Asus GTX550Ti DirectCU TOP - running slowly in games?

[CRAddison]

Hi have just bought an Asus GTX550Ti Direct CU TOP card to replace my old 8800GT which had started playing up (I think it was fried - corruption during games etc).

It installed fine and everything looks good until I run any games and the performance is dire (Crysis 2 - 10-15 fps?) - much worse than the old 8800 card - and this is only running at 1440x900 with options turned down to lowest settings.

I can't see what the problem is as Windows has given it a higher experience rating than my previous card (up from 6.8 to 7.2) and other tests I've run seem to indicate that it should be quick. I've updated the driver from the nVidia website.

Is it possible that the card is faulty in some way or could it be some kind of incompatibility with my system?

My system is:

Windows 7 32-bit
Intel Core 2 processor overclocked to 3.08Ghz
ASUS P5N-E SLI Socket LGA775 Motherboard
3Gb RAM

I know I could do with upgrading the motherboard and processor etc but I can't see how the new card would be slower than the old one? Nothing else has changed from before and it was fine.

[xeromist]

Make sure you do a clean install of the latest drivers (you have to check the box for clean install). Also use something like GPUz to see what your temps are like.

[CRAddison]

Strange one, this seems to have resolved itself after a few reboots.

I did think I probably should have done a fresh install of the drivers but seems okay now anyway.

[devinderaujla]

Strange yes.. I am also facing the same issue. The first time I launch any game after a restart it works fine but if I close that game and launch another one, it wont render more than 10 FPS. No matter what game I try and in what order. If I run Furmark and check the graphs, I get 0% usage on VID but the GPU is over 90% and I would get only 7-10 FPS on built in 720p benchmark. If I run furmark first thing after a restart, it would give me more than 50 FPS. I have installed the latest drivers from nvidia.com

Any ideas?

[HiVizMan]

It sounds like your system has some crud left over from older drivers. What I would do is a complete VGA driver clean up. Remove your drives in safe mode and then physically remove any left overs or strays from your registry.

IOnce you have done so then you can install your driver version of choice.

[devinderaujla]

Thanks for the quick reply.. I will try that. I have also heard that the 3xx series version of nvidia drivers is bit buggy and many ppl are facing this issue.