sorry guys i guess it' s inappropriate to post about this personal matter here but i guess i' m desperatly in need of help... i have a problem with my pc ( 3ghz, 1 go ram, 9800 pro atlantis 128)

in far cry for instance, when i turn textures to " very high" all others set to " high" with 1024*768 no AA, most of the time during gameplay i have an average of 35 fps then there is a serious sudden drop in fps to reach 7 fps!!! that happens " usualy" around corners or opening a door and getting to a new area... there are times when there is even a light display and even so it will crawl to around 7fps... to solve that i should look somewhere else to display something different !! is it because of my memory video 128 not a 256?? the problems seems coming from textures so far

now i noticed this problem on call of duty 2, FEAR, medal of honor (when i make textures " very" high ), is it normal or my card is saying goodbye ??

please please help me.

PSU 480W
no spyware or viruses detected
cataslyst 5.10 , service pack 2, everything is updated.

P.S: the problem never occured while playing Quake 4 and doom 3, both (1027*768 AA*2) everything set to high... (quake 4 not very high because that mode says i should have 512mo video, i didnt even dare)

I' m not a PC gamer, but it could be an issue of trade-offs. Have you tried lower texture settings than " very high" ? Also what exactly are the other settings that you' ve set to " High" ?

thanks terry for the quick reply, in far cry all things are set to high (water, ligh, shadow, euuuh can' t remember all og them) except textures that are very high, when i make textures high there is no problem...
same for other games, in FEAR when i set textures very high (well at least they say that this mode will drop fps seriously) but i don' t think it should be that way, not from a 40 to 7 just because i entered a new area even if it' s relatively big i think it' s an issue .
when i set medal of honor textures to very high, again sometimes there is a a sudden huuuge slowdown (3 fps), while high is absolutly ok... oh my god i don' t know how to explain that, it' s always me who have the unique problem on earth

Well sounds like the temporary solution to your problem is simple, just don' t set textures too high . Also, selecting a high level of lighting can also be an attributing factor. I' d just lower each of the settings to what I would find visually acceptable and try playing that way.

I got a p4 3ghz 1024 ram ati radeon 9800 pro 256mb,i play for ex call of duty 2 at highest with 1024' 768 2xaa and get like 50-60 fps min, same with quake4+fear,so i dont know what to tell you,and i also got a 2,5 half year old 19 TFT.
And i have the latest catalyst too,but try take medium or high in some places if you have so big drop problems in terms of fps.
Or turn of shadows,in fear/quake4 it will make a big diffrence,and still there is shadows in the game so dont worry.

But just so you know,ati radeon 9800 pro 256mb,is a high end card,but there is better ones now,and you had the 128 mb,i suggest going med/hard with mixing,and turning of shadows,and play at 1024' 768.
It should work.

well you know how textures are important in a game to make it look better, fortunatly quake 4 made it and the game look stunning , the best graphics i' ve ever seen right Quezcatol?? but anyway i hope that soem of you guys can solve my problem or at least if you have 9800 pro " 128" , do you experience the same problem when setting textures very high , do not include old games as those i can play them with not a single problem...
my 3dmark score 2005 : 2550 , 3d mark score 2003: 5800 , again not a single problem while benchmarking

Turn of shadow,it will make a huge diffrence,and shadows will still be there.
And btw,i play quake4 at high,but not ultra high, my whole freaking pc turns to dust then.

quezcatol my friend, i' ve lready said it , there is no problem in quake 4 , and shadows are not the problem , only textures when set to very high and may be bt i' m not sure abou this one when (volumitric light on are very high) the difference between our two card are only in memory, and memory has to do with textures, but i need a confirmation, i need to make sure that my card is ok , thank you for the answer ... by the way call od duty 2 is great but are u using " fraps" to see how many fps ???

no,i just feel it,i run very fast with no slow down,i compare to other games i played,for ex halo to xbox runs 30 fps and so does ghost recon,and i can feel it,so i could when the game told me 40-60 fps in quke4.
I cant even put on very high oin texture, just high,i can go from high to ultra high,but that make my pc go crazy,and its totally worthless,seeing how there is no diffrence in graphic that i could see and it drops 20-30 fps.

it' s kinda hard to know fps in a game, so here is my advice use fraps, it' s a small free software that will enable oyu to take pictures in a game and the fps on the corner , so it' s very useful, you could have done hat with your other pictures so you can give valuable information as if the game runs great or not, that' s what i needed from you last time when you posted the pictures..
i' m sure that your average fps in callofduty2 cannot be 50-60 min with 1024*768 2*aa, that' s just impossible with a 9800 pro 256, you' ll find out when you will use fraps.

http://img350.imageshack.us/img350/9269/codingame8ol.jpg

http://img350.imageshack.us/img350/2685/cod227hu.jpg


Okay so i was a little wrong,i had avg 38-40 fps,same as i have in fear

http://img350.imageshack.us/img350/959/fearfps7zv.jpg

However irecently dl omega drivers 5.10 and got 40+ in fps.

http://img350.imageshack.us/img350/1806/shit1el.jpg

this is how fear look for me.

http://img350.imageshack.us/img350/368/texturer7bn.jpg

some texture look...

Yes i wasn' t at 60 fps or avg 55 as i though,but you kind of feel it when the game run so fast,but 45+fps was good enough.

links are not working but i still think that averaging 40fps in COD2 is very impressive for a 9800 pro 256, well mine also make it but not in the first level (the very begining when the captain teach you the first moves) i think it' s because of the snow , i do have an average 45 fps (800*600 aa*2) in egypt (night), ok well i guess there is no hope in this forum, well i expected so it' s not like it' s the right place but one could hope lol

Who cares about fps numbers? if it runs good for you,then why even bother?

By the sounds of it you' re just running out of video memory. Increasing the windows pagefile could also help alleviate some of the problem. How much is it currently set at?

Lightining and shadow should be lowered. I kno u said it' s the textures, but have u tried high textures and medium lightining or shadow???? try shutting off as many progs as possible, just cuz u have 1GB of ram (btw, what kind of ram?) doesn' t mean u can have a shitload of appz running and a game. try updating ur chip drivers, Like i have a Via chip, was having probs with Halo, then upgraded drivers and it worked like a charm. Dont' t forget, it is a 128 DDR that u have in ur video card, and it' s also atlantis, not really good quality. If u had the same card, but made by ATI it would be much better as a videocard. If u have a intel processor, that could be the prob as we all know AMD performs better in videogames. Try to go to www.tomshardware.com and look around there, great site for PC info.

and it' s also atlantis, not really good quality. If u had the same card, but made by ATI it would be much better as a videocard.

It doesn' t matter who the graphics card is supplied by - it' s still a fully functioning ATI 9800 pro. The only difference between a stock reference ATI board and a 3rd party one would be the software package and maybe cooling solution. The chipset/architecture and performance is always the same.

It sounds like you don' t have enough video memory. You should adjust your video aperature in your BIOS. To do that you just hit delete or f8 or something (it is different for different motherboards and porbably says on the screen " hit f5 for BIOS" ) when your computer is starting up. Then somewhere in those options there should be video aperature size. Set this to at least 128 mb. Since you have 1 gb of system ram you can easily afford that, you might even want to try 256 mb. I' m guessing this will solve the problem. The reason it drops to 7 around corners and stuff is because it has to load all of the new textures into memory and get rid of the old ones. That is why with lower detailed textures you don' t have the problem, they take up less memory.

that' s exactly what i thought locopuyo and i had already the agp aperture size set to 256... i just really wanna know if this is normal because i heard (although i have some doubts now lol) that people with 9800 pro 128 run far cry at the fullest, meaning they set also textures to very high, see that' s why i' m confused ... i did update my chipset ... my ram it' s samsung ddr sdram 2*256 on dual chanel and 512 ...

unluckyone, i don' t know what' s " Increasing the windows pagefile " wher' s that , do you mean virtual memory??? if it' s so it' s set to 1536 mo ... may be this is the problem actualy , i' ll increase that to 2536 mo ...

thank you all for your answers i really appreciate it.

virtual memory now 2000-3600

ORIGINAL: Abasoufiane

virtual memory now 2000-3600

Your pagefile (virtual memory) should ideally be 150% of your system RAM. 200% is also acceptable. Anything higher is usually just a waste of hard drive space. So if you have 1024MB of RAM, your pagefile should ideally be at 1536MB or if necessary 2048MB. And make sure it' s a static number (ie 1536MB - 1536MB) instead of a flexible number like you have now. By making sure that the max and min are the same it' ll stop windows trying to increase the pagefile in the middle of a game, turning it into stutter city.

edit. oh and also try defragmenting the hard drive after you' ve done all of these changes. Sometimes I' ve found that a good defrag really helps your system out after you' ve installed all of those games. If you really want to you can set your pagefile to 0, reboot, do a defrag and then set the pagefile to the size you want it. That way your pagefile won' t be fragmented either and it can be used more efficiently.