No performance upgrade from a 9800 gtx to gtx 470?

Skayel

Hi guys! I have a little problem here that I could use your assistance with. I have just upgraded my 512mb Geforce 9800 GTX to a 1280mb Geforce GTX 470, and I am seeing no noticeable increase in performance. I've tested it in a few graphic intensive games such as Battlefield Bad Company 2 and Everquest 2, and I haven't seen any (or very little) increase in FPS.

My drivers are up to date (and are the correct ones for my system). In all games I use 1680x1050 resolution (my monitor's native reso). In BC2 the graphics are on the max settings with a couple of things turned down a bit (like AA to 2x and shadows to medium) and FPS is goes from a low of 15 to a high of 30ish depending on the situation ingame. I would estimate that the frame rate was about the same before the upgrade as after the upgrade.

My other system specs are: Intel Core 2 Duo E6850 3.0ghz dual core processor, 4 gigs of ram, and Windows 7 Ultimate

I'm at a loss as to why I'm not seeing a big performance boost. Any suggestions on what I could do to remedy this would be appreciated!

Loki

In Bad Company 2's case, it's your CPU bottlenecking it. The game is designed and optimized for quad core, and absolutely murders those as it is. Running it high on a dual core is going to cause performance issues no matter how good the video card is.

Scrublet

What's your motherboard? I'm guessing some sort of limitation there? You should not be having FPS issues in EQ2.

Skayel

Thanks guys, it does look like the processor is the problem currently. My motherboard is an ASUS P5N-D. It seems that the best processor I can get in my socket 775 board is an Intel Core 2 Quad Q9650 @ 3ghz

s3rial one

EQ2 performance has almost nothing to do with the video card. The game was developed back before multi-core CPUs hit the market. Ideal hardware for EQ2 would be something like a 6ghz single-core CPU. It technically has dual-core support, but it doesn't accomplish much; it's unlikely it ever will, because adding that would require a major rewrite of the game.

In the mean time, your best bet is to learn to live with awful performance and or turn the graphics settings down. Cloth simulation, flora displacement and - oddly enough - GPU shadows are all big frame rate killers.

The game's engine was just designed to run on hardware that never hit the market.

Dark Shroud

Don't bother upgrading the CPU for that computer unless you have a good deal. You would be better off just getting a new CPU & mobo. Sandy Bridge should be released in the next month or two which will also drive down costs on current socket CPU & Mobos.