Sapphire Radeon 9100 Driver

[ledfortr]

Hello Again!

I have recently installed the Radeon 9100 and I was wondering if anyone knows of a driver that will let me overclock the core and mem on it. I am attempting to locate the latest driver and possibly look into powerstrip 3.4 to tweak it above the 250/200.

Any help would be appreciated.

 

[ledfortr]

I installed Powerstrip and overclocked to 300/250 with driver version 6.13.

Here are the results of the latest 3dmark 2001 SE
Prior to Overlclock, score of 6520
Post Overclock, score of 6912

 

[CraigRT]

This is what I use since I got my Radeon.. works good!

http://www.rage3d.com/r3dtweak/

 

[ledfortr]

I was able to tweak it to no more then 325/250, anybody else?

 

[Blastman]

I think 250mhz for a stock 200mhz memory card is very respectable. I saw one review where they got a Sapphire 128MB (200mhz) card to 261.

Anything over 300mhz for the 9100 GPU core is very good.

What type of system (CPU) are you running that 9100 on?

 

[ledfortr]

CPU is p4 2.0Ghz
512 ddr pc2700
ECS p4vmm2

It is very stable at these speeds, I'm pretty impressed. Its a great buy.

 

[Blastman]

Is that 9100 a PCI card?

 

[Mloot]

I believe the only PCI 9100's are made by Visiontek, and all are supposed to be clocked at 250/250, AFAIK.

 

[Blastman]

Just noticed it's a Sapphire card and they only make AGP models.

 

[Blastman]

The reason I asked that, is because I was thinking his score should be around close to 8000 on a P4 2.0 and that card at stock speeds. He?s running 20% slower than I would expect and that is what the penalty a PCI card has compared to a AGP card.

In this review of a Sapphire 128MB they got 8760 (250/200) on a P4-2.48 (550fsb), and 10,170 at (290/261).

I?m expecting around 6500 3Dmark2001 on my Sapphire 9100 (250/230) 64MB (1.33Ghz Celeron-T) which I will get hopefully next week and my system isn't nearly as fast as his in gaming.

 

[ledfortr]

I agree, I think its coming in low. I'm trying to figure out why. The tests were performed with 3dmark2001 se at 1024x768 (32bit)

 

[Blastman]

Under the Direct3d panel, hit the ? "Always Off" ? button under ?. Wait for Vertical Sync ...........See if that improves your score.

 

[ledfortr]

I change the vertical synch setting and it did not improve the score. 6813 was my score.

Any ideas??

 

[nardvark]

I don't know. I just got my 64mb 9100 from sapphire. stock is 250/230, and I've got it running stable at 315/270.
However, my 3DMark2001SE is capping at about 6450. I don't place a lot of value on this benchmark, but it does lower than it should be. On the plus side, at stock speeds it was at about 5500, so overclocking definitely did something.
Any ideas?
I can't remember what's in my profile, so just in case, I'm running on a 1.7 Ghz P4 (willy), 384MB RDRAM, and the above-mentioned video card.

 

[Blastman]

The only thing I can think of is to get a newer version of drivers for your card. The drivers that came on a CD with your card are probably a little outdated, and may be more than a year old. In the summer of last year (about late June 2002), ATI?s new drivers increased performance significantly -- by about 15 - 20%. So if the drivers you have are before that date your 3Dmark2001 scores will probably be down by about 15 - 20%.

Go to Sapphiretech

 

[selfbuilt]

Your 3DMark 2001 score should be a bit higher on that setup ... do you have the latest intel chipset drivers (AGP drivers) for your motherboard?

My son's retail ATI 8500LE 64MB (identifical to 9100 64MB), running at stock 230/230 on an AMD 1800+ system (Asus A7V8X, 512MB PC2700) scores about 8150 with the Catalyst 3.2 drivers running.

I would definitely try updating your AGP and video card drivers to see if it helps.

 

[ledfortr]

The video drivers are the latest and greatest from ATI. Version 6.14.1.6307. I am running now at 300/265 with a score of 7040.
Bios version of 9100 is VER008.004.008.000
I am running on the latest version BIOS for my mb also.

 

[Blastman]

My VIA 4in1?s improve AGP performance by 20-25% over the W-XP drivers.

 

[ledfortr]

It doesn't look like ECS has an updated driver
MOBO INFO
:frown:
I don't believe they have one for this card outside of standard xp, unless I am missing something (which i hope i am)

 

[Blastman]

Your M/B should have come with a CD with the proper drivers on it.

Since you M/B has onboard graphics, when you uninstalled your onboard Savage graphics, you may have also removed your VIA AGP drivers too. I?m not familiar on how to keep those drivers and still install an external AGP card like a 9100.

ADD: Your M/B CD should have the proper 4in1?s. Just reinstall them. You should be able to install them without the Savage graphics (I would think).

 

[ledfortr]

I was able to locate some updates at viaarena.com, the 4in1 drivers are now called Via Hyperion 4 in 1. Once installed, I was able to get a score of 7110.

The test left many lines and artifacts though.... looks bad

 

[Blastman]

I think you may have to uninstall you graphic card drivers before installing 4in1?s (not sure about this). On my ABIT VH6T (apollo pro 133T) it says the VIA 4in1s have to be installed before the VGA. There are different 4in1s for 98SE and W2000/XP.

 

[ledfortr]

I just uninstalled the vga driver, installed the 4 in 1 and reinstalled the vga driver (rebooting at each step) and gave me similar results with lines on the screen and artifacts.....

 

[Blastman]

Well, it looks like we may have found your problem.

See this rage3d ?

Your card may be a 64bit memory version rather than a 128bit. This would drop the performance a good 25% if not more. Get RivaTuner, it can verify whether your card is on a 64bit memory bus.

 

[ledfortr]

The card is a 64bit memory bus!

I sent the card back to newegg this morning. The card has already dropped $5 since i purchased it 2 weeks ago!

I also recently had a motherboard die and a replacement is on its way. I just upgraded to an ECS L4VXA2 with a 2.66Ghz p4. The new board supports 8x agp!
Now the question..... Is there a 9100 with 128bit memory bus that support 8x agp out there?