Okay, before I get into the meat of this thread, I would like to preface this by saying that I do know about computers quite a bit and I've had to maintain a certain level of knowledge to troubleshoot my problems in the past. I come here to simply ask for guidance so that I can pinpoint what is exactly happening in my computer ever since I installed a new graphics card. ---- The Days Before Installing the New Card: The past weeks were plagued with a lot of issues for my computer which ultimately led to having to replace my dying video card with something with a bit more power behind it. I was sick in the last days of my GT430's life and I wanted to record some footage and b-roll for editing. I fired up my capture card's software (I have a HD PVR) and my Super Nintendo which was jerry-rigged to run on the PVR for recording purposes when I noticed something was a bit off. The software up and decided to lag which was odd, my capture software never lagged and it doesn't even lag on a 2009 MacBook which has lower specs than my computer. At the time, I was using my HDTV as a second monitor when the HDMI port also decided to just stop working for whatever reason. Where it gets interesting was the idea of no game being able to run on my machine. Where the GT430 isn't really a gaming based graphics card, it ran a lot of modern games perfectly including Battlefield 3. I started to notice that the card was on its last leg and would soon die when the game would literally become slideshow heaven and run at a whole whopping 2fps occasionally hitting up to 4fps. The odd thing about that was the fact that around the beginning of 2013 when I bought Battlefield 3, my average for the settings that I ran was around 60fps even in the multiplayer which ran perfectly fine with no issues. I thought maybe it was just the game and tried to fire up Half Life 2 on my Steam. Half Life 2 has been a game that even my old Dell laptop could max in terms of the settings, and now my machine can't run the game even on low getting worse by the minute. This is where I decided that it was time for a new card. When my graphics card refuses to even properly run Half Life 2, I think it's time to upgrade. While all of this was going on, I was troubleshooting all of my parts in my computer and even cleaning them since they needed it just to confirm that it was my graphics card and it wasn't the onset of a dying PSU, processor, or RAM. ---- The New Card and the New Plague of Issues: I decided to go with the MSI R7770 PMDIGD5 (AMD Radeon HD 7770). I did the research and where the card did have its faults, it also had things that I could benefit from. Before I installed the card, I had previously gone through 2 NVIDIA cards and I thought maybe it was driver related. I removed every trace of the NVIDIA drivers because I know sometimes when you install new drivers, the old ones can potentially conflict with one another thus resulting in some "hilarious" moments. I installed the graphics card without any issue and I fired my computer up through the brand new HDMI port that this graphics card gave me (the new card did not have a VGA port, only DVI and DisplayPort [which my monitor does not have]). Everything seemed to run fine, if not better. I installed the new drivers (not from the disc mind you, I went to AMD's website and downloaded them) and restarted my computer in the typical fashion. Now, here's where it gets interesting and for good reason. I booted up Steam first and I decided to try Garry's Mod and Half Life 2 again to see if they would work, and I can confirm that both of them work... sort of. I can play the games fine, but recording them for whatever reason, good luck trying to play with 20fps. These games average 200fps through various FPS Counters from not only Fraps and DXTory, but through the game's console. I then decided to try Arkham Asylum, a game that I had even verified if it could run on my new card which it can, and even on low the game lags something fierce. I know the game can be maxed out on my specs because I exceed said requirements with my build but where it gets even more weird is the fact that its sequel Arkham City runs just fine. Finally I tried to play Battlefield 3 which was the game that started it all and the game runs... at 800x600 with everything on low. This is what strikes me as odd, I know not to rely on others videos when it comes to picking out a graphics card because I'd rather be informed about the benchmarks on how well it performs and if its going to cater to my budget based needs. Not only did I check the benchmarks but I also checked other people's videos in which some of the players had lowered specs than mine and were running the game perfectly fine at even 1920x1080. It seems like everything else is working perfectly fine because rendering on my computer is faster than ever with my new GPU, but it just seems like gaming on my machine is becoming more and more of a hassle to do when everything used to run perfectly fine. This is where I ask all of you, could this potentially be another issue with my computer or does it seem as if the GPU isn't strong enough to handle gaming on its own accord? EDIT: Here are the specs of my machine Corsair 700w Gaming Series PSU Gigabyte H61M-HD2 Motherboard Intel i5 Quad Core Sandy Bridge 2400 3.1GHz 6GB Corsair DDR3 RAM MSI R7770 1GB GHz Edition GPU 1680x1050 HP Monitor This set up is running the stock heatsink from the i5, but I am also using 2 case fans on my case.
First of all, you need to add some paragraph breaks. This looks like 2 huge blocks of text. Secondly, I'm not sure what's causing the issues. Your GPU isn't a super high powered one, but I would think it could run the games you mentioned without any issues. It sounds like it might be a software issue. Maybe try reinstalling the games, scan for viruses, make sure you have the latest drivers, etc. And if all that fails, you might want to do a clean install of your OS (I assume you're using Windows). That's about all I can think of.
Yeah sorry about that earlier. I was in somewhat of a hurry this morning to get this thread posted before a job orientation plus two cups of coffee didn't really help my situation with only getting 3 hours of sleep. I mean, I tried to pinpoint the issue because I knew my GPU wouldn't be a too high powered going into purchasing the HD 7770. Between bills and such, a fancy card was out of the question but I digress. When I installed the graphics card, I actually did a fresh install on my 500GB HDD. When I updated the drivers originally with my GT430, that kind of led to the downfall of my computer which does somewhat aggravate me because I did have games on Origin and Steam that I did want to finish (Bioshock Infinite being one of them considering I was 3/4 through the game). Both GPUs were powerful enough to run the game at an ideal aspect ratio for not only my monitor, but also my TV for gaming from my futon. I did get the games to somewhat run on the HD 7770, but it's not really ideal to play a game at 800x600 in full-screen on a 1680x1050 native monitor. I wasn't expecting to run those games at the full aspect ratio, but at least in 1280x1080. I was using Windows, I popped my old hard drive in my tower with Mavericks on it until I can figure out what is going on with this thing. The ironic thing about it all, everything in Mavericks including rendering videos in Final Cut Pro X is running absolutely flawless.
Well, one thing you might try is doing some benchmarks, and see how they compare to averages for your GPU. You could also try the Uningine Valley benchmark. That benchmark has both Windows and Mac versions, so you could try both and see how they compare. It's free, by the way. I don't quite understand what you mean by running the games at the "full aspect ratio". Why would you want to run games at anything but your monitor's native aspect ratio? If you're trying to improve performance, you're better off lowering the resolution but keeping the aspect ratio the same. That's far better than having black bars on the side or a stretched image. That's just my opinion.
I think it would be best to check the most basics. Did you install any drivers for it? Sometimes the reason for such bad performance is you're using the drivers included in Windows. It's best to use drivers that come from ATI themselves and not the built in ones from Windows. Especially ATI Video Cards.
Have you tried using DDU? https://forums.geforce.com/default/...uninstaller-ddu-v12-8-0-1-released-05-15-14-/
