Fastvid for Pentium Pro 200

Can anyone tell me if this was a "fix" for pre-Natoma chipset (82440) based Pentium Pro motherboards or do you still need this utility if you have for example an Intel Venus VS440FX Natoma chipset Motherboard? Thanks in advance! Ray

It probably depends on your BIOS. The current Venus BIOS (1.00.06 CS1) does not provide the functionality of fastvid. What fastvid does is enable a feature called "write combining" for the memory region used when accessing the video board. What this does is allow back-to-back writes to the video card to use burst-mode transfers on the PCI bus which are much more efficient. If you have an Intel motherboard with AMI BIOS, you do need it. It may be that other BIOSes can enable write combining by default. It's easy enough to check. Along with fastvid, you can get a small utility program called "showmsr". It will print out the regions of memory in your system, and their caching behavior. If the linear frame buffer address of your video board is not set for "write-combining", you should run fastvid. On my Venus system with Matrox Millenium, I get 29 MB/Sec transfers to video before fastvid, and 93 MB/Sec after. -- --------------- Scott Pritchett

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> > Can anyone tell me if this was a "fix" for pre-Natoma chipset (82440) > > based Pentium Pro motherboards or do you still need this utility if you > > have for example an Intel Venus VS440FX Natoma chipset Motherboard? > It probably depends on your BIOS. The current Venus BIOS (1.00.06 CS1) > does not provide the functionality of fastvid. What fastvid does is > enable a feature called "write combining" for the memory region used > when accessing the video board. What this does is allow back-to-back > writes to the video card to use burst-mode transfers on the PCI bus > which are much more efficient. If you have an Intel motherboard with > AMI BIOS, you do need it. It may be that other BIOSes can enable > write combining by default. It's easy enough to check. Along with > fastvid, you can get a small utility program called "showmsr". It > will print out the regions of memory in your system, and their caching > behavior. If the linear frame buffer address of your video board is > not set for "write-combining", you should run fastvid. > On my Venus system with Matrox Millenium, I get 29 MB/Sec transfers to > video before fastvid, and 93 MB/Sec after. > -- > --------------- > Scott Pritchett

Hi Scott! Thanks for your great advice! What is your occupancy rate at first corner of Monaco, and what details do you leave OFF (ie. sky, track, etc) to get a realtime racing feel? Also, I am deciding whether to go with Matrox Millenium or Hercules Dynamite 128/Video boards. What do you think. I have read great reviews about Hercules board but dont know whether it would outperform Matrox in GP2. I know that a Matrox would be great overall card, but I need the best card available right now for REALTIME RACING in GP2. Thanks again! Ray

>Can anyone tell me if this was a "fix" for pre-Natoma chipset (82440) >based Pentium Pro motherboards or do you still need this utility if you >have for example an Intel Venus VS440FX Natoma chipset Motherboard? >Thanks in advance! >Ray AFAIK, you still need it on the 440FX chipset at least for DOS, some BIOS allowing some USWC settings that make the LFB fastvid functions redundant.

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> > On my Venus system with Matrox Millenium, I get 29 MB/Sec transfers to > > video before fastvid, and 93 MB/Sec after. > Hi Scott! > Thanks for your great advice! What is your occupancy rate at first > corner of Monaco, and what details do you leave OFF (ie. sky, track, > etc) to get a realtime racing feel? > Also, I am deciding whether to go with Matrox Millenium or Hercules > Dynamite 128/Video boards. What do you think. I have read great > reviews about Hercules board but dont know whether it would outperform > Matrox in GP2. I know that a Matrox would be great overall card, but I > need the best card available right now for REALTIME RACING in GP2.

Hello Ray, This is from memory, so it might be slightly wrong. I have all details except sky turned on in the front, and just about everything off in the mirrors (I like the simple mirror display so I haven't experimented much there). The system estimate is 25.6 FPS (not >25.6 FPS). I manually select the setting that's about 2 FPS below that to give more consistent results. In normal racing conditions, I normally get about 65%-70% occupancy. When clouds of smoke are on screen, the occupancy can go to 160% or more. In the pits or with full-screen billboards displayed, the occupancy can hover around 100%. I don't normally run the monaco track, so I'll have to do the experiment and let you know what the result is later. As far as the comparisons between the Matrox and Hercules cards goes, I don't have any good information directly comparing them on this class of machine. You might wish to peruse the Quake benchmark page at http://www.cam.org/~agena/quake.html and see what conclusions you come to. This page doesn't give the exact comparison you want. You might also find the information at http://www.dfw.net/~sdw/ to be useful when configuring a system. -- --------------- Scott Pritchett

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> Thanks for your great advice! What is your occupancy rate at first > corner of Monaco, and what details do you leave OFF (ie. sky, track, > etc) to get a realtime racing feel? > Also, I am deciding whether to go with Matrox Millenium or Hercules > Dynamite 128/Video boards. What do you think. I have read great > reviews about Hercules board but dont know whether it would outperform > Matrox in GP2. I know that a Matrox would be great overall card, but I > need the best card available right now for REALTIME RACING in GP2. > Thanks again! > Ray

It is best not to worry about the occupancy at the first corner as it will be much higher then than at any other time of the race. Therefore, just live with it. If it really bothers you, the best thing to do is to turn off the trackside objects using ALT-D and then turn them back on again once the cars have sorted themselves into a single file.