Non-existing performance with ATI X800 Pro

[KilgoreTrout]

Problem: my computer has horrible performance in games. Doom 3 stutters and experiences slowdowns, as does Counter-Strike: Source. Average FPS for CS:S is 20-40. Some guy told me that he is running it with a GeForce 2 with FPS over 50. The quality of the graphics doesn't seem to have any bearing on the problem. I can use all the anisotropic filtering in the world or none at all, and it doesn't change anything.

I'm experienced at tweaking Windows, so basically every unnecessary background operation has been removed. No System Restore, no Indexing Service, minimal services and so on. All drives have been defragmented. All drivers are the latest available (Catalyst is 4.8), and they were installed on a clean install of Windows. If this is ATI's idea of a joke, I'm not laughing very much.

Specs:

CPU: AMD Athlon 64 3000+ (2.0 Ghz)
RAM: 1 gigabyte
Motherboard: Asrock K8S8X
Display adapter: Connect 3D ATI Radeon X800 Pro
Operating system: Windows XP Professional, Service Pack 2

UPDATE: I ran Aquamark3. 1024x768, no AA, an.filtering x4. High detail. Score: 29,299. I'm still not laughing.

 

[nanaki333]

just out of curiousity, do you have your motherboard's latest chipset drivers?

 

[Unforgiven]

is the card running at 8x agp?

 

[mechBgon]

Originally posted by: nanaki333
just out of curiousity, do you have your motherboard's latest chipset drivers?

To expand on this question, do you have your motherboard's latest chipset drivers and did you install them before installing the video drivers? (yes = good)

Otherwise I got a GeForce2 I'll trade ya...

 

[KilgoreTrout]

Yes, I have the latest chipset drivers, which were installed before Catalyst. And later reinstalled. There are no BIOS updates for the board related to AGP or ATI. And, the card is running at 8X. The BIOS says so, as does the ATI control panel.

 

[Gnosis]

Have you checked the control panel cpu usage display?
If your system is resting cpu usage should be 0-5%.
If more you could have something *EVIL* working in the
background. Try antivirus etc.

When everything else fails.... uninstall, unplug and
reinstall. beginging with the supplied software and
then adding latest catalyst drivers on top of that.

Also make sure there the card is plugged in ok
with no dust in between and that the extra power cable
is connected ok.

If it STILL dosen't work. I'd try it on another computer
or use my warranty.

 

[KilgoreTrout]

CPU use is normal. Also, the card runs at 50 degrees celsius in desktop use, if that helps.

 

[Gnosis]

5
0 C sounds a bit high for an unstressed GPU but on the
other hand some GPU:s are very power hungry even
while idling. You should check the value while gaming
or running aquamark several times. If the GPU
becomes hotter than the CPU that's suspicous...
And the Cpu itself shouldn't be above 65 C in my
opinion.

*Unfortunately* I have a ASUS X800 Pro and it doesn't
have an onboard temperature sensor so there no
way to compare.

However - it could also have something to do with
Windows Sp2 since it's new and has caused a fair
amount of bugs here and there. It would be
interesting to know if you ever tested the
perfomance on the good old Sp1.

You could also try running the card with just
the official Catalyst drivers and nothing from
Connect 3D.

After that.... I haven't a clue....

 

[oldman420]

try going to the device manager and removing both ati display drivers.
reboot reinstall with new drivers that may help
also check to insure that pci latency isnt affecting the bus in a strange way.
i had a 9700 pro that had that problem i fixed it by eliminating sata so i figure it may be a pci bus issue.

 

[fbrdphreak]

Here is what I would do:
(1) Uninstall ATI drivers and re-install the card as a standard PCI VGA Card. Run Driver Cleaner to remove all traces of the drivers.
(2) Uninstall your mobo drivers (not familiar with what chipset ASRock uses) and see if Driver Cleaner can clean those up as well. (Note: Read Driver Cleaner instructions before use)
(3) Update system BIOS and make sure all AGP options are enabled properly.
(4) Finally re-install latest version of chipset drivers and reboot.
(5) Reinstall latest Catalyst and reboot.

If its still not working, open the Run window and type 'dxdiag' and see if that can help you. Run the D3D draw tests and such and see what it comes up with. Also you might try disabling Fast Writes, although that shouldn't be what is causing such horrible performance. If that doesn't do it, I would either RMA the card, re-format, or try taking SP2 off. Good luck & write back with results/more questions

 

[BCW]

Hi well i have experienced this problem also.

Ive been doing alot of doom3 editing and after installing catalyst 4.8 playing a single room i had made whilst the editor is open makes doom slow to a crawl, like 2-3 frames a second if it would unfreeze long enough for me to bring the console down . It is also extremly noticable playing the game normaly aswell gets really choppy but before was running really smooth .timedemo = 55fps +/-0.5fps

All my drivers are upto date and i dont run a sloppy machine . After much testing uninstalling ,reinstalling both directx9c (because i done this around the same time) and catalyst and reseting of doom3 cfg files) i have found it is due to the catalyst 4.8 drivers, uninstall them and go back to 4.7. I have since seen this on other machines all of different specs but all running 4.8 and all fixed by going back a driver.

I am now a happy doom3 editor .

p.s lets hope they get 4.9 (the so called doom3 fix driver) to work a hell of a lot better.

 

[Gnosis]

I sent you a private message! (just so you don't miss it...)

 

[stultus]

Was a solution ever found?

 

[BCW]

Well i have since done catalyst 4.9 and all seems to be well.

I used ATI's clean tool to make sure no drivers were left on my system then installed catalyst 4.9. I did find however that i had to delete my doomconfig.cfg and let the game remake it before i noticed any improvement ,the file must hold settings related to your graphics driver.

Other things that seemed to make atleast doom run better where :-
Enabling vsync in doom.
In advanced settings of your graphics card under 3d , tick opengl box then click compatability and change triple buffering to enabled.
Install the glprogs fix for doom that changes some of the math for handling textures better on ATI cards.

In all i seem to have around a 10% increase in performance and its ment to be greater for x800 and above boards..I now get 61fps in doom timedemo @ 800x600 medium settings.

GLProgs fix
ATI clean tool

Hope this helps.