Bad performance with Sapphire x850XT

[Divide]

A friend picked up a Sapphire x850XT a few days ago, upgrading from his old x600XT. Anyway, it seems that this new card isn't giving him any performance boost at all. Im thinking its his PSU(295 watt) not giving enough juice to the card, in the manual it calls for a 350 watts PSU. I've never used a vid card that feeds from the psu thought maybe you guys might know about this.

His Setup
CPU: P4 3.0Ghz HT
RAM: 1.5GB PC3200
HDD: 200GB
OS: Windows XP
PSU: 295 watts
Vid: X850XT PCI-E (Stock Most recent drivers)


We both play World of Warcraft,(He runs at 1024X768) he gets around 35-50 FPS while i get 60-85FPS on my X800XL.(At 1280X1024) We cleaned up his pc killed apps that were useless and all that other jazz aswell to no performance increase. I wanted to try out my X800XL on his pc since it doesent feed from the PSU, but maybe you guys can inform me a little more before i resort to that.:D

My Setup
CPU: P4 3.4Ghz HT
RAM: 1GB PC 3200
HDD: 250GB
OS: Windows XP
PSU: 360 watts
Vid: X800XL PCI-E (Stock Most recent drivers)

Thankya

[Juggernaut1987]

Do it the easy way, put his card in your machine and measure the increase in performance. First 3Dmark your machine stock.
Put his card in and 3Dmark it again.

If its increased theres nothing wrong with the card but if it didnt there could be one.

Or the other way round.
Put your card in his machine and 3dmark it before and after. If your X800XL is faster its defenitly a PSU problem.

[{JNT}Raptor]

1st glance I'd have to think It's the PSU.....the 295watt PSU doesn't meet the Minimum requirement to power the X850XT..let alone all the other gear He's got In there.

Tell him to upgrade His PSU to at least a Quality 450watt and Unleash that card. :)

[Divide]

Tell him to upgrade His PSU to at least a Quality 450watt and Unleash that card. :)

Hah, yea his PC is a Sony Vaio.. came with a not so friendly case. Anyway, im going to try out
Juggernaut's idea and see what goes down after that.

Thx guys:respect:

[Tatty_One]

The 850XT requires a minimum of a 350W power supply full stop, that is an ATI spec anything less will be only utilising a proportion of it's full potential. Dependant on how many other power hungry periphials you have and any overclocking I would say the BARE minimum is 400W and preferably more (if overclocking card or cpu).

[Divide]

Alright, we ran a few tests using ati tool's cube screen to check fps.

My pc with X800XL got 215avg FPS

Friends pc with x850XT got 250avg FPS

We switched vid cards around and we got the same results (I used his x850XT also got around 250avg FPS he used my X800XL also got around 215avg give or take a few)

We ran World of Warcraft with my x800xl on his pc and got just about the same FPS(if not less) he was getting on his x850xt in heavy areas. We then used his x850xt on my pc and i did notice a nice performace boost from that card.

Could it be bad RAM on his pc? It just seems no matter what we try his pc seems to lag behind.:confused:

[sneekypeet]

not really sure how to approach this so here goes... i just got my hands on a new sapphire X850XT and im not all that impressed with the cards performance in 3Dmark or aquamark but where i saw the biggest difference was in the shape and clarity of the edges

iguess i shouldn't have expected much cuz i was on a modified X800 gto to 16 pipes and slightly overclocked with TRIXX.....scored much better in tests than the X850XT


and tha power supply issue....i run a 350 watt stocker that came with my xdreamer case and it seems to be enough power

[JC316]

Probably a stupid question, but does his motherboard have PCI X16? I am not even sure if it would run in anything less, but I know you would see something like this with an AGP 8X in an agp 4X slot.

[sneekypeet]

oh and i dont have as much ram and atitool shows 230 fps

[drade]

Also, the saphire x850xt seem to be a big artifact card..

[noneed4me2]

I would guess his ram is not up to snuff as you surmised. I would also still consider replacing his PSU. Since performance in benching was roughly the same it could be software related. Its kinda extreme but considering how much extra bogus software is preinstalled on store bought systems like the Vaio a reformat and fresh install might be in order. If you can get get a seperate non-restore version of whatever version XP he is using, you can always phone activate the software using the key sticker found on the PC, just tell them you had to replace a bad harddrive. I have done it many times bnoth on pro and home version.

[Divide]

Probably a stupid question, but does his motherboard have PCI X16? I am not even sure if it would run in anything less, but I know you would see something like this with an AGP 8X in an agp 4X slot.

Yes both of us have PCI X16.. funny thing is we have the same motherboard.:p

[sneekypeet]

ive used TRIXX in performance mode with clocks of 523.13 VPU and 597.38 memory had no issues with any artifacts where i got concerned was the heat

[Divide]

I would guess his ram is not up to snuff as you surmised. I would also still consider replacing his PSU. Since performance in benching was roughly the same it could be software related. Its kinda extreme but considering how much extra bogus software is preinstalled on store bought systems like the Vaio a reformat and fresh install might be in order. If you can get get a seperate non-restore version of whatever version XP he is using, you can always phone activate the software using the key sticker found on the PC, just tell them you had to replace a bad harddrive. I have done it many times bnoth on pro and home version.

Hah yea I just noticed he has a ton of HDD space used up, 38gigs out of 200gig HDD. He seems to have a ton of movies and albums d/l on to it. On my pc i only have about 20-30gigs used up out of 250. We were planing on using the system restore tonight to clean up all his junk. Thx for the Windows install activation tip.. I never knew you could do that.;)

[Tatty_One]

not really sure how to approach this so here goes... i just got my hands on a new sapphire X850XT and im not all that impressed with the cards performance in 3Dmark or aquamark but where i saw the biggest difference was in the shape and clarity of the edges

iguess i shouldn't have expected much cuz i was on a modified X800 gto to 16 pipes and slightly overclocked with TRIXX.....scored much better in tests than the X850XT


and tha power supply issue....i run a 350 watt stocker that came with my xdreamer case and it seems to be enough power

I was getting a 3D Mark 2005 score of 7300 with my 850XT albeit overclocked with a 3200 again overclocked....what are you getting?

[g12rxz]

Some of that power supply stuff they feed you isnt 100% true, on my AOpen XC Cube i'm running 2 gigs of ram, a dvd burner, hd, A643700 --- the specs you can see >.> . The only difference it seems to make is when it comes to heat, this thing is an OVEN. But hey, it may or may not be the PSU, and when I get all my new computer parts, I may or may not notice a tremendous difference in performance going from a 275w psu to a 600W w/ dual 12v rails and active pfc ......

[Tatty_One]

Some of that power supply stuff they feed you isnt 100% true, on my AOpen XC Cube i'm running 2 gigs of ram, a dvd burner, hd, A643700 --- the specs you can see >.> . The only difference it seems to make is when it comes to heat, this thing is an OVEN. But hey, it may or may not be the PSU, and when I get all my new computer parts, I may or may not notice a tremendous difference in performance going from a 275w psu to a 600W w/ dual 12v rails and active pfc ......

You will!!

[mmx]

It may be the driver, or some program running in background, or bad windows, anyway the problem is software.
That mutch difference couldnt come from the CPU or not haweing 16XPCIe mobo, or from the ram.

[SomeRandomGuy]

When comparing your setups, I notice a few things. First, he is running 1.5Gb RAM, this means he probably isn't running in dual channel mode, giving your rig a double bandwidth RAM advantage. Secondly, you are probably running 2x512 stics while he is running either 3x512 sticks or 2x512 + 2x256. With a lower quality mobo (in a prebuilt rig) I highly doubt he is running at a 1T command rate for the RAM, while your rig should be able to handle it easily (further bandwidth advantage). I suspect the RAM as the reason your computer outperforms his by as much as it does. If it was only an FPS difference of 5 frames, I'd hop on the HD bandwagon, however, 20+ FPS difference causes me to start up the RAM bandwagon.