Brand new 8800GT performing like a 3 year old card

[destrukt]

What I did:

- Took out my temp card, my old 7600GT, put in my new 8800GT (My PSU is modular so I just plugged in a PCI-Express cable which is just some 6pin thing)
- Uninstalled Nvidia drivers, reset into safemode, used Driver Cleaner
- Reset, went into normal Vista [x64] and installed the latest drivers (162.95)
- Reset, Vista loaded fine and I changed some settings in the Nvidia CP like forced V-Sync off and just a couple of standard, small things

The problem:

Games are incredibly slow and I receive a 3.6 rating in the Vista rating thing as opposed to a 5.4 or so with the 7600GT. I guess now might be a good time to mention that the 8800GT is kind of better.

System specs:

Intel Core 2 Duo E6750
Gigabyte P35-DS3P (F6 bios)
4GB (4x1) DDR2800 Corsair TwinX
BFG 8800GT OC 512MB
500GB SATAII Western Digital 16MB cache
Corsair HX-620W PSU
Vista [64Bit/Home Premium; fully updated]

At the moment nothing is overclocked.


All equipment is < 2 weeks old. Could this be a faulty 8800GT? Or somehow it's being slowed down by software (Windows, Nvidia, ??) for some reason? Also, is there any type of diagnostic software to run?

This is so annoying, I waited like 3 weeks for this after so many delays. I spoke to the computer store just before and they just offered the usual "Do you have the latest drivers blah blah" and suggested bring it and my PC down tomorrow.. see, we can not go without this PC and I know it's not the problem so I'll just put my 7600GT back in (And see if that performs like usual) and take the 8800GT in.

I've looked through the BIOS and I can't see any settings that might be limiting it, are there any known ones that do that I might be missing?

 

[elrasho]

you should have uninstalled Nvidia drivers and ran driver cleaning BEFORE putting the 8800GT in

 

[destrukt]

Ideally, yeah, and I usually would have but I guess I was just in a hurry (Finally got the card and could finally play some games). :/ Anyway, ultimately would it cause a problem like this? I considered it might be due to my process but I can't figure out how it could cause it. The drivers were totally removed so I have no idea how it could affect it whether I put in the new card first or not.

 

[2real]

yes it would sadly.

 

[destrukt]

But.. how? I've considered bizarre things like it might causing it to run at 7600GT speeds but if that was so, it would run most games I've tried smoothly and I fail to see how removing the card and purging the drivers could somehow create a problem that persists in the 8800GT or for some magical reason the problem is persisting in Windows somehow.

Unless it's one of those completely random, bizarre computer problems we've all come across but I can't fathom how.

 

[2real]

Uninstall the drivers again turn off PC take the 8800Gt out put it back in reinstall drivers imo

 

[elrasho]

similar to waht 2real said. Take out the 8800GT put the 7600GT in. Load Windows and uninstall the drivers and run driver cleaner. Then switch the computer off and install the 8800GT, then download the latest drivers AND download/install DirectX.

Thats what I did

 

[Zephos]

You might not think it, but drivers can do some extremely crazy shit.

 

[Citrus]

The latest ATI Catalyst drivers render Windows Media Player useless for me :/

Had to system restore just because of a f* driver.

 

[destrukt]

I tried that, putting the 7600GT (Which is still running fine, woo.. :/), uninstalled the drivers, turned it off, put in the 8800GT, installed latest drivers and same, silly problem. But the drivers were completely removed, that's just why I don't see how the problem could persist if it was driver related.

The card itself seems to be identifying fine:

I'm downloading the latest DX10 now from here, well, the MS site it links to..

 

[Zephos]

The latest ATI Catalyst drivers render Windows Media Player useless for me :/

Had to system restore just because of a f* driver.

The last time my drivers borked, my computer would shut down and make beeps as if the RAM was dislodged. Would have to remove the ram several times and put it back in before it would start up, and maybe a few more times before it got past the bios. Only after reinstalling the video drivers did it stop the crashes.

 

[destrukt]

I checked that and it seems to be running at 16x and according to GPU-Z it seems to be as well.

I'm going to install Vista on another HDD and see how it runs with this card before I return it.

 

[Kyorisu]

Why do you people bother with driver cleaner? Stop wasting your time and just uninstall/reinstall drivers. I've known drive cleaner to cause more problem than it's worth. But yeah in the future remove drivers for a part BEFORE TAKING IT OUT.

 

[Nemesis6]

A shot in the general direction here - Some motherboards had trouble with the 8800 GT cards, could this be one of those cases? I doubt it though, since his is relatively new.

 

[Andrew LB]

Try using the 169.25 drivers for Vista 64-bit. I had issues with the drivers you are currently using.

 

[destrukt]

I actually was using the newest ones, 169.25, I simply made a typo in my original post, haha. Anyway, I installed Vista on another HDD and it had the same problem but someone suggested trying the drivers it came with (167.26 I think) and it's all fine!

I feel stupid having not tried this earlier on, but oh well. Thanks for all your suggestions and everything, my silly problem is fixed.

 

[Vigilante]

Glad to hear it .