Geforce TI Question Everyone

[MiamiJones]

Hi all,
First off I have a PNY TI4200 6mb vid card. My PC specs are located below. I don't understand why I can't run my games at the highest settings and atleast 1280 x 1024 resolution. I can d othis but i get lagg. Can anyone explain the reason seems liek the card can't handle. Man I pay so much.

Also what are the best settings to set the BIOS too for gaming.

Any other suggestions are welcome I will gladly appreaciate them thank you.

 

[Megatomic]

What games specifically? What settings aside from resolution do you have set for the games? Have you overclocked your video card by any chance? You can gain some performance by upping your memory clockrate on the Ti 4200.

As to BIOS settings, I'd say make sure you have at 32 if not 64MB set as your AGP aperature setting. Also, set your AGP Fast Writes to on and enable the AGP Master 1 Wait State (whatever it is called in your BIOS) options if your system can handle it and still be stable. Manually set your memory (mainboard DDR) settings to the fastest they will allow. When I was using the memory you are currently using I was able to set it at CAS2 with 2/6/3 on the timings. I don't have your motherboard so I don't know what your BIOS options are, but check your CPU specific settings. If you have something akin to Command Decode Rate set that to the fastest you can select. That's all I can think of right now for BIOS settings.

In Windows, make sure your system is defragged, that your pagefile is set to about 512MB min./max. (you have lots of memory, you might even get away with a smaller pagefile) so that you don't have that thing resizing on the fly which hurts performance often. Have you installed the Via 4-in-1 patch? If not, don't, just install the AGP patch, the latest one is 4.30 I believe. What version of the the Detonator drivers are you running? I use 30.82 personally as they are the most stable IMHO and offer good performance. In the NV control panel extension of the display.cpl, go to the DirectX tab under More Settings. Set the MipMap Level to Best Performance. I get a big increase in benchmark scores and game fps when I do this. I personally don't run games at this setting as my system is capable of playing all the games I own at over 70fps even at 1280x1024x32 with high details. But you may need this setting. How many programs startup with Windows on your system? Is your system tray full of crap? If you have lots of stuff starting up with windows, fix that. Allow only the essentials to load on startup so that you have max. memory available to the programs/games you want to run.

If I can think of anything else I'll post another reply. Good luck MiamiJones.

 

[MiamiJones]

In reply to SeekingTao
I run Madden2003, GTA3 the less problamatic jerky games are Jedi Knight 2 Outkast, RTCW , MOHAA and Soilder of Fortune II.

I run all these @ 1280 x 1024 but had to lower Madden sometimes .
MY Desktop is 1280 x 1024 120mhz refresh rate.

As for the BIOS settings I have made those adjustments before so I guess Ican rule that out, although I have AGP apeture @ 128mb is that ok ? I had a ATi in my pc before I formatted and it would only go up to 64mb on a 64mb card. This PNY GF4 ti4200 is 64mb.

Yes I have overclocked it to about 270 clock core and 550mhz ram.
I have used 3dMarkSe it got faster benchmarks than my roomates Abit Gf4 Siluro Ti4200 128mb. He doesn't run games @ 1280 x 1024 but the lower 1024 x 768.

I only load essential things in my startup Norton 2003 and Firewall and Nvidia. I'm running windows XP for games...I don't have the new drivers I think I did before my fortmatt, but I will try the AGP drivers you said and not install ViA's other drivers. I'm using Nvidia's beta Detonator driver's which did give me a performance inscrease after I installed but that was way back so after al lthe bell and whistles this is where I'm at. Thank you for your help but if anymore ideas arise please let me know.

Quick question how can I get less jagged edges when I move around in games like especially Medal of honor? I hear about antitropic and antalias but I think when Iuse them it causes slow down wuts a good setting to put them @?

Thankx for the time.

 

[AnAndAustin]

AA is used to get rid of those jaggies. For GF4TI cards 2xAA is best although QuinxAA is worth trying too,it gives more of a 4xAA effect but is more blurry. Anisotropic Filtering basicly sharpens up in the textures esp at medium to long distances. If you use QuinxAA then it's wise to force on 2xAniso too. 2xAA and QxAA hardly hurt GF4TI perf at all while 4xAA and 4xSxAA do hit it quite hard. Aniso on GF4TI also hits them a little hard, esp the higher modes, nice quality though.

A 4200-64MB should get closer to 300/600, just take it in small steps, when you start seeing visual glitches simply back off a couple of notches and that's the best setting for your card. 64MB will hit you in some current games and certainly games due out, best to enable texture compression and set AGP Aperture to 128MB unless that proves problematic.

If you are running a VIA mobo chipset then be sure to install the VIA PCI Latency Patch. As for BIOS settings disabe 'PCI Master Read Cache' as it kills the CPU cache and has no real gains at all. If you do change any BIOS settings, again do keep a note so they can be changed back if it doesn't help. If you try faster (lower) RAM latency settings be very sure to stress test your RAM for weaknesses, if it's running slightly too fast it may not be immediately evident but it will steadily corrupt your HD files. The diff between the fastest and slowest RAM timings is pretty small in terms of actual over-all perf, worth trying but do take care and avoid being overly ambitious. I'd rec defragging and setting the swpafile MIN to 512MB but leave the maximum open, the only time resizing and fragmenting will become an issue is when more RAM is needed and will avoid nasty errors or even crashing.

For your system 1024x768x32 with 2xAA should work very well in all current games, if you push a little higher you may find some games will stutter a bit esp at busy points in the game which are often the most crucial.

 

[MiamiJones]

Yeah I see what your saying. Ya 1024 x 768 should do I just hoped to get more at the higher res so games can take it I guress so can't. I wil try so of the things you said. So Ihave already had done prior to this.

 

[flyderman]

Hi, I have a VIA mobo (Epox 8KHA+), using win2k. I'm just wondering why you shouldn't install the 4-in-1 patch? The AGP patch is included in it anyway. Will there be any conflicts whatsoever?

Thanks!

 

[AnAndAustin]

Well opinion is a little split over whether or not to install the latest VIA 4in1 drivers on Win2000/XP. Some say it slows their system down, others say it speeds them up, some find it stabalises the PC while others feel it destabalises their PC. If your PC is working without a hitch then there isn't really any need, if you are experiencing probs and the usual easy stuff isn't helping then I'd rec using the 4in1. One thing I think everybody agrees on is installing the VIA PCI Latency Patch ... but even then the PCI bus is at last sorted out on the KT400 isn't it?