I've benchmarked Crysis with an E8600 and GTX 980 Ti with Windows XP 32-bit. I was getting ~61 FPS in the GPU benchmark and ~59 FPS in the CPU benchmark.

The GPU in this instance is heavily bottlenecked by the rest of the system. In my newer 3770k build and same GPU I get over 100 FPS in each benchmark.

I would expect that a QX6850 and GTX 780 to at least perform comparably. That you're getting such low frame rates suggest something is really wonky.

Increasing the frequency doesn't always result in a performance boost, for example increasing the frequency of your GPU will not double the memory bus width. Besides, overclocking will cause all sorts of instabilities, especially if you push the processor to its limit.

You need at least GTX 295 for modest performance with all bells and whistles. 8800GTX SLI can run Crysis adequately on High setting with 1280x720 resolution.

Swishkebab wrote on 2023-11-05, 18:17:

Was crysis really "unplayable" maxed out even with the absolute top end hardware available in 2007?

Crysis came out in late 2007 and was known for years as a demanding, demanding game... and I think it was fairly common in those days to ship games (Doom 3 is another one that comes to mind though that was a couple of years earlier) that couldn't max out all settings at the highest-for-the-time resolutions for another generation or two of GPUs.

Have you tried other games to test your hardware, first? Something from like 2004 like UT2004 should scream on your setup...

VivienM wrote on 2023-11-05, 18:50:

Swishkebab wrote on 2023-11-05, 18:17:

Was crysis really "unplayable" maxed out even with the absolute top end hardware available in 2007?

Have you tried other games to test your hardware, first? Something from like 2004 like UT2004 should scream on your setup...

Older games seem pretty fine.. F.E.A.R. runs at 80-400fps from my memory. UT 2009 flies. Far Cry 2 has quite high frame rate in XP, but is super stuttery. The benchmark gives great results in fps but it's headache inducing to watch it.

Shponglefan wrote on 2023-11-05, 18:35:

I would expect that a QX6850 and GTX 780 to at least perform comparably. That you're getting such low frame rates suggest something is really wonky.

I'm going to return with some benchmarks. Windows XP runs with way more fps but pretty stuttery like I mentioned. The north bridge temperature difference for seemingly no reason seems so bizarre to me. It feels unnaturally cold, like it's not performing at its peak?

dominusprog wrote on 2023-11-05, 18:40:

Increasing the frequency doesn't always result in a performance boost, for example increasing the frequency of your GPU will not double the memory bus width. Besides, overclocking will cause all sorts of instabilities, especially if you push the processor to its limit.

Didn't notice any instability. Just thought it was weird 2.66>4ghz performed essentially the same.

Those Nvidia chipsets ran pretty hot (some motherboards had a 50-60mm fan on the northbridge and a heatpipe to the southbridge). If they're suddenly cold, make sure the heatsinks are still tightly mounted onto the chips. I don't know how this hardware handles overheating.

Also, those chips might be affected by bumpgate (it's the right era - the 8800 cards are definitely affected), but that would result in a dead board, not poor performance. If they're flawed chips, keeping them cool will delay their failure.

In my testing Crysis doesn't really benefit from SLI. It prefers a single card with more RAM. Like mentioned above, a GTX 295 is a good card choice. For AMD fans, my R9 270X 2GB will play Crysis 1.2.1 under XP @ 1080P High with an average around 65 FPS. With a fast dual core.