ATI 9700 Pro Problem

[SgtB]

I'm getting some piss poor results from my new 9700 Pro Card. FPS in Tribes 2 usually sits arounf 30-40, and frequently dips to the low 20's. This is the same as I was getting with my Geforce3! The game doesn't look much better either. There are some strange anomolies that I cannot decribe as well, but the fps is my main concern right now.
Here's specs:
Dell Dimension 8100
1.3 GHz P4
256 RDRAM
9700 Pro
DX9.0a
250 W Power Supply

I also have 2 cd-drives, floppy, hard drive, mobo, and the ATI card all hanging off the power supply. I heard that you should have atleast a 350W PS when using the ATI card. Could this be causing my problems?

What do you all think? ________________________________________
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[jrjuiliano]

It would definitely help to have a bigger power supply, but I'm not sure that's the main cause of your problems. Have you tweaked the refresh rates on the monitor, and got the latest drivers? J.R.

 

[paparazi]

RDram? so the Dell 8100 motherboard is using the intel 850 chipset? Well that shouldn't be your bottle neck, the same can't be said however of the P4 1.3 (is this a P4 or a Celeron?) either way it is probably the main course of the low fps. As a general rule, when it comes to lower spec machines, the higher the spec of the card the more there performance is effected so something like a GF2 MX400 won't be bottlenecked by the 1.3 but the 9700pro will be effected quite badly.
250watts is too little power now you have the 9700pro installed (ATI's minimum spec with the 9700pro is 300watts I believe) but I dought this has anything to do with the low frame rate. Martin
Replying helps further our knowledge, without comment leaves us wondering.

 

[SgtB]

Thanks for the replies!

I'll most likely be ordering a new machine then. I've been pricing out one from monarchcomputer.com. With out the price of the card included I'll be getting a nice 2.8 P4 with 1GB DDR Ram for around $1300!

I've been told on other boards that the bottleneck is the probably the CPU (and PS as well)

Considering the machine will take 3 weeks to get here I might just get a bigger PS for the time being. They're pretty cheap.

Thanks again for the replies! ________________________________________
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