Author Topic: Inhereted a new system, Whats its weekest link? (Read 656 times)

eskimo2 · « **on:** June 28, 2002, 12:44:58 AM »

Iv'e been flying on the same old P-2 350 with 128 meg ram and a Hurcules Profit 2.... well forever.

My very kind brother in law was upgrading and gave me his old:
Athelon 1400 with 256 Ram and a NVIDIA RIVA TNT2 Model 64 vidio card (32 meg).
Iv'e just got it online and running, had a bit of de-bugging to do. I have yet to see a frame rate of 30 yet. I think my frame rate was actually better in my old 350.

On both systems I am running 32 bit color and 1024 x 768 on the desktop and in the game. I always shut down everything but Systray and Explorer before starting.

So what could be holding this baby back?
Could I have some porked settings?
Does my vidio card suck?

Thanks,
eskimo

straffo · « **Reply #1 on:** June 28, 2002, 01:55:41 AM »

In genreral that's the user who is the weak link

but in your case it's the TNT2 if the Hercule is a GForce you'd better swap the Hercule and the TNT or afford a new video board (a GF3 would fit nicely un your config without beieng too expensive.

Skuzzy · « **Reply #2 on:** June 28, 2002, 10:36:44 AM »

I woudl kick it down to 16 bit color. That card will perform better as it really was not setup to run 32 bit color very well.

Staga · « **Reply #3 on:** June 28, 2002, 10:55:11 AM »

TNT2 M64 (Also known as Vanta) sure is the weakest link... Anything less than GF3/Radeon 7500/GF4MX440/460 is keeping your framerate down.

Personally I would check if I could afford to buy GF3Ti200/Radeon 8500/GF4Ti4200 videocard.

Skuzzy · « **Reply #4 on:** June 28, 2002, 11:52:49 AM »

Uhmm,...the ATI8500 series price will be dropping like a rock in August, if you can wait.

Staga · « **Reply #5 on:** June 28, 2002, 12:25:10 PM »

Guess Skuzzy is talking about Ati's R300 which shoud be on stores later this year.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
From "TheInquirer":
"ATI WILL TAKE Nvidia on big time by introducing an R300 that will have DirectX 9 support.
The card is an NV25 killer while ATI's lower market model the RV 250 which many assumed to be an NV17 killer now has large speed advantages over Nvidia's offering.

While clock speeds are still under waraps, the RV250 will be spawned from the R200, currently branded as the Radeon 8500.

Whle Nvidia is readying its cards for launch in the next fortnight or so, as revealed on Friday, it is still to finish its work to take advantage of DirectX 9.

Samples of the R300 will go to ATI partners in the next two weeks and R&D teams are preparing their card designs.

ATI is positioning SnoBIT 2002 at Hangover, Germany, as the venue for some big introductions including the R300, the INQUIRER learns.

The R300 is being developed by the ArtX team and we can expect a design and price performance much more competitive than NV25.

Nvidia finds itself between the horns of a dilemma because our source claimed that Nvidia will have some problems following up the current graphic offerings swaddled in NDAs, but which we've told you about.

The ATI R300 will be faster and cheaper than NV25, also known as GeForce 4."

eskimo2 · « **Reply #6 on:** June 28, 2002, 12:57:43 PM »

Thanks guys!

I just downloaded the latest NVIDIA drivers and dropped the color down to 16. My frame rates now go past 30 part of the time, even in the 40s if the view is mostly blue sky, but its still in the 20s much of the time (just buzzing aroundoffline, chasing drones.)

Wabbit told me that my system should be doing much better, even with the vidio card.

Should I get a new one?

What's the best thing going in the $150-$200 range?

BTW, I don't know jack about all this stuff because I only get a new system every 3 or 4 years... I'm way behind on what's current. My point is, don't assume that I know ALL the obvious stuff and I could be missing something basic. Like I've heard about anti-ailiasing effecting frame rate. Is this true? How do I turn it off?

Can someone point me to a good tweeking thread? I never look in this part of the BB and have surely missed previous threads that have already hashed this out.

Thanks,
eskimo

214thCavalier · « **Reply #7 on:** June 28, 2002, 01:12:43 PM »

TNT2 M64 is the worst performing Nvidia card in creation.
It was designed for system builders usage, which means performance was secondary to pricing, and it shows.
Dump the vid card virtually anything else will be an improvement.

AKWarp · « **Reply #8 on:** June 28, 2002, 08:25:44 PM »

Drop your resolution to 800x600 and you will see a big improvement.

I ran on an old TNT1 for some time. 800x600 worked ok, 1024x768 absolutely killed it.

Skuzzy · « **Reply #9 on:** June 29, 2002, 07:11:09 AM »

Pretty much true Staga, and I can augment that a bit more.

The problems NVidia is facing with the NV30 are pretty bad.

1) They designed the chip for a .13u process. This is good, but TSMC (thiers and ATI's fab house) cannot produce .13u parts yet and is having problems getting to that point. TSMC feels they can get to the process by Feb/Mar 2003, which directly delays NVidia's introduction of the NV30.

2) The NV30 does not meet the specifications to be DX9 compatible. Now this may be more marketing than anything else, but games written to the DX9 spec will simply not run on the NV30. I think the impact if this is insignificant. All it will do is force software companies to not use the DX9 architecture until NVidia can release a chip that supports it. Too bad to, as DX9 has some really nice features.

The R300 Id usd for thier demo of DoomIII ran over 14,000 3DMarks. ATI feels they can improve on that before they go into full production.

Now the R300 is not without issues. It uses .15u process and ATI had to some some fancy work to get it under the Intel specification for power on the AGP bus (48 watts). ATI stayed with the .15u process as they knew TSMC would not be ready in time for the part and they have a .13u design ready to go once TSMC gets its act together.
Once they go to .13u with the R300, it is easy to assume it will improve the performance again.

If I was NVidia, I would dump the NV30 and get to work on another part or they are going to be behind the performance curve for 6 months after the R300 is released.

funkedup · « **Reply #10 on:** June 29, 2002, 06:09:19 PM »

Put a Geforce 3 in there.

Staga · « **Reply #11 on:** June 29, 2002, 06:37:06 PM »

IIRC Hercules Prophet 2 in your old computer is a "real" GeForce 2 card so it should be much faster than that TNT2 M64 your new computer has. You may get more fps if you swap those cards.
They were also easy to overclock so there could be another way to boost your fps.
My old GF2MX (slower than "real" GF2 you have) had 175mhz core/183mhz memory and it did run stable at 210-220mhz core/memory.

Staga · « **Reply #12 on:** June 29, 2002, 07:14:29 PM »

I just run 3D-Mark 2001SE benchmark on my system (AMD 1,4GHz/Radeon 64 vivo/WinXP) and took a scr.shot from results. List has also TNT2 M64 thought it didn't fit to the pic.
GF2 should still be good for AH.

whels · « **Reply #13 on:** June 29, 2002, 09:12:31 PM »

Quote

Originally posted by eskimo2
Thanks guys!

What's the best thing going in the $150-$200 range?

eskimo

GF4 TI4200 best Card for the money right now.

whels

whels · « **Reply #14 on:** June 29, 2002, 09:14:22 PM »

Quote

Originally posted by Staga
I just run 3D-Mark 2001SE benchmark on my system (AMD 1,4GHz/Radeon 64 vivo/WinXP) and took a scr.shot from results. List has also TNT2 M64 thought it didn't fit to the pic.
GF2 should still be good for AH.

Xp1900, 512 ram, GF4 TI4400, WinXP pro,

3dmark2001 SE score of 10,320

whels