Black_V!per

I just got my new monitor (Dell Ultrasharp 24") to replace my older 17" Ultrasharp... I went into CS:S and upped the resolution but forgot to lower video quality... Weirdest thing was when i was playing I was getting at or above the same frame rates my older 17" LCD at 1280*1024... Can anyone explain to me why this is?

Evga 590sli AM2
AMD 5600+ x2
4096MB DDR2-800
Geforce 8800GTS


P.S. I think my monitor is too big... NOT! Holy crap 24" is beautiful!

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El_Gringo_Grande

Well. I am no video card expert but I have dealt with other types of bottle necks in systems quite often.

I would bet the bottle neck at the lower resolution had nothing to due with your video card. Some other component is keeping the frame rate where it is.

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- "The essence of tyranny is the denial of complexity". -Jacob Burkhardt
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- "People should not be afraid of it's government, government should be afraid of it's People." - Line from V for Vendetta
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Buckets

You're probably a little bit bottlenecked at the CPU. Modern video cards love high resolution but need a REALLY fast CPU to run properly at lower ones.

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Sirusblk

Also, monitors have reaction times themselves. Your new monitor could be faster. Probably the least likely of all but still a possibility

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Acreo Aeneas

Most games usually have a line of code (or a command) that lets you adjust the maximum framerate. It might just be that that maximum was adjusted when you switched resolutions.

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Acreo_Aeneas
Former 9th MID Member

=Sarc=

I'd say it's a CPU bottleneck but I'm not sure. That 24" must have a native resolution of 1650x1280 or something. The Source engine is pretty old now so it's possible that a 8800GTS can get bottlenecked by the CPU even at a high resolution. I don't think the Source engine has any sort of framerate limiter other than the regular vsync of a graphics card. The monitor wouldn't do anything different since the refresh rate doesn't really affect anything other than vsync. Even then, you'd see some sort of multiple of your monitor's refresh rate (60, 30, or 15).

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Black_V!per

Yea, the monitors native is 1920*1200 (A 16:10 aspect ratio). I havnt tried playing on a different (Or newer) game other than CS:S, but i'll see the differences on those engines (BF series, Oblivion, C&C:3, Doom 3 *Old*, ect). I find it weird though that my 5600+ dual core @ 2.8Ghz will be a bottleneck...

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=Sarc=

Your 5600+ is a good processor but the 8800's are really good video cards. I think it's possible.

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Black_V!per

Hmm, well i hear that the new Phenom X4's on the AM2+ socket will be compatible with a regular AM2, so when they come out and drop price I'll try upgrading (and possibly a new Gfx card since i like pretty eye candy at this high resolution).

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El_Gringo_Grande

I have always wondered if the dual cores compromise something to be multi-core. Overall the user would have a better experience because there are more than one core, but individual application might be limited by the compromises taken.

Seeing that most games can only use one core you effectively, for the game, have a single 2.8gHz spu machine. And maybe even a CPU that is deficient in some way?

__________________
I’m not racists, I have republican friends. Radio show host.
- "The essence of tyranny is the denial of complexity". -Jacob Burkhardt
- "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds" - Emerson
- "People should not be afraid of it's government, government should be afraid of it's People." - Line from V for Vendetta
- If software were as unreliable as economic theory, there wouldn't be a plane made of anything other than paper that could get off the ground. Jim Fawcette

Black_V!per

That statement brings up a different issue. It probably is my CPU thats my limiting factor. The game only runs off of one core, and that one core only has 1MB of cache, which may not be enough, hence the reasons teh new Core2Duos are much better, due to the large cache sizes. Im hoping the new Barcelona architecture with a modest L2 and a larger shared L3 cache will rid me of my CPU limitations.

I'll know in a few months time :P

Thanks for the input, im almost 100% sure its my CPU, a "slight" overclock to 3.1Ghz (From 2.8) yeilded me 80+ fps.

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=Sarc=

The Core 2's aren't better because of the larger cache sizes. Intel usually has larger cache sizes than AMD. The Core 2's have had such a large architecture change that the improvements are much better than Pentium 4's. The early benchmarks between the 2MB Core 2's and the 4MB show that there's very little difference in performance.

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