Weird thing with my gpu

[Dirty-Bird]

Got a brand-spankin' new gpu recently, the evga 7900 gt to replace my old ati x800xl. The card runs F.E.A.R. at max settings in everything except the filtering which is at 8x (no small feat...) and I'm still running in the ballpark of 50-60 fps without no hiccups at all. Then.....I boot up CS:S. I pull up the advanced video settings and they're exactly the same as what my old card was.....uh wtf? I reboot cs:s, same thing. I tell myself that's it's just the typical steam being uncooperative, so I boot up the game and start playing spawnpoint cs_assault. I'm surprised to see that the game runs at about the same frames as my old card with the settings only slightly higher. I get fairly ranging frames on assault (as before) now from about 50-100. I know this is odd because most people who have a 7900 gt get at least 150 or so on that map and mine is one of the top of the line 7900 gts. At any rate, I don't really understand what would cause this card to run other games so well but seem to not get along with cs:s, a game much easier to run than something like F.E.A.R.

Any ideas?

[fallen1]

part of it may be your connection. If you're on a shared connection, or some other program on your comp is accessing the internet, or about a hundred other possibilities, you're connection speed will fluctuate and may not be consistantly delivering enough info for your card to work with. I have a 7800GS and I've seen my FPS drop into the teens when McAfee decided to download a major update in the middle of a gaming session.

[Fugazi]

Hi Dirty,

I already talked to you on xfire about this but I will reiderate and some more.

I believe the best option for you would be to RMA. Newegg gives you 30 days. If you arent satisfied with its performance on CS:S (which I wouldnt be) then go this route otherwise you arent really getting what you paid for. If you are feeling lucky then RMA and get another 7900GT and see if just the card you got is defective, but I would advise against that. I see your best route to be the ATi route. Get an X1800XT and use the omega drivers. Also with ATi too you should be able to get the core clock from 625 to 700 easily.

I know you well enough to say your main game is CS:S and you want a card that will get your most bang for the buck on the game.

Another thing you might want to check to see is if the motherboard is running the card at the correct voltages. Look in the manual to see what the voltage should be at and check to see if your BIOS set it right. If your BIOS underclocked the voltage then you performance will definately suffer.

Here is the x1800xt
[link=http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814102008]http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814102008[/link]

Here are the ATi omega drivers
[link=http://omegadrivers.net/]http://omegadrivers.net/[/link]

To save about $100 you can go to X850XT route and still get amazing CS:S and FEAR performance.
[link=http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductCompare.asp?CompareItemList=N82E16814102688 %2CN82E16814241013&SubCategory=48]http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductCompare.asp?CompareItemList=N82E16814102688 %2CN82E16814241013&SubCategory=48[/link]
This is a newegg comparison between the Sapphire X850XT and the Gecube X850XT PE. The PE OC'd will get you to about the speed of a not overclocked X1800XT.

Anytime you read for either the X1800XT or the X850XT "THE FAN IS REALLY LOUD!!!" just get ATi Tool. It will overclock the gpu for you and it will control fanspeed so that is isnt running at high rpms when it doesnt have to.

Good luck

[Dirty-Bird]

Yeah, whenever my antivirus updates the frames drop like crazy, enough so that I can tell when it's happening. All this seems like good advice, but I still don't see why this would only apply to CS:S? I'm beginning to think that something else is bottlenecking the card because it runs my other games just as I would expect...maybe my processor or something. Here's my other specs.

AMD 64 3700+
2 gig corsair ram
audigy 2 soundcard
thermaltake case
7900gt
etc

[fallen1]

fear doesn't depend on your internet conection to provide your vid card with the info it needs to tell it what to display, so programs accessing the net won't affect performance in them. McAfee is a bandwidth hog when it's downloading updates. it basically pulls the "I'm security software, so everything else can sit and wait while I use all the bandwidth". My copy of SpySweeper tends to do the same thing...only it also decides to pop up a window and let me know when it's done.

[Fugazi]

No your other specs are fine.

A 3700+ would not be your bottle neck, the 3700+ is plenty sufficient to run a gaming rig with a 7900GT. Ask Vs.Ninja about nVidia vs. ATi for CS:S play. He gave me some real technical answer basically saying that ATi cards utilize their processing power best in CS:S because of the way the game as coded in some certain manner. nVidia GPUs waste processing power in CS:S is basically what he said resulting in less performance.

[scoot]

i have read where valve has it split off to like a half and half deal. like half or it goes to your cpu and the other goes to your video card.

[Fugazi]

Give us an update Dirty.

[Dirty-Bird]

Uh.......same as before?

[Fenix]

... I think you can only go to a certain point with video cards on CSS, in order to go farther you need to find some downloads that allow you to, I myself have a 6600GT and I sit at 60Fps without config, when I have my config on(this removes all the usless junk: cans, walldesigns, etc.) and I run at 70Fps not bad. I think to go farther in your settings,you need to tweak them, don't ask where to get I don't know, this is just what I hear.

Hope I Helped...