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Running Vanguard on Vista with dual 8800s in SLi... suggestions??
drduplic
Member Posts: 29
I recently (a month ago) built my rig. Specs as follows....
EVGA 680i Mobo
Intel QX6700 Quadcore Processor
2 EVGA Nvidia 8800 VCs in SLi
2x250GB HDs
4 stick of 1gb ram (windows only recognizes 2.5 of it due to the large amount of memory pooled in the VCs)
Running Windows Vista Home Premium (retail)
other specs on request but i don't believe are needed
So why are people getting FPS in the 40s while i can't get above 20?
Comments
And is that 4x 1gb = 4gb or 4x 256m = 1g, ram?
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Cloud mother bitch!
Final Fantasy 7
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Well for.
- Take out 2gb of the ram
- Quad core is crap for games atm, Vanguard wont even be optimised to run it
- Nvidia are shite and Vanguard isn't properly supporting the 8800
- It's proven Vanguard runs better on a single card and not SLI.
+ XP performs better on games than Vista and specially in Vanguards case + Vista drivers tend to be beta drivers.
Sorry about that
meant to say 4 sticks of 1GB Kensington ram
So... it sounds like i need to remove 2 sticks of ram... then go to Task Manager and tell it to only run Vanguard client on 2 cores (or would 1 be better)
And they are SATA HDs... something up with that and VG??
So far as I know, and I'm running two 7950 X2's in SLi also, there is no official SLi support for Vanguard just yet, Nvidia has stated that Sigil hasn't even contacted them about this just yet so who knows when it's going to happen. There are custom sets though at voodoogaming and nvnews.net.
Vanguard does not support quadcores just yet, so you may need to define and specifi which core to use in sync.
If your HD's are in a raid array, there is a known bug regarding certain raid array issues.
Vista drivers for the 8800 are sketchy at best, you might to do some tooling around or get some of the custom sets at nvnews.net.
And I wont even touch that 4 x 1 gig ram set up.
Also, 680i just got a driver revision specifically for 12 games, Vanguard was one of them, make sure you bios and driver up.
Important Information regarding Posting and You
If I was in your position I would revert back to XP until Vista has improved.
Also sound cards tend to help, takes pressure off the CPU and improves quality of sound. I'd recommend a Fatal1ty FPS card ($200) if you can afford, alternatively, you can pick up a pretty decent one for $100.
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The problem is Vista. I went from XP to Vista and lost 20 FPS. Tried it for a week and gave up. I reinstalled XP and got my 20 FPS back.
I don't know why, I suspect the nVidia Vista drivers or something else.
I would add, Vista may work very well for you especially on a high-end machine, but I am fairly confident that it would run even better with XP. Don't blame Vista unless you can compare XP and Vista directly (which I did and found Vista wanting).
I agree with the other posters remove 2 gigs of ram. Unless your version of Vista is 64 bit.
This is how it was explained to me. 32 bit operating systems can only address 4 gigs of total of RAM, including video memory. If you have more than that, the system can't use it all. In your case, you have 5.5 gigs of memory. (4 of system, 1.5 of video memory). So you may be getting the use of all of your ram. Or worse, you may not be getting the use of all of your video ram.
It may also be related to the hardware drivers, which I have heard are a bit incomplete at this point. If Nvida has released SLI drivers for Vista, they are very new and probably are in need of optimization.
With this amount of ram you should be running vista x64, it will see and use your 4Gb.
Vanguard runs beautifully on my Visty 64 btw. (all settings maxed out with 16x anisotropic; ATI x1900xt)
Thanks For the suggestions! And that goes for anyone who has
I'm looking for the new driver for the 680i you speak of.. however i'm blinded to it. I've looked on nvidia.com and there last drive for 680i was back in November.
You can either, reformat one HDD and partition. OR you can partition without the reformat, which tends to be less stable and cause problems ime.
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You can run something like partition magic or partionIT to set up the dual boot, so long as they are not on the same NTFS you should be fine.
Also, here's a quick walkthrough for dual booting, this was mostly for beta but is just as relevant.
http://lifehacker.com/software/top/windows-vista-beta-how-to-dual-boot-windows-xp-and-windows-vista-179906.php
And sorry for not giving source on 680i drivers earlier, I got mine from the asus site and now their at nvnews, looks like they might be beta's that are just about to be released because they are cert. I'll look into it some more for you.
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I have 2 250GB HDs Not in Raid... Currently one is housing Vista and Everything else... the other is partitioned and empty.
So it sounds like i can just put the XP disk in, reboot from it, then install xp on the second (empty) drive.
If this is correct... will i need to reinstall VG on that partition in XP?
You can run something like partition magic or partionIT to set up the dual boot, so long as they are not on the same NTFS you should be fine.
Also, here's a quick walkthrough for dual booting, this was mostly for beta but is just as relevant.
http://lifehacker.com/software/top/windows-vista-beta-how-to-dual-boot-windows-xp-and-windows-vista-179906.php
And sorry for not giving source on 680i drivers earlier, I got mine from the asus site and now their at nvnews, looks like they might be beta's that are just about to be released because they are cert. I'll look into it some more for you.
You are awesome! Cheers
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Awesome rig Mr OP !! I think it might be a few months ahead of its time. I did hear that VG doesn't currently support SLI, so you aren't getting the benefit from that second awesome card. I know that sux to hear. Also, Vista is very new so I bet there's some things slowing ya down. However, Vista does come with DX10 which those 8800s should very much take advantage of.
Frankly, I'm surprised your fps isn't considerably higher. Vista is a bit too new so I'm waiting a little bit before installing it.
Happy gaming with that awesome rig.
Luckily, i don't need you to like me to enjoy video games. -nariusseldon.
In F2P I think it's more a case of the game's trying to play the player's. -laserit
The statement below shows how much your advice is actually worth. Nvidia actually are not shite do you even own a quad core or a 8800gtx? Answer most likely is no the performance with a 8800 is actually not bad at all with Vanguard, may be actually own the hardware before you spout crap?. A quadcore QX6700 slightly overclocked can out perform any CPU on the market even the core 2 duo 6800 extreme.
Vanguard only needs to be patched so it can run multi-threaded then the quad core will indeed support it so will a dual core processor. (If your refering to the fact it doesn't support all 4 cores, it doesn't support 2 either as it's not a multi-threaded application - so again you know sod all - yet a a QX6700 still performs better then any single core processor available to "joe" public so I would hardly say it is crap for games.)
Do not run Vanguard on Vista at the moment all DX9 support for games regardless what games you have is crap mainly due to bad drivers and vista being bloated. Stick with XP for now if you want the best performance in dx9 and it is proven that the 8800gtx offers the best performance out of any card available on the market for dx9 based games.
No i am not an Nvidia fan boy I just own the hardware so I know what's BS like the guy I quoted and whats not.
Regarding the OP the reason you can't get above 20fps is due to Nvidia's Vista drivers and the fact that all DX9 performance in Vista will not match XP's 10% to 15% slower in most cases.
Water cooled Intel Corei7 920 D0 Stepping OC'd 4.3GHz - 6GB Corsair Dominator GT RAM 2000Mhz - ASUS RAGE II EXTREME X58 Mobo - 2x HD 5870 in Crossfire X, OC'd 0.9Ghz core 1.3Ghz RAM - Dell 2407WFP Flat Panel LCD 24" 1920x1200
Sounds like we have very similar setups
Also, how is your FPS with vanguard in XP? and what drivers are you using for your cards?? SLi when playing VG? stuff like that. I think it will help my situation if i had a similar rig to compare to. That is if you don't mind taking the time to gather some info for me
Thanks!
Hi mate yup no probs I can tell you what you need to get the best out of your hardware for Vanguard safely.
The only reason I overclocked to 3.9 Ghz was to actually see what I could get the chip to stable and how adequate my cooling was. Normally I run the chip at 3.3ghz stable with nice temps under 100% load temps reach about 50/48 Degrees Celcius which isn't too bad. I haven't overclocked my GFX cards as there seriously isn't any need to, they are fast enough as it is so keep those at stock. You should be able to get your frontside bus up to 300 and set the cpu clock to 11, therefore 11 * 300 = 3300Ghz a nice safe overclock which benefits your gaming performance a shed load. I have my ram rclocked at 800Mhz using these settings you do not need to do any volt mods manually leave those set to automatic you only need to fiddle with those if you are going for super high clocks and super high bench marks. The cut out point for the 680i EVGA board is about 310 but you have stability issues and need to fiddle with the voltages of various aspects such as ram, cpu etc so not advisable to do that unless you know what you are doing, the safe range is between 200 and 300.
Using this setup together with the 97.92 XP drivers I get a 3Dmark 2006 score of 16515 which isn't bad at all and it gives me a constant 55 to 60 fps with everything maxed out on Vanguard in Windows XP SP2(occasionally the FPS drops to 30 in heavily populated areas or areas which are known for lag but pops straight back up after everything is loaded in).
However using the exact same settings and current Vista drivers the 100.59's in Windows Vista Ultimate 64 bit I get a 3DMark 2006 score of 13061 and about 25 to 38fps in Vanguard. Now this points out to me that the current drivers are not working as intended and that one card is doing more work then the other so the SLI isn't working properly not to mention the factoring in the loss of performance by the way Vista handles DX9L also that there is more stress on the CPU and GFX cards from Windows Vista in general. The reason I say this is that in XP I can get the same score with a single card that I get when I use 2 in SLI.
Now i've been overclocking for years burnt a few chips along the way, but I would advise you to read up around the subject before you attempt anything since your kit cost a fortune. The above method I have used is safe and will not screw your components up but if you venture in to the high clocking arena be warned make sure you know what you are doing 100% and that you have adequate cooling for your CPU and your MOBO, RAM and GFX cards. I will not be held responsible if your stuff goes poof by messing about with volt modding etc.
Forgot to mention I also play Vanguard at 1900x1200 so I reckon if your gaming at 1600x1200 or 1280x1024 your fps should reach a constant 60 most of the time or above.
Water cooled Intel Corei7 920 D0 Stepping OC'd 4.3GHz - 6GB Corsair Dominator GT RAM 2000Mhz - ASUS RAGE II EXTREME X58 Mobo - 2x HD 5870 in Crossfire X, OC'd 0.9Ghz core 1.3Ghz RAM - Dell 2407WFP Flat Panel LCD 24" 1920x1200
Awesome! thanks for the info! So you do in fact run VG with your cards in SLi? and the 97.92 video card driver right? Not board driver... I could prolly look at nvidia's site and see that. I just figured i'd throw it in the post while i'm typing. I think i remeber the board drivers numbers being completely different anyway.
So if i read this right.... I should be able to dual boot xp and vista.... put VG on XP and boot there when i want to play it. Run in SLi and i can get 55 to 60 fps in vanguard??
Did you do any tweaks in VG's display settings?