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GF2 MX Upgrade Problems, Part 2.

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Yeah, try the bios update. Also try pulling out the sound, nic, whatever else for the heck of it and see what happens.
 
Hmm, only a 235 watt power supply? I'm no tech genius, but I know enough to have worked as a technician at a local PC repair shop. One thing I never understood was how just changing the power supply could solve problems I thought were software or RAM-related. Maybe its time for a beefier 250 watt or 300 watt PS? What do the others here think of this??
 
I have to agree that it sounds like a motherboard compatibility problem. I just checked and my current system has my Geforce 2 MX sharing IRQ 11 with ACPI IRQ holder for PCI steering and a Diamond Monster sound card. Yet they all get along just swell with windows 98 and the MSI-6309 motherboard. ON my other system the Creative Geforce 2 MX shares with just the holder for PCI steering on IRQ 11 and it assigned the Aureal sound card stuff to IRQ 9. Interestingly enough, I haven't had any problems with the video or sound on either system. (knocks on wood..) Also makes me glad I didn't get adventurous last system build and ordered another MSI-6309. Great motherboards for beginners and system builder wannabes.
Chuck
 
OK, I updated my BIOS but the lockups didn't stop. To add insult to injury my Quake 3 framerates droppped! Needless to say my good ol' BIOS is back in action.

I'm pretty much definitely going to return to the card but I've made a few interesting observations about it:

Firstly, GLQuake and Quake 2 don't crash at all. I've run multiple timedemos multiple times for several minutes and I played several levels for several minutes, and everything seemed OK. That leaves Unreal/Return To Na Pali and Quake 3 as the problem games. If it was a motherboard problem all 3D games would crash, no?

Secondly, regarding the stuck resolution/refresh in 2D mode, I've discovered that if you install monitor drivers that don't tell Windows what the maximum refresh is, the resolution switching starts to work correctly. For example, instead of installing the 1024 x 768 x 75 Hz monitor driver (where nothing works), instead install the 1024 x 768 driver, which does not specify what the maximum refresh rate is.

The resolution switching then starts to work correctly. The refresh is still stuck at 60 Hz but you can use any tweaking utility to bump up the refresh, given it isn't locked to any specific number. From this observation I can only conclude that nVidia's drivers are incorrectly reading the monitor information provided by Windows. Othwerwise they would work flawlessly like my Voodoo 3 drivers did.

Thirdly, it's pretty much beyond a doubt that power issues are not causing the problems. Given that both the Voodoo 3 and my Celeron 500 burned more power than my P3 650E and my GF2 MX, coupled to the fact that I have jumpered my motherboard to provide extra voltage to the AGP slot (which is enough to power a GF DDR, according to the manual), I'm convinced the issue isn't power-related. I suspect nVidia's drivers more than I suspect motherboard compatibilities.

Oh well, I guess I now have to clean up my system now from all nVidia related items. :frown:
 
Have you tried to turn AGP down to 1x? I have an old 440BX mainboard (Asus P2B) and experienced the same lock up problem when upgrading to an MX. However, after using Powerstrip to force AGP to 1x, i haven't got a lock up since. All my games run fine now. I know there's a performance hit but it's your call.
 
No, that's one thing I didn't try. It's too late now though because I've removed the card, cleared the old drivers/registry entries and re-installed my Voodoo 3. But I'll remember that the next time I try an AGP card.

Did you have problems in every 3D game before your switched to AGP x 1? Or just some of your games?
 
Hey, my ELSA mx has similar problem (always lockup in IE, 3d stuff, but still can warm boot) with my Epox 8KTA2 and Epox ZX370A (Intel ZX chipset).

 
Did you have problem in every 3D game before your switched to AGP 1x?

I had problem with games such as NFSPU, Quake3, Soldier of Fortune, NHL2001, F1 2000 etc...
 
I know it sounds like a pain in the a$$ BFG, but that may be what you're looking for. I'd give it one last go before I call it quits, even if you have to go through all teh driver removal crap again. Trust me, i had basically the same problems when i tried to stick a GF DDR in with a SS7 CPU :/

Anyways, how ya doin? I haven't seen you around here for a while 🙂
 
BFG10K:

I was having the same problem on my ABIT KT7 mobo. What I had to do was disable ACPI. One way to do it is to see if the BIOS has an option to disable it. Now, in my case, I had to format my HD. Then, when installing Win98 SE, you have to type: D:\win98\setup /p i

This will not install it, and it doesn't hurt anything. It solved my problem with games locking up (I fought for days trying to figure it out!). In my case, ACPI was making almost all my cards share IRQ 11 (including my video card), which isn't good. Whether this is an issue with nVidia's drivers, hardware, or whatever, I don't know, but my system is rock solid stable. Try it and see if it fixes it.

Tip: As a diagnostic step, pull all of the cards out (except video) and then install the OS. Then install the video card drivers and install a game. See if it locks up before installing other cards. If it does, it must be a POS mobo.
 
Tip: As a diagnostic step, pull all of the cards out (except video) and then install the OS. Then install the video card drivers and install a game. See if it locks up before installing other cards. If it does, it must be a POS mobo.

Indeed, this is how I install Windows. Video card only. Get EVERYTHING installed, test after each app install, then add the sound card, then NIC, then modem and SCSI.

Much wiser.
 
Weyoun:

I know it sounds like a pain in the a$$ BFG, but that may be what you're looking for. I'd give it one last go before I call it quits, even if you have to go through all teh driver removal crap again.

<Sigh> I really can't be bothered.

Anyways, how ya doin? I haven't seen you around here for a while 🙂

Eh? I've been here all along. I haven't gone anywhere.

Compellor:

I was having the same problem on my ABIT KT7 mobo. What I had to do was disable ACPI.

That's aboslutely out of the question. Sleep mode is one of the most valued additions to my system. I'm not giving it up under any circumstance.

Tip: As a diagnostic step, pull all of the cards out (except video) and then install the OS. Then install the video card drivers and install a game. See if it locks up before installing other cards. If it does, it must be a POS mobo.

:Q

You've got to be kidding me. I don't have the time nor the energy to do something like that just get a video card to work.
 


<< That's aboslutely out of the question. Sleep mode is one of the most valued additions to my system. I'm not giving it up under any circumstance. >>



Not installing ACPI doesn't disable sleep mode; you still get Advanced Power Management Support (before ACPI was born). I can set my system to use it if I want, but I don't because of the slight performance hit.



<< You've got to be kidding me. I don't have the time nor the energy to do something like that just get a video card to work. >>



Well, then good luck with your Radeon.
 
You guys are not going to believe this. I decided to try the card one last time but this time I used powerstrip to force the card to AGP x 1. Now it works great with no lockups! I've had several games and run a lot of timedemos in Quake 3 and Unreal and they both work fine. Unreal looks beautiful in 32 bit colour, especially the fog. Plus the walls seem to be sharper and cleaner.

I found powerstrip to be annoying because everytime I would restart, my system would reset itself to AGP x 2. I found this registry upgrade which permanently modifies your registry so that you always use AGP x 1. I've deleted both powerstrip and Gainward's utility and I'm using nVidia's detonator 6.49 drivers.

Now I have to find some way of disabling Direct 3D vsync and doing something about that corrupted Start Menu. I think I'll try the 6.50 drivers and then the 6.72 drivers if I continue to have Start Menu problems.

Also going from AGP x 2 to AGP x 1 makes me drop only 3 FPS in Quake 3. That's a small price to pay for total stability. 🙂
 
Hmm, I downloaded coolbits and disabled vsync in Direct 3D. Yet for some reason Unreal seems to take a huge performance hit when running under 32 BPP rather than 16 BPP (640 x 480). Is this normal?
 


<< Yet for some reason Unreal seems to take a huge performance hit when running under 32 BPP rather than 16 BPP (640 x 480). Is this normal? >>



It is because the Unreal engine was programmed for Glide. From what I understand, it runs faster in software mode in 32 bit color. I've found that Unreal, UT, and Deus Ex all run better in 16 bit color under Direct3D on my Geforce 2 GTS. They also run better without using high res textures, but my system seems fast enough that it's not that much of a performance hit.

Oh, I'm glad to hear you got it working. 🙂
 
It's really good to hear you've got it up and running BFG, I'm happy for ya 🙂 At least you didn't give up i guess, the MX's are damn ncie little cards, i'm running one im my machine ATM and couldn't be happier 🙂

Oh well, I must be going blind then 🙂 I mostly hang around beyond3d instead of this forum though, although i still dont have the intellect to post anything over there yet 🙂
 
good job man, glad you got it running!!!

the 16-bit vs. 32-bit performance hit in Unreal is kinda normal for a card with the MX's fillrate and memory throughput, when you think about it.

It's kinda like the nasty performance hit it takes when FSAA is enabled.
 
I've been playing Quake 3 for several hours now and I'm happy to report that it's as rock solid as my Voodoo 3 was. I've had absolutely no trouble with it and the image quality is very nice.

Regarding the Unreal issue, there's something odd about the whole thing (note, I'm talking about the orginal Unreal, not UT).

Here are the scores I'm getting at 640 x 480:

Return To Na Pali
16 bit: 76.9 FPS. (Voodoo 3 16 bit: 75 FPS).
32 bit: 67.5 FPS.

Unreal
16 bit: 66.8 FPS.
32 bit: 42.4 FPS.

As you can see Return To Na Pali's scores are exactly what they should be, especially when you compare the 16 bit score to the Voodoo 3. But when running Unreal the scores are much lower. Yet both games are running the same Castle Flybuy Scene in Direct 3D mode with the same settings.

I don't know what's going on there. I'll have to check the config files line by line or something. 😕

RoboTECH:

The 16-bit vs. 32-bit performance hit in Unreal is kinda normal for a card with the MX's fillrate and memory throughput, when you think about it.

Yes but not at 640 x 480, given that setting is CPU limited. Look at the scores above and tell me what you think.
 
Glad to hear you got it working BFG🙂😀

Try OpenGL for UT, it runs much better with a nV board then D3D(particularly the Loki build, though it may require a bit of tweaking to get it up and running).

A chart of UT on nV cards. Much faster in memory bandwith limited situations using OpenGL(particularly the Loki build) then D3D, not to mention much better looking with the S3TC textures. BTW- All of the scores on the chart are 32bit, I never run anything in 16bit<blech!:disgust:>
 
Right, I've fixed the Unreal problem. I copied the D3Ddrv.dll from the Na Pali folder and replaced the file with the same name in the Unreal folder. Now it runs how it should (ie identical scores to Return To Na Pali).
 
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