Possible fix for some of you with Vista and poor Graphic Card preformance low Fps

[Vmpwraith]

I just did this in vista http://support.microsoft.com/kb/935799.
I belive my problem was the power setting in Vista said Preformance in the area to change powersettings but was in fact set to ballance in the registry and was chocking my cards power. After applying this fix and setting the reg to preformance my FPS jumped from 6-15 to 45-50.There are probably a few more teaks out there but this has made a huge imporvement. Anyway its explained on the website and use it at your own risk, regedits can kill your machine.

edit a second fix for some with multiple cards maybe:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/936710
" When a DirectX 10 application runs on a Windows Vista-based computer that has multiple graphics cards, the computer does not use the secondary graphics card"

[moosejaw]

Holy crap. Thanks vmp. This is something I never looked at. I didn't know the OS was even throttling like that. I am going to investigate my settings asap.

Thank you again for posting the Micro$oft link.

[sqeaky4100]

Totally seems like it helped me!

Tested in stormwind, and before the change I had 60fps, but it "stuttered" every few seconds...

After the change, I had 60fps, but it seemed far more smooth.



Mine said "Performance" in the Power Options too, but when going into Registery, it had the code for Balanced... WTF VISTA?!?!?! At least it's changed now :)

[Catamer]

I hate green.
I mean really, I would rather have the super charged Hummer of a PC than the prius of PCs.

I want the biggest baddest, fastest mo-fo they make.

oh yeah. I've got two :D

[keyclone]

cute... the control panel showed 'high performance' but the registry was set to 'balanced'. fixed. we'll see if it helps.

when i want to save power, i turn off the computer.

thanks for the heads up!!

:thumbsup:

[Vmpwraith]

Cheers. My Gt9600 was really underpowered but I knew my power sorce was not really good enough. I know there is another microsoft fix for running dual/ multi graphics cards in a vista machines.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/936710
" When a DirectX 10 application runs on a Windows Vista-based computer that has multiple graphics cards, the computer does not use the secondary graphics card"

[EaTCarbS]

WoW! that made a difference! Thanks a bunch!

[ciscokid454]

Wow, mine was set to balance in the registry as well.
Good fine!

[Sajuuk]

Just checked it out (No real performance issues, but what the heck)

It was set to balanced. -_-

Thank ye!

[TeamGrizzly]

I'm using a 4870X2 so does this count as having multiple cards? Does the 2nd fix applies to me?

[Vmpwraith]

Not Sure about if this effects slots eg using 2 AGP or PCIe slots or if the card has 2 GPUs.

Consider the following scenario: You have a Windows Vista-based computer. The computer uses two or more DirectX-compatible graphics processing units (GPUs) in a linked configuration. You are using a DirectX 10 application and driver. In this scenario, the computer's graphics performance indicates that only a single GPU is being used.
CAUSE
This problem occurs because the operating system does not forward driver-render requests to the secondary GPU.

Take a look for yourself at http://support.microsoft.com/kb/936710 just choose the 32bit or 64bit fix to download. If you are running SP1 on vista I'm not sure if it was already included but you can try it and see. I dont think it has anything to do with which cards you use as it's a VIsta Bug for all people running multigraphics cards.

[Bigzini]

Thanks a lot man!

[Hiram]

needed those changes ty super info

[Gurblash]

Freaking AMAZING!! +1 Karma for you sir... I demand a sticky

[pinotnoir]

The second fix said it does not apply to my system. I was surprised to see my new pc was set to balanced under the power options. Thanks for the heads up.

[majty]

So is this fix safe to use without any risk. I mean there is no risk that system overheat and such?

It will only consume more power?

[Multibocks]

The video card one told me that the fix does not apply to my system (vista64), so does that mean its already installed??

[MarkHR]

Thanks very much for posting the energy plan post and link. Mine was stuck in Dell's "balanced" mode X(

[Taliesin]

I had noticed that my two cards were running underclocked (like 250MHz versus the advertised 825MHz) when I first got my machine last fall. I tried all kinds of things to fix it, and eventually ended up installing RivaTuner and using that to manually configure the cards to what they were supposed to be and that fixed everything. It sounds like these fixes will correct my problem too so that I no longer need a 3rd party app to manage the cards anymore.

Great find.

[Multibocks]

Where do I look to see what my cards are running at and what they should be running at? This is on 4870x2s.

[Taliesin]

Other people may have better ways of doing this, but I initially got RivaTuner v2.22 just for the capability to monitor the cards, which is how I learned that they were running underclocked and using it's other features to manually adjust all the settings. I knew something was wrong because the PC would frequently freeze up especially when trying to play games, which led me to looking for a way to monitor system performance.

As far as the current operating specs of your cards, you're probably going to have to look on the box, builder's website, or search for the part's specs on the web to determine what it should be running at. Keep in mind that different manufacturers may tweak the specs for their card, so not all 4870X2s may be the same. I'm running dual 3870X2s, so you should also be in the 825MHz ballpark.

EDIT: Played with this after getting home. The power settings changes haven't made any discernable difference in regards to the performance of my cards (yeah, I updated both through the GUI and regedit), they still want to run underclocked without using RivaTuner. Updated to latest 9.6 ATI drivers and CCC (dated 6/15/09) which I hadn't seen yet in case latest drivers would maybe correct the issue, but no luck there either. No harm done I guess, since I already stated that I'm working fine with RivaTuner.

[Multibocks]

Hmm ok I vill check out ze RivaTuner.

[Triple_c]

Just wanted to say thanks, I'm glad I stumbled on this.

[Simulacra]

Hi - I stumbled upon this thread last week and made the registry change from balanced, since then I've had pretty bad issues when logging into wow using keyclone, the machine just hangs and I have to reboot. If I login 1 at a time it's ok and the pc runs well. Has anyone else experienced this? I have a gb motherboard and am using the easytune software to overclock it a little so that could be it too although it's been oc'd for months now.

specs:
Windows 7 RC 7100
Q9550
8g RAM
keyclone

[jak3676]

Good articles - thx. Just a note that is also applies to Win 7 the same as Vista (at least the Win7 RC).

@ Simulacra - I've had a terrible time OCing my CPU with WoW. I'm still running an old C2D E6300 (dual core 1.83GHz) on a G-Bit board as well. I used to overclock it at stock voltage and stock heat sink to 2.4 GHz pretty easily. The EasyTune option never worked that well for me though - I got much better results tweaking it myself in the BIOS. I kept it at 2.4GHz for well over a year. But at some point I updated the BIOS. Since I did the BIOS update I haven't been able to get a stable overclock above 2.0 GHz (It will POST at 2.1GHz, but win 7 will bluescreen just a few min after booting up - even I don't load anything). So I dropped down to 2.0 GHz, but then I started getting errors with WoW. I played with it for a few hours but didn't see anything obvious. So now I'm back to stock 1.83GHz myself. I don't know if it just that loading WoW is very CPU intensive, or if there's more too it. It probably doesn't help that I have a 3-year-old CPU at this point. I'm looking for a cheap 9550 at the moment.

[heyaz]

cute... the control panel showed 'high performance' but the registry was set to 'balanced'. fixed. we'll see if it helps.

when i want to save power, i turn off the computer.

thanks for the heads up!!

:thumbsup:

Awesome... mine was too. And I suppose it's been like that for the last 9 months I've owned this thing.

Seriously, power saving features like that on a desktop? That's totally worth the performance hit:

http://img59.imageshack.us/img59/6939/powerbill.jpg

Overlap between lighting and other category - $13... and that also includes tv, xbox, stereo, 2 monitors, fans, and air filters. This thing probably costs $3/month to run. maybe $3.50 in high performance mode!

[daviddoran]

Awesome... mine was too. And I suppose it's been like that for the last 9 months I've owned this thing.

Seriously, power saving features like that on a desktop? That's totally worth the performance hit:

http://img59.imageshack.us/img59/6939/powerbill.jpg

Overlap between lighting and other category - $13... and that also includes tv, xbox, stereo, 2 monitors, fans, and air filters. This thing probably costs $3/month to run. maybe $3.50 in high performance mode!

I know the computer itself doesn't cost as much electricity, but I know that if I leave my computers on while im at work, the house is VERY hot , therefore it must take more energy to cool it back down. After I moved, I started shutting my computer down at night, and while at work (previously it had been on 24/7, when I moved the computer ended up closer to my bed, and the noise bothered me) and my power bill has been cheaper ever since, from a combination of less juice sucked up by idle computers, and less AC required to cool those same computers back down.

It's a vicious cycle...

[heyaz]

I know the computer itself doesn't cost as much electricity, but I know that if I leave my computers on while im at work, the house is VERY hot , therefore it must take more energy to cool it back down. After I moved, I started shutting my computer down at night, and while at work (previously it had been on 24/7, when I moved the computer ended up closer to my bed, and the noise bothered me) and my power bill has been cheaper ever since, from a combination of less juice sucked up by idle computers, and less AC required to cool those same computers back down.

It's a vicious cycle...

I haven't noticed much when just running 1 PC and 2 monitors. The room is maybe 2F warmer. I would say 99% of my cooling costs is getting the house from 110F to 78F... I'm in Phoenix :)

[Thar]

Thanks a lot for the link about the profile. It works fine!

[tripleboxed]

I just did this in vista http://support.microsoft.com/kb/935799.
I belive my problem was the power setting in Vista said Preformance in the area to change powersettings but was in fact set to ballance in the registry and was chocking my cards power. After applying this fix and setting the reg to preformance my FPS jumped from 6-15 to 45-50.There are probably a few more teaks out there but this has made a huge imporvement. Anyway its explained on the website and use it at your own risk, regedits can kill your machine.

edit a second fix for some with multiple cards maybe:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/936710
" When a DirectX 10 application runs on a Windows Vista-based computer that has multiple graphics cards, the computer does not use the secondary graphics card"im a windows 7 user and i just did this and it increas my fps i game about 4-8.

[coud]

I use vista and my fps went up more than 5 on my slow laptop good advice.

[daviddoran]

thread necro, and ugg boots adverts? whats up with that?

[JackBurton]

thank you. someone add this to our wiki plz
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qdFLPn30dvQ

[outdrsyguy1]

wow, glad i found this, I also got roughly 4-8 fps increase. I still can't believe this, they can't patch this crap in an update so your settings you 'set' actually work??

[Javlin]

thank you very much for this has improved my performance now achieving 60fps woot

[eisenhorn]

Cool, just read this thread, and thought I'd check my settings as I know I'd set High Performance in power when I first installed Win7 x64. Low and behold it was balanced in the registry. I have changed now and will check performance tonight...