[SOLVED] GeForce 7600 GS inferior to Radeon 9800 Pro?

Black Ice

I've recently "upgraded" from a Radeon 9800 Pro (okay, it was a replacement when the 9800 kicked the bucket) to a GeForce 7600 GS. I would say "Sweet, a better card for free," but I've got a problem..

I've been able to play Battlefield 2 with graphics pumped up from Medium to High. Awesome!!

But with Counterstrike Source..the game runs slower. What used to be - on the exact same graphics settings - 40-60FPS on a Radeon 9800 Pro is now 23-30FPS on a GeForce 7600. I have uninstalled all ATi drivers and installed the nVidia Forceware driver, as well as reinstalled all of Half-Life 2 (I deleted the entire Valve folder as well and even uninstalled Steam) and Counter-Strike. It's the exact same.

Was the Radeon 9800 Pro better than the GeForce 7600 in some respect (speed, or something?), and that's why it can't run CSS as fast as I used to? Is there some sort of tweaking I should do? I'm not too familiar with the nVidia drivers.

I have a Pentium 4 with 2.5 gigs of RAM. Advice?

Jasconius

You gotta remember the source engine was optimized for ATI video cards.

Honestly, the 7600 SHOULD be a step up from the 9800 in almost every way, even in HL2.

I know it's cliche but check all your system drivers...

The Radeon 9800 was THE performance card when the Source engine was being optimized, so it's going to kick ass no matter what in those games.

Though I must say I am shocked the 7600 isn't up there.

gneGne

Yeah should be faster, even though it's a GS and not a GT.

TetraNitroCubane

Believe it or not, leftover crap from the previous driver installation might be causing an issue even after running the provided uninstallation tool. I'd suggest doing the following to clean off any old traces of the preceeding drivers and starting fresh, if you wish. I'm no tech, though, so someone else may have better advice than this:

1.) Download DriverCleaner pro 1.5 - It's the last free version available, and you can get it here, I believe. Install the program.

2.) Download the latest Forceware drivers from Nvidia's webpage. I'd recommend the 94.24 drivers (the beta versions), as I've had problems with the 93.71 versions personally (Specifically on Source engine games).

3.) Run the uninstallation tool for your currently installed drivers, just as you would normally. When asked to reboot the system, say yes and reboot into safe mode.

4.) In safe mode, cancel the automatic driver installation. Afterward, run drivercleaner. Select the ATi option from the menu and run the cleaner. Then do it again with Nvidia selected - This will ensure that the traces of both installations are cleared out of your system before you try to reinstall the appropriate drivers.

5.) Reboot your system into normal mode. Again, cancel the request to automatically install drivers.

(Optional) 5a.) Make sure your motherboard drivers are installed correctly! If you have any chipset drivers that haven't been installed, be sure to install them at this point. This can be a minor thing, but still, it's a good idea to take care of it before you install your videocard drivers.

6.) Install your new video card drivers, as per normal. Play games and see if performance improves.

Midshipman

Unfortunately, the 7600 series is pretty gimped for its generation of cards. That gap between a 7600 and 7800 is larger than it was between a 6600 and 6800. I don't remember the details, but I had researched both nVidia and ATI's midrange cards about 6 months ago and was rather dissapointed with what I learned about both of them.

Black Ice

TetraNitroCubane wrote: »

Believe it or not, leftover crap from the previous driver installation might be causing an issue even after running the provided uninstallation tool. I'd suggest doing the following to clean off any old traces of the preceeding drivers and starting fresh, if you wish. I'm no tech, though, so someone else may have better advice than this:

1.) Download DriverCleaner pro 1.5 - It's the last free version available, and you can get it here, I believe. Install the program.

2.) Download the latest Forceware drivers from Nvidia's webpage. I'd recommend the 94.24 drivers (the beta versions), as I've had problems with the 93.71 versions personally (Specifically on Source engine games).

3.) Run the uninstallation tool for your currently installed drivers, just as you would normally. When asked to reboot the system, say yes and reboot into safe mode.

4.) In safe mode, cancel the automatic driver installation. Afterward, run drivercleaner. Select the ATi option from the menu and run the cleaner. Then do it again with Nvidia selected - This will ensure that the traces of both installations are cleared out of your system before you try to reinstall the appropriate drivers.

5.) Reboot your system into normal mode. Again, cancel the request to automatically install drivers.

(Optional) 5a.) Make sure your motherboard drivers are installed correctly! If you have any chipset drivers that haven't been installed, be sure to install them at this point. This can be a minor thing, but still, it's a good idea to take care of it before you install your videocard drivers.

6.) Install your new video card drivers, as per normal. Play games and see if performance improves.

Awesome.. this seems to have worked! Maybe BF2 will even run faster now. I apparently missed some things going through my H_KEY manually, and DC caught the rest. I also uninstalled all of the nVidia drivers and reinstalled 93.71 (For some reason I didn't have the newest driver running, but I took your word and used that version for Source).

That's incredible that Valve was able to squeeze so much power out of a 9800 by simply concentrating on ATi technology. Hopefully it's a precursor to what next-gen consoles will be capable of when companies sit down and do the same that Valve did.

Anyways, thanks for all of the help guys.