System Specs: Windows XP, P4-3.4Ghz, 2Gb RAM, GeForce 8800GT 512Mb
Note: I’m running this on a 3-year-old motherboard (ABIT-AA8XE)

So I just got a brand new video card, and I believe my system is pretty competitive besides the motherboard/CPU. It’s interesting because I’m able to run some new games, like COD4, Company of Heroes and UT3 on the absolute highest settings and still get 40-80 FPS. Then I tried Gears of War and World in Conflict on medium settings and I had pretty poor frame rates (20-30).

I understand that these games use different engines, but I want to know what pieces of games concentrate on CPU instead of GPU. I thought getting a new videocard would solve all my gaming problems, but it seems for some games I may need a new CPU/Motherboard. Is there anyway to focus more of the game on my GPU? Any thoughts?

I believe that all games are "GPU heavy." I built a new system that had on board video. I ran 3Dmark 3 and scored about 5000 as I recall. Then I bought a 8800GT with 512 meg of ddr3 ram. Installed it and ran the 3Dmark 3 and scored over 30,000. (I may not be giving accurate numbers here but it was a HUGE difference with the 8800.)

So my point is it doesn't matter how good a system you have if you don't have a really good vid card.

Still, my problem is that I can't run games like Gears of War or World in Conflict at higher FPS even though I have one of the best GPU and 2Gb of ram, my processor seems to be the problem.

What vid card do you have?

I listed system specs in the first post, but here's a link to my card

Newegg.com - EVGA 512-P3-N801-AR GeForce 8800 GT 512MB 256-bit GDDR3 PCI Express x16 HDCP Ready SLI Supported Video Card - Desktop Graphics / Video Cards

Well then in my opinion you have some other issues. Your system is more than sufficient to run any game out there.

My guess would be vid card driver issues. go to Nvidia's web site and dl the latest drivers for you vid card.

I have the newest video card drivers. I close as many services as I can when I'm gaming. I'm thinking it may be my dated motherboard bottlenecking performance. Should I be using any of nVidia's tools to reconfigure?

I don't know anything about updated BIOS or anything. Do I need to download new motherboard/CPU/RAM BIOS files? How would I find those?

You might try uninstalling/re-installing the game. Other than that I don't know.

ahh NN Tote, there is no way in HELL you got 5000 with onboard graphics and 30, 000 with 8800gt. 32-36k is the WR for 3dmark06

lrb190: A GPU heavy game like crysis, cod4, bioshock etc are stress ful beacuse they have so many textures to render, where as a CPU heavy game like Gow, WiC etc are CPU heavy beacuse there is so much in the way of physics to process, and that take CPU grunt, something P-4s dont have really.
The 8800gt is by no means the best graphics card, its is fairly average performance, its just awsome because of its value.

Your CPU is a real bottleneck on your system. You should get beta and leaked graphics drivers as usually thye are better, and rearely have bugs. try the 177.40 and the Nvidia Physx drivers for some more performance.

hope i helped
jackolantern

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Get yaself a dual core cpu and that should help your system out.

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