Good hardware, bad FPS

So I was playing COD4 multiplayer on my desktop, and someone was asking for help because he was only getting 15-25 FPS with his XFX 8800. This struck me as odd, because the 8800 series are great graphics cards, and should be able to run COD4 very reasonably. I was playing on low resolution, med-high settings, and was cranking out anywhere from 30-90 fps on an 8500 GT. He had an 8800 and should have been cranking high settings and getting much better FPS. He was playing with "optimal settings" at 1024 x 768. I asked for his specs, and he had a pentium 4 at 3.0 ghz and 1 gig of ram on windows XP, which happened to be the exact same specs I was running. We got him to update his drivers, but that didn't help at all. I know I'll never meet this guy again to fix his problem, but I was curious what the problem could be? His hardware seemed powerful enough to run COD4 with great frame rates. Left me totally stumped

 

If i had to guess, it was the 1gig of ram
edit: background programs or possibly a virus could be chugging down the system

 

Wow... he has an 8800 series GPU with that CPU and RAM?? Wow...

Well I would tell him to stop background processes and think about buying a little bit of RAM and seeing as 2 Gb is a mere $35 nowadays I think that would help him a ton.

 

Well even tho 3ghz sounds high a P4 3ghz is not even as fast as a 1.6ghz core2duo and to keep up with a 8800 you need probably about 1.8-2ghz on a C2D.

So the cpu is limiting, and 1gb of ram is definitely low for a gaming machine 2gb is standard, and 4gb becoming the standard.

The person in question needs to learn to build a system thats synchronized with all the parts working in unison at a common performance level. You cant toss a high end gpu in a bad machine and expect results.

 

It's his CPU. At that resolution, his processor is doing a somewhat larger task than the video card. If he can't raise the resolution, make sure he is at least running all settings at the maximum and with the most AA. Otherwise it's up to his good ol' Pentium to take over.

2GB of memory would help any studdering.

 

Thats a great gpu ,... problem is.. his entire system is the bottleneck.

 

I agree; that card deserves better...lol.

I was having problems running COD4 with my specs, but as soon as I upgraded the video driver, it started to run perfectly on all maxed out @ 1440X900.

 

But the thing is, I have the exact same specs as him (except the type of ram), and I can run COD4 fine, with great FPS, and I only have an 8500 GT (low res, but still looks great).

 

And you also said that he updated the drivers? That is weird. I have read about people getting low fps with monster systems, but I'm not sure what the real cause is.

 

Wow Ukrainian all maxed out at 1440×900? Thats pretty impressive. I have essentially the same video card as you , but with quadro drivers. I play it at 1440×900 also, but medium settings (AA off, shadows off, specular mapping off) and get 40 FPS on average (normal gunfight in normal open area), never dips below 30 FPS (wide open area with lots of explosions etc going on), and about 70 FPS at highest (inside, in corridors etc.)

I'm gonna fiddle around with the settings so I can turn specular mapping on without taking a hit in FPS.... I like things shiny! Any tips?

EDIT:
Ok I just turned on specular mapping. The framerate hit isnt that bad, about 5 fps on average I'd say. However, the game looks WAY better with it turned on. I didnt realize how much of a difference it makes until now.

Also, it has some advantages for multiplayer. before, all character models were bland, and sometimes I wouldnt notice a player that was hidden or far away. With specular mapping, players that are standing outside in the light , light up like a cristmas tree, making it easier to spot them.

Might think about playing on 1280×800

 

On a tangent, I would recommend you do play on 1280x800 and turn up the settings, the game will look incredible, even without a few pixels.

 

Please note that I was getting 20-30 fps. I don't want to mislead people..