8800m GTS Benchmarks Part 2: New CPU

So I have been toying with my X7800 the last few days and I got it working right finally. I will be redoing ALL of my benchmarks from my previous thread, click the link in my sig to see those games. I will also be adding Mass Effect and Kotor 2. Working on obtaining Crysis from a friend, also Command and Conquer 3 and FEAR will not be included, sorry, CNC3 I am having problems with, and FEAR is not really a good judge on modern hardware. I will be doing all the test at 2.8Ghz, so I am thinking there will be a very large difference in some games, and maybe very little in others. We will see.

All test are done with the following specs: XP 32bit, X7800 @2.8Ghz, 3GB DDR2 667, 250 5400RPM HDD, 1440x900 resolution, Drivers 177.66.

3DMARK 06, @ 1440X900



My score before the CPU upgrade was 6991, so I gained alot there, its not really a good judge, but it is a good benchmark to use to see where your system stands against others.


Crysis, All High, 1024x768













This was a much smoother experience then with the previous CPU and Vista. Hovered between 29-46 normally and dropped to 27-30 in firefights. This game is playable down to 25 FPS, so there was no choppiness I noticed at all. Awesome looking game, never really got super in to it though. For fun, I turned on 2xAA and it sat around the same, but in firefights it dropped to 20, which was slightly choppy. If I OCed the GPU, I think it could very well run 2xAA and all high.



World In Conflict, DX9, Max Res, Max Settings







This games frames literally doubled, the min frames was 20 during the stress test, and that is what mattered most to me. Maxed at 80, and an average of 40. Obvisouly there is going to be more of an affect in this game because it is an RTS. Impressive nonetheless. By the way, this is on superior settings, before I had physics at medium and AA at 4, this bench was at High physics, and 16XQSCAA.


Company of Heroes, DX9, Maxed









This game didnt see a huge benefit with the processor upgrade, the min FPS jumped about 5 or 6, the max jumped 30, and the average gained about 12. More smooth for sure though, in the parts where it would have been unplayable with the previous processor.

Gears of War, Maxed, DX9











This game looks awesome and was so smooth. Never dropped below 40, even in heavier firefights. Mostly idles at around 60. Never played this game before, but was very impressed with the controls and graphics, will give it a shot.


Dawn of War: Dark Crusade, Maxed, Forced 2XAA







This game sorta wierded me out when I was benching it. Before with the T5450, this game would idle between 50-60. This idled at between 100-460. Yes, 460. This game is only written for single-core architecture, but apparently one core is good enough. The min FPS was only a little higher then before, but it did not ever become unplayable. Usually it will sit between, with moderate action, 50-80. Full out action it will never drop below 30. The screenshots say 22 or a certain number but they are 10 higher, with this game I received a 10FPS drop every time I went to take a screenshot. Also in the benchmark with the T5450, I had only one computer player, in this bench I had *7* computer players. Good improvement though.


TES4: Oblivion, All Sliders to Max, 8XAA, All Options On









Inside FPS skyrocketed, before were between 20-40FPS, now between 60-180. outside didnt change too much, riding through forested areas was a bit choppy sometimes, hovering at 29-35, mut mostly was above 60, and well over 100. I think 8xAA is more demanding then HDR, but if someone can clear that up it would be awesome. Great improvement though, much smoother gameplay.

Unreal Tournament 3, Maxed, VSync







This game didnt feel any different, I saw no improvement over when it was benchmarked with the T5450, min FPS was slighty higher though.

Bioshock, Maxed











This game ran very well, did not drop below 35, hovered around 40-80 usually. Great water affects. Not much change though, more GPU bound for sure.

Mass Effect, Maxed







Very smooth, no stuttering at all. Before when maxed with the T5450, some firefights would stutter, *almost* unplayable, this hovers between 30-40 during firefights and 45-60 anything else. One of the best looking games released this year, also one of the best stories, highly reccomended.

Star Wars: Battlefront 2, 8xAA, Maxed









I made sure that the CPU was utilized alot during this game. There were well over 250 NPC's during the *massive battle* on the ground. It never dropped below 30, staying mostly between 40-60. In space, there was less going on, so it stayed usually at 80, but dropped to 60 occasionally. This is an older game, but the amount of NPCs that can be on screen is quite large, so it could stress a CPU if needed.

Devil May Cry 4 Test, High Settings, 16xQSAA

 

I look forward to it narsnail

 

thanks Im excited to see the full potential of this machine.

 

I look forward to it as well hope u get it done soon.

 

I actually might be able to get it done tonight if I can get the games installed, working on it as we speak.

 

Please, can you also post some Crysis benchmarks done with this tool:
http://downloads.guru3d.com/Crysis-Benchmark-Tool-1.05-Final-download-1791.html

 

added some have a look

@Ifrin, Crysis was one of the originals I benchmarked, I will be doing it again.

 

can you bench tf2? i would really like to see how much the cpu would help.

 

Looking good, narsnail. You might want to thumbnail the pics though.

 

personally I find it annoying to have to click on the screenshots, Majority of poeple have a net connection that can handle that. As for the scrolling I also do not think its a huge deal.

 

Chalk one up for tf2 from me as well(when you've got time). Seems fps drop a lot with 20+players on, might be cpu related?

 

Hey man! Good work on the review! Glad to see that processor finally working out for you!

 

your FPS is still wierd in DOW Imo.. its dropping too low, i'm 100% that there is something wrong here..

 

I'm really interested to see how Crysis runs with the new CPU and the new drivers out.

 

i dont even knwo what drivers im using, i will check hold on a sec

and I agree brainer, I think it should be much higher FPS, but this time the difference was I was running *SEVEN* NPC's and myself, before, that was just me and one other NPC.

edit: using 177.66, im not up to date on the driver front, which ones would be better for testing, anyone got a bit of experience with them lately?

 

well from my experience anything but that driver ROFL, it was the worst for me.

 

oh sweet! lol, i guess I will change it then..

 

I didn't see you mention it but you also did an Oblivion benchmark. After the other cool ones you mentioned (including Mass Effect) would you mind re-doing this fine game?

 

Hey narsnail could you add the DMC4 benchmark?

 

Yes, I said in the first post I would be re-doing all of the older games I did

Yes, it is a downloadable benchmark correct?

 

yah you can download just the benchmark

 

ok sure, will throw it up then

 

On the games that are seeing performance improvements, do you think the improvement comes because the T5450 was holding the 8800M GTS back or because the games are CPU bound? It's probably hard to tell, but I just wanted to see if there is a recommended CPU speed to best take advantage of a GPU in the performance range of a 8800M GTS. A 2.8GHz Extreme Edition is probably a bit excessive, but a T5450 is probably a bit slow.

 

It is actully 2.6, but it is OCed to 2.8

Also, it was cheap, and for being retail and not ES or OEM, it was the same or less then the Penyrn chips. I am seeing an increase in everygame so far, so i think it is a little bit of both. The more CPU bound games obviously will see more of an improvement, and less CPU bound games will see an improvement, from what I have seen so far, but maybe not quite as large.

 

I love ur laptop Narsnail, i think its close to perfect. I wish i had 1 but i doubt they ship to Thailand -_-

 

thanks Satyrion, its exactly how I want it, The only thing I could personally adding now is another HDD.

Also Bioshock, Oblivion, and UT3 added. The rest will be up very soon.

 

i see some obvious improvements in games like WIC and Company of Heroes, while not so much in the others, so nothing surprising there. thank you very much!

 

Very nice work narsnail! I've barely been able to game since I put in my T9300, but I did play Crysis, I believe the 3rd level yesterday for about half an hour... I was surprised that I could either turn on some settings high and 2xAA or almost all settings high. I don't think that the average or high FPS increases though with the CPU upgrade, but maybe the minimum FPS gets better with a CPU upgrade.

I also played Civ4 last night, everything high, 8xAA I think... ran really smooth, I was impressed. I believe that's a pretty CPU-bound game so the new processor helped a lot. I usually play more FPS-type games though.

 

thanks for the support guys, I am having a problem with mass effect, I will post the screen of the error I am getting.




I have re-installed a rew times now, probably four, there were 5 re-installs if i was not mistaken?

 

I can post some screenshots with FPS if you want. I've been playing this game for a while now so I should be able to go back and get some FPS in some of the more stressful areas.

Won't be a completely direct comparison, but it should still be able to give a pretty good idea what an extra ghz or more of CPU speed will do for the game.

 

Here's some screenshots. I'll thumbnail them so as not to take too much space on this page since it's narsnail's

All settings are maxed, I turned dynamic shadows on too, although when I play I have those off because they cast really fugly looking shadows on peoples faces when you talk to them. Anything 30+ in this game is playable, maybe even 25 because of the motion blur IMO, that and it's not a TRUE FPS, you can pause the game and plan your next move, etc.







Edit: BTW in case anyone wanted to compare, I have a T9300 on a P-6831FX, and I'm using drivers 177.41.

 

nars, I checked around for you and it appears there are many causes for that error, some of which are: avg free running, using a pirated copy and problems with the bdts module.

 

I have a purchased version, got it off Direct to Drive, and I do have AVG free running, I will try and shut it down, then see if it works, thanks Dook, I appreciate the help.

Thanks Citizen, I will add those if i cannot get ME running.

EDIT: Tried AVG shutdown, did nothing, I tried to escape ME cause it was not responding, but my display driver folded like a house of cards, and my screen shutdown. Had to restart....I need stable drivers..

 

Hmm. Very weird. Do you have your GPU overclocked? Mine folds on Crysis if I have the memory speed set too high.

 

This here is yeomans work by narsnail. Much appreciated! +1 rep

 

Are you playing Dawn Of War with fullres_teamcolour=1 in your Local.ini file? It really ups the textures in Skirmish/Online games.

Here's some before and afters:


With:



Before:


With:

 

got Mass Effect working, screens up

 

Battlefront 2 and 3dmark 06 score up

 

Amazing 3d mark increment i only get 374 points with my killer gaming laptop in my sig

 

I might also suggest, mainly to keep it all in the original post, to add the driver version you are running. I did find you mentioned (on page 2 I believe) you are currently running the 177.66 drivers from (I assume) LV2G.

 

oh geeeze, what a monster!

yes, I will add that as well. thanks

 

Crysis adding as we speak

 

crysis looks like it runs good on stock clocks.

 

sure does, was very suprised at the performance increase I got in that game.

 

You know, Space Siege the demo has been released. If you were looking for other games to bench this might be a cool one to try out. I certainly see this one in my future

 

ok I can do that as well, I still need to add Gears of War(getting from a friend), DMC4, and the Space Seige Demo, as well as COD4, BFME2, and Half Life 2: Episode 2

 

Aaaahhhahahahaha, well I guess you'll be busybusybusy. Obviously take time for yourself with that beastly machine! Since I've had my FX I've been a gamin' fool. Collected games for years and years with no machine to play them very well.

 

DMC4 benchmark is essential! i think you will get a hell of a boost in scene 4 because its CPU intensive

 

I had not done it before I had this processor brainer, so I am not sure what the results would have been with the T5450. I am sure someone else could throw some up though.

 

gears of war is up