GTX560Ti OC 1GB Slower than 9800GT in Windows 7

[Caterpillar]

Hello All,

I am trying to "upgrade" my Dell XPS720 from a 9800GT to a GTX560Ti and am experiencing some strange problems. 

Upon installing the new card and booting up Win7 for the first time, everything appeared to be going very slowly indeed.  Once into Windows, the CPU was getting thoroughly hammered and my frame rate in Eve online just about halved.  I tried unisntalling and resinstalling drivers and ultimately did a clean reinstall of windows, assuming that it was a software issue. 

Earlier today, i decided to put the 9800 back in and was more than a little surprised to get the faster system speed again.  Windows loads faster and the CPU appears to be far less stressed.  More importantly, my frame rates in eve are back to how they were.

The 560 card is fine by the way, as my son uses exactly the same one in his win7 PC and his PC performance didnt change when i tried my card in his rig.

Has anyone else had similar problems or has anyone managed to successfully get a gtx560ti working with a Dell XPS720?

My motherboard has the latest BIOS by the way.

Thanks in anticipation

[Dark Mantis]

Hi and welcome to the Gigabyte Forum.

Firstly did you make sure that you cleared the CMOS when you installed the upgrade ?

Did you make sure that you inserted all the power cables into the new card as I expect it actually requires more than the old card ?

[Caterpillar]

Thanks for the welcome.

I did plug the card into the PCIe 16x slot securely and i did attach the two 6-pin power connectors as directed.  Both of these appear to work, as i have previously tried them both out with the 9800GT.  The PSU is a 750W unit by the way.

As for clearing the CMOS, if it did get cleared, it would have been accidentally, as i wouldnt know how to clear it.

What is normally stored in the CMOS and could a failure to clear it cause the symptoms i describe?  If so, i would appreciate any help you could give me as to how i would go about clearing the CMOS.

Cheers

[Caterpillar]

Well, i found out how to clear the CMOS, removed my 9800, cleared the CMOS and reinstalled the 560Ti and unfortunately, this does not appear to have solved the problem. 

However, i did track down the cause of the high CPU usage, namely system interrupts.  I am currently trying to find out what is causing such  a high level of interrupts, probably a driver, and will post this when i can.

the bottom line is that my shiny new graphics card is now back in my PC, which is currently running like an absolute dog. 

Cheers

[Dark Mantis]

Try clearing the CMOS again exactly as per my instructions ( unless of course it was them that you followed the first time)

Remove the power cable from the mains supply and then press the power switch on the case for a few seconds just to drain any residual energy in the PSU capacitors.

Once done remove the motherboard battery for at least one hour before replacing it.
 
Next plug back into the mains supply and boot.
 
You will now need to enter the BIOS by pressing DEL and load Optimised BIOS Defaults.

Make any other changes to the BIOS settings to suit your self like disabling the floppy drive, disabling the full screen logo and making the HDD the primary boot device and then press F10 to save and exit.


Another thing to check is for maleware and viruses. They can slow a system to a crawl with no trouble. Try the computer unplugged from the internet.  If necessary completely wipe the hard drive and do a fresh install to make sure any crap is removed from the system and registry. If you have an old PS2 mouse and keyboard try using them too just for troubleshooting.

[Caterpillar]

I have cleared the CMOS as per the XPS instruction manual and it certainly worked, as i got an IDE error on boot, asking me to go into BIOS.  I have RAID 0 on my two drives and RAID needed to be set.  I had previously done a full scan for viruses and malware, with nothing being found.

I think i might have found what is causing the problem though.  Using a piece of software, latencymon or something like that. (im not at home atm), it would appear that my USB drivers and SATA drivers are causing a lot of interrupts that they shouldnt be.  Why these dont misbehave when the 9800 is installed isnt clear, but they certainly slug the CPU at the moment.

I have downloaded 64-bit versions of the 680i SATA drivers, but they appear to sit alongside the previous versions rather than replacing them.  I think i need to find a way of forcing a clean install of the 64-bit drivers as the problem doesnt appear to have gone away.  I will also need to find a new version of the usbport.sys file, as that is also generating an unhealthy amount of system interrupts.

Although my problem appears to have been highlighted by installing the 560Ti, it is starting to look like it is a more fundamental issue of making sure that i have the right win7 drivers installed.

Thanks for you help

[Dark Mantis]

Try uninstalling the offending files with DriverCleaner and then replace with the new drivers.

[Caterpillar]

nvlddmkm.sys now appears to be in the frame.  Latencymon is reporting this as the main draw on the CPU, even though i am still getting high numbers of interrupts from the USBPORT.sys, STORPORT.sys and nvstor64.sys drivers.  I finally managed to get the latter 3 drivers updated, but the nvlddmkm.sys file is part of the nvidia 560 driver set and is at the latest version. 

The fact that i didnt have this problem until i put the 560 into my PC and that the 560 worked fine in another PC, would probably reinforce the case against its assosciated drivers.

[Caterpillar]

Just by way of an update, i have now removed the 560 from my machine and put back the 9800GT.  All appears to be good, albeit not as fast as i would have hoped.

My son is well pleased as he now has a dual 560 setup in his PC. 

I think that my Dell XPS720 motherboard just can't handle the latest graphics cards. 

Thanks for the help

[Dark Mantis]

You are very welcome and I don't doubt that you have one very happy son now! Dell are often problematic as they tend to do everything differently and have their own ideas and designs of everything. They have always been the same and wouldn'y even fit into a standard case etc.