GeForce 7900 to GeForce 8600 GTS = no improvement?

[sorrowharvester]

Hey all,

I just got an 8600 GTS with 512mb RAM. (From a 7900 series w/256 mb)
I upgraded from 2gb system memory to 3gb.

No improvement??

AMD Athlon 64 4000+ ~ 2.4GHz
I'm running 5 accounts (2560x1024 Horizontal span) on this 1 machine

I'm running main on left monitor at 1024x768 and the other 4 on right monitor 800x600.

Any tips on optimization here?

Thanks

[Ughmahedhurtz]

If upgrading your graphics card doesn't speed your graphics up, then it wasn't your graphics card that was holding you back but your CPU or memory/front-side bus speeds.

[sorrowharvester]

Yeah, I feared as much.

It's a LITTLE better, but, not worth the money I put into it.

I guess I'll have to upgrade the motherboard and CPU next

[sorrowharvester]

I take it back... main screen is now running 25-30 fps and alts are at 20 fps. (was 20fps and 10fps)

Still not the improvement I was expecting.

Don't know why it was running like poo before :/

[zanthor]

The 8600 isn't an upgrade over the 7900. You are talking an 8000 series low end card VS a 7000 series high end card...

The 7900 -> 8800 is BARELY an upgrade, on only saw a 10 FPS gain going 7900gt to 8800gtx...

[sorrowharvester]

Yeah but, faster clock speed and 256 mb more memory.
It HAS to help?

[Lost Ninja]

GPU memory is almost entirely used for textures, and while WoW does need some texture memory as its designed to run on such a wide variety of machines texture memory is unlikely to be a sticking point. Pure power is far more important.

[sorrowharvester]

Yeah I know, before I was constantly thrashing swapping textures in and out. The card also does skeleton bone transforms and such.

I've since made some discoveries with this though.

1) It loads MUCH MUCH faster.
2) If I use the /console maxfps and maxfpsbk, my game runs a LOT better. Main is running at around 30 and alts are running at 15.

I'm happier with it than I was originially, but, I do think it's time to upgrade the ol' CPU and Motherboard.

Thanks for all of the input!

[Taipan]

Greetings,

Tom' Hardware "Overall All Game FPS" chart will confirm.

http://www23.tomshardware.com/graphi...1058&chart=318

7900 GT 256 is about 15% faster than a 8600 GTS 512.
7900 GS 256 is on par with a 8600 GTS 512.

I personnaly got better FPS with a Duo2Core 6850 3.0ghz no O/C with ATI X1950 256 under XP than with a QuadCore 6600 O/C 3.0 ghz with Nvidia 8800 GT 512 under Vista, both on Raptor 10,000 rpm 150go, while 5 MBs.

I'll try the latest setup soon with XP for fair comparison but I still suspect ATI drivers to be more efficient for WoW in gaining more CPU raw power than Nvidia ones into FPS.

Note : MB load time in heavy-populated areas such as IronForge is longer with DuoCore but once done, FPS is deffo better.

/salute

[sorrowharvester]

OK, I gave in.

I took all the stuff back to Fry's and bought:
~ 4gb DDR2 PC6400 RAM
~ BFG GeForce 8800GT OC 512mb ($250 on sale at Best Buy!)
~ New MSI AM2 motherboard
~ AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual-Core Processor 6400+ Black Edition (3.2ghz)

Upgrading/Repairing XP now... we'll see what happens

Wish me luck...