Aces High Bulletin Board
General Forums => Aces High General Discussion => Topic started by: milnko on October 17, 2001, 12:19:00 AM
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I'm getting very poor FPS, with drops as low as 8 fps at times.
Especially when looking any direction but forward.
Was wondering if a fix was in the works.
Intel PIII 733EB CPU (133 FSB x 5.5 stepping)
ABIT BE6 2.0 MOBO
256 meg of 133mhz RAM
ASUS AGP-V7700 GeForce2 GTS Deluxe 32meg videocard
19" .26mm dot pitch non-interlaced EV900 monitor
CreativeLabs SB PCI128 soundcard
ISA Bus ActionTec 33.6 Faxmodem
Microsoft Natural Keyboard
Logitech optical Mouse
Saitek X-36 USB joystick
USB CH Pro rudder pedals
25x CDR-W
50x CD/DVD drive
10gig hard drive connected thru Ultra ATA/66 IDE
Video driver: ASUS AGP-V7700 Deluxe v6.31c
AGP in Default mode (x2)
AGP appeture set to 128
Video BIOS cache ON
Video RAM cache ON
Sideband ON
Vsync OFF
Frames rendered ahead set to 1
Mouse driver: 19.10.53
Soundcard driver: CTPCI9x build 4.12.01.2011
Windoze version: Win98SE 4.10, Build 2222
DirectX version: DirectX 8.0 build; 4.08.00.0400
(also using dxapplet to turn off Directsound Debug output)
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dang mil
we have almost identical setups, but i get fr upwards of 40-50 @ 1024x768x16bpp
im betting your problem lies with your SB pci 128
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WIth that system you should have way better, gotīthe latest drivers for everything, including the grpahic card and the soundblaster?
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I have a 1ghz T-bird with 384mb of PC-133 and a Radeon64DDR.. I run it at 1600x1200x32.. but with 'clutter' it cant take the FR hit.. drops to around 14.. *SHOULDENT* my system be able to more than handle everything AH can throw at it?
I have SBLIVE too, ill check if drivers are current.
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I have a pretty similar system and get way better performance than that. I have my rez set at 1280x1024x16 and don't drop under 30's (except in smoke). The only real difference I have from your system is I have 768MB RAM... :(
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Same. Lower specced system and I run much better. Mostly 40's with dips in the 30's unless it's smoke and then it hits the 20's.
Is that an Nvidia TNT2 chip based graphics card? If so get the Nvidia 778 drivers as they are MUCH better.
Westy
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I'd be surprised if his SB PCI128 was the problem. The Benchmarks I've seen put it within 98% of a SB Live without a lot of the conflict troubles the live has.
He should be doing a lot better than he is however.
Wobble, for curiousity's sake try dropping to 1024x768 32 bit & check framerate.
Your athlon 1gig should ROCK, my 800 with voodoo 5500 64mb is running 50-70's most times.
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Generally it's foolish to complain about framerates if you run the game at 1600x1200 resolution. It's just too much to handle for 90% of modern computers.
Best advice is to drop the resolution, change color depth to match desktop, turn monitor refresh UP and vsync ON. Vsync off should be used only for benchmarking, not for playing.
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Also, make sure you AGP port is not sharing an interrupt with anything else.
I cannot tell you how many systems at the CON had this problem. Fixed a couple of them at the CON and the guys were getting double the frame rate at better resolutions and color depths after getting the AGP bus on its own interrupt.
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Originally posted by Skuzzy:
Also, make sure you AGP port is not sharing an interrupt with anything else.
I cannot tell you how many systems at the CON had this problem. Fixed a couple of them at the CON and the guys were getting double the frame rate at better resolutions and color depths after getting the AGP bus on its own interrupt.
Yep, at the place I used to build machines for it was a no-no to place any card in the PCI slot below the AGP card. They share IRQs and can be a total pain in the bellybutton with conflicts, although I never knew it could affect FR. Learn something knew everyday :)
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Skuzzy, I went to check to see if I had a shared IRQ. I don't think I do but when checking under device manager (system..harware profiles..) and via Win "System tools" I found no reference to AGP direclty. So I took a screen shot of my IRQs and was wondering if you could tell me if I was ok. PCI steering? No idea what that is.
(http://www.townisp.com/~jugdriver/irq.gif)
Thanks if you get a chance to see this and reply.
-- Westy
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Westy,
to my knowledge (which can be very wrong sometimes) the only way to share irqs with an AGP port is to have another card directly below it in the adjoining PCI slot.
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Westy,..uh,..did you disable the AGP Interrupt in the BIOS? Oops, nevermind. Your video card is at interrupt 5 and all alone. Good man.
Other than that, your Ethernet card and USB bus are sharing the same (10) interrupt. That could be interesting.
If you do not need you COM ports, go into yourBIOS and disable them. Then you can allocate those (3 or 4) to the Ethernet card, as long as your motherboard does not have that Ethernet PCI slot hardwared to the USB bus.
The PCI Steering thing is nothing to worry about. It is required so the PCI bus knows what interrupt is associated with what slot.
[ 10-17-2001: Message edited by: Skuzzy ]
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milnko - That sound card sucks - Believe me, I had one. Get a SB Live! Value, and see things improve. From what I understand, it offloads voices to the CPU to process, and I had all sorts of problems with it. You should be able to get a SB Live! Value for about $30. Also, get the Detonator driver from nVidia instead of using that Asus driver.
I have a PIII 800, 32MB GF2 MX, 256MB, SB Live, and I get 50fps at either 1600x1200 16 bit, or 1280x1024 32bit.
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just checked for conflicts with my vid card.
i have a voodoo3 3000 agp and it said it's in conflict with the agp controler,
what does that mean?
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probably nothing - you can share IRQs. If everything works, then everything works, so don't mess with it.
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wow, I have my video card on IRQ 11...just the same as the modem and another thing I dont have a clue on what it is (and can't tell in english cause my system is in spanish)
how does one change the IRQ settings?
Thanks in advance.
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Video driver: ASUS AGP-V7700 Deluxe v6.31c
AGP in Default mode (x2)
AGP appeture set to 128
Video BIOS cache ON (SET THIS OFF)
Video RAM cache ON (SET THIS OFF)
Sideband ON
Vsync OFF (SET THIS ON)
Frames rendered ahead set to 1 (Better at 3)
Other suggestions in AH video setup tick mip maps ON and palletised textures OFF.
Them palletised textures cripple even my 1.4 Gig with a GF2 Ultra.
The reason for turning off caching of your Video cards Bios and Ram is ever since the TNT vid card Nvidia have recommended you switch them options off as the dedicated memory on board the card performs better than sharing your cache memory.
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Thanks for the help fellas. I reformatted and reinstalled all drivers and made some changes to BIOS and vis settings, haven't tried it online yet tho.
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Ditto. Thanks Skuzzy for the reply. I disabled the COM ports and that freed up IRQ's 3 and 4. Now off to get either the USB or the Ethernet card off of the shared IRQ :)
Westy
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on the IRQ thing.. if have Win2k or 2pro, and you are sharing lots of IRQs its probably because your computer is running in ACPI mode.. in device manager click computer, of its says ACPI or anything else, double click that and go to update driver and changed it to 'standard pc' that after reboot you will need to reinstal some drivers, but everything will have its own IRQ automatically.
ACPI tries to save as many IRQ numbers as possable.. and lumps many devices on to one..
after changing it I went from 29fps to 37fps.. sitting on runway in P51 in 1600x1200x32.