Sluggish gaming perfomance

I just built from scratch the following set-up:

MOBO - ECS GeForce6100-sm-m1
CPU - Athlon64 X2 6400 dual core
GPU - MSI HD6670 1gb DDR5
RAM - 2 x 2gb Corsair XMS DDR2 400
PSU - Corsair CX750
System HDD - Corsair 120gb SSD sata
Data HDD - WD Caviar Black 1gb sata
DVDRW - LG lightscribe ide
OS - Windows 7 Professional 64bit
ANTIVIRUS - AVIRA Free edition

Updated everything from the OS to the catalyst drivers.

I get a blue screen saying something about video scheduler everytime I try to run Windows Performance Index Assessment. Installed MW3 to try it out but it really lags, as in LAGS!!! My previous AMD K8 did much better with a HD4200 1gb GPU and 4 gb DDR RAM with IDE drives. what am i missing here?:confused should i change the MOBO/CPU/RAM? or should i tinker with the drivers? please help! :cry

 

Welcome to Majorgeeks!

That on-board GeForce 6150SE-based graphics chipset is pretty dire by today's standards (SE means it is about half the speed of the full-fat version, which is very basic anyway), barely capable of driving the W7 Desktop.

I'd buy a new graphics card, something like a HD7750 should be a good match, install the new card, enter the BIOS and disable the on-board.

To enable TRIM for the SSD (to ensure it performs optimally), you will probably need to change the nForce IDE/ATA driver in Device Manager to the standard Microsoft one.

 

I concur with satrow . . . an add-in video card would greatly improve your gaming experience.

You need a PCI-E card . . . no matter what make or model of card you go with, try and stick to a card with no lower then a 128bit memory bus. A lot of card makers try to sell cards with lower memory buses but large amounts of onboard RAM (RAM is cheap right now). The problem with that is with such a small memory bus the card can't really take full advantage of a lot of RAM so it's just a gimmick, IMO.

At least a 128bit memory bus and at least 512mb (although 1GB is common now) of onboard RAM. Bigger the memory bus, the more the card is going to cost. There are tons of decent cards out there that meet the criteria even on a tight budget, if money is an issue.

 

Thanks for the reply satrow. id like to emphasize that i did buy a dedicated graphics card, the MSI R6670-MD1GD5 Radeon HD 6670 1GB 128-bit GDDR5 PCI Express card and have also disabled the on-board nvidia graphics. The only driver i used from the ECS website is for the built-in realtek HD audio and the co-processor driver. the rest were installed via windows update. by the way, this is my first time to venture into using ssd drives. are there any other things i still need to know about ssd drives other than trim? thanks for replying!

 

the MSI R6670-MD1GD5 is 128-bit bus. i was wondering if the bottle necks are with the cpu and/or the motherboards chipset.........if they really are the cause of the blue screen and sluggish gaming then i guess i have to shelve out a bit more for a newer mobo/cpu/ram.....:cry

 

Apologies for skimming your post and misleading Spad.

Sluggish gaming will not be a fault of the SSD, as gaming is done primarily from RAM (very long game load/level load times would be down to drive speed), it must be a GPU issue.

Here it could be that recent ATI/AMD cards are not fully backwards compatible with the PCI-E version used in that motherboard (I'm having difficulty getting any definitive reference; the most 'useful' I have is for Intel boards: http://www.overclock.net/a/the-final-answer-to-the-controversial-pcie-x16-version-compatibility - but note the comments section there too).

Have you checked for BIOS updates? Tried uninstalling the chipset (nForce) and GPU drivers then rebooting and installing the latest versions again?

Is there a PSU connector on the card, if so, try connecting it from a different PSU rail/lead.

Check that all power saving settings are set for 100% in Control Panel and also CCC, assuming you have that installed. Note that any motherboard/GPU 'utilities' may override those settings - check (or uninstall them).

Check that the GPU is capable of running up to spec by loaning it out/testing in another PC.

 

thanks for the links Spad. i found these there: http://www.overclock.net/a/the-final-answer-to-the-controversial-pcie-x16-version-compatibility

"AMD Radeon HD 7000 series is extremely power efficient. Having said that it comes at a cost. This power efficiency comes due to the new electrical interface featured in PCIe v3.0 and 2.0 slots and is ABSENT in PCIe v1.1 slots. Hence they are NOT COMPATIBLE.
Sources of proof: Online interaction with Sapphire technical staff
Online interaction with AMD technical staff
Personal interaction with technical staff from MSI
They all clearly stated that that PCIe v3.0 cards are not compatible with v1.1
Further to prove their point MSI was even kind enough to provide a reference card they had with them, i.e the HD 7850 and it did not work on my computer's motherboard featuring PCIe x16 v1.1 slot."

looks like i have my answer. since i prefer to save on power consumption in the long run, i guess i have to upgrade to a newer CPU/MOBO/DDR3 combo that supports PCIe v3.0. thank you all for your help!