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Gf2 MX400 pci

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  • Graphics Cards
  • PCI
  • Overclocking
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April 1, 2002 1:16:03 AM

well im stuck with this card and its horrible but i nd some help. I play counter strike on it and i get horrible frame rates of like 10 to 15 sometimes even lower its really bad. Is their anything i can do to get better frame rates and will tweaking help at all. Im stuck with pci cuz i got an hp last year and its really bad with a 700 mhz celeron. I will be building a new comp soon hopefully but i nd to get some help soon with my crappy card. btw i have the game playing at a small screen size to.

More about : gf2 mx400 pci

April 1, 2002 1:45:13 AM

700Mhz Celeron Cumine and a Geforce2 Mx 64MB PCI...oh gods I haven't ran on a system that bad since I first got a Riva Tnt...Well, first of all, get some kind of overclocking utility. Go to http://guru3d.com/rivatuner/ to download rivatuner, or just do a search. Lets see...PCI Gf2Mx...you can probably get the core to somewhere around 200 and the memory up to about 183, 200 if you are very lucky (good memory on chip). Other than that, you should switch the settings of Counter-Strike to very low level. No more than 800x600 resolution, 16 bits, and generally low settings. Other than that, you may want to buy some more SDRAM...that usually helps.

"When there's a will, there's a way."
April 1, 2002 2:54:30 AM

i want to have vsync disabled right and my clock settings we3re already at 200 and 167 so how much higher should i try and get them
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April 1, 2002 4:16:03 AM

Try to get your mem speed up to 183Mhz, if you can, go 200Mhz. Make sure you manually turned off anti-aliasing, that will kill your performance easily. Core clock isn't as important as memory, so leave it at 200Mhz. Bottom line, get your memory as high as possible.

"When there's a will, there's a way."
April 1, 2002 6:39:20 AM

the pci geforce 2 mx400 dosnt have AA function..i think.. but just be sure u have eveything closed befor u play cs
April 1, 2002 3:14:22 PM

Well, i'm not sure myself. I just think that Nvidia includes support for AA in it's recent 21.83 drivers. Still, if he DID use AA in games for the Mx400, it would have absolutely crap performance.

"When there's a will, there's a way."
April 1, 2002 4:32:48 PM

The AGP version has 2/4x AA, don't know about the PCI, they probably have it too.

<b>THGC:</b> before: :frown: :eek:  , after: :smile: :cool: .
April 1, 2002 4:38:52 PM

For your information I OC'ed my ASUS GeForce2 MX AGP from 175/166 MHz (GPU/mem) to 225/205 MHz. So if you have a quality card you can OC it pretty high. Just increase it a couple of MHz a time and test if you don't get strange screens (2D problems), missing textures, or crash black screens when loading a 3D game.

<b>THGC:</b> before: :frown: :eek:  , after: :smile: :cool: .
April 1, 2002 5:12:47 PM

Is there any feasible reason to even attempt using even 2x AA on a Gf2MX? It's performance would be castrated so badly...especially with a .7Ghz Celeron...My gods, you would have to run at like 7-10FPS for any game! Maybe 20 at Q3!

"When there's a will, there's a way."
April 1, 2002 5:25:16 PM

Yes, you're right it is useless, but you <i>can</i> use it :smile: .

<b>THGC:</b> before: :frown: :eek:  , after: :smile: :cool: .
April 1, 2002 11:16:38 PM

i think i turned it off the aa in rage but how do i know for sure. I am getting a lil better fps but not much. like 10 to 20 now
April 1, 2002 11:57:21 PM

go to display properties in the control panel, and choose advanced. Then, there is a setting strictly for Nvidia controls. You need to go to the control for anti-aliasing and set it off. Make sure it isn't 2x or 4x. That will destroy your performance

"When there's a will, there's a way."
April 2, 2002 2:08:33 AM

hey man thanks a lot for ur help
April 2, 2002 3:04:57 AM

Hey, no problem =) Glad to help out

"When there's a will, there's a way."
a b U Graphics card
a b K Overclocking
April 2, 2002 11:32:48 PM

Dude, it's the PCI bus. The TNT2 already saturated the PCI bus, so any faster card does not much better.

What's the frequency, Kenneth?
April 2, 2002 11:42:22 PM

Try saying that to people who would STILL buy a Gf4Mx 440 PCI. I have a friend who argued with me that his Gf2Mx PCI was "just as good as AGP"...Oh did he have regrets after buying it :) 

"When there's a will, there's a way."
April 3, 2002 1:52:36 AM

boy do i regret ever getting an hp never again will i make this mistake. Im so sick of this crappy pci geforce 2mx400. It doesnt do anything good and the only reason why i got it was to play medal of honor aa and that turned out pretty bad. O well i guess i just gotta wait til i build my new comp.
a b U Graphics card
a b K Overclocking
April 3, 2002 2:15:29 AM

One problem is that the numbers lie! Look at the specs, the chip is the same, so the numbers for the ship are the same. But the chip can only use what is fed to it! This was the main reason the full version TNT2, with it's 128-bit memory path, beet the MX200, with a 64-bit memory path. A chain is only as strong as its weakest link!

What's the frequency, Kenneth?
April 3, 2002 7:30:48 PM

It's a shame people don't know what AGP 2x and 4x mean. It's a real shame they don't know that AGP doesn't equal PCI! I can't wait to see a Gf5 with AGP 8x and sorrowfully underclocking Gf5Mx PCI...thats so sad!

"When there's a will, there's a way."
a b U Graphics card
a b K Overclocking
April 3, 2002 9:52:47 PM

Even with the newest cards people are still finding AGP4x to provide minimal gains over AGP2x. Although AGP2x is only 4 times as fast as PCI, AGP has other features that help boost performance, like direct memory access and the fact that it doesn't have to share buswidth with the IDE controller, drives, soundcard, etc.

What's the frequency, Kenneth?
April 3, 2002 11:09:31 PM

"Even with the newest cards people are still finding AGP4x to provide minimal gains over AGP2x. Although AGP2x is only 4 times as fast as PCI, AGP has other features that help boost performance, like direct memory access and the fact that it doesn't have to share buswidth with the IDE controller, drives, soundcard, etc."

This is probably a bad analogy, so try to bear with me. Is it that PCI devices are like RDRAM in a sense that they have to all be working in a single channel, sorta like the serial requirement of RDRAM? In that same sense, does this lag cause the PCI to be slower than AGP just by the other devices slowing it down?

"Even with the newest cards people are still finding AGP4x to provide minimal gains over AGP2x"

Does this mean video cards will have to evolve before we can get to a faster AGP bus like the 8x?

"When there's a will, there's a way."
a b U Graphics card
a b K Overclocking
April 4, 2002 1:07:38 AM

The PCI bus is limited to 133MB/s to the southbridge, so all slots are bottlenecked to the bandwidth of a single slot, on most PC boards.

Cards can be made AGP8x compliant without actually transferring enough information to fill that bandwidth.

What's the frequency, Kenneth?
April 4, 2002 3:04:52 AM

Are we actually going to be taking advantage of AGP 8x anytime soon?

"When there's a will, there's a way."
April 4, 2002 4:16:43 AM

As already mentioned, the big bottleneck is the PCI bus.

To improve performance you need to minimize the amount textures stored in system memory and limit the textures to video card's memory. You can do this by setting the PCI memory to the minimum amounts. In display properties under advanced settings you will see options for OpenGL and Direct3D. In one of these (I forget which) you can set the PCI memory to just 5 MB. In the other you can set it to zero. These two settings will pretty much restrict all your textures to local video card memory. This will improve performance as long as all the textures will fit in that video memory but will decrease the amount of textures that can be stored. With a 32MB video card, resolution could be limited to 800x600 or lower depending on the game, otherwise the game will run out of texture memory. With a 64 MB MX400 this should not be a problem with most games. 1024x768 might be possible. I say "might be possible" because much data still must be passed to the video card, even if all the textures are stored in the video cards memory. This information includes vertex information as well as new textures (as scenes change). The amount vertex information is the same for all resolutions but textures are larger for higher resolutions requiring more memory.

To limit the amount of memory used (and allow games to run with just local video memory) keep the resolution low enough. Using 16-bit textures instead of 32-bit textures will also save memory. Using 16-bit colors instead of 32-bit colors will greatly cut the amount of memory needed, in fact by half, but will also greatly degrade visual quality. All of these will also improve performance.

<b>I have so many cookies I now have a FAT problem!</b><P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by phsstpok on 04/04/02 00:20 AM.</EM></FONT></P>
a b U Graphics card
a b K Overclocking
April 4, 2002 4:45:39 AM

No, not unless it adds something more besides faster transfer rates.

What's the frequency, Kenneth?
April 14, 2002 3:09:48 PM

I benchmarked my Gf2 mx400 AGP with 2AA on and it was horrible. i normally get around 3050 3D marks on 3Dmark2001, but with 2AA i got 1689! awful.

but... i got up to 3267 marks o'c at 220/220. :) 

<b>uraniborg
<font color=purple>"Brilliant thinkers have often met violent opposition from mediocre minds."
April 14, 2002 4:09:47 PM

Heh, yeah I know, anything below a Gf3 or R8.5K can't do AA for beans.

"When there's a will, there's a way."
!