rec.autos.simulators

For the past 6 months I've been happily making do with a lowly Xabre 200
graphics card from ECS (A what?) with 64MB of DDR memory, which I bought
at the time because I had read it was good value for money and AGP 8x
compliant, and indeed for the 35  pounds I paid I was reasonably
satisfied.  I could play NR2003, GPL, plus some others on my Athlon XP
1800 without too much trouble as long as I didn't overtax on the
graphics side.

However, being a non Nvidia or ATI card it had a few idiosyncrasies that
were difficult to resolve.  Nothing major, but little things where the
graphics weren't quite right, such as double shadows in NR2003 and car
logos fuzzy (now sorted with new drivers), some screens not displaying
correctly, etc.

Then at christmas I received F1C 99-02 and the little old card was
having to work that bit more to keep frame rates up, even with a modicum
of overclocking.  Time for a new card.

Now, I'm not wealthy enough to go out and spend 100 pounds plus just
like that and so I settled for what I could afford, which was a Sapphire
Radeon 9200 Atlantis Lite with 128DDR memory for 57 quid (but which I
assume would have been over 70 pounds 6 months ago) , bunged it in
expecting better things, only to find that things have got slower.

I've only got 3D Mark 2000 and so tested it on that using both WinME and
Win98SE:

Xabre 200 = 8800
Radeon 9200 = 8400

These are approx values, but near enough and with no overclocking for
either.

In NR2003 I'm sure I could run at 27+ frames from the back of a 28 pack
field, whereas, with the same settings I'm now down in the low 20's.

What I don't understand is, how can the Xabre card, which had Engine and
memory clocks of 199Mhz and only 64Mb of DDR memory outperform the
radeon with engine of 247 and 128Mb of 200MHz DDR memory.

Admittedly I am only able to run either card at 4x AGP as my ECS K7s5A
board doesn't support 8x (yes I need a new mobo too :), but would that
make much of a difference anyway, and surely the Radeon would be able to
perform as well even if being held back by the system.  So, despite 6
months passing and paying more money, I've got a card that runs slower
than my old one.  I wasn't expecting a huge leap in performance, but at
least an extra 10 to 15% perhaps.  Any ideas?

A couple of other things:

Catalyst drivers = 3.6 (or is that 3.7?), though I can't see any updates
improving things that much.

Also, 2 display drivers show under hardware>>display adapters.  

Radeon 9200
Radeon 9200 secondary

Can only surmise from what I've read that it has something to do with
one for 3D and one for 2D.  Is that normal for ATI cards?
--
Peter Ives (AKA Pete Ivington)
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Cheers for that :)

--
Peter Ives (AKA Pete Ivington)
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   Yes the two monitors are normal in ati drivers.  I haven't the foggiest
notion why they do that though.
    Basically you replaced your low end video card with another low end
video card.  Just because it's an ATI product does not make it a speedy
part.  Probably you would have to move up to an ati 9600 to see any
improvement.  Also, you could try the two different 3d rasterizers.  There
is the default Direct 3d and OpenGl.  Good luck getting open gl to work
with nr2k3.  

dave henrie

As Dave says the 9200 is a low low end card and all the figures you used to
compare dont actually do any comparing in the real frames per second world.
At the moment you would be able to take it back ,make any excuse up you
want,and get a 9600 Pro for 99 like i did.
Another option is to get a GF4 ti4800 like i did for my brother which cost
73 and would leave you a very happy man.

Just ideas Peter

AD

It's just how ATi chooses to implement the hardware support for dual
monitors.  AFAIK, the AGP spec doesn't allow for more than one AGP video
device.  ATi found a way around that...

D.

Was that an ATi-based card?

ATi cards will *sometimes* perform like poop if you upgrade hardware but
have older driver fragments lying around.  I think rage3d.com had a nice
tutorial on removal.  Basically cleaning the registry and the system32
folder.

I've been there and done it.  100% improvements in speed.

FYI, there have been insignificant performance jumps in recent Catalyst
versions but I do seem to remember several bug fixes related to the NR sims.
Do a cleaning then give Cat 4.2 a try.

D.

If so, those are dead slow cards, about on par with a GF4MX or a GF2,
works well enough for office computers as the 2D output is pretty good
and it has a DVI connector for LCD's, but it's no *** card by today's
standards

Not sure how it compares to your old one as I've never worked with the
Sabre cards, but looking at an old comparison test over at Tom's

http://www.racesimcentral.net/

you'd be hard pressed to push the 9200SE card much past 5-6000 points in
3DMark01, which if we look at the Xabre 400 card would be somewhat equal
to your card ?

Beers and cheers
(uncle) Goy
"goyl at nettx dot no"

http://www.racesimcentral.net/

"A man is only as old as the woman he feels........"
--Groucho Marx--

bluestringer

  Yes, sorry I wasn't very clear there, I did mean getting OpenGl working
with an ATI product.  I have had opengl working in nr2k3, but usually I
can't even get through the 3dconfig process, it just locks up.  So, I just
ignore it.  :)  
  I will say...At CompUSA, they are having a President's Day sale with ATI
9800 Pro(128meg) selling for $199.  That is a great price.  Unless you are
planning on being heavily involved with either Doom3 or Halflife2, then a
128meg card will still be quite functional.

dave henrie

Jason

--
Peter Ives (AKA Pete Ivington)
Remove ALL_STRESS before replying via email
If you know what's good for you, don't listen to me :)
GPLRank Joystick -50.63 Wheel -25.01

I did remove the Xabre drivers by using add/remove, so hopefully nothing
was left over before installing the ATI drivers.  Howerver, it could
still be worth doing a reg clean and starting again.

Cheers for that.
--
Peter Ives (AKA Pete Ivington)
Remove ALL_STRESS before replying via email
If you know what's good for you, don't listen to me :)
GPLRank Joystick -50.63 Wheel -25.01