Please help - low score

[Menelaus]

Hello,

I bought a new graphics card about 4 months ago and only recently have I played games that stress it and it REALLY struggles. I downloaded the performance test and according to the chart my gfx card is underperforming by 30%++

its an XFX Radeon HD 4670 1gb DDR2
your chart puts its performance around '729' but I am getting a MAX of '404' in the tests. This is quite some difference. I also tried 3dmark and its averaging the same with that too. 30%+ off what its capable of.

Here is my system info
Windows 7 32bit
Foxconn A6VMX Motherboard (Bios v080014)
AMD Athlon II x4 620 (4x 2.6ghz)
4 Gb ram (3.25 usable in Win7 32bit)
Running Catalyst 11.6 drivers

3d Graphics mark
This Computer 404.4
Simple 444.8
Medium 192.1
Complex 42.2
DirectX 10 3.62

Please help me regain some of the power in my card
Thanks

[David (PassMark)]

3D performance depends on the video card and CPU.
And your CPU looks a little under powered compared to what other people might be running.
64bit might also help slightly.

[Menelaus]

3D performance depends on the video card and CPU.
And your CPU looks a little under powered compared to what other people might be running.
64bit might also help slightly.

Would a 'little underpowered' cpu cause a drop of what looks like 30-40% of the cards performance? if so thats very disappointing as I can't even buy a new gfx card because of the wimpy cpu.. damn

as for 64bit, I would like to install it but I don't think I can. I bought the Windows 7 upgrade from Vista which has 2 dvds in the box, 32bit and 64bit but as the Vista version I upgraded from was 32bit I don't think its possible for me to use the 64bit dvd even though I have it.

Edit: in WEI my cpu performance is showing as 7.2

Edit2: I'd also like to add that a friend of mine with a lesser graphics card and lesser cpu is getting far better performance in the same games. not 10% better.. more like 50% better.

[David (PassMark)]

Here is the ranking of your Athlon II vs other CPUs.
http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu_look...hlon+II+X4+620
There 222 other CPU models on the market that are faster. It is about on par with some of the low power chips that are used in laptops.

See also this post,
Causes and Solutions for a slow PC

[Menelaus]

I find that hard to believe, sure its not state of the art but when a friend with a lesser cpu and graphics card is pulling 20-30fps more than me with mine..

it doesn't make sense but thanks anyway.

[David (PassMark)]

a friend with a lesser cpu and graphics card

Can't really comment without knowing the specs of the machine and the test environment. e.g. maybe he is running with different game settings.

[Menelaus]

Actually he's running with higher settings but hey.

Played a game today with the task monitor open on the 2nd monitor than even though the game is struggling to pull 30fps on lowest settings the cpu usage is medium. it never goes above 80% and I'd say its averaging 60-70% whilst gaming.

I cannot understand if the cpu is slow why isn't it running at 100% when gaming? or am I stupid?

Edit:-

Just done 3 tests,

World of Warcraft, all graphics settings lowest or disabled, getting 26-32fps - cpu usage averaging at 65-68%

The Witcher, all graphics settings lowest or off. getting 8-12fps, 3-5fps on cut scenes. cpu usage averaging 80% max

Everquest 2 (which is an old game) all graphics settings lowest or off, getting 21-27fps - cpu usage averaging 70% max

seems my cpu is sitting on its behind and not working..

[wonderwrench]

Is your friend running dual monitors? Dual monitors will kill FPS in many cases. What resolution are you and your friend gaming at? If its not the same FPS can't be compared.

[David (PassMark)]

What is the CPUMark score you are getting in PerformanceTest?

It is normal that games don't hit 100% CPU usage. Especially with quad core. This is because not everything in the game can be processed in parallel. Remember if you have 4 cores, then you need 4 simultaneous things happening on the CPU to get near 100%. More often one or more of the cores will be waiting for RAM, the disk, or the GPU to finish their job.

[Menelaus]

Is your friend running dual monitors? Dual monitors will kill FPS in many cases. What resolution are you and your friend gaming at? If its not the same FPS can't be compared.

Yes he is.

my main is 1680x1050 (gaming monitor)
2nd one is 1024x768 which is only used for browsing or irc. no 3d stuff.

[Menelaus]

What is the CPUMark score you are getting in PerformanceTest?

It is normal that games don't hit 100% CPU usage. Especially with quad core. This is because not everything in the game can be processed in parallel. Remember if you have 4 cores, then you need 4 simultaneous things happening on the CPU to get near 100%. More often one or more of the cores will be waiting for RAM, the disk, or the GPU to finish their job.

Sadly my eval has run out so I cannot test that but I do remember the cpu score was good. also 3dmark has my cpu score as good as the only low score was the gpu. 30-35% down on their average for that card.

Thanks for your help anyway