Gf4 AGP Sideband Addressing Question

[308nato]

I am running a 1.6a on an MSI 845 Ultra Aru at 140fsb. I recently went from a Visiontek Gf3 ti-200 to a Visiontek ti-4600. I just noticed last nite that SANDRA says AGP Sideband Addressing is enabled. With the ti-200 it was not enabled. This kind of confuses me as my bios doesn't give this option and I have no tweak utilities loaded for the card. Why is it enabled? Whats the difference between cards? I am using the last official 28.32 drivers from Nvidia's website. I had been using the 23.11's with the ti-200.

I guess it really doesn't matter but I would rather have this disabled. I always thought Sideband being enabled slows things down. I scored 10,765 on 3DMark2001 with no tweaks to the card which doesn't seem to bad (I am no benchmark guru).

Just a curious question. Thanks!

 

[dbal]

Originally posted by: 308nato
With the ti-200 it was not enabled.I am using the last official 28.32 drivers from Nvidia's website.

Same things apply to me and my Gainward GF2 Ti which btw belongs to the same Ti family-Sandra reports it is not supported....

Originally posted by: 308nato
I always thought Sideband being enabled slows things down.

Does it? Anyone knows sth about it generally?

 

[308nato]

Anyone home???????

 

[dbal]

Some new info I gathered around for SideBanding...Being enabled or not depends on the motherboard and the vid card's bios and this differs a lot from one card to another i.e. the GF3 Ti200 u had doesn't have it enabled like my GF2Ti and a friend's GF4Ti 4400. Others do like your new one and my old Radeon VE....As for the motherboard it's what Sandra refers to "SideBand Supported". The majority of latest mobos support it ,but not all cards as I said, thus it is reported correctly as "Disabled" by Sandra...
Question remains though about :
1.its effects in performance and
2.manufacturers and their criteria of enabling it in a card's bios or not....
Anyone cares and knows sth about it???

 

[Gonad the Barbarian]

You'll need to edit the video card's bios to enable sidebanding & fastwrites. The programs you need are:
vgabios
nvflash
ray adam's nvidia bios editor
You'll have to scrounge around for them, but I was able to find links to all of them in various threads posted here.
You'll have to dump your current bios using nvflash, enable fastwrites and/or sidebanding with the bios editor, test with vgabios, and reflash with nvflash.

 

[Gonad the Barbarian]

I just tested 3DMark with sideband enabled and it was down 7 points from the previous run with just fastwrites enabled. I think I remember reading that fastwrites will supercede sidebanding anyway, which would make since considering my scores.

 

[dbal]

Gonad I think u are right- surfing around I found that SBanding is less effective than FW enabled. But still we have to learn why nVidia i.e. has it enabled in some cards' bios and not in others.....