again so try some different drivers

[Jinks]

I'm not going to get too specific but basically for ET the biggest performance boosters would be FSB and CPU speed. I was running an amd 2100 with a radeon 8500 for a while and it was pretty decent. (Usually 76fps some drops down to 40's here and there) I upgraded to amd 3000 and got a considerable performance boost. I later added a r9800 pro, basically all I got for my money was being able to crank up eye candy and run at higher resolutions without fps loss, the gain for my standard settings was noticable but not anywhere near what I thought it would be (same boat as you)

Looking back I should have upgraded my mobo/ram/cpu to 400fsb (or higher) and worried about the video card later.

[tictac]

Do you guys think it will help if I change drivers, to example omega? or if I do a format: c? Because it was quite awhile since I did that, there could be stuff messing things up...but thats always hard to know. Im sorry to say that my budget ain't that good after I bought my radeon, which didn't increase my fps at all so I don't think Im able to upgrade my computer any further..and I shoudn't have to according to some of you(I agree!)