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ATI 9800 Pro 128MB Help! Please!

S

ScottDoom

Junior Member
I've spent a lot of time trying to get my ATI 9800 Pro 128MB to work. First it wouldn't work with my crap motherboard, so I bought an Asus P4P800-VM. Then, my computer wouldn't start so I reinstalled Windows without a format. Then, it wouldn't use the 3D features of the card and Windows was running really slow. I was told I needed SP1, and I got that. Finally, it worked!

I ran the UT2003 demo benchmark first, and had an 85FPS increase on my GeForce 3 ti200. Not bad. I thought it was supposed to be higher, but whatever.

But then I ran 3DMark 2003, and I had a score of 1986 while others with 2.4Ghz and ATI 9800 Pro 128MBs have scores of 5000+.

What am I doing wrong!? I've always had the PC that scored way under everyone's. I've always had the crappy PC components. So this summer I got a job and bought the best graphics card I could and the best motherboard I could, and my computer performs 3000 points slower than someone with the exact same system as me (except different mobos). Check out these pictures: http://images.prosperpoint.com/2679/134956-1.jpg
http://images.prosperpoint.com/2679/134956-2.jpg

Somebody please help. My card right now basically runs the tests the same as my GeForce 3 ti200! They both get about 1-5FPS on the two game test after the plane one.

I also tried out the 01 test. I compared myself to the exact same person. Here were the results:
http://images.prosperpoint.com/2679/134956-3.jpg

I think it's weird that things such as fill rate, advanced pixel shader, etc. scored exactly the same, and even the bump mapping was pretty close, but the FPS on the games were way off.

So for all you people getting 5000+ on 03 and 15000+ on 01, how do you do it!? I'm thinking it's actually still using some sort of GeForce 3 ti200 driver. I might try a format, but I'll see what you guys have to say first.

Anyway, besides the benchmarks, I tried playing Battlefield. The menu screen was really blurry. The fonts in game were blurry too, but the graphics looked pretty good. With 6x FSAA I could see no jagged edges, even at 1024x768. I was amazed by the smoothness of the anti-aircraft's crosshair. I mainted 99FPS the entire time, except when I switched to Desert Combat on Gazala. Then it was about 85FPS, and I also noticed when I looked at the hangar on the Allied side, the FPS dropped down to 40FPS for some odd reason.

I also tried Mafia. I didn't notice much difference in that game. It didn't stutter like my GeForce, and made maybe 10FPS more. The graphics might have been slightly better.

I tried out Morrowind. Didn't notice anything different, and I forgot the command to show FPS so I couldn't see how much better it was doing.

Oh yeah, I'm using the 3.5's. Didn't feel like getting the 3.6's. I read that they messed up OpenGL anyway.
 
I would say most likely it's the fact that your mobo's FSB is running at 100mhz... Compared to the other guy's running at 200mhz (x4=800mhz.)

So either, you don't have 2 sticks of pc3200 ram in that motherboard, or you need to configure the ram speed up to 400mhz in the bios. That's the reason your fill rates seem on par, because your vid card is working fine. But your processor is struggling to move that data around between itself, the memory and the vid card.
 
I only have one stick of PC2100 266Mhz RAM right now. I really don't want to spend more money in order to get this ATI 9800 128MB to work. I already spent $350 on it, and then another $150 on the new motherboard. And I've spent two day trying to figure it out. I'm really tired and I just wish it would perform the way it's supposed to.

I'm going to try a format first and a clean install of everything, because I think the ATI card is somehow using a file from the GeForce 3 ti200's driver.

Edit:
I checked my chip. It's a 400Mhz FSB 2.4Ghz chip. My motherboard supports 400/533/800Mhz FSBs. Why is my PC running at 100Mhz and not 400Mhz? I'd like it to at least go 300Mhz. How do I raise the FSB speed?
 
Yes, I think that could be the problem. But first I'd like to mess around with increasing my FSB speed. If that doesn't work, I'll format. If it still doesn't work, then... I don't know. I think I'll go insane.
 
Originally posted by: ScottDoom
I only have one stick of PC2100 266Mhz RAM right now. I really don't want to spend more money in order to get this ATI 9800 128MB to work. I already spent $350 on it, and then another $150 on the new motherboard. And I've spent two day trying to figure it out. I'm really tired and I just wish it would perform the way it's supposed to.

I'm going to try a format first and a clean install of everything, because I think the ATI card is somehow using a file from the GeForce 3 ti200's driver.

Edit:
I checked my chip. It's a 400Mhz FSB 2.4Ghz chip. My motherboard supports 400/533/800Mhz FSBs. Why is my PC running at 100Mhz and not 400Mhz? I'd like it to at least go 300Mhz. How do I raise the FSB speed?
Click to expand...
P4s work on a principle called "quad-pumping." Working on a similar concept as agp 2x, 4x, 8x, in layman's terms, this means a 100 mhz fsb runs at 400 mhz fsb. Therefore, there's nothing wrong with your fsb if it's set at 100 mhz

 
Originally posted by: RyuRobD
Originally posted by: ScottDoom
I only have one stick of PC2100 266Mhz RAM right now. I really don't want to spend more money in order to get this ATI 9800 128MB to work. I already spent $350 on it, and then another $150 on the new motherboard. And I've spent two day trying to figure it out. I'm really tired and I just wish it would perform the way it's supposed to.

I'm going to try a format first and a clean install of everything, because I think the ATI card is somehow using a file from the GeForce 3 ti200's driver.

Edit:
I checked my chip. It's a 400Mhz FSB 2.4Ghz chip. My motherboard supports 400/533/800Mhz FSBs. Why is my PC running at 100Mhz and not 400Mhz? I'd like it to at least go 300Mhz. How do I raise the FSB speed?
Click to expand...
P4s work on a principle called "quad-pumping." Working on a similar concept as agp 2x, 4x, 8x, in layman's terms, this means a 100 mhz fsb runs at 400 mhz fsb. Therefore, there's nothing wrong with your fsb if it's set at 100 mhz
Click to expand...
But with a stick of PC2100 (266MHz) trying to run at 4x100=400MHz, there might be some problems. Higher-quality memory certainly couldn't hurt, but I would try the format first. And why not download the latest drivers? From what I've heard, things are better with them than without.
 
Originally posted by: TheInvincibleMustard
Originally posted by: RyuRobD
Originally posted by: ScottDoom
I only have one stick of PC2100 266Mhz RAM right now. I really don't want to spend more money in order to get this ATI 9800 128MB to work. I already spent $350 on it, and then another $150 on the new motherboard. And I've spent two day trying to figure it out. I'm really tired and I just wish it would perform the way it's supposed to.

I'm going to try a format first and a clean install of everything, because I think the ATI card is somehow using a file from the GeForce 3 ti200's driver.

Edit:
I checked my chip. It's a 400Mhz FSB 2.4Ghz chip. My motherboard supports 400/533/800Mhz FSBs. Why is my PC running at 100Mhz and not 400Mhz? I'd like it to at least go 300Mhz. How do I raise the FSB speed?
Click to expand...
P4s work on a principle called "quad-pumping." Working on a similar concept as agp 2x, 4x, 8x, in layman's terms, this means a 100 mhz fsb runs at 400 mhz fsb. Therefore, there's nothing wrong with your fsb if it's set at 100 mhz
Click to expand...
But with a stick of PC2100 (266MHz) trying to run at 4x100=400MHz, there might be some problems. Higher-quality memory certainly couldn't hurt, but I would try the format first. And why not download the latest drivers? From what I've heard, things are better with them than without.
Click to expand...

Nooooooooooooooooo, PC2100 runs at 133MHz (266MHz DDR), his P4 is running at 100MHz (quad-pumped, but that doesn't matter in this case), so he has plenty of headroom left. You can't compare quad-pumped frequency with DDR frequency, it's apples and oranges that way.
 
Originally posted by: TheInvincibleMustard
But with a stick of PC2100 (266MHz) trying to run at 4x100=400MHz, there might be some problems. Higher-quality memory certainly couldn't hurt, but I would try the format first. And why not download the latest drivers? From what I've heard, things are better with them than without.
Click to expand...

the ram runs async. better ram would help, though. pc 3200 would at least provide similar bandwidth to what the p4 can take
 
Originally posted by: ElFenix
Originally posted by: TheInvincibleMustard
But with a stick of PC2100 (266MHz) trying to run at 4x100=400MHz, there might be some problems. Higher-quality memory certainly couldn't hurt, but I would try the format first. And why not download the latest drivers? From what I've heard, things are better with them than without.
Click to expand...

the ram runs async. better ram would help, though. pc 3200 would at least provide similar bandwidth to what the p4 can take
Click to expand...
That's what I was referring to ... didn't mean to imply that PC2100 (2x133MHz) couldn't be run at 4x100MHz speeds ... 🙂
 
Yeesh! Scott, dont listen to the people telling you
to buy more ram, perhaps down the road you might
consider it, but with the trouble and money you've already
gone through 512 of ddr 2100 should be quite sufficient.

The clean install I feel will solve most of your problems.
When troubleshooting, remember start from 0 and add
components one by one all the way up till you have the system
you want. If you hardware's working do the same for your OS/driver/software
installs.

In tweaking your cpu and ram, first just make sure they're
registering during post correctly, which they probably are.
Dont be confused by the 100mHz fsb quad pumped and DDR x2.
Ignore that. Make sure that for the start you have your ram setting
By SPD (serial presence detect) and that your CPU is showing up
correctly in the bios.

Then install winXP, mobo drivers, SP1, ATI driver (rebooting between each of those)
and then the rest of your drivers. Run 3dmark and whatever benches again
and see if you're getting on par with others results.

Good luck,

dM
 
Ok, thanks for the info guys. I'll we doing a clean install today after I back up misc. files to my friend's PC over LAN at 1.1MB/sec. Heh. It saves the CDs.

Right now I have work for 7 hours though, so I'll post what happens later tonight.
 
Ah, I see, your chip really is a 400mhz chip... Your ram should be fine then... if it runs at 133mhz, then when it's quad pumped, it should be enough to fill your chip's FSB.... the problem is, in order to quad pump that 133mhz speed, you had to have dual channels. As it is, with one stick, and thus single channel, you're only getting 266mhz FSB. That's what's crippling your performance. I suggest another stick of ram... Although I don't know why you got such a fast motherboard only to couple it with a 400mhz FSB chip... I might just deal with the performance for now, and save up for a P4C processor, and PC3200 ram. But if you want to fix your scores now, you need another stick of memory to run dual channel mode. Simple as that.
 
Ok. I formatted. I installed my chipset drivers and got a new BIOS. I updated Windows XP with all the misc. updates and SP1. I installed Direct X 9.

Everything is ready to go for my ATI 9800 Pro 128MB! Well, not really. Windows XP can't find drivers for my Video Controller (AGP Compatible), Video Controller, PCI Input Device, and Multimedia Audio Controller. It says once it gets connected to the internet, it can find the drivers to enable them. I am connected to the internet. I'm using my computer to post here right now. I hate Windows.
 
Originally posted by: ScottDoom
Ok. I formatted. I installed my chipset drivers and got a new BIOS. I updated Windows XP with all the misc. updates and SP1. I installed Direct X 9.

Everything is ready to go for my ATI 9800 Pro 128MB! Well, not really. Windows XP can't find drivers for my Video Controller (AGP Compatible), Video Controller, PCI Input Device, and Multimedia Audio Controller. It says once it gets connected to the internet, it can find the drivers to enable them. I am connected to the internet. I'm using my computer to post here right now. I hate Windows.
Click to expand...

those drivers should be on the cd that you got with your motherboard.
 
That's exactly what I thought. The only drivers on my CD that came with the motherboard are drivers for the onboard sound, Intel chipset drivers, onboard graphics drivers, and onboard LAN card drivers.

 
Originally posted by: ScottDoom
That's exactly what I thought. The only drivers on my CD that came with the motherboard are drivers for the onboard sound, Intel chipset drivers, onboard graphics drivers, and onboard LAN card drivers.
Click to expand...

then check Microsofts web site
 
Don't you have the CD that came with your Audigy and ATI 9800 Pro? The drivers will be there. I am suprised XP though won't find an Audigy. The Video Card is too new to be in XP's drivers. Use the ATI CD and Creative CD that came with your cards.
 
I did... sort of. Not really sure what to look for or where to look.

But, I just installed my Audigy X Gamer drivers for the fun of it, and it no longer says the drivers for PCI Input and Multimedia Audio Controller are missing!

Only thing left is VGA Controller and VGA Controll (AGP Compatible). I think I'll try installing my ATI 9800 Pro 128MB's Cat 3.5 drivers and see what happens.
 
Originally posted by: Dennis Travis
Don't you have the CD that came with your Audigy and ATI 9800 Pro? The drivers will be there. I am suprised XP though won't find an Audigy. The Video Card is too new to be in XP's drivers. Use the ATI CD and Creative CD that came with your cards.
Click to expand...

Yeah! That was it. I just needed to install my sound card and ATI card. Man, I'm stupid.

Well, I'm going to run 3DMark now and see how it goes. It better at least get a 4000-4500. I know it probably won't get 5000+ since I don't have the best system.
 
I just ran 3DMark 2003. I got a 5339. Not bad. The two second game tests after the plane one weren't slideshows anymore.

Thanks for the help guys.
 
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