FPS with an 8800GT?

[HappyWino]

Guru's,

I just borrowed a Palit 8800GT/512 from a friend expecting a noticeable improvement over my HD2600XT @ 1440x900 but if anything it is worst, maybe equal at best

I was thinking I should be able to have everything at max (16x) and high and have it just sail through with high FPS...have I set my expectations too high? What should I reasonably expect from this card on TF2?

[edit] Just in case it isn't all about the card itself, I have an older Intel motherboard (D915PBL), 4GB ram, P4 3.4 GHZ (spaceheater) and the latest drivers from Nvidia. Windows XP SP3

Cheers

HW

[MrBlah]

Your CPU may be bottlenecking the video card. Probably a good chance on that.

but yeah you "should" be able to run every thing on high, or close to.

[HappyWino]

I would kinda expect the rest of the system to be bottlenecking it at a higher resolution but I am surprised that it could be at a "paltry" 1440x900!

[Clay Pigeon]

The source engine was known for being processor-limited when hl2 was first released. Having the top of the line card made less of a difference than having a top of the line processor at the time.

[Gen.Ben]

Yeah that P4 looks to be the problem.

[Boss Llama]

I have a very similar setup to you, though slightly older. I'm on an Intel mobo with the same processor, a P4 3.4 extreme, and 4GBs RAM, but I use an old 7600GS AGP card (those Socket 478 + PCI-E 16 boards are unusual creatures!). I don't run things set high, but I have no problems whatsoever on a 24" widescreen. If I crank up the settings, it kills it though. The card hasn't shown any sign of trouble, but the rest of the system can't handle it. Looks like the key is definitely a CPU bottleneck here, rather than the GPU.

I'm in the process of acquiring the stuff to build a whole new box, and have an 8800GT sitting a couple feet away from me for it. It's going to be going with, most likely, an E8400 processor to start, and I'm hoping to hop it to a QX series when I can afford it. I'd definitely look in to upgrading your mobo/processor to current generation stuff as your next performance booster, as it's best to keep all your technology at around the same level, not one thing super and the rest mundane. The old P4s just aren't cutting it for high settings these days.