Kustompcs

[CSB]

Hi All,

Havn't been on for a short while which I apologise for. Graeme has been in contact with me over the past couple of weeks and I'll be posting back the card to him today. Will mean I have no working PC until this is all sorted.

Graeme will test the card in his machine and will compare it to a 560 card, he'll be using 3D Mark etc and will be expecting my card to perform about 30% better than the 560, although I'll be very surprised if that happens to be honest.

Graeme has been really good and has said that if the card is faulty, he'll arrange a replacement asap and will even refund me the special delivery postage that I'll be paying today.

Thats not something you would hear from the dreadful OCUK site is it

Will post back as soon as I can guys

Rob

 

[V_R]

Good news, did you link him to your Crysis Thread?

 

[CSB]

I havn't sent Graeme a direct link to this forum, I just didn't know if he would believe us that after all the tests you helped me do, it still appeared to be a problem with the card.

As I took the card out, I did wonder about one thing, on our GTX580 cards, you of course have 2 x DVI, one labled (1) and the other (2). If the single monitor was connected to number 2, surely that wouldn't matter would it ?.

I'll just now have to wait and see what Graeme comes back to me with. In the last email, he said possibly the problem could lie elsewhere. If thats possible, the only other thing that I feel could be a problem, could possible be the PCIE X16 Slot on the Mobo, but what are the chances of that. Anyway, the Mobo was bought from Graeme aswell.

Could be at least a week before I get the Main PC back up and running if Graeme says its not the card, but then if I'm still not happy with it, would he have to get his supplier to send me a new one still. I don't like having to send anything back and I'd rather just be enjoying high end gaming with little trouble, but as you know from the MSI Afterburner screensots. The games wern't getting the kind of performace they should have been.

I tried to post earlier today using my phone, went to submit and the site claimed I needed to type at least one charecter for it to post, well I had typed at least half of what you see now, so god knows what went wrong there.

Using a laptop I'm borrowing at the moment.

 

[V_R]

Well personally, im fairly certain its the card after seeing the evidence in the Crysis thread, amongst others.

Will be very interested to know what it was if its not the card though.....

Out of interest, did you try a fresh install of windows in the end?

Good luck and keep us posted dude.

 

[CSB]

Using laptop at mo, just a bit of info o what graemes findin have been below.



"FPS ranges from 170-200fps in Resident Evil 5 for your card (versus 120-140 on the GTX560)

X2085 marks in 3DMark 2011 is slightly above the results in the comparison chart on the extreme benchmark for the GTX580 with i3 CPU (they're typically X1900-X1999 although there is an overclock on our processor there which would explain the slightly higher score)

COD Black Ops, Summit level was showing 80-90 FPS. I tried that on the GTX560 and it was mostly the same, although dropped to about 60 in a more detailed area of the map on the slower card.

Just realised that the Crysis Wars I have is only for local LAN play and won't connect to online servers. Crysis 2 demo is locked out now. If you would prefer me to try it on Crysis, I'll buy it, it's only £9.99 now anyway. I don't have GTA4 either - anything else you were having problems with that I can try just in case I've already got those games here too?

System running this on is a ASRock H55M board, i3 CPU, 4Gb GSkill RAM, Antec TruePower 650 PSU and Benq XL2410T monitor (1920 x 1080)"


Graeme has also downloaded Crysis 1 off steam the other day, but it wouldn't play due to steam claiming the key needed to be re entered, apparently there was a big thread complaint on steam forums about it.

I don't know if its been fixed now and been able to use my card with it as it was one of the first games I started noticing something wern't right. If the card was fine, then that could possibly mean the mobo PCIE slot is buggered somehow or somthing else on the mobo, but then that would really pee me off if I had to take the system apart.

We'll wait and see.

 

[CSB]

I have the card back now, Graeme said he couldn't find anything wrong with it. Bloody strange still, as I just tried GTA4 again and still runs slow and stutters badly, even tried to install the official patch and the installer says it failed as it couldn't find the game or something, just rediculous.

Will disconnect my ssd and my fiancess Samsung 1TB F3 HDD sometime (as there is very little stuff on there anyway) and will format and install windows to that as a fresh instal and will try the troublesome games again, I guess if all runs the same, then something must be wrong with the Mobo.

I wanted to test the memory earlier and went to V_R's software sticky, the mem test site looked a bit confusing to me and I wasn't sure which one I'd have to download.

 

[floppybootstomp]

Second one down, download, burn ISO to CD, boot from it, run for at least three hours, note results.

Or if your motherboard boots from usb stick (which it probably does) use the USB version. Your choice

Have you run AV and anti-malware software btw? Cos I have never known one individual suffer so many problems

 

[V_R]

You have got your MB drivers installed and upto date?

 

[CSB]

I know, tell me about it FBS. Befoe putting this system together, I really thought "Brilliant, I'll have a high end system and no game thats out right now can stop it" How wrong was I.

Downloaded second Memtest, will double check if my Asus Sabertooth X58 can boot from USB and will try it later or tomorrow now.

In regards to Motherboard drivers V_R, I did go on the Asus site about 6 weeks ago to update the Mobo drivers, even updated BIOS to current version incase that would solve it.

I just don't get it, because Crysis 2 and Mafia 2 have played almost completely fine from what I could tell, so why does any game which was made more than like a year ago perform like this. I sometimes think, maybe the Mobo don't like the Corsair Dominator GT Memory, but then if that was the case, Crysis 2 would run poorly aswell. Gives you a headache don't it.

Will also try disconnecting SSD and one Samsung HDD and fresh install windows to other Samsung HDD and go from there. But that might not happen until Thurday as I don't finish work until 7.30pm and I don't feel like doing that at like 9pm.

Oh, one thing that did enter my mind but probably wouldn't make a difference, is that when you uninstall Nvidia drivers and the system restarts and shows the screen alot larger, you know how I mean. Windows automatically installs a generic driver for the card. Should it be doing that and do you think it could be the cause why any Nvidia driver I try has hasn't helped much. Just a thought from a numpty.


Thanks again guys for all your help. Lets all laugh, because if I don't I'll cry lol

 

[floppybootstomp]

It's just a thought, probably wrong, but I do remember when newer PC's wouldn't run older games, they just weren't high spec enough to run properly on a modern system. I can remember installing American McGhee's Alice on an upgraded system and by setting the video res too high froze the game.

Windows will install a generic driver when no gamecard driver is present, that's normal, don't worry about it.

 

[CSB]

Run it for 3 hours. Results below, hope you can read it all. I did notice that it wasn't running in ECC mode and you could select it from configuration settings but left it as it was when booted from disc. I could have put it on USC but just decided to use a disc anyway in the end.

 

[floppybootstomp]

Assuming that in those 3 hours some 100% figures were reached 2 or 3 times, nothing wrong with your RAM.

Memtest is usually pretty quick to let you know if you have a duff stick.

 

[Me__2001]

I dunno if its worth considering but i updated to the latest drivers recently and i kept getting artefacting and stuttering, rolled back to the previous version i had and all is back to normal

 

[muckshifter]

ECC is, error correctional checking, it's primarily used in servers for data integrity. There is no reason to set it in your machine, you'll get no performance gain.

 

[CSB]

During the 3 hours, it had 3 passes I believe. So I guess all is ok with the Ram.

Thanks for the info on ECC Mucks

As for the graphics driver Me_2001, best I've ever had Crysis 1 running at is about 25 FPS. No other gains were noticed in all other games, no matter which driver I used really.

 

[V_R]

Your problem is low GPU usage, that is clear, we established this in your Crysis thread. The hard part is working out what is causing it...

I'd say try a fresh install of win7 on another drive. BUT dont install any crap from the MB CD's. Let Win7 do it.

Then just install the GPU Drivers, MSI AB (for monitoring your GPU usage) and Crysis, Play and see what happens.

If its the same as it is now it a hardware issue and you can just boot back from your main drive your running now.

 

[CSB]

Will deffinately try a new install of Windows 7. However, will most likely have to do it when we get back as we're away for a week from tomorrow.

Will use Sarahs HDD as its hardly been used at all and has very little on it, so will move the data to my HDD and install to that after disconnecting my HDD and the SSD. I already know which HDD is mine as I pulled the Sata cable out on one and turned back on to see which HDD was still on. Mine is on top

As you say V_R, I won't bother with the Mobo disc and will see how it goes.

I'll send you all a postcard

 

[CSB]

Came back from Hols the other day. Today installed Windows 7 Pro 64 bit to Samsung F3 1tb Sata HDD. Tried to install GTA4, but of course it needs internet authentication with Rockstar but didnt bother to install net on it as I didnt want thwe router settings to change or anything when I want to go back previous install on SSD.

Went through the manual route and visited Rocstar site on my phone, input the long code to request an unlock code, had the code, input it on the installation screen, said it was succesfull and then when I try to play the game, the authentcation thing comes up again again. Really peed me off.

Well I then went to install Kane and Lynch 2, but of course, Steam requires internet for Steam install and game installation so couldn't do that either. Same goes for quite a few other games as they all need stupid pathetic STEAM !.

 

[CSB]

F....ing keyboard. Typed a load and it went back a page so lost all I typed, not sure what key I pressed but I was typing as normal using letter keys.

Will keep it brief now cos I cant be arsed to type it all again.

Disconnected SSD and one Samsung F3 1TB HDD.

Installed Windows to Samsung HDD and left Mobo drivers off, only installed Graphics driver and Afterburner.

Tried to install GTA 4, need internet to authenticate installation, no internet available on that as I havn't bothered, especially as my intentions are to just try games offline.

Tried to authentcate manually via Rockstar site using my phone, input code for unlock request, had unlock code, input code and game said Sucessful. Tried to run game, claims Authentication hasn't been done .... well ... what a f ... ing joke.

So scrapped trying to play that, tried to install Kane and Lynch 2, but as Steam needs internet during installation, couldn't do that either, so made many of my other games unplayable ... great so far isn't it.

Installed Medal Of Honor standard edition, I believe you can get a Teir 1 edition aswell. Havn't noticed any difference in performance at the moment and Afterburner was showing disappointing GPU usage.... see pic. ... errr scrap that, havn't got the pic cos forgot to copy it before changing back to this drive.

Will go back to that drive tomorrow after work and will try some other games which don't need the fricking internet to install.

Havn't been able to instal Crysis as my brother has been borrowing it and we live 90 mins apart.

One good note to add. I managed to install my side fan on the case even thought the HSF was really in the way, I chopped off half the Noctua NH-D14 Fins ...........................................................................................


Ha Ha, only joking. I sanded away some of the plastic on the Fan so it now fits. Had to cut off one corner on one side to begin with, didn't matter as the clips only need one side of the fan to hold onto. Then used Sandpaper to further take specific areas down so it would fit around the corners of the HSF.

 

[muckshifter]

So, you have a pretty colour PC that, can't play any games.