Can I really harness the power of the 9800Pro?

[Bob151]

System4B533-E, P4 1.8 Oc'ed at 2.4, 1 GB DDR, Maxtor 80GB 7200RPM, XP Pro, 15" LCD (the only other card installed is the Hauppagge WinTV model 401).

Can I really harness the power of the Radeon9800Pro-128? Look at my system hardware, I've installed the card and I don't find that performance is much smoother when playing BF1942 (old card is a GF3 Ti-200). Maybe the texture maps are a little better, but since I'm always on the move in this game, don't have a chance to enjoy the view I guess.

I did notice less refresh hesitation when playing the FarCry Demo maps with the 9800Pro, but there are problems with the drivers that ATI is working on.

But, the jump just wasn't what I thought it might be, even though the benchmarks of the 9800Pro aren't in the same league as the older Ti-200. My Aquamark3 banchmark was only 29K, much lower than most other P4-2.4 512MB (and higher) R9800Pro users.

When watching TV with the WinTV card, processor utilization by WinTV is between 25-50%. I just don't remember it hogging up that much before.

I also notice that I get occassional drive thrashing (only 180MB RAM used before launching game) when playing BF1942. I did not notice this before, but I don't understand how it can be related. The resolution I play BF at is just 1024x768 (max for the monitor). I can't imagine that BF @ 1024x768 could stress the card. Is this the punkbuster scanning my hard drive? I'm stopped a lot of XP system services thinking it was something there, the thrashing still pops up.

I don't know if I should even keep the card. Am I utilizing it to it's best potential? Is my system too slow for it?

 

[Matthias99]

What are you getting in 3DMark01/03? Do those scores seem right for your config? Are you running with AA/AF on and don't realize it (a common problem)?

This could also be a driver issue -- did you use Driver Cleaner or the like to clean out the NVIDIA drivers before installing the ATI card? And is SmartGART reporting your AGP settings correctly? If not, you may need to reinstall your motherboard chipset drivers.

 

[Bob151]

Originally posted by: Matthias99
What are you getting in 3DMark01/03? Do those scores seem right for your config? Are you running with AA/AF on and don't realize it (a common problem)?

This could also be a driver issue -- did you use Driver Cleaner or the like to clean out the NVIDIA drivers before installing the ATI card? And is SmartGART reporting your AGP settings correctly? If not, you may need to reinstall your motherboard chipset drivers.

3DMark? Those are free, right? I remember wanting to benchmark my PC when it was a new build about a year ago, and some common benchmark software was fee based...

Driver Cleaner? I'll google for that and try it. BTW, I did do an uninstall of the NV drivers before even physically installing the 9800.

SmartGART? Never even heard of that. I'll google for it too. But I wouldn't know what my correct AGP settings should be.

 

[modedepe]

P4-1.8, eh? If it's a willamette it'll bottleneck your card quite a bit.

 

[Viper96720]

Smartgart is part of the ATI drivers. If you want to harness the power turn on AA and AF crank up the details. Now you can have those enabled and still get acceptable framerates. While with your older card the framerates would slow down more.

 

[Matthias99]

Originally posted by: Bob151

Originally posted by: Matthias99
What are you getting in 3DMark01/03? Do those scores seem right for your config? Are you running with AA/AF on and don't realize it (a common problem)?

This could also be a driver issue -- did you use Driver Cleaner or the like to clean out the NVIDIA drivers before installing the ATI card? And is SmartGART reporting your AGP settings correctly? If not, you may need to reinstall your motherboard chipset drivers.

3DMark? Those are free, right? I remember wanting to benchmark my PC when it was a new build about a year ago, and some common benchmark software was fee based...

Hoo boy. Yeah, they're free; download them over at www.futuremark.com. How's that rock you've been living under?

Driver Cleaner? I'll google for that and try it. BTW, I did do an uninstall of the NV drivers before even physically installing the 9800.

This is likely the source of your problems. NVIDIA's 'uninstaller' leaves much to be desired. Be sure to follow the directions *exactly* or you could mess up things in your registry (although there's all of about three steps; the most important thing is to run it in safe mode and AFTER you uninstall the drivers).

SmartGART? Never even heard of that. I'll google for it too. But I wouldn't know what my correct AGP settings should be.

Try looking under the "Advanced" section under Control Panels/Display/Settings (this is a good area to familiarize yourself with). It should be in there if you've installed the ATI driver package. Your 9800Pro should be running at 4X or 8X AGP, depending on what your motherboard is set for/supports (if it's running at 1X, you have issues and will need to reinstall your chipset drivers and then the video drivers). You generally want to disable fast writes, as some motherboards have issues with it and the performance gain is very, very minimal (if any).

 

[nick1985]

Originally posted by: Bob151
System4B533-E

LOL @ the : P =

hahaha

 

[BFG10K]

BF1942 is a very CPU intensive game so if you're using a Willy and/or PC2100 RAM (or slower) your bottleneck will be squarely on the CPU. Having said that you should be able to notice a difference between your GPUs if you crank up the settings in the game.

 

[Bob151]

Originally posted by: modedepe
P4-1.8, eh? If it's a willamette it'll bottleneck your card quite a bit.

CPU-Z says its a Northwood (it was well liked here at least when I bought it a while back) FSB 134.7, Bus 538.6, Core Speed 2,423.7

 

[Bob151]

Originally posted by: Matthias99Hoo boy. Yeah, they're free; download them over at www.futuremark.com. How's that rock you've been living under?

Good one! Well, I don't spend much time tweaking a system trying to squeeze more blood out of it. Usually some OC'ing when I set it up. Once I find a good stable point, I leave it alone....

I went to their page before, but I didn't catch the link to the free version I guess.

Geez, I can't find a site fast enought to DL it. 20KB/sec? No, not my ISP or PC, I can get cisco bins at 300KB+ right now. Finally found a faster site bbgames.jp I'm managing to maintain 180KB.

Try looking under the "Advanced" section under Control Panels/Display/Settings (this is a good area to familiarize yourself with). It should be in there if you've installed the ATI driver package. Your 9800Pro should be running at 4X or 8X AGP, depending on what your motherboard is set for/supports (if it's running at 1X, you have issues and will need to reinstall your chipset drivers and then the video drivers). You generally want to disable fast writes, as some motherboards have issues with it and the performance gain is very, very minimal (if any).

Ah, yes, running at 4x, I am sure that is the highest for my mobo, the P4B533-E.

Fast-writes are enabled, I don't find anything in my mobo manual about that. It may not be supported.

 

[Bob151]

Originally posted by: BFG10K
BF1942 is a very CPU intensive game so if you're using a Willy and/or PC2100 RAM (or slower) your bottleneck will be squarely on the CPU. Having said that you should be able to notice a difference between your GPUs if you crank up the settings in the game.

I'm running a pair of 512 2700 @ 2.5 3 3 7 according to CPU-Z.

 

[Bob151]

3dMark03 results 2219.

The thing suffered immensely under proxycon, trolls lair, and mother nature in the first round. Reliably it resulted in single digit FPS.

In the second round, it pulsated or stepped durring the test, and the text status strip at the bottom that told you your FPS stats and stuff, the words "FPS", "Time" and "Frame" were barely legible. I noticed that in BF1942, barely legible text. It was never like that before. But later in the "Pixel shader 2.0 test" the text was again legible.

The 3dmark site wouldn't take my results online and said it couldn't let me register as their servers were unavailable.

Are these results normal?

 

[BenSkywalker]

3dMark03 results 2219

Something is way off, you should be getting more then double that score.

 

[akshayt]

You'll get the double the score if you have a 3.2ghz,with ddr 400 ram and clean the system 100% and keep it optimized.
Your getting a little more should be good enuf.

 

[RussianSensation]

Originally posted by: akshayt
You'll get the double the score if you have a 3.2ghz,with ddr 400 ram and clean the system 100% and keep it optimized.
Your getting a little more should be good enuf.

Actually with a RAdeon 9800Pro you'll get 5500 points witha P3 733mhz. 3dmark03 is not affected by CPU performance by more than 5% within the same platform setup. The only difference is between p4 xp and a64 setups but the range of scores within each platform is almost identical regardless of CPU speeds.

Check if you have AA/AF enabled in the driver and disable them for testing purposes, also disable Vsync.

you should get at least 15000 in 3dmark 2001.

 

[Matthias99]

3dMark03 results 2219.

Yeah; something's way out of whack in your system. You should be getting 4K-5K on that setup, easy. Make sure you have the performance settings in the ATI control panels at 'normal' or over to the 'performance' side, and that AA/AF are disabled (set to 'application preference').

If that doesn't help, I'd try uninstalling the drivers, running Driver Cleaner (follow the instructions!), and then reinstalling them. VSync should be off (as mentioned above) for testing, although if the card is obviously stuttering and not running smoothly during the benchmark, I doubt that's your problem.

I noticed that in BF1942, barely legible text.

This makes me think you have FSAA enabled; it screws with the text display in BF1942.

 

[Bob151]

Originally posted by: BenSkywalker

3dMark03 results 2219

Something is way off, you should be getting more then double that score.

Well, after doing the driver uninstall for the ATI drivers (I had already done it for the NVidia), I did the driver cleaner for both NV and ATI booted in safe mode, then installed the ATI drivers 4.3 from scratch in normal boot mode.

Re-ran the 3dmark03. I didn't get the stepped hesitattion on the 3 games like before (thats an improvement), but the result was only 3200 (and some), not more than double.

 

[Bob151]

Originally posted by: Matthias99

Originally posted by: Bob151

Originally posted by: Matthias99
What are you getting in 3DMark01/03? Do those scores seem right for your config? Are you running with AA/AF on and don't realize it (a common problem)?

This could also be a driver issue -- did you use Driver Cleaner or the like to clean out the NVIDIA drivers before installing the ATI card? And is SmartGART reporting your AGP settings correctly? If not, you may need to reinstall your motherboard chipset drivers.

3DMark? Those are free, right? I remember wanting to benchmark my PC when it was a new build about a year ago, and some common benchmark software was fee based...

Hoo boy. Yeah, they're free; download them over at www.futuremark.com. How's that rock you've been living under?

Driver Cleaner? I'll google for that and try it. BTW, I did do an uninstall of the NV drivers before even physically installing the 9800.

This is likely the source of your problems. NVIDIA's 'uninstaller' leaves much to be desired. Be sure to follow the directions *exactly* or you could mess up things in your registry (although there's all of about three steps; the most important thing is to run it in safe mode and AFTER you uninstall the drivers).

SmartGART? Never even heard of that. I'll google for it too. But I wouldn't know what my correct AGP settings should be.

Try looking under the "Advanced" section under Control Panels/Display/Settings (this is a good area to familiarize yourself with). It should be in there if you've installed the ATI driver package. Your 9800Pro should be running at 4X or 8X AGP, depending on what your motherboard is set for/supports (if it's running at 1X, you have issues and will need to reinstall your chipset drivers and then the video drivers). You generally want to disable fast writes, as some motherboards have issues with it and the performance gain is very, very minimal (if any).

You know, after re-installing the ATI drivers the smartGART has not appeared in the adapters advanced area.....

 

[Bob151]

Originally posted by: RussianSensation

Originally posted by: akshayt
You'll get the double the score if you have a 3.2ghz,with ddr 400 ram and clean the system 100% and keep it optimized.
Your getting a little more should be good enuf.

Actually with a RAdeon 9800Pro you'll get 5500 points witha P3 733mhz. 3dmark03 is not affected by CPU performance by more than 5% within the same platform setup. The only difference is between p4 xp and a64 setups but the range of scores within each platform is almost identical regardless of CPU speeds.

Check if you have AA/AF enabled in the driver and disable them for testing purposes, also disable Vsync.

you should get at least 15000 in 3dmark 2001.

Ah... I think it is enabled. By AF, you mean ansotropic filtering (I may be wrong in the exact words, I'm at work right now)

The power of the 9800 is in the ability of doing AA/AF faster than the NV cards, I would think it would be bench'ed with those things enabled.

So when people post there benchmarks, it is supported to be with AA/AF, VSync, FSAA off then?

 

[Bob151]

Originally posted by: Matthias99

3dMark03 results 2219.

Yeah; something's way out of whack in your system. You should be getting 4K-5K on that setup, easy. Make sure you have the performance settings in the ATI control panels at 'normal' or over to the 'performance' side, and that AA/AF are disabled (set to 'application preference').

If that doesn't help, I'd try uninstalling the drivers, running Driver Cleaner (follow the instructions!), and then reinstalling them. VSync should be off (as mentioned above) for testing, although if the card is obviously stuttering and not running smoothly during the benchmark, I doubt that's your problem.

I noticed that in BF1942, barely legible text.

This makes me think you have FSAA enabled; it screws with the text display in BF1942.

OK, I'll try it with FSAA off as well.

BTW, the stepping(heart beat) hesitation is gone since doing the driver cleaner. The proxycon part of the 3dmark03 flows much better.

 

[Matthias99]

Originally posted by: Bob151


Ah... I think it is enabled. By AF, you mean ansotropic filtering (I may be wrong in the exact words, I'm at work right now)

The power of the 9800 is in the ability of doing AA/AF faster than the NV cards, I would think it would be bench'ed with those things enabled.

So when people post there benchmarks, it is supported to be with AA/AF, VSync, FSAA off then?

Yes, AA is (Full-Scene) AntiAliasing, and AF is Anisotropic Filtering. The RADEON cards take much less of a performance hit (relatively) than the GeForceFX boards using these features, but it still slows them down quite a bit! Programs like 3DMark calculate your card's speed based on how many frames per second it can put out, and turning on AA and/or AF greatly reduces its perceived performance. Benchmarks are almost universally done WITHOUT AA/AF, and with VSync disabled.

You know, after re-installing the ATI drivers the smartGART has not appeared in the adapters advanced area.....

Did you install the full driver package with the control panel? It should be there... :-/

BTW, the stepping(heart beat) hesitation is gone since doing the driver cleaner. The proxycon part of the 3dmark03 flows much better.

That sounds like an improvement. Definitely try it again without AA and AF and see if you don't get a much more positive outcome.

 

[Bob151]

Got 5433 with AA/AF set to performance, no card OC'ing.

I think the most of the issues was the hesitation issue, which I suspect may have been resolved with the driver cleaner.

I now suspect the stuff with bf1942 may be servers that could not feed the data fast enough to 50+ users (when my section of the map gets crowded). Before I bought a new card, I thought my PC was having trouble drawing many independant objects. Now its either the server or my PC I guess. Although my PC runs at 2.4 reliably..... I was really hoping this would let me get into the large user games. I have 3.0 MB downstream, don't know my upstream.

 

[Bob151]

Matthias99,

I am pretty darn sure I installed the controll panel, I think I saw it selected in the custom installation.

I did not find a VSync option among all the other Radeon Control panel options.

 

[BFG10K]

And make sure you're running the latest BIOS and chipset drivers for your system.

 

[Matthias99]

Originally posted by: Bob151
Got 5433 with AA/AF set to performance, no card OC'ing.

I think the most of the issues was the hesitation issue, which I suspect may have been resolved with the driver cleaner.

I now suspect the stuff with bf1942 may be servers that could not feed the data fast enough to 50+ users (when my section of the map gets crowded). Before I bought a new card, I thought my PC was having trouble drawing many independant objects. Now its either the server or my PC I guess. Although my PC runs at 2.4 reliably..... I was really hoping this would let me get into the large user games. I have 3.0 MB downstream, don't know my upstream.

Ding ding ding! We have a winner! Glad to hear you got the card working properly.

BF1942 is hugely dependent on the server's connection bandwidth. I've been in 64-player games that work fine, and in ones that bog down horribly when there's a lot of stuff going on. I would guess that it's probably an issue on the server end if you don't have connection issues with smaller games.

I am pretty darn sure I installed the controll panel, I think I saw it selected in the custom installation.

I did not find a VSync option among all the other Radeon Control panel options.

I still don't know why you don't have a SmartGART tab (unless ATI moved/removed it in the last few driver revs? I'm still using 3.9...) It's definitely there with all the other ATI options tabs under Display Properties/Settings/"Advanced..." on my system.

However, the VSync controls should definitely be there. If you go to the "3D" tab, and go into the "Custom..." dialog, you can set "Wait For Vertical Sync" to either 'Always Off', 'Application Preference', or 'Always On'.