[Gharakh (old)]

So this was my computer a few days ago:
Asus p4s533-e mobo - AGP 4x
p4 2.0ghz
Geforce 4 Ti 4600
512MB ddr2700 ram
+ audigy 2, hard drives etc. 
This setup ran Urban Terror pretty damn smoothly, usually getting 80-90fps.

Now I have upgraded it to this:
same mobo, asus agp 4x
p4 2.0ghz, same
geforce 6800GS - AGP4x/8x 256MB
Ultra DDR Memory: 1 gig of pc2700 ddr

so just upgraded the ram and vid card.

This increased the framerate, but not nearly as much as it should have.  I'm only getting about 110-120fps in urban terror, not even on the highest settings (high resolution though)

Now when I'm running urban terror, usually after 30 minutes or so I will crash to the desktop or restart completely.  These crashes come without warning - i.e. the screen doesn't start going wacky before this happens, so I don't think the card is overheated or anything.  My cpu temp is about 42 C when gaming, 33 C right now as I type this.  Not too hot.

So I'm wondering if I should take out the new ram and put in my old 512 stick and see if it works then.  I'll probably try that, just wondering if anyone has any other suggestions/ideas?  I think my motherboard should be able to handle this vid card shouldn't it?

Thanks for any help guys.  By the way I'm running Windows XP with directx 9.0c

[Hybridesque (old)]

Q3 is largely CPU limited dude, so that's why you're not seeing the gains you were expecting.

Should try the other stick of ddr too.

[Gharakh (old)]

Thanks,  and yeah that is kind of what I was thinking too just not totally sure.  It is definitely a nice upgrade though as I can easily run two monitors off of it.  It was kind of slow with the gf4Ti.  (I turn dual monitors off when running urt)

I just popped the other stick in so I'm off to game for a bit to see if it is any more stable.  Thanks for the post.

[Gharakh (old)]

So far so good.  Not much of a performance loss either so I guess I'll be returning the new stick if I can. Sucks though, I used to have 2 512 sticks in here but one of them died this summer   Oh well, I'll live with it.  Seems like this mother board is pretty picky about which RAM it will run well.

[Woekele]

Urt could be CPU-dependant, but not that much I think.

You can use memtest86 from http://www.memtest86.com/#download0 (get the .iso in the .zup). Burn the .iso to CD, boot your PC from the CD and let it check your mem for a few hours or so. Should find 0 errors. Any error means your memory is borked, or doesnt work well with the rest of your setup.

Other reasons I can think of... Not properly de/re-installing vidcard-drivers between vidcard upgrade. Although nvidia to nvidia should go okay, although the newer card might need newer drivers to not be buggy.

Maybe your power supply cant handle the power the new card takes.

[Gharakh (old)]

Quote

Urt could be CPU-dependant, but not that much I think.

You can use memtest86 from http://www.memtest86.com/#download0 (get the .iso in the .zup). Burn the .iso to CD, boot your PC from the CD and let it check your mem for a few hours or so. Should find 0 errors. Any error means your memory is borked, or doesnt work well with the rest of your setup.

Other reasons I can think of... Not properly de/re-installing vidcard-drivers between vidcard upgrade. Although nvidia to nvidia should go okay, although the newer card might need newer drivers to not be buggy.

Maybe your power supply cant handle the power the new card takes.

The drivers should be alright.  I uninstalled the old ones, and installed the new ones from the disc.  So far since I changed the RAM back I haven't had any problems, so if I do run into more problems the next step will probably be to uninstall drivers and download new nvidia drivers.

My psu is 400 watts.  I didn't think the new card would take all that much more than the last card, but I guess I could be way off.  That will be the last step if problems persist.
Thanks for the help.

edit: I'm running two optical drives and two hard drives off of the 400 watt psu.  As well as soundcard/vid card.  Am I underpowered do you think?

[Woekele]

Checking the new mem with memtest would be a good idea, so you can check if that's really the problem and return it if it is fooked.

About your PSU, it depends on the brand... some brands are fine, some brands are crappy. The voltage doesnt say much about it anymore if you have a crappy brand. You could check my disconnecting 1 HD and the 2 optical drives and test a while with that.

Also, I would indeed advise to use the newest (signed) drivers from nvidia.com , not the ones that came with the card on an (old) disc.

[Gharakh (old)]

Quote

Checking the new mem with memtest would be a good idea, so you can check if that's really the problem and return it if it is fooked.

About your PSU, it depends on the brand... some brands are fine, some brands are crappy. The voltage doesnt say much about it anymore if you have a crappy brand. You could check my disconnecting 1 HD and the 2 optical drives and test a while with that.

Also, I would indeed advise to use the newest (signed) drivers from nvidia.com , not the ones that came with the card on an (old) disc.

Ok thanks for those tips.  I will test the memory later just to be sure, but I think that it is the problem as I have been playing for quite some time now with no problems.  I will also reinstall drivers later.
Cheers

[Woekele]

Ye, but its just that you can easier convince the shop that your memory is broken if you can confront them with the memtest-result Good luck with it!

[Gharakh (old)]

Yeah good call.  I ran the test and sure enough ran into an error about 27% through the test.
I'll return the stick and just live with the 512 until I get enough funds to upgrade my mobo as well.  Thanks