6600 GT lemon

Hey folks,
Just upgraded my 9700 Pro to a EVGA 6600 GT. I expected to see great results over my 9700 but sadly it performs on par w/ 9700!?!?! I have read a great deal of reviews before buying my 6600 GT, from what I saw it outperforms the 9700 by a stretch. Why then am I not able to run Q3 or Q4 at ultra high settings w/ out major Lag? FEAR on top settings is as laggy as my 9700. I dont get it. I am using the 81.94's w/ a fresh install if WinXP SP2. Got latest DX. AA and AAF is turned off as well.
what I am missing here?

Well don't expect a 6600GT to run everything in ultra high settings.med low settings @ 1028x768 will the best you'll be prob be running at.

Your on a bit of a cpu limited side...my friends 2000+ AXP with a 9600 can barely run CSS w/ low settings where as my old 3700+ San Deigo @ 250x11 with a GF4 MX420 would run CSS 70 ~ 110FPS.

Thanks for the replies, but I need to stress that this card "performs Exactly the same as my 9700 pro". I updated my via 4 in 1's. Reseated the vid card. Checked the power cable. Fiddled w/ the bios to make sure all was tickedy boo. Still poor performance. I am well aware that I am limited by my cpu, I am also comparing performance to my Uncles rig who has a 2500+Xp and a 6600GT. We play Doom3 and Q4 at ultra high settings w/ AA and AAf turned on. No lag on his rig!!!!!

Is his cpu overclocked?

Have you run 3dmark05 on it? You should get around 3500 or so.

cre8 said:

Is his cpu overclocked?

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/\Not at all./\


I just noticed that while running Q4 my PF usage was at 1.3gigs!! Q3 is eating waaaay too much Mem? Gonna see if FEAR does the same thing.

Hmmm.

I use linux, and most of my systems are....older.

But my 6600 gt AGP card does just fine, with or without overclock.
My normal resolution now (lcd monitor) is 1280x1024 and while I haven't got Q4 or FEAR, D3, HL2 and every game I DO have plays great with eye candy right up there.
CPU is a Socket A XP at 2326mhz (overclocked.)

All I can think of is the basic card setup stuff - fast writes, etc., or maybe something eating up cpu cycles or memory.

Thanks for all your replies! I got the card working as it should. It was a memory problem. While Q4 was running my memory was at 1.3 G....now it is a respectable 700mb. It runs on Ultra high settings w/ x2 AA turned on and smooth as buttah!
FEAR is playable w/ maxed out settings but I am getting about 20 FPS in the Stress test. Lost Coast looks and plays wickedly on the 6600 GT compared to my 9700. I never thought that color would look so good on a Nvidia card. ATI was always the champ for richer colors.

Again, thanks folks!

-Puer

I am still getting memory probs. Any ideas why my mem usage might be skyrocketing during games?
Before you get on my case about apps in the background. This is a fresh install of WinXP SP2. Mem usage w/ out a game is 186mb. So apps are not the issue. Before installing the new card I never had a mem problem and all my games ran fine.

Another thing to note is upon boot up I get a Long beep warning. This happens about every 3rd or 4th reboot. I believe it is a memory error. I reslotted the mem and have not got a warning beep upon boot up yet but my games still take up huge amounts of mem?!?!
I am also curious about the Power going into the Video card, I had an issue w/ one of the Molex connectors (pair of pliers fixed one of the bent pins). Could insufficient power to the vid card be an issue? Or would that result in a non boot?

The CPU is running below 50% instead of 100% while a game is running?!?!
I am baffled

this upgrade was pointless as you have gone from an (8PIPE) card to another (8pipe) card just a bit faster this one is.

Blackmage said:

this upgrad was pointless as you have gone from an 8PIPE card to another 8pipe card just a bit faster this one is.

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You dont have the full picture:
A plain 6600 benches on par w/ the 9700p in many cases. A 6600 GT benches pretty near the 6800 in many cases. We all know that is a leap over the 9700 Pro. I bought this 6600Gt for a unbelievable price. I could not pass it up. I also made sure to read many many reviews about this card before i bought it. In all cases it out performs the 9700p by a fair stretch. Upon playing FEAR or Lost Cost in comparison to my 9700.....it is a far from pointless upgrade. Now do you wanna wipe the foot prints off of your tongue and help me troubleshoot or continue to critisize my new video card?

Puer Aeternus to be perfectally honest you do not have the full picture. Blackmage is correct, the CPU specifically the RAM is what is causing this.

You are trying to run textures above what your RAM can handle it is as simple as that. The CPU and specifically RAM cannot keep up and decompress all the files. Ultra quality has nothing to do with the vcard. It has everything to do with texture size. Ultra is designed for 512MB cards with atleast 2GB of system RAM. You have neither and therefor the game lags.

Overall a 6600GT and a 9700PRO are about equal at higher resolutions since its effective speed is rougly half of its true ram speed because it is 128bit.

If you wanted games to run faster blackmage is correct, you made the wrong decision. Your lack of ram + lack of fast RAM with a 3yr old CPU is what is causing games to lag behind.

It is unfortunate that you had to find that out after buying the 6600GT.

HL2 uses a modded DX8 engine which does not use a great deal of system RAM, however games like FEAR, Q4 and BF2 use more of a true DX9 platform which is why they use 2GB of ram.

Sentential said:

Puer Aeternus to be perfectally honest you do not have the full picture. Blackmage is correct, the CPU specifically the RAM is what is causing this.

You are trying to run textures above what your RAM can handle it is as simple as that. The CPU and specifically RAM cannot keep up and decompress all the files. Ultra quality has nothing to do with the vcard. It has everything to do with texture size. Ultra is designed for 512MB cards with atleast 2GB of system RAM. You have neither and therefor the game lags.

Overall a 6600GT and a 9700PRO are about equal at higher resolutions since its effective speed is rougly half of its true ram speed because it is 128bit.

If you wanted games to run faster blackmage is correct, you made the wrong decision. Your lack of ram + lack of fast RAM with a 3yr old CPU is what is causing games to lag behind.

It is unfortunate that you had to find that out after buying the 6600GT.

HL2 uses a modded DX8 engine which does not use a great deal of system RAM, however games like FEAR, Q4 and BF2 use more of a true DX9 platform which is why they use 2GB of ram.

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couldn't of said it better myself

Dude Doom 3 was just playable on Ultra high settings w/ my 9700Pro. there was no excessive ram usage that caused the game to be unplayable. I Upgrade and the same game is unplayable at the same settings....DONT YOU PEOPLE READ!!!! I have managed to play Q4 on Ultra high settings w/ out exsessive ram usage w/ my 6600. The mem usage stayed under 800mb. Most other times it is running at 1.3g's and games are unplayable. Read the F*ing thread!!! I wanna know why all of a sudden games are unplayable and my Mem is running so high!!
Listen up dudes, it is my rig and I know the diff between the 2 cards. I have been using the 9700pro for a year now. I have seen the 6600 Gt on a similar rig to mine and my jaw dropped when i saw how smooth newer games ran using 4xaa and 16xAFF. This new card has managed to play a few games w/ out the ram issue. The diff in visuals is definatly worth the upgrade. Running Q4 at Ultra High w/ 4xAA is sweet. According to you guys my Uncles rig which is similar to mine should not be able to play FEAR, Q4 or D3 at max settings. He does. His card is a 6600 Gt...NOT a Plain jane 6600. I think you guys are mistaking the 6600 GT for the 6600.
Gawd, this is why I dont hang out on the forums anymore.

Dont forget there is also the long beep upon boot up. I thought it was ram so I swapped out the 2 sticks of 512 and put in a stick of pc3200 512. Still getting a beep and shutdown. The beep might be a video error. there is the possiblity that my AGp slot is not 2.0 or the voltage for the card is higher than 1.5 which is what my agp supports.

Puer Aeternus said:

Dude Doom 3 was just playable on Ultra high settings w/ my 9700Pro. there was no excessive ram usage that caused the game to be unplayable. I Upgrade and the same game is unplayable at the same settings....DONT YOU PEOPLE READ!!!! ........I think you guys are mistaking the 6600 GT for the 6600.
Gawd, this is why I dont hang out on the forums anymore.

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I was reading, where did you mention that all games played perfectally on your 9700PRO? Nowhere. The first time you mentioned that was now.

So to anwser the question, yes I am reading, you need to cool off and learn to express yourself better. I cant read your mind over the internet, Im not that good yet. Being rude will not motivate people to help you. If you want to vent that is fine, but you are asking us to give an honest evaluation of the situation based upon the facts you give us, not what you know.

Puer Aeternus said:

Dont forget there is also the long beep upon boot up. I thought it was ram so I swapped out the 2 sticks of 512 and put in a stick of pc3200 512. Still getting a beep and shutdown. The beep might be a video error. there is the possiblity that my AGp slot is not 2.0 or the voltage for the card is higher than 1.5 which is what my agp supports.

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The AGP voltage will not effect POST. If you are getting warning sirens you will have to describe them or compare them to what the manual says or give us a POST ID code off the motherboard.

Long beeps can range from a poor AGP connection, to overheating, to lack of power and just about anything else.

Generally speaking any siren followed by a shutdown is generally one of three things: CPU fan not detected, Overheating, Bad / Overloaded PSU.

Once again, BF2, Q4, Fear and other Games really do use atleast 1.5GB of RAM. When you saw it at 700MB it probly wasnt at a large scene or something like that.

Typically RAM issue cause freezing or hitching (brief pauses) during gameplay which look almost like a hardlock.

Apologies, I was getting frusterated. Your last post was helpful. Thank you.

The manual does not describe the Long beep then shut down. I trouble shooted the ram and that is not the issue. I suspect it is the card....but I dunno. I reseated it several times. Changed the Molex connectors on it. Played in the Bios to see if something was amis?

My Frusteration lies in that the card worked a few times just dandy. I played FEAR for 2 hours on max settings. Next day at the same save point the game is a slide show. Same thing for Q4, I play it maxed out w/ 4x AA and the next reboot, slide show. I understand what you are saying about these games being resource hogs. but take my word for it, I have played em just fine on the highest settings. the same goes for my uncles rig. his is a Barton 2500xp w/ a g of ram and a 6600Gt vid card. I have played D3, Q4 and BF2 maxed out.

Puer Aeternus said:

Apologies, I was getting frusterated. Your last post was helpful. Thank you.

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Not a problem I can understand how it feels, what we want is constructive help to solving this and I belive we are moving in that direction.

Puer Aeternus said:

The CPU is running below 50% instead of 100% while a game is running?!?!
I am baffled

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Just a heads up most CPU usage during games is under 10%. Games dont take alot of CPU power as much as it takes RAM and Vcard power.

All the CPU is used for is loading maps and physics as a whole. Most of the power is done by the GPU that is why the CPU load is fluctiating so heavily.