I just installed a new 8800GTS (320 MB), 3GB of RAM, a sound card, and a 700 W power supply. That is in addition to a AMD 64x2 3800+. I thought I would be able to run all my games at 1440 x 900 on all high settings at around 80 fps but it seems like I'm not able to.

CS:S - 50 - 70 fps (gunfights) 90 - 110 fps (still)
HL2 - 40 - 50 fps (gunfights) 90 - 110 fps (still)
TF2 - 40 fps (gunfights) 100 - 120 fps (still)
COD4 Demo - 40 - 65 fps (gunfights) 70 - 80 fps (still)
Portal - 90 - 110 fps (action)

...and that is with compromising some settings, but mostly all high on 1440x900. Any ideas of whats up? Or is this normal? How can I increase the fps all around?

Did you do a fresh install? I know it seems an off the wall question but I'd wipe and fresh install, redo all my drivers, yada yada. It should help I would think. Plus all your pron viruses will be gone.

yea i just installed everything the other night

welp, I'm spent.

yeah seems like everyone else is too

I would play around with some settings. The newer source games, tf2, hl2 ep2 and portal have alot of more advanced AA and shaders, so even newer cards might get slowdown in action sequences. Try dropping off AA to near nothing or entirely and see if that improves things.

im having the same issues father, i got the 8800 with 640 mb ram and i seem to be seeing the same thing.

ok, well that makes me feel a lot better and that it wasn't a total waste of money. i mean it is still a great improvement, but after reading a lot of the benchmarks and reviews for it i was expecting to see nearly double the fps. i wonder if it has something to do with Valve using ATI now. i noticed in COD4 with all the settings on high (1440x900) i was getting about 60 fps and that is a much more graphically intense game. Driver issues maybe? I dunno but i would like to be getting these numbers other people are getting.

Try to shut off the antianaylasing or something like that. Second, something that I had to do in Urban Terror is shut off one of the processors. For some reason some games do not do well with dual core machines or x2 machines. Try to make all of the settings for the card application controlled and not nVidia controlled. I have had similar issues with the 8600 but w/e. You said you are running vista? Make sure you do have the latest version available. If this does not have any improvement, try an older driver?

I don't have any other ideas.

no i did not say i was running Vista and i do have the antaliasing set to low or off in every game. i also considered shutting one processor off but i haven't tried it yet.

That may be an issue as well, people who are still running XP have fps issues, but once they put Vista on they do not have the issue.... Don't know, but that may be the problem.?

Try shutting off one processor

yea i just tried that and it didn't help. maybe it is an XP thing. who knows. i probably won't upgrade until Vista has all the bugs worked out. thnx for the imput.

Vista isn't all that bad in general. Sure it has a couple quirks, but overall it's pretty stable and I haven't had any major problems with it yet. They say with TF2 you lose about 5% performance going up to Vista, but that it also stabilizes the game more. I was in a discussion about it with some guy the other day on a server, saying that the drivers for the bigger, newer cards are more refined on Vista because that is their main development area.

Well I found out that it's not an XP problem. I also tried reinstalling all the drivers and still had no success. I can't imagine what it is.

Done some in depth searching for possible causes of the lower than expected fps numbers but I still could not pin point an exact reason. Some people had low fps becuase of bad drivers but apparently the latest one fixed that. Others also suffered from weak PSU's but I just installed a 700W so I should be fine. I'm gonna go ahead and join a tech forum and try getting some info first hand. If that fails that I'm gonna call EVGA. Hopefully this gets resolved soon cause $300 was a lot for something a 7600 can do -- kind of makes me mad.

I hear you there father.... I was seeing some of the same issues with my 8600 gts oc.. but I figured them out. It was mostly due to my dual core processor, and after I turned one off it fixed the problem... don't know. The other thing that I found was allowing the game to control the graphics and not so much the card, they both try to help increase quality and it slows it down in the long run. Kinda like having 2 firewalls from your router then one on your pc...hardware/software firewalls. I don't know. I will try to get on vent tonight if you can get on, I can try to walk you through what all I have changed on my card to help your performance.

yeah that would be cool

Ok, well a lot of people think it could be my CPU. I didn't think it was that old already. But the thing is if I get a new processor then I need to get a new mobo and new ram, and at that point I might as well build a whole new tower. I bought the card as temporarily upgrade until I could make a whole new rig but I guess not. Kinda pissed now. And then I come to see nVidia release a 8800GT SC that is a better card for the same price. Ugh, i don't what to do.

Well I'd imagine one limitation to the card is just that it is the 384mb version. I mean when you up the architecture of the card but only increase the ram 128mb over my current 6800 GT...I wouldn't expect the card to outperform mine by a whole lot.

The ram on the vid card is going to be huge in determining FPS, not just what series it is or whether it is DX10 capable or not. Unfortunately, this means more money =(

I don't know if that's true because I was reading that the VRAM only helps out with high texture detail and large environments. In benchmarks with the 320MB version vs the 640MB version, the 640 only got about 15 - 20 fps higher in the tests.