Non AH performance issues

[Kratzer]

Okay...

So in the last month I've bought two upgrades:
A 40GB Maxtor D540X Ultra ATA 133 drive.
A 64MB GeForce3 Ti 200.

I had a GeForce2MX in there before...

Anyway... when I got the drive, I partitioned it and installed windows on it.  So my drives are setup as follows:

C: 10GB partition on new maxtor
D: 10GB Quantum ATA 133 drive I had in there before
E: 30GB partition no new maxtor, this is where all the games get installed.

I'm slightly annoyed that windows forced the secondary drive to be D:, but I can live with it.

So... with both the GeForce2MX and the GeForce3, I get terrible framerates in Operation Flashpoint, and an odd 'stuttering' in Ghost Recon.

First, Operation Flashpoint: I ran this game with the old setup (Quantum and GeForce2 MX) at 1164x864 16 bit and had great framerates - it was nice and smooth.  Now it is unplayable at ANY resolution, no matter what I do with the detail levels.  It doesn't matter if it is hitting the hard drive or not.

Ghost Recon - I turn on the framerate counter, and at pretty much any resolution I can get framerates about 49fps.  What happens is when I'm running, the ground goes by like I'm pausing every 3rd or 4th step.  Turning down the detail levels and resolution has no affect on this, and watching my HDD light, it is not hitting the drive when the problem occurs.  This game also ran great at 1024x768 16 bit on my old setup.

What the hell is going on here?  Anyone?

My swap file is set to 2GB, I've had the problem both before and after messing with the swap file and doing a bunch of hard drive tweaks for Windows ME on tweak3d.net.  I've tried turning down sound settings with no affect.

My 3dMark 2001 score is 4931.   I can play AH at 1600x1200, 32bit color and get 30 - 70 fps.

Windows ME - fully updated
Directx 8.1
PIII 800
256MB PC 133
64MB GeForce3 Ti 200 The vid card is overclocked to 230Mhz Core/500Mhz Memory. Tried it clocked at the manufacturer settings too.
Soundblaster Live!
Maxtor D540X ATA 133

[Maverick]

Just a thought here. What is you AGP aperture in your setup? I was reading a FAQ about the Geforce cards that indicated frame rate may be tied to the aperture. They suggested setting the thing to one half of you RAM on your system. If the situation got worse drop it to one quarter and so on down to 64  and see if that makes a change. Second thing is to make sure you have the newest drivers for the vid card and DX8.1.

Good luck.

PS what is the refresh rate on your monitor? Is it in conflict with the vid card. The "optimum" setting may not really be optimum. Try putting in a refresh rate compatible with the monitor and check your performance.

Mav

[bloom25]

Some people are reporting these symptoms with the 23.11 Nvidia drivers.  (You don't indicate which set you are running.)  You might try the 21.83 or 21.88 versions to see if they behave differently.  You should also set your AGP aperature in the bios to 128 MB.

[mrsid2]

You shouldn't keep a 2Gb swapfile, it's unnecessary waste of resources. 2.5x RAM is enough for most or all situations.

Also set your swapfile to use your old 10Gb drive, not the new maxtor. It should bring some improvement in IO performance - that is if you don't run both harddrives in the same ide channel.

Make sure all your drivers are updated, sound included. Try different versions of detonators, some work better than the others. You should also run desktop and games at same color depth, I have both set to 32bit and they run smooth.

One thing to keep in mind is that if you enabled FSAA and / or 64-tap anisotropic filtering, both bite a chunk of your fps. FSAA more than anisotropic filtering.

[Kratzer]

Thanks for the replies guys.

mrsid2 -

I had a smaller swap, but increased it to see if it helped. It didn't.
Not sure about your comment on setting the swap to the other drive - they are on the same cable.
I believe I have the latest sound and video drivers.
I've run the desktop and the game at the same depth, no improvement.
All FSAA is turned off.

Bloom - I tried the 21.83 drivers, and saw no difference.

Maverick - I had my AGP aperture at 64MB.  I decreased this to 32, and my 3dmark went up about 50 points.  The game behaved the same in both instances.

Monitor driver is installed, the refresh rate is set to 85 Hz.

As I noted, I don't think it is related to the new video card - it all seemed to happen with the reinstallation.

[mrsid2]

You didn't tell us which motherboard you use. Maybe it has some exotic chipset which needs a special driver like VIA's.

If reinstall brought all these problems, I'd strongly consider formatting c: and doing it over again. This time just do the basic installation, reboot and then install hardware specific drivers.

Better option would be of course to move to a real OS like W2k

Oh, and if you want the most out of your harddrives, connect them with individual IDE cables so that hd1 uses primary and hd2 secondary IDE channel. Now they share the bandwidth of primary controller.

[Kratzer]

Well, the D drive does nothing but hold MP3s and Downloads, so it is never used when I'm gaming.

Motherboard is an Intel D815EEA, shouldn't need weird drivers.

No way I'm going to 2K, I'm trying to get as much 3d performance out of my PC as I can, not as little.

I think I'll reinstall here in a few minutes.  *sigh*

[Kratzer]

Reinstall did the trick.

[mrsid2]

Kratzer, W2k performs similar or better in 3D than winme. If you want a real performance improvement (5-10%) use W98SE. It's still the fastest option out there.

You should place your swapfile to the D: drive if it's the least used because that way swapfile usage doesn't force the active harddrive to do constant track changes as it reads data in the otherplace and caches in the other place.

[Lephturn]

As MrSid2 said, you want to place your swap file on a different physical drive from your OS install for best performance.

Now as for the size of the swap file, the old "2.5 x RAM" rule of thumb is no longer valid.  These days we have so much RAM that we don't need very much swap file in comparison.  500 MB will be more than enough.

[Kratzer]

Pah, mrsid.

I use 2000 at work, and I've tried playing games on it, and it isn't anywhere near the performance of 98SE or ME.  Some games just plain won't run.

ME fits my needs at home perfectly, especially now that it works.

[mrsid2]

Pah, Kratzer I'm playing with W2k as it is and I have no games (0) that refuse to work on it.

Your work computer probably lacked Dx8.1, 3D accelerator etc. pretty relevant components. Workstations don't usually have that kind of extra features building up cost.

[Kratzer]

I used to have a dual boot, 98SE and 2000 Pro here at work.  Work PC is a PIII 600, nVidia TNT2, TB montego... so it runs most games pretty well.  Rogue Spear wouldn't run at all in 2000, and every game I played ran 2 or 3 times better in 98SE.  Bolloxim tries to convince me to use 2K all the time too.  I refuse to be convinced!

Either way though, thanks for your suggestions with the problems I was having.  I'll definitely try out putting the swap on the second drive.

[Vermillion]

Strange, but Rogue Spear /Ghost Recon and all games work on my Win2k machine at home.

I get very slightly lower fps readings than I did, when I was running the exact same machine on Win98SE, but the stability is SO MUCH BETTER that it more than makes up for what is about 5 fps loss in an overall 75fps.

I don't think my machine has crashed but once in the 3 months I've been using Win2k   With Win98SE, I had to reboot several times a night.

[Skuzzy]

Stability......hmmm.  I have w95, w98se and 2k systems here.  None,..not one has ever crashed,..unless it was directly due to pilot error (after all, i do trip over power cords).
I just got through intalling XP Pro as well.

Out of all 4, I like 98se best for gaming.

Doesn't really matter.  Soon we all will be forced to run XP.  And I have to say, I hate that OS.  It is the most unfriendly OS I have ever dealt with.  Don't like MS Instant Messenger?  Too bad, it is gonna be installed anyways.  Want to remove it?  No way.
Want to customize your install, because you do not really need all the crap that is in there?  Too bad, it aint gonna happen.
New to security issues with MS products?  Well, unless you are an expert, you are going to have security holes a truck can drive through after the install.  Don't want to use Outlook Express?  Too bad, you cannot remove it.  The list goes on and on.

As far as I am concerned, MS has gone way too far this time.  This is not an operating system, it is an operating dictatorship.