Hi Roger, Auto, and Congo...!

One of my lads popped in today and I showed him this thread including our benchmarks...
"Have you got a shoot-em-up that you can run in a window", he said...
So...
We ran my Doom 3 in one window and the Riva Tuna* Tuner speed graph in a separate window...
Lo and behold, as soon as the "3D" game kicked-in, the core speed shot up to 525 Mhz.... ...!
Shut down the 3D game...running in Desktop 2D, the speed dropped back to 300 Mhz... ...!

So all seems OK. The 3D speed is hidden from view when running a game using 3D... 8)...!

It's just strange that the frame rates seem on the low side when testing, using 3D Mark '01... ...!

The only thing which I am lothe to install is my motherboard BIOS update....for obvious reasons... ...!
My Gigabyte Motherboard: GA7-VT6- 600L.  The latest BIOS version is 9, my current version is 6... ...!
The up-date must be performed one version at a time...apparantly...!
Whether this will improve anything, I don't know... ...!
Otherwise it seems that everything runs OK...

Cheers all...!

Paul...in the 3rd dimension, @525 Mhz... ...!

* ...Typo... ...!

Well Done Fozzer!    

And Rollerball, I didn't get that last post up quick enough for you sorry.

You really need to forget about the updates and the internet when you reinstall, get the video side of things sorted first, that way you will find out what is slowing you down as you install it. It could be an update.

Oh, I hope it's not too late but I hope you know the correct way to install SP2, it's not online........

It's by installing this file, the one and only, pure and unabridged, SP2 network install update file. It's a must have for everyone, get it before MS pulls it from their site, burn it safely to disk, back it up on 2 hard drives, etc etc.

This file, combined with WinXPpro, produces the most stable op sys I've ever seen.

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=049C9DBE-3B8E-4F30-8245...

There is a matter of PC architecture that needs to be addressed here.

On page 1 of this thread I posted 2 benchmarks, the former was on an nForce2 chipset using a slightly o/c'd 2800+ cpu with an nVidia "total junk" FX5900XT 128mb 8x AGP video card.

The latter mark was made using an Athlon 64 3500+ cpu on nForce 4 chipset with an nVidia 6600GT 128mb PCIe video card.

The systems both ran the same exact RAM, 1024 mb of PC3500 DDR, though the ram was underclocked on the older (first) system.

Both systems used the ram in dual channel mode, but the latter one is more efficient at dual channel from my understanding.

In light of this information, those really crap FX5900XT's are looking pretty ok for a cheap card heh?

The PC's architecture has an influence on the results, that's why I'm always raving on about getting the correct chipset on your mainboard, despite the brand name of the manufacturer.

The video card maker also influences performance by their adherence to, or deviation from the reference design by nVidia.

Fozzer I googled this:  "GA7-VT6- 600L"  and got nothing, what gives m8? Don't get a bios for something that doesn't exist.

I wouldn't sweat it too much, if it dies, there's always a nice nForce2 board on sale somewhere!

ROTFL    

nVidia are on a chipset roll. Keep a weather eye on Via chipsets for improvements, but they have been second rate for a few years now.



(aaaaarggghh........ I let me sailor talk slip out again....)

Quote:


Nah-Na-Na-Nah-Nah...!
...serves you right for boasting.........!!


Quote:


The Missus will be delighted, Roger......!
Time to cancel the divorce and have a cuddle instead......!
LOL...!

Cheers all...!

Paul....8)...!

Forgive me if this has been mentioned before, but, if my 2D and 3D core speeds don't match exactly, my card and benchmarks such as 3D Mark 2001 run very much slower, I wonder Paul, have you tried this?

As an example, if your GPU's core is 350mhz, make sure both 2D and Performance 3D is the same speed.
Clicking on the arrow in the "Settings" window will bring up 2D or 3D speeds.

You will need Nvidia "Coolbits"  to modify the clock frequency settings from the display properties.

Hope this helps. 

A final footnote to all this. I was so pi**ed off with this I went off and bought another hard drive locally and created a completely new, fresh install consisting just of XP Home (with congo's SP2), AVG anti-virus, Spybot and FS9.

I started with my 'out of box' nForce 2 chipset drivers and the 'out of box' 6600GT drivers.

Had the same failure which the XP error message kindly described as a device driver error.

I then tried every combination of the original nForce2 drivers, the updated nForce sound driver only, the full updated (version 5) nForce drivers and various official and unofficial nVidia graphics drivers.

All resulted in the same failure.

When I started this new drive up this morning (bearing in mind it was brand new with a fresh full install) there was a boot-up error informing me that system cfg was damaged and Windows could not start. Thank God this was not my main hard drive which has all my personal and business stuff on it as well.

I've reinstalled my GeForce 3 Ti 200 and tried to go back to my original hard drive, which bear in mind was exposed to the 6600GT in the beginning.

I'm now also getting similar FS9 crashes on that even with my original nForce 2 chipset drivers and nVidia graphics drivers that used to work. Plus I now have a whole bunch of 'recovered' file fragments on my C: drive.

So at the end of this not only do I not have a working copy of FS2004 (hence no screenie contest etc this month) but I also feel that my main hard drive is under serious threat. In due course I'll use the new drive I bought as the basis of yet another full system install and data transfer from the threatened drive but I can't do that until I know what's happening on the graphics card front. I just hope my exisiting drive holds up, but unless I make a temporary FS9 install on the spare drive, which I don't now really have the time to do, flight simming is definitely out for me for the time being.

So I'm afraid I do blame this card. I've already raised an RMA request with the supplier and I'm waiting for a response. I don't know whether it's just faulty (although I doubt it as it seems to be fine in 2D mode and when running BM programs) but for me all the evidence points to a serious driver conflict and for that I totally blame nVidia. They more or less acknowledge that there's a problem because when you DL driver updates from their website they mention that they 'overcome various problems in games'. And there are dozens of postings on the hardware forums from guys having the same problems as me.

BTW I've put in dozens and dozens of different cards into my own and clients' machines over several years. I have to say that I've favoured ATI and I've NEVER had a problem (edit - I had a faulty Rage Pro once I recall) up until I had the faulty 9800Pro that started this saga. And at least when that card went wrong it didn't try to take out my whole bl**dy system.