New video card w00t!
 

So I finally got my tax return, so yes, I am finally upgrading my video card. No more 6200 POS winfast, no more 35 FPS!!!

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814130290

EVGA 512-P2-N757-TR GeForce 8600GT 512MB 128-bit GDDR3 PCI Express x16 HDCP Ready SLI Supported Video Card

My current PC specs:

AMD Athlon 64 3800+ 2.4gHz Processor
Asus A8N nForce4 non SLI Mobo 939 Socket
1 GB Corsair Value Select PC 3200 DDR RAM
200GB Western Digital 7200RPM HDD
No Sound Card
400Watt Rosewill PSU

Congrats

I always get excited when I see my new equipment rock, how about you guys?

I've never run a benchmark on my PC before. Anyone know a good program to do this?

Fortress Forever :P

I've used 3dmark but you'll only become disappointed when comparing it to people that have turbo computers so be careful. If you want to benchmark then I'd recommend doing it to compare similar systems to see if yours is running like it should (or could).

Agree'd.. even after just upgrading my pc I ran 3dmark06 and became very disappointed with my score while comparing it to systems with dual ultras.

The best benchmark is actual in game tests, although just for kicks I run the HL2 and FEAR benchmarks to compare the new specs with my old specs.

yeah mudfrog that's what I planned on doing. I was gonna try FF, HL2 and CS 1.6 to see the difference. I hope it's in today. SO EXCITED!!! DFGSDFGjfgajlWERGHFFAIL!

You should see a big increase in performance, I just built mine this past friday so I'm still in the "honeymoon" phase.. daydreaming about it at work ;)

lmao nice. I'm in the fetal position rocking back and forth practically waiting. I'm at wortk too. I think people are starting to stare. O_o:lol: :lol:

run the HL2: Lost Coast stress test, and if you dont have lost coast, run the CSS stress test (you'll get over like 160), and then the SDK Base Stress Test (EVERYONE has that, same as HL2:LC Test)

Ok, I ran the Source DSK Base stress test and here are the results:

Old 6200 video card: AVG of 16 fps.
New 8600 GT 512 MB: AVG of 90 fps.

The highest I've seen it go so far was 413, the lowest it's gone so far was about 65.

Resolution, settings (AA, AF)?

i ran the source sdk test as well...very interesting. first run i only got about 162fps average, so i checked the settings, and everything was where it should be besides the resolution. i bump the res up from 12x10 to 16x12 and ran it again, and got about the same result i think it was 167, but the areas where light was reflecting off of objects was tinted purple. reran the test and all was normal. it seems to me that the "video" stress test is highly cpu dependant on resolutions of 16x12 and below..i wish my monitor would do more but thats its cap.

sounds like you're missing textures, or have bumpmapping off. check the intgery of game cache, and type in mat_bumpmap 1 in console

Actually it's a bug, I had it too the second time I ran that test. As if you alt-tabbed and the shaders were missing. Anyway, I had 160-ish fps most of the time, both in 1024x as in 1280x, which is my highest res on this monitor. Only when enabling 16xQs AA and 16 AF, it 'dropped' to 98.

Funny, because I have much lower fps in FF, especially when there's a pyro in aardvark's yard. Also dev_2fort or what's that mapped called, lags the crap out me in certain parts of the map.

yeah ive ran it 3 times since that happened and it hasnt repeated..i turned off yahoo messenger and vista sidebar, and yielded about 10 more fps, so nearly 180, which makes me think my cpu is the bottlecap.
im running a 2.8ghz core2 duo(this is an overclocked e6320 from 1.86 to 2.8 with a fsb of 1600mhz and a voltage of 1.4, and 4mb of L2 cache)
4gb of crucial ballistix ddr2 800
dual raptors in raid 0
1 8800gtx

The res I used on both cards is 1600 X 900.

I played with all low settings on my old card, and all standard Fortress Forever video settings with my new one.

I was messing around with my GPU settings, trying to overclock it a bit. I didn't know I could directly control my fan like that. I could up the fan to 50% and add a couple hundred Mhz to my core clock and memory clock and it'll run at about 65 degrees celsius. I've never overclocked before though so I defaulted everything back after I was done.

I get an average of 150-200 fps on this card in FF, and the average fps of my old card was 35 fps.

you can turn the default settings way higher than they are set, for two reasons:

1. your directX Setting is directX9.0+ (in source anyways), and that ONLY uses directX9.0+ pre-set settings in the code (dxlevel.cfg or something).

2. since it's ONLY the pre-set, it's really not configured for your system, only a very general one. you can crank up the setttings all the way and get little FPS difference

Whoopteedoo, I ordered one too!

Asus 8800 GT 1GB PCI-e

BOOM! I bought the "asus" one because:

a) it has 1GB video memory
b)I have an ASUS MoBo so it's 'pre-tweaked'

On what resolution do you play (mostly)?

highest possible. (dunno by heart)