rec.autos.simulators

System - 3DMark score

GF2MX PCI in 866Mhz P3 - 1960

GF2MX PCI in AMD 1800 XP - 1960

GF4MX440 in AMD 1800 XP - 4255

Here's the thing...

I guess I must have been maxing out the GF2 with the 866 so no improvement,
yet some of the individual averages are a little higher with the 866...

Here's the wierd one, tho:
Vertex Shader.  17.7 fps with GF2 in 866, 15.7 with GF2 in 1800, 7.5 (SEVEN
POINT FIVE!) with GF4 in 1800.

The GF4MX440 is, I suspect, broken as I get curious graphical anomolies in
the high detail lobby test, and the F12K2 demo gives me some lovely
psychadelic effects in smoke and on tyre sidewalls...

Bring on the Ti4200 - should arrive tomorrow...

Cheers,

Mark
Reading, UK

  Nope not broken...but it's NOT really a GF 4.  What the mx 440 is ......is
a gf2 with some faster memory thrown in.  It cannot do dx8 effects.  rather
than use 2001 se version of 3dmark, you should probably used the 2000
version.    Nvidia should offer a refund to any purchaser who thought
because the box said GF4 they were actually getting a GF4.
dave henrie

Cheers,

Mark
Reading, UK

"Mark"
.  Anyway, this should all be
  I hope it shows up.  Good luck with the new card, let us know how things
work after you get it in.
dave henrie

I AM PULLING MY FRICKIN HAIR OUT!!!

I've got the 4200 now and I wasn't expecting miracles but I thought I'd do
better that a 3DMark of 6320.  And the Vertex shader benchmark is *still*
lower than the GF2MX PCI was on the 866!!  12.9 fps vs 17.7!!!  The GF2MX
managed 15.7 fps on the 1800XP!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?
One thing the 866Mhz setup had was 512Mb SDRAM.
There's something wierd going on in this system somewhere.

Who's up for helping me out here?

There's probably a wrong jumper setting on the motherboard (ECI K7S5A) or a
BIOS problem, I reckon.

Feck.

Mark
Reading, UK

(for benchmarking make sure your test is set to equal your desktop...I'd
suggest placing your desktop color depth to 1024x720x16 and make sure the
test uses the same settings)

What drivers are you using?  And, what are your SBA and FW settings on the
mobo and vga bios?  You definitely got something set wrong......those two
are biggest culprits for low performance on a Ti 4200 or 4600.  I just
minimized this newsgroup window....left all my FSAA and anisotropic settings
"on"....and did a quick n' dirty 3DM2Kse run......it was 8290 with a VS of
42.7fps.  This is a 1.4gig with 512DDR and a ti4200.  With a clean prep
run...I get north of 9500 on 3DM2Kse.  But, I've meticulously gone through
all system settings.....best bet there is to go to Guru3D, live on their
forums for a while.

TP

I'm using the latest NVidia drivers.  I notice that SBA (if I got the
acronym right) is available but disbled according to 3DMark's results.
 I can't find anywhere in the the BOIS that resembles a switch for
this.  According to the manual - haven't scanned the hardware itself
yet, there are only 2 jumper switches on the board.  One is to clear
the BIOS, the other is to enable that interface who's name I forget -
small slot for modem.

Gotta be something up somewhere.  I wish I knew someone with the same
card so I could swap it and give it a try.

I said in another post that my framerates in N2K2 have gone up all of
4fps over the GF4MX 440.  Not exactly earth shattering, eh?

BTW, thanks for the Sears upgrade, Tom, but I haven't had a chance to
install it yet because of this problem taking up all my time...

Mark
Reading, UK

Mark, read some of your posts & will give it a shot.

SBA (side band addressing) is controversial, esp w/ Via chipset MBs.  FWIW it
doesn't seem to help on my system, XP1800 - Soyo Dragon+ (Via 266a chipset) -
GF3 ti200, so I have it disabled because some say it could cause instability.

FW (fast writes) OTOH seem to noticeably help.  This needs to be enabled in the
MB Bios, *and* enabled in a tweaker prog like Rivatuner, GeForce Tweaker, etc.
YMMV

Only suggestion I have is to make sure that the driver install didn't revert the
vid card back to a 1x or 2x AGP setting, as happened to me a couple of times.
Using one of the progs above (I prefer Rivatuner) make sure that you have 4x
enabled, & that it takes after a reboot.  Probably not your problem, but I can't
think of anything else.

HTH,
Brian

This is in Win XP Pro at 10x7x32 and no overclocking.  I'd double check all
your BIOS settings and make sure the chipset drivers are installed correctly
as well.

Russ

Most likely there's a conflict with your AGP drivers or something like
that. I remember that I got a 1600 score in 3D Mark the first time I
ran it after I had installed these new components. Main things that
helped was re-installing windows and installing the AGP driver from
the CD before installing nVidia drivers.

 - Greger

Hi Mark

I got the ECS K7S5A (same as yours if I read right?) mobo and an
Athlon XP 1800+ on Tuesday to replace my Abit KT7 / AMD Duron 700
combo.

I got a 3249 score in 3DMark 2001 SE with my GeForce 2 MX 32 MB video
card overclocked to 190 core / 209 MHz memory. I got a 2500 score with
my old system and 3200 is probably all my current video card can do...
I'm planning on getting a GF4 next week. My vertex shader score was
35.4 fps.

In N2002 I saw a bigger difference as with my old system I was getting
little under 30 fps at Daytona on the front straight with 25 AI cars.
Now in the same place I get over 50 fps and I have most of the gfx
options turned on, so the difference compared to my old system is
almost 30 fps.

I'm not sure what your problem could be... did you install the AGP
drivers that came on the mobo CD before installing the nVidia drivers?
That seemed to help for me. Oh, I'm running the 29.42 drivers at the
moment.. Win98.

I also re-installed Windows (twice, actually!) which always seems like
a good idea when you change your mobo. Anyway, let me know if you have
any questions and I'll try to help...

 - Greger

Thanks for the suggestions all.  Guru3D seems a good place, too.  Thanks,
Tom.
Not had time to play with the kit but wanted to pop in see if anyone had
anymore tips.  Didn't want to seem to disappear!!

Cheers,

Mark

Much better now.

As you've got the same mobo...

Is there a way on enabling fast writes?  Do you know if it makes a
difference?

Cheers,

Mark
Reading, UK

No idea, haven't seen the option for that or SBA in the BIOS. Maybe a
BIOS update would help, but I'm not sure about that. I'll try to check
some forums for more info.

 - Greger