Particle
09-19-2009, 06:15 PM
So here's a good one. The following is an interesting and bizarre tale. I'd like to get some speculation on this:
Ever since I moved to my dual Istanbul rig, I've suffered from decreased graphics performance. It seems simple enough, right? I went from a 3.5GHz clock speed to a 2.2GHz clock speed. I'm still using the same Radeon 4850, but performance is in the gutter for some games.
Red Faction Guerrilla is unplayable at literally 2-3fps. I can count frames easily.
ArmA II is unplayable at about 5-8fps. I can't count frames, but neither can I aim.
Other games like all HL2 engine and UT3 engine ones play great. They're just a linear decrease from my old CPU clock speed.
An interesting point is that changing detail levels and resolutions seemingly has no impact on framerates at this point.
BUT
I swapped my Radeon 4850 for a Radeon 3870 I used to use so that I could put the 4850 in a sort of 'gaming rig'. Immediately, performance increased. In TF2 for instance, I went from a solid 20-24fps to a pretty bouncy 15-35fps. It feels better.
So the question is why. The 3870 has 320 shaders to the 4850's 800. Interestingly, I've noted that the 3870 has faster memory and a higher clock speed for virtually the same shader design. I wonder if the decreased CPU performance (since renderers and the ATI drivers don't exactly use multithreading effectively) drives fewer shaders better. I'm not sure on what level the hardware is exposed to the driver, but I certainly see it as a possibility.
These results are odd since generally the 3870 appears to only be about 50-65% as fast as a 4850 in reviews. I wonder why this system is getting +50 to +100% with it.
http://www.pcrpg.org/pics/computer/gpuz3870.png http://www.pcrpg.org/pics/computer/gpuz4850.jpg
Ever since I moved to my dual Istanbul rig, I've suffered from decreased graphics performance. It seems simple enough, right? I went from a 3.5GHz clock speed to a 2.2GHz clock speed. I'm still using the same Radeon 4850, but performance is in the gutter for some games.
Red Faction Guerrilla is unplayable at literally 2-3fps. I can count frames easily.
ArmA II is unplayable at about 5-8fps. I can't count frames, but neither can I aim.
Other games like all HL2 engine and UT3 engine ones play great. They're just a linear decrease from my old CPU clock speed.
An interesting point is that changing detail levels and resolutions seemingly has no impact on framerates at this point.
BUT
I swapped my Radeon 4850 for a Radeon 3870 I used to use so that I could put the 4850 in a sort of 'gaming rig'. Immediately, performance increased. In TF2 for instance, I went from a solid 20-24fps to a pretty bouncy 15-35fps. It feels better.
So the question is why. The 3870 has 320 shaders to the 4850's 800. Interestingly, I've noted that the 3870 has faster memory and a higher clock speed for virtually the same shader design. I wonder if the decreased CPU performance (since renderers and the ATI drivers don't exactly use multithreading effectively) drives fewer shaders better. I'm not sure on what level the hardware is exposed to the driver, but I certainly see it as a possibility.
These results are odd since generally the 3870 appears to only be about 50-65% as fast as a 4850 in reviews. I wonder why this system is getting +50 to +100% with it.
http://www.pcrpg.org/pics/computer/gpuz3870.png http://www.pcrpg.org/pics/computer/gpuz4850.jpg