Vista - Frustrated - various issues

12 gigs of ram. yes 12.
i7.
750 corsair.
hd 4890 overclock edition (not that i've tweaked any overclock settings)
two 1 terabyte hard drives
soundblaster x-fi titanium (which i have removed from my machine in the hopes that its presence was the issue, and have not put back in b/c i don't see the need for it at the moment)

okay. so with 12 gigs of ram and a supposedly sick card like the 4890, one would think a game like counter-strike 1.6, which was made 8 or 9 years ago, would run with constant 100 fps. or you would think that a higher end game like empire total war could run in the "very high" graphics settings.

well, my fps CAN be 100...but it drops to 20 to 50 in any combat at all, and ranges from 60 to 100 when basically 'idle'. this is counter-strike 1.6!!! i should be getting 100 fps no problem. and i'm not a nub. vsync is off, i've dled, uninstalled and reinstalled the latest ati drivers and ccc.

for empire total war? the gameplay is choppy on ANY setting and i expected better. after removing the sound card and taking the 4890 out of the slot it was in and moving it up a couple slots (i was desperate and tried everything i could!) the empire gameplay seemed to maybe be a bit smoother.

also my usb headsets (i have a creative one and a logitech one) both are very staticy to the point that it is unbearable. they work fine on my other machine that runs xp. is this just a vista 64 bit issue or what? i know this problem is random.

any help would be greatly appreciated. i'm at a complete loss.

oh also:

i have tried to set affinity to 0 and unchecking all other boxes, i have tried to hook up different monitors and try vga vs. hdmi vs. dvi, and btw i dunno i am throwing this out there - maybe it's related to my other problems - but i have a usb panel ont eh front panel of the tower that has a mic and headphone jack (and a 1394) and neither of those two work even though the usb slots work in the same panel.

oh and here are pics of everything (before i took out the sound card and moved up the vid card. for curious people, it's a zalman case):

just reading my system specs after putting them in, i wondered

could it be that my nvidia motherboard hates my ati card and refuses to work well with it and vice versa?

i am more of a nub then i may have let on, so i don't know jack about my motherboard or the potential of this issue so please help lol

hm.... that would make the most sense...... did you check for conflicts with it?
oh nice gpu btw

maybe i should buy a nvidia card

ne suggestions for the best one for 64 bit vista?

um... i'd just get a different mobo before i got another video card.... something like a asus mobo.... to get something equal to the 4890 you'd have to spend more than what a new mobo would cost..... but try to see if the mobo has conflicts with the vid card or anything like that

also..... if your mobo has any kind of onboard video you need to disable that in the bio's....

How do I check this potential bios issue? That is how do I disable it.

Also I have decided to install xp pro 32 bit for my 2nd HD. I'm gonna run cs as well as protools wich is not compatible with vista64.

I have a different NVidia chipset Mobo but I'm using an ATI card without any problems. As long as you're not trying to use Crossfire on an Nvidia chipset board, you should not have any problems using ATI cards.

What version of catalyst do you have loaded? I believe the most current is 9.9. (I don't know for sure because the last version that worked with my card was 9.3).

it would be right as the computer started up before windows started loading there should be something like enter bio's or setup, and in there it will be in one of those pages just go through until you find it