PCIE x16 and PCIE 2.0 x16

T

torzak

Famous
Joined
Jul 1, 2009
Messages
487
I recently got a new PNY Nvidia 9800gt and I havnt been getting the performance I was hoping out of it. I am getting abot 20fps in cryisis very high no AA 1024x768. My friend also just got a 9800GT and he is getting about 40fps samw settings but with 4xAA but with a quad core cpu (I have a triple core both CPUs are at 2.3GHz). I looked in CPUZ today and found out I have a motherboard with 1 PCIe x16 slot not 2.0 so I was wondering if that was why I am not getting the same or at least close to the same fps? I have tried overclocking my GPU but mine doesnt OC well and i dont have enough fans to make one blow directly on it. The farthest I was able to get it and still be stable in game was 650/1620/950.

Specs:
CPU: AMD Phenom 8650 triple core 2.3GHz
Motherboard: Abit AN78GS
Ram 5GB
GPU: PNY 9800gt 512mb 600/1500/900
Windows Vista 64bit.
 
Last edited:
that extra core could give him something extra.. and not having a PCi xp 2.0 slot doesnt allow the gpu to run at full capacity... i know some of the original 2.0 gpus would downgrade themselves quite a bit so the difference wasnt that noticable.. but alot of the newer cards, ie anything past the 8000 series nvidia will not run near what it could if u had a 2.0 slot.
 
babyJam said:
that extra core could give him something extra.. and not having a PCi xp 2.0 slot doesnt allow the gpu to run at full capacity... i know some of the original 2.0 gpus would downgrade themselves quite a bit so the difference wasnt that noticable.. but alot of the newer cards, ie anything past the 8000 series nvidia will not run near what it could if u had a 2.0 slot.
Click to expand...

not really true...........PCI-e 1.0 x16 bandwith is only just starting to get fully used by cards like the GTX 295 and supposedly ATI 5870x2. There have been tests on this and the drop in performance between a PCI-e 1.0 x16 vs a PCI-e 2.0 x16 are very very minimal. The decrease in performance is like 2-4 FPS ??? its something like a 2% decrease or something like that. Its highly unnoticeable and having a PCI-e 1.0 is not limiting ur GPU to the extent of it being alot slower than PCI-e 2.0

As for your problem, i say that either you need to update your drivers or ur CPU is bottlenecking. Im gonna go with that your CPU is bottlenecking because i see that you have one of the very first Phenom's which were sadly very slow in performance. I would recommend you try overclocking your CPU to something like 3.0ghz
Ultimately though, the 9800gt isn't a very fast card in general, i see your trying to run crysis at like 1024x768 which is a very low resolution so i see no problem in the card being able to dish out playable framerates at that resolution.
 
PewPewBangBang said:
not really true...........PCI-e 1.0 x16 bandwith is only just starting to get fully used by cards like the GTX 295 and supposedly ATI 5870x2. There have been tests on this and the drop in performance between a PCI-e 1.0 x16 vs a PCI-e 2.0 x16 are very very minimal. The decrease in performance is like 2-4 FPS ??? its something like a 2% decrease or something like that. Its highly unnoticeable and having a PCI-e 1.0 is not limiting ur GPU to the extent of it being alot slower than PCI-e 2.0

As for your problem, i say that either you need to update your drivers or ur CPU is bottlenecking. Im gonna go with that your CPU is bottlenecking because i see that you have one of the very first Phenom's which were sadly very slow in performance. I would recommend you try overclocking your CPU to something like 3.0ghz
Ultimately though, the 9800gt isn't a very fast card in general, i see your trying to run crysis at like 1024x768 which is a very low resolution so i see no problem in the card being able to dish out playable framerates at that resolution.
Click to expand...

+1 listen to him he knows all
 
Ok I need to tell my parents what I want for Christmas so would I be better off with a new Motherboard that has PCIE 2.0 or a new quad core processor like this? My motherboard currently only supports AM2 and AM2+ CPU sockets and that is the best AM2+ CPU I can find.
 
torzak said:
Ok I need to tell my parents what I want for Christmas so would I be better off with a new Motherboard that has PCIE 2.0 or a new quad core processor like this? My motherboard currently only supports AM2 and AM2+ CPU sockets and that is the best AM2+ CPU I can find.
Click to expand...

I would go with the new cpu.
 
I'd go with a new Mobo. I currently have a Phenom II X3 and it's way overkill for gaming. If you have a good GPU then your CPU won't be doing much. Like right now I have Aion and CS:S running windowed in the BG and my CPU is at about 50%

And if you're going to get a new CPU I wouldn't get anymore more than an X3. I can run Prime95, watch a movie and browse the net without any problem. I know because I did so while stress testing my OC :D.
 
When I upgraded from my x16 1.0 pci-e to 2.0, I got a massive boost in valve games. It's not even funny how many more frames I was getting. I did get new things along with the new mobo, but I still feel it was the change from 1.0 to 2.0 that gave me the biggest boost in performance.
 
ShadowBlade72 said:
I'd go with a new Mobo. I currently have a Phenom II X3 and it's way overkill for gaming. If you have a good GPU then your CPU won't be doing much. Like right now I have Aion and CS:S running windowed in the BG and my CPU is at about 50%

And if you're going to get a new CPU I wouldn't get anymore more than an X3. I can run Prime95, watch a movie and browse the net without any problem. I know because I did so while stress testing my OC :D.
Click to expand...

He doesn't have a new Phenom II though.....hes running an old Phenom which were sadly slow

My recommendation is to get a new CPU, the one you picked out is fine, just get a new PHENOM II quad-core, the phenom II will be much better than the CPU ur using now. It's not worth it to go to PCI-e 2.0 if ur not going to be upgrading to a new Socket. PCI-e 1.0 is fine and the performance drop is like nothing noticeable at all.

Im actually still using a PCI-e 1.0 and have an ATI 4850 right now but plan to upgrade to a 5870x2 all still using a PCI-e 1.0 because the performance decrease is unnoticeable. Atleast until maybe next generation when the cards will exceed the bandwith of PCI-e 1.0
Im staying with pci-e 1.0 cuz im running a Q6600 which is fast enough, especially since i overclocked it to 3.65 ghz
 
An easy way to tell if your CPU is what is slowing your down is to setup a performance monitor and play a game. If your CPU is at 100% the entire time then that is where your bottleneck is. If it's not pegged then your bottleneck is elsewhere.
 
ShadowBlade72 said:
An easy way to tell if your CPU is what is slowing your down is to setup a performance monitor and play a game. If your CPU is at 100% the entire time then that is where your bottleneck is. If it's not pegged then your bottleneck is elsewhere.
Click to expand...

Is it really??? if the CPU is running at 100% then your bottlenecking??
Im not so sure about ur statement, ill have to look that up.

Usually you know if your CPU is bottlenecking if your running a good GPU with a crap CPU. In your case, that might be possible. The old Phenoms were very slow in performance and the 9800gt is fairly newer than that phenom you have. The 9800gt is no beast but it could be bottlenecked by ur CPU. Either way, we recommend u upgrade a CPU over the motherboard.
 
I am diffidently going to upgrade my CPU i think for Christmas I am going to ask for a new power supply maybe somewhere between a 750W and a 850W the one I have now is REALLY loud and its driving me crazy having to listen to it. The rest of my fans are quit but I can hear my PSU fan over my music sometimes. My birthday is in April so I will ask for/buy with b-day $ a new CPU. And during the summer I am planning on upgrading my GPU too either a Nvidia 200/300 series card or a ATI 5870.
 
PewPewBangBang said:
Is it really??? if the CPU is running at 100% then your bottlenecking??
Im not so sure about ur statement, ill have to look that up.

Usually you know if your CPU is bottlenecking if your running a good GPU with a crap CPU. In your case, that might be possible. The old Phenoms were very slow in performance and the 9800gt is fairly newer than that phenom you have. The 9800gt is no beast but it could be bottlenecked by ur CPU. Either way, we recommend u upgrade a CPU over the motherboard.
Click to expand...

If you read the first post in this thread his original statement was that a person with the same graphics card was getting more FPS than he was. Which means that it's not the GPU that's his problem. So an easy way to tell if his CPU trying to pick up the slack but cant is to just open task manager > performance > resource monitor.

If your CPU is trying to pick up the slack because the GPU isn't powerful enough and it's unable to do so then it'll be maxed out the entire time.
 
Last edited:
I played Crysis on very high 1600x900 windowed and my cpu was only at about half load. I was getting less then 20 fps. I got my friend to do the same but at his res 1650x1080 and he was getting over 30fps. So I guess it is not because the CPU is bottlenecking.
 
ShadowBlade72 said:
If you read the first post in this thread his original statement was that a person with the same graphics card was getting more FPS than he was. Which means that it's not the GPU that's his problem. So an easy way to tell if his CPU trying to pick up the slack but cant is to just open task manager > performance > resource monitor.

If your CPU is trying to pick up the slack because the GPU isn't powerful enough and it's unable to do so then it'll be maxed out the entire time.
Click to expand...

mmmm.....i understand his problem, no need to restate anything, i've read it already...........i just figured the CPU always ran 100% when playing games and graphic intensive stuff, i realize this isn't true though, not because you said so but because when i play, i have a Windows Sidebar monitor that shows CPU usage and such and it doesn't reach 100%. Some cores are used more than other but its around a solid 60% or a bit more. I guess it makes sense though that if the CPU is running at 100% then its bottlenecking.

I just figured that when you ran a game like Crysis, the CPU isn't powerful enough at all, not even the GPU so then it would run 100% just to try to get the most performance. Thats just what i thought and how it worked. I've never really paid attention to bottlenecking though, probably because i don't have that problem.

And yea, Torzak, get a new CPU as ur next immediate upgrade, then i guess its nice that you might get a 5870 as your next upgrade. I also plan on getting an ATI card but one of their dual-chip cards. By next summer though, there will probably be something new, like more ATI cards added to the 5 series lineup and the GTX 300 cards are supposed to be faster single-chip cards than the current ATI 5870/5850. Probably more expensive too though considering ATI is going price per performance and Nvidia is usually more expensive.
 
If your friend lives close to you try putting your graphics card in his computer and see if his FPS remains the same. If so then that rules out a faulty graphics card. It's possible that some of the built in ram on the graphics card may be faulty causing it to not run at 100%. Or it's possible that the actual GPU on the card may just be dieing or defective.
 
Last edited:
When I upgrade My graphic card ill probably get the best one for under $300 considering how expensive the 5870 is now and there is a goos chance the 5870x2 or one of the new Nvidia cards will be double that. Im kinda hoping by then the price of the Nvidia 295GTX will drop to around $300.
 
If he sees a drop in FPS then it's obviously your GPU. If not then consider all of the factors. What kind of ram do you have?

It's also possible that your bottleneck is due to your Northbridge on your motherboard. The Northbridge handles the transfer of data to and from your RAM and PCI Express devices. While I'm not sure this is where the problem is, it's always a possibility.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Latest posts

Back
Top