Bottlenecking Nvidia GTX 570 - Slow performance

Hi to all, I'm new in the forum and I have a doubt.
I'm not actually pretty sure what my bottleneck is but I am sure that there IS a bottleneck. My 570 is not performing well and I don't get the fps I'd like to. In the first mission of COD Black Ops I'm getting around 30-45 fps, and for what I know and seen it should be running at 80-100.

My specs are:
Intel Core 2 Quad Q9550 2.8GHz (3.4GHz OCed)
2GB RAM DDR2 OCZ 1066MHz (I think this is the bottleneck I'm going to get another 2gb more since I don't have money to change to i7 and DDR3)
Zotac Nvidia Geforce GTX 570
mobo GIGABYTE GA-EP43 UD3L

What do you think the bottleneck is? Is it the RAM? If I add another 2GB will it run better? I don't think it is the processor actually, it's a quad core and even though it is old techology it stills manage to do pretty well.

 

It is definately your ram. Get another 2gb of ram and the game will fly...

 

Hi niconomad,
First welcome, to the forums. I think it could be your 2GB of ram/ and or your psu 520W for a GTX570?. if you are running windows 7 64-bit get your self 2 more GB of ram/ or may be 6GB of ram

 

Its easy to see if its a CPU botttleneck.
Open task manager and play the game.
Check to see if any CPU core hits 90% usage or higher during gameplay.

2GB ram is a problem though if using Win7/Vista and will cause paging.
As this also increases CPU use a bit, its probably wise to upgrade the memory before looking at the exact bottleneck situ.

 

I think I'm gonna get 2 more gb tomorrow. I'll post the new results with the RAM.
I'm running Windows 7 and I know 2GB is not enough, I can't even export heavy things in After Effects.

 

Like kanej said 2GB more and games will fly. You can always overclock your CPU for some extra fps

 

Yeah, it will be a combination of W7, and 2gb Ram.

Do you have XP installed, or could you?
XP apparently has much higher GPU usage, with people getting near double the performance compared to W7, plus the lack of system ram won't be doing you any favours.

 

are you on xp? if so then no worries, even crysis dont uses 2gb along with total system resources, now if your playing witcher, different story.

but yes if on win7/vista, min 3gb.

I also notice one thing too, more ram you put in your system, the more ram resources shows up. wants to free up more stuff cause it sees more ram.

and I would also strongly recommened changing your psu for future stability.

 

Adding more RAM will improove a lot of things, making it the most worthy upgrade for your PC anyhow, but it might not solve your problem here. When you start playing a game, Windows automatically pages other tasks so that it can allocate the main RAM to the game. Doing this causes delays when starting the game, when loading new levels and when exiting back to Windows. However the actual game framerates are usually not affected.

Appart from the more RAM that is almost a must, make sure you have installed the Intel chipset drivers and that the card is working in full speed mode. You can check if it really does by running a game in Windowed mode and a GPU-monitor utility in the background, or by installing something like RivaTuner statistics server and configure it to display the real time clock speeds while gaming. A reason for the card not to run in full-speed mode is not recieving enought power or it is overheating

 

Thank you all for the support!
I'll be getting two more gigabytes soon and I'll post some results. About the PSU, I don't think it's a bottleneck at all. Maybe I'll change it later but I won't have problems, the PC doesn't even reach 400W at full load

 

True, it shouldn't reach 400W under full load, but a near full 225W for the video card and another 70-100 for the CPU make it more than 300W requested from the +12V line. I have doughts if it can actually handle it. I'd measure the +12V under load if I were you.

 

How can I measure it?
I'm planning to get a 80 plus PSU BTW

 

With a multimeter ( http://www.google.co.uk/products?hl...esult_group&ct=title&resnum=3&ved=0CFIQrQQwAg ). These should be around $10-$20 tools. Those 4-pin molex connectors from the PSU are ideal measure points. The black wires (middle) are ground, the yellow is +12V and the red +5V. Connecting the yellow with a ground gives you the +12V reading. BTW, the values you get from utilities that read voltages under Windows are inaccurate

If the +12V voltage under load drops below 11.4V then the PSU can't handle the load. If you have a quality PSU and it runs comfortable within spec, then the reading should be quite far from that value.

If you don't have a multimeter you can try underclocking and undervolting the CPU, so that it draws less power, and test if under these settings the video card can run in full speed mode.

 

Easier way to have us tell if its your PSU or not is, tell us the brand and model.
Somply enough.

I bet that, if its some OEM crappy PSU, the fault will be there and you are probably still lucky it didn't blew your PC yet.

Open the case and check the label on the side if you're unsure what you have,

 

520W from OEM probably would not have enough AMP on the 12V rail...

 

I wouldn’t a trust 520W psu with the gear you’re running; even it was from a well known manufacture. A couple things to think about, the age of the psu and how long will it last under near max load.

Looking forward to seeing your results with the ram up-grade, keep us posted.

 

What brand is the PSU.I don't think 520W is enough for your system.You should have at least 550W with 38A on the +12V rail.

 

How do you know? Maybe its Corsair HX520W it can push 42A on +12v.

Until he dosnt say brand we can just guess...

 

Not a good test for Black Ops as many people hit 100% cpu usage during play causing stutter that isn't fixed yet especially dual cores.