Problems with nVidia GeForce 6200 card

[yelo333]

Originally posted by: Borg20001

Originally posted by: nismotigerwvu
agp 6200 with the 128 bit bus....shouldn;t this unlock to 8 pipes? I'm sure doubling the "power" of the card can't hurt

I thought of this, but it has to be the 43 version and they are rare these days. This one is the 44 version I believe with no pipes available to unlock so I'm stuck with the 4 pipes only.

That is correct. Unless you have a second heatsink (which is for the PCIE-agp bridge), you have the nv44 version.

I too have recently purchased an nvidia 6200 card, hoping it would improve framerates over an old radeon 9000 non-pro card.

While the framerate on newer games has improved (prob. because of the fact it supports DX9), the framerate on older games has worsened (IE, Need for speed High Stakes, a DX7 game). The framerate on DX8 titles seems to be close, though I have noticed that the 9000 often has an edge (like Track Mania: Nations).

So, if performance is only slightly better compared to a radeon 9000, it would not suprise me at all that a GF3 TI200 would best it in many games.

Keep us posted, though -- I've only tried it with the 9X.XX drivers. It is possible the 84.XX drivers could improve performance.

And look on the bright side: Now you can run Windows Vista w/ all the fancy-ness on. And, in my case, coming from an ATI card, I finally have decent graphics performance under Linux.

 

[Borg20001]

Originally posted by: yelo333

That is correct. Unless you have a second heatsink (which is for the PCIE-agp bridge), you have the nv44 version.

I too have recently purchased an nvidia 6200 card, hoping it would improve framerates over an old radeon 9000 non-pro card.

While the framerate on newer games has improved (prob. because of the fact it supports DX9), the framerate on older games has worsened (IE, Need for speed High Stakes, a DX7 game). The framerate on DX8 titles seems to be close, though I have noticed that the 9000 often has an edge (like Track Mania: Nations).

So, if performance is only slightly better compared to a radeon 9000, it would not suprise me at all that a GF3 TI200 would best it in many games.

Keep us posted, though -- I've only tried it with the 9X.XX drivers. It is possible the 84.XX drivers could improve performance.

And look on the bright side: Now you can run Windows Vista w/ all the fancy-ness on. And, in my case, coming from an ATI card, I finally have decent graphics performance under Linux.

Thanks for the feedback - disheartening as it may be. I will have to check other older games to see how they play with the new 6200 card (Need for Speed Underground is one older game that may play better). I will try the 84.80 drivers and hope for the best.

As for Windows Vista - given the constraints of my cpu (P4 1.8 GHz) and RAM constraints, (256M RDRAM), I'm not sure I will ever be able to run Vista on my PC.

Maybe I would have been better off keeping the old GF3 card in and using the cash to get more RAM, though with the cost of RDRAM, what I spent would maybe buy one stick of 256M - and you need to buy them in pairs - guess I'm damned if I do and damned if I don't - don't ya love old tech!!

Thx again!

 

[blckgrffn]

Originally posted by: Borg20001

Originally posted by: yelo333

That is correct. Unless you have a second heatsink (which is for the PCIE-agp bridge), you have the nv44 version.

I too have recently purchased an nvidia 6200 card, hoping it would improve framerates over an old radeon 9000 non-pro card.

While the framerate on newer games has improved (prob. because of the fact it supports DX9), the framerate on older games has worsened (IE, Need for speed High Stakes, a DX7 game). The framerate on DX8 titles seems to be close, though I have noticed that the 9000 often has an edge (like Track Mania: Nations).

So, if performance is only slightly better compared to a radeon 9000, it would not suprise me at all that a GF3 TI200 would best it in many games.

Keep us posted, though -- I've only tried it with the 9X.XX drivers. It is possible the 84.XX drivers could improve performance.

And look on the bright side: Now you can run Windows Vista w/ all the fancy-ness on. And, in my case, coming from an ATI card, I finally have decent graphics performance under Linux.

Thanks for the feedback - disheartening as it may be. I will have to check other older games to see how they play with the new 6200 card (Need for Speed Underground is one older game that may play better). I will try the 84.80 drivers and hope for the best.

As for Windows Vista - given the constraints of my cpu (P4 1.8 GHz) and RAM constraints, (256M RDRAM), I'm not sure I will ever be able to run Vista on my PC.

Maybe I would have been better off keeping the old GF3 card in and using the cash to get more RAM, though with the cost of RDRAM, what I spent would maybe buy one stick of 256M - and you need to buy them in pairs - guess I'm damned if I do and damned if I don't - don't ya love old tech!!

Thx again!

You would be best served by spending ~$300 and upgrading the whole PC. You could do it for cheaper if you wanted, by doing things like keeping the HD.

That's what I would do, your current box is a money pit.

Nat

 

[Borg20001]

Originally posted by: blckgrffn

You would be best served by spending ~$300 and upgrading the whole PC. You could do it for cheaper if you wanted, by doing things like keeping the HD.

That's what I would do, your current box is a money pit.

Nat

Yup, I hear you Nat, but I don't gots the cash at present to do this, though from an economic standpoint it would probably be cheaper in the long run. I ran into the same thing years ago when I had a old PC that had EDO Ram on it. Guess I'm just a sucker for expensive ram motherboards.

As to the overall upgrade, I guess I could keep my two HDs, 250 Gig and 180 Gig and save some dough, but then I'm not sure if I could pull off making the upgrades of an entire system by myself. I can upgrade the small stuff, but putting in a new motherboard and PSU etc. I'm just not very comfortable with that.

Thx

 

[aka1nas]

We just did the same graphics upgrade(ti200--> 6200A) for my wife's PC and the car is a bit faster. In benchmarks it is about 50% faster, but in games I expect it is less. The only real upgrade you will se is that you will get DirectX 9 effects in games that didn't have as nice of a DX 8 codepath.

On the other hand, we initially dropped the 6200 into my brother-in-law's PC while he is staying with us and had issues, so we swapped the ti200 into it and he said he can't tell much of a difference in performance, so take that as you will.

 

[Borg20001]

Originally posted by: fbrdphreak
Looks like all the issues people have suggested have checked out.

Look into your swap file and make sure it has sufficient space. If possible, you can put it on a different hard disk.

To eliminate software issues, I would clean out the drivers and do a fresh install. Here is what I would do for that:

*Download & install DriverCleaner
*Uninstall NVIDIA drivers.
*Reboot into Safe Mode.
*Run DriverCleaner and clean out NVIDIA drivers. Also use the CAB Cleaner function to clean the Drivers.cab and SP2.cab files.
*Reboot and install latest NVIDIA drivers.

If that doesn't fix it, we can go from there.

Well, I followed what was prescribed above.

Checked the Swap file and it was set for 400 - 1000 Meg on the C: drive (10Gig free) and I added on by creating a second swap file on my K drive (31 Gig free) for another 400-1000 Meg in size. (granted these are two partitions on the same HD)

Then I installed DriverCleaner Pro 1.5 and uninstalled the nVidia drivers and rebooted in Safe Mode.

Ran DriverCleaner, then CAB Cleaner function as well (Cleaned the Driver.CAB, and apparently I had two SP2.CAB files recognized by CAB Cleaner so I cleaned them both as well) then ran DriverCleaner for the NVidia drivers.

Rebooted and then installed the NVidia Forcedriver version 84.80.

Restarted again and ran Dxdiag and the Direct Draw and 3D tests all ran fine.

Then I tried a couple of games:

Halo ran fine (still stuck in the Library - I hate the Flood) but then Halo ran well with the GF3Ti200.

BF1942 Secret Weapons - this ran slow when I approached congested battle areas (playing single player, instant Battle). Heard some HD spinning but not alot. (BTW I'm running BF 1942 vers. 1.45.

Both games are running at 1024 x 768.

Did not have time to run BF Vietnam, but based on comments here, it looks like my 256M of RDRAM is the bottleneck and not the video card.

So that's what happened. Didn't really see much improvement, tho based on the latest comments here, it looks like I might not see much game speed improvement anyway with this vid card change.

I'm leaning towards sending it back to NewEgg and look to drop my bux into something to better fix this old pc or get a better used pc as an upgrade.

I appreciate all the help the forum has offered thus far - Thanks much.

Does anyone have any other suggestions?

 

[Borg20001]

Bump for any additional feedback.

 

[fbrdphreak]

If you followed those instructions, it indeed sounds like you are being restricted by the rest of your system.

This slowness in BF1942: is it just the game itself slows down (i.e. running, jumping, moving, firing appears to be in slow-motion or something) or does the game proceed at normal speed and it is just jerky (i.e. the video jumps from one scene to another, it is not smooth or fluid)? If the game is jerky and not fluid or smooth, that sounds like a RAM bottle neck. If the game is smooth and fluid, but just slow; that is probably a video bottle neck.

Good luck

 

[Borg20001]

Originally posted by: fbrdphreak
If you followed those instructions, it indeed sounds like you are being restricted by the rest of your system.

This slowness in BF1942: is it just the game itself slows down (i.e. running, jumping, moving, firing appears to be in slow-motion or something) or does the game proceed at normal speed and it is just jerky (i.e. the video jumps from one scene to another, it is not smooth or fluid)? If the game is jerky and not fluid or smooth, that sounds like a RAM bottle neck. If the game is smooth and fluid, but just slow; that is probably a video bottle neck.

Good luck

Thanks fbrdphreak,

An example of what happens in BF1942, when I go to turn or shoot, the game is very slow, like it is going frame by frame, I'll click the mouse to fire and I'll hear the shot go, but I don't see the effects until several seconds later. Then when I go to escape out of the game back to the menu, the screen goes black for a bit (though I can still hear the sound track) and then after a couple of minutes, I see the menu screen, and then everything is moving normally (on the menu screen), so I can move my mouse cursor around and ti moves at normal speed.

What does all this indicate?

 

[unfalliblekrutch]

Originally posted by: Borg20001

Originally posted by: fbrdphreak
If you followed those instructions, it indeed sounds like you are being restricted by the rest of your system.

This slowness in BF1942: is it just the game itself slows down (i.e. running, jumping, moving, firing appears to be in slow-motion or something) or does the game proceed at normal speed and it is just jerky (i.e. the video jumps from one scene to another, it is not smooth or fluid)? If the game is jerky and not fluid or smooth, that sounds like a RAM bottle neck. If the game is smooth and fluid, but just slow; that is probably a video bottle neck.

Good luck

Thanks fbrdphreak,

An example of what happens in BF1942, when I go to turn or shoot, the game is very slow, like it is going frame by frame, I'll click the mouse to fire and I'll hear the shot go, but I don't see the effects until several seconds later. Then when I go to escape out of the game back to the menu, the screen goes black for a bit (though I can still hear the sound track) and then after a couple of minutes, I see the menu screen, and then everything is moving normally (on the menu screen), so I can move my mouse cursor around and ti moves at normal speed.

What does all this indicate?

sounds like some swapping to page file is going on?

 

[Borg20001]

Originally posted by: unfalliblekrutch

sounds like some swapping to page file is going on?

Unfalliblekrutch, I'm not sure what that means. I know I have received some errors about virtual memory being too low and the system was adjusting it up, but that is all that I know. Does Swapping to page file have anything to do with the systems memory (RAM)?

Okay, I did a bit more research and it looks like you are referring to the virtual memory and it is possible that there are issues with it that are occuring that are causing slowdown on BF1942 (though not on Halo). I read somewhere that you should not have multiple swap files on the same HD, so I may have to check this to see if the swap files I have set on c: drive and k: drive are on the same HD (not sure if they are).

appreciate any feedback on this.

 

[Borg20001]

Bump for any additional input.