Performance decrease 16mb to 64mb

[Robnaldo]

I am having great deal of trouble with my computer FPS on most games especially Counter Strike. I recently went from a 16mb Voodoo Banshee to a Gf2mx400 64mb and seen littledifference, and somtimes a decrease in performance.

Heres a link to a my system specs and a few things I've tried.

Heres my system and some discussion about it

 

[Cerb]

A GF2MX400 is worse than a GF2, and typically less than 5% better than a normal GF2MX. But...you went from BANSHEE to ANYTHING and LOST performance? Wow. I think I can die now . I can't say what it is, as I've never used either card myself (The Banshee then was like the GFMX cards now...less money, and less value to boot). However, I do know that a similar setup (celeron 466) worked better with a GF2 GTS (my ELSA Gladiac just didn't want to die!) than a voodoo3.

Sounds like the drivers need some overhead room to me (K6-2s had pretty crappy FP performance, so the above celeron may be beating it more than just the 16MHz it has over it).

 

[vss1980]

Having the extra memory could be a bit of a problem for you, and I have seen some noticeable performance losses when the amount of memory in a system goes out of the uncacheable range, but another reason for the loss could be down to the fact that as the Half-Life game engine is a bit CPU limited on your system, the Voodoo cards when making use of Glide support incur less of an overhead than the GF2MX would using OpenGL or D3D. This would mean that even on your friends computer with the slower processor, it could allow the faster Voodoo card to stretch its legs a bit more anyway.
Of course, that assumes are making sure you are finding/selecting the fastest/best rendering method when you used each card.

Also, just cos his system has PCI and yours has AGP doesn't really help. The Banshee didn't really push the limits of AGP and neither does the capacity of the Socket 7 Pentium/K6 architecture, so in having AGP you have an advantage, but not all that much (certainly not as much as the companies would have had you believe at the time).

 

[Robnaldo]

Its not the memory thing cause I've tried 128, 256, 384 mbs and it only improves in performance as it gets higher...

Even with the overhead I can't see his Pentium 1 200mhz(He says its P2 but I never heard of a p2 200) with 64mb of ram and a 16mb Voodoo3 out perform my

Amd k6-2 450 1024k onboard cache
384mb sdram
64mb Gf2MX400
8.4 Fuji 5400rpm

I don't think I installed the card right, because All I did was uninstall all the old stuff and reinstalled the new stuff, but didn't do anything to bios or download any AGP drivers.

 

[BFG10K]

Did you correctly remove all traces of your previous video card?
Do you have the latest BIOS and chipset drivers for your system?

Amd k6-2 450 1024k onboard cache

Are you sure? That's one hell of a cache size.

 

[Mingon]

the k6-2's had 256, 512 0r 1mb of level 3 cache - most used 256 as gains were not much better. As for performance problems are you running exactly the same config in games? i.e 16bit etc. try using regcleaner to look for 3dfx / voodoo traces in the registry

 

[vss1980]

One other thing. What chipset is his computer using and what is yours using?? Its just that, if his computer has an Intel TX chipset (or one of its close relatives), they often beat the pants off some of the other Socket 7 chipsets around in games, even when paired with K6-2-3 CPU's. Certainly, some of the early ALi and SiS Socket 7 AGP chipsets were not competitive at all.

 

[Mingon]

Its am ali I think, no intel board iirc had the lvl 3 cache

 

[Robnaldo]

I have cleared every trace of the Voodoo card, and used Regclean also.
And I have flashed my bios to the latest, and installed the latest 4in1's
And yeah its 1024k of "onboard" L2 cache, different than "On-die"
Read the 4th and 6th topic here for a good explantion about it

Read Here about On-board cache

But if you don't want to read it, basically the the it caches 32mb of ram for every 256k of cache, which equals out to only 128mb of ram of mine being cached.
However I have tried 128, 256, and ,384mb of ram and even if alot of the ram goes uncached I see a performance increase.

And yes I run the same config in games, 16bit etc..

And I'm not sure what chipset my friend has but it must be bad, because he got it at Staples or somewhere like that.
And It could be a Pentium 1 200 or a Pentium 2 200(Maybe he's underclocking it?)
So I'm really not sure what chipset he has.


One person told me to do this:
"try checking your agp drivers for your motherboard.
and increase your bit to 128 in the bios"

But I don't know how to do that or what AGP drivers look like!

 

[vss1980]

The cache on the motherboard was deemed level2 or level3 depending on the CPU. The K6-2 and 3 just moved an extra segment of cache onto the chip, and any extra on the motherboard was practically moved down a level.
As the Pentiums didn't do this, for them the cache on the board was its level2 cache. This is why BIOS support was important for getting the most out of the K6-2's when they first came out.

Only other thing I can think of at the moment is to try adjusting the AGP Aperture size setting in the BIOS. If its set wrongly it can cause instability or slow-downs with one card combination and not with another. Usually its set to 64MB in the BIOS on most PC's, but usually varies between 32MB or 128MB on some machines.

 

[Peter]

Just for the history record, the K6 and K6-2 do not have internal L2 cache. K6-III, K6-2+, K6-III+ do. 2+ has 128K, the III and III+ have 256.

Chipset controlled cache on socket 7 mainboards had sizes of up to 2 MBytes.

 

[Robnaldo]

I should probably just look for a k6-2+, 3, or 3+ but I don't want to order ands its gonna be kinda tuff to find one but I will try.

At least it wont cost much.

And put the aperture from 64 to 128 and seen no difference.

Realized that the AGP drivers were included in the Via 4in1's I installed.

And one other thing, I can't find ANY information on my Videocard...It's supposed to be a Apollo Geforce2 MX400 64mb but I clearly couldnt find any info on it.


And it has a pretty low default clock speeds even for a Gf2mx400

They start at 175 core and 166 memory....I don't have a fan and heatsink on them now, but when I do I'm gonna try to get them to around 210/200.

And someone mentions the overhead being less on a Voodoo3 because of Glide,

Is it possible to get a glide wrapper for my gf2mx400?

 

[Robnaldo]

I finally found the webpage for my Videocard, its an Apollo Bloody Monster Geforce2 MX400

http://www.joytech.com/apoolo Geforce 2 MX400.htm?prd_id=CMX2D

But I can't find a SINGLE website that even mentioned the card, let alone review it.

 

[Bovinicus]

It definitely has to do with the fact that your CPU is holding back performance. The previous poster's explanation about Glide seems to make sense. It requires a little less CPU power to do what it is supposed to.

 

[merlocka]

I would predict that the culprit is more of a chipset/AGP issue. The banshee is basically a PCI card in an AGP slot. Using a real AGP card on a chipset which was anything but reliable for AGP (the MVP3) is asking for trouble.

 

[rogue1979]

Video perforamance definately cpu limited.

 

[Robnaldo]

Hmmm okay thanks for info,
So your saying even if I get an AMD-K6-3 it won't make a difference because the AGP on my mobo sucks cock?


I'm just gonna get a new mobo and chip,
but I don't have the cash and here in Canada its not as cheap.

Or better yet I should just pick up a PCI 16mb Voodoo3 for 20-30 bucks.

I JUST WANT 30 fps!!!!

 

[merlocka]

Originally posted by: Robnaldo
Hmmm okay thanks for info,
So your saying even if I get an AMD-K6-3 it won't make a difference because the AGP on my mobo sucks cock?

That's one way of putting it.

 

[Brian48]

I'm not surprised by this at all. In fact, I would have expected it.

1. On board memory is irrelevant. Being based on the original HL engine, this game doesn't require that much on-board video RAM to begin with.
2. CS is a very CPU intensive game, which leads us to #3.
3. Full OpenGL has a higher CPU overhead than Glide. When you were using the Banshee before, you were running the game with an optimized 3dfx miniport driver, or "3dfx OpenGL". Now you're just using "default OpenGL".

For most games, the GF2MX 200/400 is better than your Banshee, but for a few, specifically those miniport-driven, Quake engine games and those based on the original Unreal engine, the Banshee may still win out. At least until you upgrade your CPU again so you can push this card a little harder.

 

[Robnaldo]

Okay guys I got a hold of my friends 16mb Voodoo3 PCI, the same one that runs better than both my Banshee and my Gf2mx400


Anyways I installed the exact same drivers as him and the latest version of wickedgl

-Official 3dfx drivers 1.07.00-WHQL
and
-Wicked gl 3.02 (Same one I used on my Banshee)


Anyway it runs Counter-strike like crap(On all settings)...it runs worse than both my Gf2mx400 and Banshee.

Now this makes things very confusing cause the first argument was that the Voodoo3 glide made the game less cpu intensive so the 200mhz cpu could run it better......Now I got the same settings and it still runs bad.

2nd argument was the POS AGP slot I have, but I'm not even using a AGP slot now!

Is there somthing else I can change in the the bios....I mean wtf I have tried everything!

I should be getting at least the same fps as my friend. And I met up with some people with the same CPU as me and they get more FPS too!

 

[Cerb]

Have you tried a new OS install? Like just install it over itself, then put in the drivers and see?

 

[Robnaldo]

I'll try that and get back to you

 

[Robnaldo]

Okay didn't do that, but for some reason Wicked GL didn't work till the 2nd time,

Anyways now Counter-Strike runs at a little better than my friends computer,
It may not be a 30 fps but its pretty close.

Also I'm gonna find a heatsink and fan and see how far I can overclock this Voodoo3.

Can anyone show me a link to some 3DFX Voodoo3 3000 PCI 16mb sdr overclocking results?

 

[merlocka]

Can anyone show me a link to some 3DFX Voodoo3 3000 PCI 16mb sdr overclocking results?

I recall a few different types of memory on the Voodoo3. IIRC some of the early cards had SG ram, which was faster than SD ram at default speeds but couldn't overclock well at all. I believe this was a rare version of the card, most had SD ram. Or perhaps I'm getting confused with the banshee.

With SD ram however, V3 cards mainly had siemens, samsung, or hyundai parts. I believe hyundai were generally the best for overclocking, followed by samsung and then siemens. Some folks with hyundai managed close to 200MHz where the others were stopping at 180ish. YMMV.

I have 2 old V3 3000 agp's here, I see similar results. Hyundai card makes 194, Siemens card has artifacts at 182.

 

[TheCorm]

I had a K6-III system with 1024mb Cache and there was not a big difference between a Riva TNT 16mb PCI and a Geforce2 MX 32mb but it didn't go down. I think shoving the MX400 back in and trying a clean install or reinstall of the OS is a good idea. I have encountered some problems in the past when changing to a difference GPU manufacturer based card....even after doing an uninstall beforehand.

Also I'm gonna find a heatsink and fan and see how far I can overclock this Voodoo3.

Is this card actually yours now then?......if not....will your friend appreciate this?

Pentium II's started at 266mhz.....no wait, I think there were some 233mhz components too (??) but I have never heard of a Pentium II 200 that's for sure....it'll be a Pentium MMX 200mhz (Easy to tell this, it will be a socket chip like the K6-2 rather than a cartridge style one.

Corm