PC performance oddity

[MagnumForce]

I have 2 different systems to test ETW on and ETW gives me surprising results when I compare the performance between the two systems.

My primary PC:
C2D E8400 @ 3.0 ghz
Evga 680i motherboard (intergrated realtek sound)
4 GB 800 mhz ddr2 ram
2 x Geforce 8800 GTS 640 mb in SLI mode playing @1920X1200 28" monitor
can dual boot and play either Vista 64 bit or XP 32 bit.

Secondary PC:
C2D E6600 @ 2.4 ghz
gigabyte motherboard P35
4 gb 1066 mhz ram
Geforce 9600 GT video card playing @ 1600X1200 20" monitor
X-Fi sound card

Now looking at the stats you would think that my primary PC would handle ETW better because of the better processer and better SLI video, but no, my secondary PC plays ETW better. This is reversed for any other game besides ETW that I play on both PCs.

I know that ETW has some problems with SLI, but even when I play with single gpu mode, the game still plays worse than my secondary PC. I can run ETW on ultra with my secondary pc and it plays smoothly, while on my primary pc I can run on high for a while untill the game starts to chug. I wonder if it's due to the Xfi unloading sound processing off the CPU or it's that ETW does not like 8 series geforce cards?

[mandalore9]

haha i think you just answered all your questions after you asked them. silly rabbit,

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

trix are for kids

[ust]

Having or not having a soundcard in your primary system won't have a noticeable effecet on performance.
It is long time since games have benefitted in terms of perfomance from having a soundcard - the modern CPU is so powerfull that handeling sound calculations will not utilize more than a few percentage of a CPU's full capacity. It is synthetically meassureable, yes. But "in real life" you won't be able to notice it.

Your soundcard or lack of it is definately not your problem.


Not sure what mandalore9's point is though?

[mandalore9]

My point was he pretty much answered most of his questions right after he asked them.

[Spaxspore]

I know that ETW has some problems with SLI, but even when I play with single gpu mode, the game still plays worse than my secondary PC. I can run ETW on ultra with my secondary pc and it plays smoothly, while on my primary pc I can run on high for a while untill the game starts to chug. I wonder if it's due to the Xfi unloading sound processing off the CPU or it's that ETW does not like 8 series geforce cards?

Not sound card, it only effect processor, and this game is more GPU dependent then processor.

Ok this is an easy fix.

The reasons why pc #2 is running faster

1. Res is alot lower 1600x1200

2.9600gt is equavalant to a 8800gt (g92) so its considerably faster then the older 8800gts 640mb (g90 core).

3. To pump out 1920x1200/1080p res you need minimal single 4870/260gtx if you want to play well.

Im also playing on a 1080p screen, and i have a gtx 280 pumping it out. Lowest i had at this res was a 8800gtx, or a single 8800gt (it was smaller used less power and most games only 5fps then the 8800gtx)

hope that helps. Its an easy fix, get a good single gpu, or wait and see if CA fixes the SLI issues.

Main reason i dumped my 2x4850s cause of lack of support on some games.

[Bungus Holius]

I have been also having the white screen crashes in larger and longer campaigns. I suspect that the issue is related to RAM staibility. When MTW2 came out, i discovered through trial and error that one of my RAM sticks had a minor fault. They ran great with every game except MTW2. When i removed the so called bad stick of RAM, the game ran great.

While not an expert, I would imagine that lots of ppl have minor flaws in their RAM that would effect an MTW game as apposed to more stable, less memory hungry games. Any thoughts from the real experts?