6800GT frame rate fluctuations

[jsn117]

For the most part my new 6800GT is kicking ass on 61.76, maintaining high frame rates in most games. But my problem is while it can maintain high rate, it will drop down into the 20's and 10's for a second or two, causing major lag. This happens in games including Splinter Cell: PT, MVP Baseball 2004, Far Cry, Ground Control, etc.

what's to blame for this?

/edit in case this doesn't show up in my sig

Antec P-160 Case
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PNY 6800GT @ 433/1160
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1 Gb PC-3200 Corsair VS DDR400
Sparkle 400w PSU

[YOGIx213]

I think it might just be driver issues. I get some lag once in a while on MVP Baseball but nothing to really bother me. I think with this new chip/technology, it will take a little time to perfect these drivers. The 61.76 is working well for me now, but I can see much room for improvement. I look forward to 61.77.

[3madcows]

Have you had the same trouble with a different driver set? I'd suspect something else causing it, such as hard disk access. If you hit an area where the game hasn't loaded everything yet, it can do this. Also, the game itself, or another app may be eating up CPU cycles at that point. Does this happen more often when new things start appearing on the screen? Try to minimize background tasks if possible, and set your swap file/page file to a fixed size to prevent Windows from automatically resizing whenever it wants. If you want, you can also check the BIOS settings and disable fast writes to see if that helps.

[jsn117]

I can't go too far back, only very recent NV drivers officially support the 6800 series. I have a 10,000 rpm hard drive. even though it's performance is that of a 7200rpm...dont get me started...I don't think that's the bottleneck. I have very few processes running while gaming. Fast write makes no difference either.

I now can't get over 30 frames/sec in Splinter Cell PT....wtf..

[saintall99]

I've got the same problem with 61.7x driver, now I am using 62.20beta and it seems get better..try turning on the V-sync may also help

[jsn117]

I tryed the 62.20beta and its not any better.

the weird part is now I have FRAPS open, and games will lag (freeze up) for a second, then return to normal, but the frame rate will only drop to the 30's. So i'm experiencing horrible lag with decent frame rates.....why?

[Bantu]

Do you have virus scan or running in the background while gaming?

[saturnotaku]

The symptoms you're seeing are indicative of your video card memory clock speed being set too high. Drop it down by 10-20 MHz and your problems should go away.

[jsn117]

no, the clocking down the memory does nothing.

i'll tell you what the problem is...crap ass drivers and horrible hardware compatibility from nvidia. All the games that ran like silk on my old 9800 run like **** with my 6800GT. Yeah, Far cry runs great. big freaking deal, nothing else does!

/X800XT preorder not canceled

[dnottis]

Originally Posted by jsn117

no, the clocking down the memory does nothing.

i'll tell you what the problem is...crap ass drivers and horrible hardware compatibility from nvidia. All the games that ran like silk on my old 9800 run like **** with my 6800GT. Yeah, Far cry runs great. big freaking deal, nothing else does!

/X800XT preorder not canceled

Sometimes quality of gameplay is more important that quantity of framerate. I'm having similar issues - my X800 was very smooth even though it got beat in terms of raw performance. The problem is that all reviews show the raw power of the 6800 GT and neglect to have a reviewer play a few gamers to truly "experience" the hardware they are reviewing. I have a feeling if the reviewers would actually fire up a few games (older and newer) and play them (instead of just benchmarking them) the perception of the GT being the "choice" card right now would differ.

[burningrave101]

Originally Posted by jsn117

no, the clocking down the memory does nothing.

i'll tell you what the problem is...crap ass drivers and horrible hardware compatibility from nvidia. All the games that ran like silk on my old 9800 run like **** with my 6800GT. Yeah, Far cry runs great. big freaking deal, nothing else does!

/X800XT preorder not canceled

nVidia is having to construct completely new drivers for the 6800's. Their still in beta stages even if nVidia finally released the WHQL 61.76's on their site. It will take a while to work out all the bugs and get performance up to its fullest potential on the 6800's.

And you might as well cancel that X800XT pre-order because you aren't getting anything. Gateway already told several people they aren't shipping any more X800XT's and they offered them an X800Pro in its place. And CDW has missed all their shipments. ATI wont have them for sale on their site for another couple of months probably. We'll be heading into the fall refresh before PE's start hitting the market in any quantity lol.

Originally Posted by dnottis

Sometimes quality of gameplay is more important that quantity of framerate. I'm having similar issues - my X800 was very smooth even though it got beat in terms of raw performance. The problem is that all reviews show the raw power of the 6800 GT and neglect to have a reviewer play a few gamers to truly "experience" the hardware they are reviewing. I have a feeling if the reviewers would actually fire up a few games (older and newer) and play them (instead of just benchmarking them) the perception of the GT being the "choice" card right now would differ.

No. I dont think so. I've heard MORE then a few people who upgraded to a 6800GT from an X800Pro say that gameplay was smoother on the GT. And HardOCP manually runs through all the games that they test. They use FRAPS in-game. If anyone would point out the fact its smoother on the X800Pro they would. And they didn't. They declared the 6800GT the obvious winner.

The 6800GT can overclock and achieve performance results the X800Pro will never see because of being only a 12 pipeline card. You would have to soft mod a VIVO to an X800XT to even compete. Especially in DOOM 3 lol.

[dnottis]

Originally Posted by burningrave101

No. I dont think so. I've heard MORE then a few people who upgraded to a 6800GT from an X800Pro say that gameplay was smoother on the GT. And HardOCP manually runs through all the games that they test. They use FRAPS in-game. If anyone would point out the fact its smoother on the X800Pro they would. And they didn't. They declared the 6800GT the obvious winner.

The 6800GT can overclock and achieve performance results the X800Pro will never see because of being only a 12 pipeline card. You would have to soft mod a VIVO to an X800XT to even compete. Especially in DOOM 3 lol.

Well from my own personal experience the GT is NOT smoother than the x800 and from the others that are experiencing the same thing the same can be said. So now you've heard from MORE than a few people that are NOT saying gameplay is smoother on the GT...