DMA peformance

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> Now Nascar 2 is out in the UK, and Intergraph are getting a Euro > distributor I want to upgrade my video card to an Intergraph Reactor. > The question is, how can I test the DMA performance of my machine BEFORE I > get the card? > -- > Derek James

I have the same question. MY PC is an 18 month old Quantex QP5-100 SM Pentium 100 with 32 megs, ATI 2M DRAM video. The motherboard is a Biostar P5-TB. Anyone out there with a similar system successfully running the DMA versions of ICR2 and NASCAR2? I tried running DMATEST but it gave me an error. I really want to buy an Intergraph Reactor but I'm afraid I might have to buy a new motherboard. The latest bios I can find is dated 8-31-95. I've had that bios since about 9-95 and haven't had any problems. I did however disable PCI bursting in my bios on a tip I got from someone in this group. That and using ATI's latest VESA 2.0 TSR did improve CBENCH and SVGABNCH scores with this old ATI. Another little program mergeon.exe, did nothing for my system. Oh, yea one more thing, I have successfully installed a patch from intel that enabled bus mastering on my hard drives. My hard disk controllers section in the device manager now reads: Hard Disk Controllers Intel PIIX Bus Mastering PCI IDE Controller Primary IDE Controller(dual fifo) Secondary IDE Controller(dual fifo) Would this give any insight into DMA performance?

No, it has nothing to do with your IDE controller. Instead it is DMA bus-mastering across the PCI bus that the Rendition cards utilize. -- Emory University Graduate School of Arts & Sciences The IWCCCARS Project: Q & A Representative Nascar Setups Page: http://userwww.service.emory.edu/~ebusch/

Sorry to start this thread again, but I decided to check my DMA performance too, not to be behind others :) I remember seeing posts where people had problems because their m/b had PCI 2.0 and v2.1 was needed for the Intergraph. Also someone posted about the lack of dos4gw in dmadiag. Well, first Tyan did not answer my e-mail about whether my S1469VX supported PCI 2.1, and the manual does not mention version numbers. Second I downloaded dmadiag and there is positively _no_ dos4gw inside :) A standalone dos4gw is not that easy to find these days, I tried the big .exe's in ICR2 (regular) and Fragile Alliance to of course to avail. An old ~200KB from a 2 years-old game makes my computer reboot. So: any hints on how I can check my system for Rendition-readiness without actually buying a non-returnable card (see my domain:)? Karim Sincerely, Karim ---------------------------------------- Warning: e-mail address protected by Anti-Bot Protection:) Please double any reply with an e-mail. My ISP loses them less often :(

The DMAdiag on my webpage had DOS4GW included. -- Emory University Graduate School of Arts & Sciences The IWCCCARS Project: Q & A Representative Nascar Setups Page: http://userwww.service.emory.edu/~ebusch/

A lot of you seem to know quite a bit about the REactor board..I got mine and look pretty good w/ ICR2 ans N2 and Quake...Duke Nukem looks kinda shittty though.. my system is a Packard Bell...I know..:(....P-100...32 MB RAM...i had to spend quite a bit of time on tech support with Intergraph..WHICH HAS THE BEST TECH SUPPORT I HAVE EVER COME ACROSS!!!..finally got it configured correctly w/ the new drivers / BIOS.. I am not as impressed as I had thought I would be..that probably has to do with my Packard Hell motherboard.. I ran DMATEST and my results sounded low to intergraph.. "Nominal FIFO performance 11.4 MB/sec and Nominal DMA performance is 22.4 MB/sec....are these numbers very low??? what would be descent values for my system?? In Vquake, i get ~35fps at 400x300 and ~25fps at 512x384...how can i check my frame rate in ICR2 or N2?? Please help me!! newsgroup...thanks! -- "He who fights with monsters might take care, lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you." -Freiedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, "Beyond Good and Evil" ******Chris and Lesley Kolling****** ******HOME PAGE :http://shoga.wwa.com/~vampyre/ ***** **LESLEY'S BARBIE PAGE: http://shoga.wwa.com/~vampyre/barbie.htm**

Yes your DMA scores are low, a good value would be 50+. Do you have an option in your BIOS to adjust PCI Latency? If not a BIOS upgrade may improve performance. Either way I wouldn't expect great performance, as Packard Hell's are generally quite slow. As far as Duke3D goes, are you using one of the VESA modes or plain old VGA? The Reactor is extremely slow at VGA, but VESA modes fly. -- Emory University Graduate School of Arts & Sciences The IWCCCARS Project: Q & A Representative Nascar Setups Page: http://userwww.service.emory.edu/~ebusch/

: >No, it has nothing to do with your IDE controller. Instead it is DMA : >bus-mastering across the PCI bus that the Rendition cards utilize. : > : >> Would this give any insight into DMA performance? : Sorry to start this thread again, but I decided to check my DMA : performance too, not to be behind others :) I remember seeing posts : where people had problems because their m/b had PCI 2.0 and v2.1 was : needed for the Intergraph. Also someone posted about the lack of : dos4gw in dmadiag. : Well, first Tyan did not answer my e-mail about whether my S1469VX : supported PCI 2.1, and the manual does not mention version numbers. : Second I downloaded dmadiag and there is positively _no_ dos4gw inside : :) A standalone dos4gw is not that easy to find these days, I tried : the big .exe's in ICR2 (regular) and Fragile Alliance to of course to : avail. An old ~200KB from a 2 years-old game makes my computer reboot. : So: any hints on how I can check my system for Rendition-readiness : without actually buying a non-returnable card (see my domain:)? If I am correct in what I recall the DMADIAG will only work if their is a Rendition Card in your machine. However there is a copy of DMATEST that I think can be used without it. Here is the URL for DMATEST and I am pretty sure it has the dos4gw included: http://www.rendition.com/dmatest.zip -- **************************** Michael E. Carver ************************* Upside out, or inside down...False alarm the only game in town. =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=<[ /./. [- < ]>=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

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> The DMAdiag on my webpage had DOS4GW included. > -- > Emory University Graduate School of Arts & Sciences > The IWCCCARS Project: Q & A Representative > Nascar Setups Page: http://userwww.service.emory.edu/~ebusch/ > > Sorry to start this thread again, but I decided to check my DMA > > performance too, not to be behind others :) I remember seeing posts > > where people had problems because their m/b had PCI 2.0 and v2.1 was > > needed for the Intergraph. Also someone posted about the lack of > > dos4gw in dmadiag.

snip Snip I've wanted an answer to this for weeks, I wish someone would just answer that question. I have seen numerous threads where someone (including myself) wanted to know how to test DMA performance before buying a rendition based card. Since NO ONE will answer I'll have to assume that you can't run "dmatest" or "dmadiag" without actually purchasing one of the cards, then installing it and testing to see how well it works. I don't particularly like this, but I'm willing to accept it if that's the way things are. Tommorrow I'm going to bite the bullet and order an Intergraph card. Of course I'll be hangin' on to the paper work and shipping materials in case I have to send it back. Matt Howell

DMAtest requires a Rendition card, but I have no idea about DMAdiag (I've never even used it). I'm sure there is some utility out there that can test your board's PCI bus-mastering performance, but I'm not sure where you'd find it. You might try asking in comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.chips or one of the MB groups. -- Emory University Graduate School of Arts & Sciences The IWCCCARS Project: Q & A Representative Nascar Setups Page: http://userwww.service.emory.edu/~ebusch/