Author Topic: New video card, now frame rates worse, not better.... (Read 807 times)

eddiek · « **on:** November 16, 2001, 10:58:00 PM »

I went and bought a new GeForce 2 video card, installed it, and now my frame are worse than they were with my old Viper 770 Ultra TNT2.
I installed the drivers in the box, the 21.85's....the CD also had the 21.83's on it. I read Lephturn's post about driver's, tried to install 7.78's, but without success.
I downloaded the Detonator Destroyer, GeForce Tweak Utility, even downloaded the 22.80's from 3DGuru's website.
As a side note, not only AH is affected, my whole system seems to act up since I put this card in. In AH, frame rates start out decent, then it gets choppy the longer I play, finally goes into slideshow mode. Never had this problem with the Viper in place.
As to whole system performance, well, just moving around the desktop is a task sometimes now. The system wants to go real slow even just selecting a bookmark........
I am at a loss here.......anyone got ANY ideas where to start?
My system specs are:

Celeron 700 oc'd to 861mhz
Abit VH-62 mobo
256mb RAM
Visiontek Xtasy 5564 GeForce2 MX400

Staga · « **Reply #1 on:** November 17, 2001, 12:51:00 AM »

Your card is GF2 MX400 with 64mb of DDR-RAM. If I remember correct 64 megs DDR-cards with GF2MX core are using 64bit wide bus against 128bit bus in 32 megs GF2MX and GF2 GTS/Pro/Ultra. This was issue with earlier MX-chips thought I'm not sure if NVidia changed this in MX400 chips.
Card's memory is also clocked to 166MHz (info from 3D-GPU) which is slow if compared to GF2GTS or Pro cards.

First you could download 3D-Mark 2001 benchmark proggie from www.madonion.com and check your card's scores when compared to similar cards (They have huge database in their site for this).

Also you could check if you can over-clock your cards memory; My old Hercules MX was having speeds 175core/183memory but it was working stable at 210core/220memory. Your ability to over-clock memory depends speed and quality of mem-chips and without knowing speeds of memory it's hard to say how high you can oc it.

Maybe the seller of the card could change it to GF2GTS or Pro card ?

eddiek · « **Reply #2 on:** November 17, 2001, 01:23:00 AM »

Thanks Staga.......am downloading the benchmark program right now.......
One other thing.....when I initially installed the card, I got only a white screen when I tried to play AH. Checked the HTC help pages, found that deleting the "video7.cfg" file sometimes helps....not sure what the file does, but I did that and was able to get into AH.
Now, am getting white screen and lock up type situation when I go to AH. Doesn't matter if the video7 file is there or not, cannot get past the white screen. I have my video settings in AH on 1024x?, 32 bit color, and unimited FPS. Might try setting the FPS to 60 max if I can ever get back into the game..........
I was able to install the 7.78 drivers earlier....system as a whole seems faster and more stable. Why on earth a card manufacturer would put out send drivers that are unstable, I have no idea. Am gonna check the Visiontek website and see if they have any FAQ that might clue me in on possible solutions.......

214thCavalier · « **Reply #3 on:** November 17, 2001, 04:28:00 AM »

Check here they cover most problems with that range of vid cards.
http://www.geforcefaq.com/faq.cgi

-)km- · « **Reply #4 on:** November 17, 2001, 05:03:00 AM »

Hmm, I was about to buy an Abit Siluro NVidia GF2 MX400 with TV out. The specs say it has 64MB of SDRAM 128 bit bus Interface running at 166MHz. Do I gather that the 128 bit bus should avoid the problems mentioned here?
-)km-

Quote

Originally posted by Staga:
Your card is GF2 MX400 with 64mb of DDR-RAM. If I remember correct 64 megs DDR-cards with GF2MX core are using 64bit wide bus against 128bit bus in 32 megs GF2MX and GF2 GTS/Pro/Ultra. This was issue with earlier MX-chips thought I'm not sure if NVidia changed this in MX400 chips.
Card's memory is also clocked to 166MHz (info from 3D-GPU) which is slow if compared to GF2GTS or Pro cards.

First you could download 3D-Mark 2001 benchmark proggie from www.madonion.com and check your card's scores when compared to similar cards (They have huge database in their site for this).

Also you could check if you can over-clock your cards memory; My old Hercules MX was having speeds 175core/183memory but it was working stable at 210core/220memory. Your ability to over-clock memory depends speed and quality of mem-chips and without knowing speeds of memory it's hard to say how high you can oc it.

Maybe the seller of the card could change it to GF2GTS or Pro card ?

Kieran · « **Reply #5 on:** November 17, 2001, 08:09:00 AM »

Don't buy any Nvidia card with the letters "MX" attached. These are the bottom of the barrel cards of the line, pretty much. If you go GF2 get the Ultra or GTS, even if it is 32MB. Better still, get a GF3 of any kind.

Staga · « **Reply #6 on:** November 17, 2001, 09:48:00 AM »

Looks like GeForce3 Ti200 gives best bang/bucks ratio now.
Friend bought one (Elsa 721) and over-clocked it to same speeds as in "normal" GF3 and card is also having TV-out if that's what you need.

[ 11-17-2001: Message edited by: Staga ]

mrsid2 · « **Reply #7 on:** November 17, 2001, 10:05:00 AM »

Yeah avoid MX cards they are outdated.

Leadtek GF3 Ti200 offers same pcb layout, memory speed and HDTV tv-out as the normal GF3 with almost half the price. I have one under purchase at the moment. Tests report that this card can be overclocked to a speed that actually passes the standard GF3 - pretty good value for your money.

eddiek · « **Reply #8 on:** November 17, 2001, 10:30:00 AM »

Thanks all for your views and comments.

Cavalier, thanks for that link!

Hell, it told me that parts of my BIOS settings are NOT optimized, and I am now gonna go do some experimentation in there.

Repeated attempts last night to just past the white screen in AH ( I was just gonna test FPS in offline mode) were fruitless. One thing I paid attention to was the light on my case that comes on whenever the HD is being accessed.......it would flicker til the white screen came up, then go dark, no noise from the HD, nothing at all. Hitting Alt-F4 did nothing, hitting CNTRL-ALT-DEL did nothing, I had to hit the reset button each and every time I went into AH......frustrating as hell.

Oh well, I still have that Viper 770 Ultra TNT2 in the box this vid card came in.......will reinstall it and maybe tweak it some if nothing I do helps with this GF2.

DrSoya · « **Reply #9 on:** November 17, 2001, 11:10:00 AM »

If I may add my $0.02. I've been looking at reviews of GF cards, and I found an article about the Titanium cards. Unfortunately it's in French, so I'll translate the most interesting passages (you can always look at the graphs

) :

Nowadays, with the arrival of speedy and powerful processors such as Pentium 4 and Athlon XP, another generation of cards is sent into retirement. The GeForce2 MX, GeForce2 DDR and, above all, SDR, as well as the Radeon SDR have become "balls and chains" that largely penalize the system in 3D games. The increasingly wide-spread use of the 1024x768x32 mode signals the end of the cards with SDRAM, a type of memory little adapted to high resolutions.

(...)

... don't forget that the weakest part curbs the whole system. So if you have a 17 inches monitor limited to 1204x768, investing in a GeForce3 graphics card isn't advisable. Conversely, buying a 19 inches monitor if your card is a GeForce2 MX isn't either. The resolution to which the user intends to use his system is an important factor.

(...)

On one hand, we have the GeForce2 Ti based on the GeForce2 core which frequency is raised to 250MHz for the core and 200MHz for the memory. Let's admit it, such a card will not run greatly faster than a GeForce2 Pro (200MHz/200MHz). We must keep in mind that the limiting factor is the memory bandwidth and not the GPU's raw power. Apart from the frequencies, there is no difference between a GeForce2 Ti and a classic GeForce2 (GTS, Pro or Ultra).
The more speedy cards are equipped with a GeForce3 GPU. The frequency of the GPU and of the memory were lowered in the GeForce3 Ti 200: 175MHz/200MHz, against 200/233MHz for the classic GeForce3. But minimal overclocking will bring it to a "true" GeForce3 level. As for the GeForce3 Ti 500, it's a lightly improved GeForce3. Its core was raised to 240MHz, and the memory, to 250MHz. But apart from frequencies, it's important to keep in mind that the GeForce3 core offers a great advantage over its predecessor: the LightSpeed Memory Architecture. This technology that allows optimization of memory bandwidth allows the use of higher resolutions without a significant loss of performance.

(...)

Conclusion

Recommending a specific model isn't a simple task. So we prefer this time to offer a course more than a victorious card. The first factor to consider in choosing a graphics card is the resolution supported by the monitor. The GeForce3 are perfect for 19 inches monitors since they're great at 1280x1024x32. The GeForce2 Ti are perfect fot 17 inches monitors since the typical resolution is 1024x768. The power of current processors (1GHz and more) is largely sufficient in order to exploit all the cards. Less than that, it's useless to want the top 3D card, since the processor may be the limiting factor. The remaining choice is the manufacturer, i.e. a big name or a less known company. Here it's mostly a question of price and support/options. Cards by manufacturers such as the Hercules Prophet III Ti 500 are well designed and are fit for overclocking. They also benefit from a TV Out. On another hand, a more simple card like the Gainward Power Pack is a good buy for the budget-minded.

We recommend a GeForce2 Ti for 17 inches monitors and a GeForce3 Ti 200 or GeForce3 for 19 inches monitors. The Ti500 models are still too expensive considering the small amount of performance improvement.[/i]

Source:
Les GeForce Titanium

Personally, since we're talking about the same range of performance as the GeForce2 Ti, the GeForce2 GTS and Pro are a good choice if budget is a concern - although there may only be a $30 difference.

[ 11-17-2001: Message edited by: DrSoya ]