Low Frame Rate Problem

Sion Williams · Jan 13, 2013

Riight...

Last week my trusty old Nvidia GeForce 8800 GT died, so needed a new one. I went for a EVGA Nvidia GeForce 210 1GB, all good you might think, its twice the memory of the previous one (512MB) and has better output ports all for a good price. Bargain I thought!

But after I got it all running etc. first thing was some RSRBR action to try it out, and tried the stages in the up and coming Rally Club event, ones I knew my previous card didn't have a problem with. With the new card however, on some of the Czech stages and PTD Rally Sprint there is massive lag! the screen rate according to Fraps goes down from 60 (or above if I'm correct it doesn't measure above this) to about 30, making it very hard to play as its not smooth at all!

I've tried playing with the Nvidia setting and game setting and got it a little better but not much. So, anybody got any suggestions? Or have I bought a card, that for some reason can't run the game properly even though its spec far out weigh the previous card!

My setup is:
EVGA Nvidia GeForce 210 1GB
2 monitors (game runs on one)
one running on VGA and other DVI (VGA cable with adaptor)

Any help greatly appreciated!

Thanks
Sion

porridge · Jan 13, 2013

My knowledge about graphics cards is very limited these days, and in fact I really shouldn't say anything at all, but I am curious: When you say "for a good price", are we perhaps talking about too good a price, meaning under 70$? Because I'm not quite sure if that one is "a gaming card" at all.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/gaming-graphics-card-review,3107-7.html

If I look at the hierarchy chart - as I occasionally do - I can see only one 210 model in there, "G 210", and it is very much down there. Way too down, if you ask me. Whether that G stands for GeForce, I don't know, but if it doesn't stand for anything else, then I can quite confidently say that it's not a proper card. Take a look at where your 8800 GT lies.

http://www.evga.com/articles/00507/

To me, EVGA's product list doesn't prove too much otherwise. At first glance, the specs are actually not that poor when you think of older games, but I can't help but wonder about that type of memory. Yes, I strongly believe the amount of memory as such may not tell the real story as there have been different types of memory used in my lifetime: DDR2, DDR3, GDDR3, GDDR4, GDDR5 spring to mind first. And I understand that EVGA's 210 model may have DDR2 on it, which to me doesn't sound too promising.

But I reiterate, I know very little about graphics cards at this day and age, and this should always be remembered. So there's still a good chance that your issues are more of a technical sort and let's hope they are.

Anyway, one thing I've learned in the past that if you wanted a graphics card that would perform at a reasonable level with games too, it'll cost you over 70$, regardless of a time we live in. Everything below that price have always been for those who consider the gaming side of things less important.

This, I believe, will never change.

Michael Nelson · Jan 13, 2013

It looks to me like that graphics card would be appropriate for a HTPC, and not a gaming computer at all.

If you were wanting to upgrade to something cheap I'd suggest looking for a second hand AMD Radeon 4670 or 5670, which should be relatively cheap, and would be absolutely fine for RBR. (I used to use one, and played RBR with it)

One thing to look out for is that you get one with GDDR5 memory, rather than DDR2/3. GDDR5 performs much better.

If you were wanting a more serious gaming machine for a lower price, a second hand HD5770 should be relatively cheap as well.

Sion Williams · Jan 14, 2013

Thanks for your replies chaps.

Maybe I can shed more light by posting the link to what I got, this is the exact one:

http://www.pcworld.co.uk/gbuk/evga-nvidia-geforce-210-pci-e-graphics-card-1-gb-19161262-pdt.html

All the specs seem pretty good from there. OK not the best (DDR3 etc.) But I was pretty desperate as it wasn't an upgrade, it was necessity! The 8800 GT died a terminal death! So this was the one within my (very tight) budget, that seemed to me to be good enough for my needs. (only game I play is RBR and just use it as a normal computer aka surfing the web otherwise)

My old 8800 GT was pretty similar in some respects, it was also DDR3, but not sure about the clock speed, new one is 520 MHz which is slower than some slightly higher priced ones I must admit.

Does seem to be I rushed into the a bit and now paying the price

Thanks

Senad Subasic · Jan 14, 2013

It doesn't look great, I'm afraid. My 4 year old budget card outperforms it by a long way:
http://www.gpureview.com/show_cards.php?card1=579&card2=621

And your old 8800 GT is way ahead of both of them:
http://www.gpureview.com/show_cards.php?card1=544&card2=621

Seems the 210 is aimed mostly at media reproduction.

Sion Williams · Jan 14, 2013

Hmm... Ballcocks...!

It'll have to do for now though as I am skint after Christmas and can't justify buying another card right now, I have got it to work better at lower graphics setting in the game, but things have a habit of just popping up in the game with that, quite literately!

Oh well, just downloaded an Nvidia program which allows you to clock the GPU, I'll give it a try, the card wasn't much so not to bothered, might give me an excuse to get a better one in a bit...

Thanks for the advice chaps!

Sion

Tony Gentile · Jan 15, 2013

interesting

Michael Nelson · Jan 15, 2013

I just remembered that you can bake old nVidia graphics card (yeah, in the oven) to attempt to revive them. If you didn't bin it then you should definitely give it a try - nothing to lose!

This thread here has some tips in later posts: http://forum.overclock3d.net/showthread.php?t=29760 but you could probably skip the flux if you wanted to be frugal.

You can definitely google around to find success stories with people having done that, but obviously there's still a good chance it won't work, just seems like it'd be worth trying!

Good luck.

Sion Williams · Jan 15, 2013

Michael Nelson said:
I just remembered that you can bake old nVidia graphics card (yeah, in the oven) to attempt to revive them. If you didn't bin it then you should definitely give it a try - nothing to lose!

This thread here has some tips in later posts: http://forum.overclock3d.net/showthread.php?t=29760 but you could probably skip the flux if you wanted to be frugal.

You can definitely google around to find success stories with people having done that, but obviously there's still a good chance it won't work, just seems like it'd be worth trying!

Good luck.

Worth a try I suppose! I didn't chuck it actually, so like you said, nothing to lose!

I'll report back, thanks!

Sion

Sion Williams · Jan 20, 2013

Baking it seems to have worked! Thanks for everybody's help!

Sion

Kazumi · Jan 20, 2013

Remember locked fps can make things smoother and reduce GPU load.

120 fps without v-sync works for me (try 60 or 90 of course tearing can occur without v-sync), also the occasional dip is greatly reduced. I think nVidia can lock fps in driver? Other then that I can recommend the antilag plugin for that purpose http://www.kegetys.fi/

Sion Williams · Jan 20, 2013

Kazumi said:
Remember locked fps can make things smoother and reduce GPU load.

120 fps without v-sync works for me (try 60 or 90 of course tearing can occur without v-sync), also the occasional dip is greatly reduced. I think nVidia can lock fps in driver? Other then that I can recommend the antilag plugin for that purpose http://www.kegetys.fi/

Thanks for the tip on that. Can't find anything in the nVidia settings to lock FPS and I tried the one in your link but didn't really help, if anything made it worse! With the gamer how I have it it sits at a constant 60 FPS and is pretty smooth now since getting the old card working. Maybe something is already set in the nVidia settings I can't find? But it works fine on so I'm happy now.

Thanks
Sion