8800GT Poor Graphics Performance

I recently installed Windows 7 Ultimate 64-Bit. I installed the latest 196.x drivers from Nvidia (64-bit version). Previously I was gaming on Linux and Windows XP. Since installing Windows 7 my graphics performance in WoW and Second Life are half what they were on XP and Linux.

Here is some more information about my system:


More details about my computer


Component Details Subscore Base score
Processor AMD Phenom(tm) 9500 Quad-Core Processor 6.9 5.9
Determined by lowest subscore

Memory (RAM) 3.00 GB 5.9
Graphics NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT 6.8
Gaming graphics 1791 MB Total available graphics memory 6.8
Primary hard disk 214GB Free (289GB Total) 5.9
Windows 7 Ultimate

System
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Manufacturer Gateway
Model Unknow
Total amount of system memory 3.00 GB RAM
System type 64-bit operating system
Number of processor cores 4

Storage
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Total size of hard disk(s) 755 GB
Disk partition (C:) 214 GB Free (289 GB Total)
Disk partition (D:) 14 GB Free (466 GB Total)
Media drive (E:) CD/DVD

Graphics
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Display adapter type NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT
Total available graphics memory 1791 MB
Dedicated graphics memory 512 MB
Dedicated system memory 0 MB
Shared system memory 1279 MB
Display adapter driver version 8.17.11.9621
Primary monitor resolution 1920x1200
DirectX version DirectX 10

Network
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Network Adapter NVIDIA nForce Networking Controller
Network Adapter VirtualBox Bridged Networking Driver Miniport
Network Adapter VirtualBox Host-Only Ethernet Adapter
Network Adapter VirtualBox Bridged Networking Driver Miniport

try 182.50 and see if you get your performance back, 182.50 are essentially vista drivers as they wddm 1.0.

I will try that, thanks.

You should see maybe a 5-10% drop worst case with that card and actually should be very much on par with the current drivers.

There are a LOT of settings under the nvidia control panel and you need to make sure you are seting them the same as the ols system.

Things like multithreaded operation, AA modes, v-sync and single or dual accellerated montors can make huge difference in frame rate.

As per a thread on the WoW forums I am using these NV CPL settings:

nisotrpic filtering - application controlled
antialiasing mode - enhance the application setting
antialiasing setting - 16x
antialiasing transparency - multisampling
conformant texture clamp - use hardware
error reporting - off
extension limit - off
force mipmaps - trilinear
multi display - single display performance mode
texture filtering anisotropic sample optimization - on
texture filtering negative LOD bias - allow
texture filtering quality - performance
texture filtering trilinear optimization - off
threaded optimization - on
triple buffering - off
vertical sync - off

Well the settings look good. The only one I'd futz with maybe would be the 16x AA. If you are running at a high resolution it's possibly that might be biting your frame rate. High quality settings generally have little effect at lower resolutions but then there is a point at which they start to slow your FR down. Try setting it lower and see if that helps.

WoW was not one of the things I used before and after the switch to Vista using that card so I don't know baout that specifically, but on the other stuff I had generally about 5-10% slowdown, but the original vista drivers were not so hot, I got a lot of that back over the coming year after the cards release.

Yeah, I have a 22" cinema display. WoW in windowed mode is something like 1600x1024.

I noticed my card was running at 63c. Cleaned up the card and processor. Now it's running at 48c. That seems to have helped. Disabled some full-screen effects. I got up to 60 fps in empty places, but still only 10 or 11 in a crowded place.

I would have thought Windows 7 would be faster than XP or Linux.

I should get a DX10 game and see how it runs.

Have you looked into the temp of your cpu ? the problem could lay there... I used to be a huge raider on WOW (Before it became super easy and trivialized) and during our first time trying archimonde, against my will I had bow out because I kept getting crazy low fps when the other 24 players and I were too close in vicinity.. I kept experiencing issues while in main citys so I kept looking to my graphics card until I realized that the bearings on my cpu's fan had gone bad so it wasn't spinning appropriately ( I no longer have that computer but it was pretty top notch for gaming in it's time) but after replacing the fan all the issues were gone... I have also seen people who never clean their heat sink of dust and junk experience the same issues... Might be worth looking into

The 8800GT is pretty much the older 9800GT.. Only difference is a few shaders which a normal human wouldn't even be capable of noticing... In comparison the 9800GT isn't all that worse then a GTS 250.. It's about 10% difference in performance when you crunch the numbers... You would have this guy discard a perfectly good 8800GT in favor of a rough 10% increase in performance... that's not very logical and to begin with his issue is that after W7 he is noticing decrease in performance when things should be around the same as they were previously which lead him to question the drivers