WHAT?! Upgrade to GTX 280 = WORSE performance?!

[KentaroKaos]

Driver version matters a lot. I just reverted back to 174.74 from 178.24

"make sure you get the latest drivers". Nope, I don't think so

Driver version analysis

Whoa interesting, thanks for sharing that!

[Moloko]

Probably not an issue with an OC'ed Cpu, but for those who leave Intel Speedstep on this may be of interest: http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread....ight=speedstep

[Benfica]

Driver version matters a lot. I just reverted back to 174.74 from 178.24

"make sure you get the latest drivers". Nope, I don't think so

Driver version analysis

[DGUnreal]

C2Q Vista x64 system in sig, settings max, 1680x1050, just under 80fps standing in front of teleporter looking at shieldbelt.
The rest of Deck varies from 60 to 150fps, averaging about 90fps.
stat FPSChart running around the entire map for 50k frames gives me 99.1% at 60+ and only 0.4% below that (I'm going to see if Epic can improve FPSChart to include 70, 80, 90, 100+).

C2D to C2Q will only result in an average of 5% to 15% more performance, as the other cores are used for menial threads.
My C2Q is also very clean with nothing but my UE3 game development tools and UT3 on it.

Motherboard chipset is as important as the rest of the hardware regarding overall performance, the CPU and GPU are only part of the equation.

[.51.Lestat]

Uh almost exactly as i my case. On older GForce + core Duo computer I was getting 90-170fps in UT3, now with 2*ATI 4850 in crossfire and Quad CPU my fps "gain" is 50-70. It is however stable as rock never goes below 50, while geforce was like **** yoyo. With some settings I could get 100-140FPS on ATI but that made strange artifacts in UT editor.

I remember I had some strange problems with every new computer I bought in last 5 or so years, this can mean only that we need to wait for polished drivers and patches that improve our favorite games.

I just reinstalled XP sp3, its a big difference, ultra smooth at 5/5, no slowdowns, it feels a lot better. I guess I will wait for windows 7

[Jungle+=]

Can you do me a favor, please? I know you're running a much faster CPU than I am, but can you see what framerate you're getting in DM-Deck, around the very bottom area with all the green sludge and teleporter? Just walk around in front of the teleporter looking towards the pipes that have the shield belt. See what framerate you're getting at MAX settings (5/5).

I've tried this same exact spot on XP and i almost always get a smooth 60 FPS (V-sync with an LCD monitor, so 60 is all I need), so yeah, there's something off with Vista. It's DirectX 9 performance is slow (it's emulating it as far as I know).

Ok...I fired it up on Deck.
The lowest I saw the fps sink to was 65 down there. The lowest on the entire map for me was at the top of the elevators facing the centre...which dropped to 61 fps.
With my 9800 GTX I never used more than 3/3 settings to make it almost playable , but never saw it dip below 85 fps there... so I'm a little surprised at the large drop in fps on the GTX 280.

[Nawrot]

Same problem here, but another vidcard...

Two weeks ago I had a nice 8800gts 320mb running UT3 in XP all max, 1680X1050, it was smooth, I couldnt complain at all. but you know... if its not broken...its time to upgrade and break a few things...

So I got an ATI HD4850, and cuz I have too much free time, I installed Vista x64 sp1. Everything went just fine, I must say installing Vista was a trouble free xperience, zero problems. Time to try my fav FPS, I was expecting to purple combo some noobs at 4850 fps, lol, dumb me, my personal benchmark consist in loading dm-deck, to my surprise I get lower fps with my new card, as you said around 30-40 around the teleporter....it feels like a downgrade. It was a surprise cuz many reviewers never mention this problem in UT3. I tried COD4 and FarCry2, nice FPS, no problems.
I have two options, 1st go back to XP, 2nd forget UT3...

So far I dont like neither of them..

My box:

msi p7n platinum (750i sli)
core2duo 8400 @ 3.75mhz
2x 2gb ddr2 kingston
2x 320gb seagate barracuda sata drives
x-fi xtreme music sound card
msi HD4850 512mb @ 690core, 1120 mem
Vista Ultimate x64 sp1
thermaltake power express 250w sli
coolermaster 430w psu
22" samsung lcd 1680x1050

Uh almost exactly as i my case. On older GForce + core Duo computer I was getting 90-170fps in UT3, now with 2*ATI 4850 in crossfire and Quad CPU my fps "gain" is 50-70. It is however stable as rock never goes below 50, while geforce was like **** yoyo. With some settings I could get 100-140FPS on ATI but that made strange artifacts in UT editor.

I remember I had some strange problems with every new computer I bought in last 5 or so years, this can mean only that we need to wait for polished drivers and patches that improve our favorite games.

[KentaroKaos]

Have you got any other Unreal Engine 3 games installed? If so, do they exhibit the same problem?

I will try to run Bioshock when I get home tonight (Will have to reinstall it).

Just to clarify, the real framerate drops happen especially in DM-Deck. Is this map just extremely poorly optimized? Torlan also exhibits some drops to 40-ish FPS in some locations.

[Moloko]

http://enthusiast.hardocp.com/articl...hlbnRodXNpYXN0

Quote:"For online gameplay, the framerate rendering cap is at 60 FPS and there is a hard game rendering cap at 90 FPS, and there appears to be no way around it. This, we understand. The game's network code needs as much CPU time as it can get in order to reduce lag as much as possible. It just seems like this game could be performing even better if we were given the option in-game to turn FPS smoothing off".

Don't know if this is relevant to your issue i.e, whether you mean solely online, but it is an interesting article anyways.

[Masaai_Warrior]

Have you got any other Unreal Engine 3 games installed? If so, do they exhibit the same problem?

[KentaroKaos]

What driver are you using? Another thing to point out is that most review sites use qx9650 cpu's at crazy ghz, so maybe because ut3 uses all 4 cores, two is slowing you down. Ive seen alot of these types of threads pooping up recently, and there is usually a common problem/statement made by each person. "Every other game runs fine, except ut3" is the comment I keep hearing. Now I'm not saying that this is the problem for sure, just that it could be.

Looks like that is just the case. I've just come out of testing out some other games within Vista x64, and they run pretty well with the GTX280... better than my 8800 as I had hoped.

So what's up? Is UT3 really that processor-intensive? If so, why doesn't it show such strain when running in XP? Why is it only Vista?

[.51.Lestat]

Im using latest 8.10, I've tried a few options in CCC, it improves a little, but nothing near to my XP performance. I've tried a few tweaks in utgame and utengine, same results.

**** I like Vista, it looks good, it feels good, it uses my 4 gb's of ram, everything performs fast.. argghhh!!!

[Sincreator]

Same problem here, but another vidcard...

Two weeks ago I had a nice 8800gts 320mb running UT3 in XP all max, 1680X1050, it was smooth, I couldnt complain at all. but you know... if its not broken...its time to upgrade and break a few things...

So I got an ATI HD4850, and cuz I have too much free time, I installed Vista x64 sp1. Everything went just fine, I must say installing Vista was a trouble free xperience, zero problems. Time to try my fav FPS, I was expecting to purple combo some noobs at 4850 fps, lol, dumb me, my personal benchmark consist in loading dm-deck, to my surprise I get lower fps with my new card, as you said around 30-40 around the teleporter....it feels like a downgrade. It was a surprise cuz many reviewers never mention this problem in UT3. I tried COD4 and FarCry2, nice FPS, no problems.
I have two options, 1st go back to XP, 2nd forget UT3...

So far I dont like neither of them..

My box:

msi p7n platinum (750i sli)
core2duo 8400 @ 3.75mhz
2x 2gb ddr2 kingston
2x 320gb seagate barracuda sata drives
x-fi xtreme music sound card
msi HD4850 512mb @ 690core, 1120 mem
Vista Ultimate x64 sp1
thermaltake power express 250w sli
coolermaster 430w psu
22" samsung lcd 1680x1050

What driver are you using? Another thing to point out is that most review sites use qx9650 cpu's at crazy ghz, so maybe because ut3 uses all 4 cores, two is slowing you down. Ive seen alot of these types of threads pooping up recently, and there is usually a common problem/statement made by each person. "Every other game runs fine, except ut3" is the comment I keep hearing. Now I'm not saying that this is the problem for sure, just that it could be.

[.51.Lestat]

So I upgraded from my 8800 GTS (G80 revision, the one with 640 MB VRAM) to the new GTX 280 video card.

Running Vista x64, I get absolutely NO performance improvement and even WORSE performance in certain areas of maps (I'm looking at you, DM-Deck--sludge area) ! Granted, I get decent framerates.. 40-60 on average, but even so, I was expecting a smooth 60 FPS throughout! 40-60 was what I had on the 8800. And now it sometimes even dips to the 30s!

This was such a big disappointment to me, and I'm just wondering if anyone else is experiencing the same thing. If anyone out there recently upgraded to a GTX280, let me know how things are running and which OS you're using! Perhaps this is only a Vista thing.

Oh, and I'm talking about MAX settings, of course.

Same problem here, but another vidcard...

Two weeks ago I had a nice 8800gts 320mb running UT3 in XP all max, 1680X1050, it was smooth, I couldnt complain at all. but you know... if its not broken...its time to upgrade and break a few things...

So I got an ATI HD4850, and cuz I have too much free time, I installed Vista x64 sp1. Everything went just fine, I must say installing Vista was a trouble free xperience, zero problems. Time to try my fav FPS, I was expecting to purple combo some noobs at 4850 fps, lol, dumb me, my personal benchmark consist in loading dm-deck, to my surprise I get lower fps with my new card, as you said around 30-40 around the teleporter....it feels like a downgrade. It was a surprise cuz many reviewers never mention this problem in UT3. I tried COD4 and FarCry2, nice FPS, no problems.
I have two options, 1st go back to XP, 2nd forget UT3...

So far I dont like neither of them..

My box:

msi p7n platinum (750i sli)
core2duo 8400 @ 3.75mhz
2x 2gb ddr2 kingston
2x 320gb seagate barracuda sata drives
x-fi xtreme music sound card
msi HD4850 512mb @ 690core, 1120 mem
Vista Ultimate x64 sp1
thermaltake power express 250w sli
coolermaster 430w psu
22" samsung lcd 1680x1050

[Enforcer-5]

I may be of a little help but this question might be somewhat obvious, or asked
already but I missed it anyways, have you tried any other games yet to see
if you get low FPS dips as well that don't seem reasonable?