Video performance has degraded with 'upgraded' motherboard

[cdawson]

Hello.
I have just 'upgraded' from Asus A7V8X-X motherboard with Athlon XP2700 to a ECS KV2 Lite with Athlon64 3800. I have kept my ATI Radeon 9800 graphics card.
I tested the system with Aquamark 3 benchmark and was very supprised to find that my GPX score had dropped from about 5000 to just under 3000. I was not expecting it to have changed much.
I have reloaded Via Hyperion drivers v5.10 and reloaded graphic drivers, latest v7.3 and an old version v5.10 I had, but no effect.
The settings in the Bios seem OK
Is the ECS board that much worse than the Asus board design, or can anyone suggest another cause.
Can anything be done to restore the graphic performance?
Testing with 2x512MB matching ram. Windows XP2 SP2
Regards

 

[alcattle]

Just glancing at ECS site. I would try turning off this cool and quiet thing. And Google the MB, I saw some links about problems but I am blocked from them at work

 

[cdawson]

Alcattle,

thanks for taking the time to respond.

Unfortunately turning off "cool & quiet" made no difference.

I have studied the ATI catalyst control centre and am currently confused why I cannot adjust the AGP speed. Looking in the Catalyst Info Centre it say under the line "Current Bus setting" that "AGP off"
I am trying to understand why that is so. Surely the AGP is on or I would not be getting any graphic performance
Regrds
Clive

 

[Mondoman]

...
Is the ECS board that much worse than the Asus board design,..

Likely yes. Remember that ECS is a low-end manufacturer and the VIA chipset on the ECS board is a low-end chipset.

 

[cdawson]

More information:
The problem seems to stem from the fact that in DirectX 9.0c Dxdiag, AGP texture acceleration is not available. I have tried uninstalling the ATI graphic drivers, and the Via chipset drivers, and then installing Via drivers, tried both v4.56v (from the ECS website) and the newer v5.10a from Via, before then installing the graphic drivers.
I suspect the problem seems to be that when loading the Via drivers the AGP Gart driver does not appear to be installed, I assume because it doesn't think that a AGP card is fitted.
What are the best BIOS settings inorder to get the Radeon card recognised - or any other suggestions please
Regards
Clive

 

[meljor]

primary video is agp (instead of pci) is on in bios?

ecs uses the same chipsets as asus does. there will be slightly lower peromance compared to asus designs but certainly no more than 5-10%.

your 3800+ should be able to score MUCH higher than the xp 2700+.

 

[pat]

Hello.
I have just 'upgraded' from Asus A7V8X-X motherboard with Athlon XP2700 to a ECS KV2 Lite with Athlon64 3800. I have kept my ATI Radeon 9800 graphics card.
I tested the system with Aquamark 3 benchmark and was very supprised to find that my GPX score had dropped from about 5000 to just under 3000. I was not expecting it to have changed much.
I have reloaded Via Hyperion drivers v5.10 and reloaded graphic drivers, latest v7.3 and an old version v5.10 I had, but no effect.
The settings in the Bios seem OK
Is the ECS board that much worse than the Asus board design, or can anyone suggest another cause.
Can anything be done to restore the graphic performance?
Testing with 2x512MB matching ram. Windows XP2 SP2
Regards

Is that a fresh install or the old installation? Even if it has the same chipset, I would make a fresh install.

 

[meljor]

i gave it some extra thought...

an athlon xp setup has very different power needs compared to an athlon64 setup. it could very well be a psu problem.

if your card has a power connector you should check that. if the problem persists you could maybe borrow a more powerfull psu (especially on the 12v rail) and try that.

good luck and please let us know how it works out.

 

[cdawson]

Pat/ Meljor
Many thanks for your thoughts. I have been away for 2 days, hence the late reply.
Pat,
I tried a fresh install with a spare reformated Hard disk, so just the OS plus drivers. No difference.
Meljor,
My PSU is a 400watt with a claimed 20A rating on the 12V, so I thought it would be adequate, but I'll certainly try a different PSU and report the results
Thanks
Clive

 

[Mondoman]

Any power supply issue would cause crashes or other abnormalities, but wouldn't just slow down graphics performance.

As Pat said above, if you haven't done a "repair install" or a fresh install of Windows, you definitely need to do that. Otherwise, Windows is using the low-level hardware-specific code in its "HAL" (hardware abstraction layer) that was installed for your old MB, which could definitely slow things down (and often causes errors/crashes). Note that this is different from installing drivers.

 

[cdawson]

Mondoman,
Thanks for your thoughts.
As I mentioned above, I did try a fresh install of WinXP SP2 and then the VIA drivers and then the graphic drivers on a spare hard drive that I reformated before installing XP.
So it seems that maybe there is a fault with the motherboard - although I did try a fresh install with an old AGP 4X graphics card and that card caused DxDiag to report that AGP texture acceleration WAS available, so why not with my Radeon 9800??

I did try a different power supply, but it was only 350W. I measured the voltages at the power connector on the Radeon and with both power supplies I measured 4.7V on Red and 11.4V on yellow.
Regards
Clive

 

[buthed]

Maybe it's your video card. I'm just throwing ideas out.

 

[apache_lives]

Hello.
I have just 'upgraded' from Asus A7V8X-X motherboard with Athlon XP2700 to a ECS KV2 Lite with Athlon64 3800. I have kept my ATI Radeon 9800 graphics card.
I tested the system with Aquamark 3 benchmark and was very supprised to find that my GPX score had dropped from about 5000 to just under 3000. I was not expecting it to have changed much.
I have reloaded Via Hyperion drivers v5.10 and reloaded graphic drivers, latest v7.3 and an old version v5.10 I had, but no effect.
The settings in the Bios seem OK
Is the ECS board that much worse than the Asus board design, or can anyone suggest another cause.
Can anything be done to restore the graphic performance?
Testing with 2x512MB matching ram. Windows XP2 SP2
Regards

Perhaps different drivers versions and optimizations - i remember my GF4 Ti4200 scored 13000 3DMark2001 marks with 4x.xx drivers but as soon as i updated to 5x.xx drivers it scored ~10000?

Also chipset drivers perhaps?

 

[yquo]

I had the same problem with via chipset , you card is now working in pci mode so it is crippled.

It happened with the latest driver downloaded from via

So you have 3 options:

1_ Use the latest driver from ECS site
2_ Use the driver that came with the motherboard cd
3_ Use a driver prior to the latest from via website
4_ Use a driver prior to the latest from ECS website

I hope this helps you

 

[cdawson]

I have more test data.

It seems to be a temperature issue, but I'm not sure which component.

Let me explain:

I borrowed an "identical" Radeon 9800 from a friend (we bought them at the same time.

With my Radeon in the PC I get very poor AquaMark results all the time, as reported before but the PC does run stable indefinately

If I install my friends Radeon into a cold machine, I immediately get AquaMark results that should be expected (no change of drivers, just the board changed) BUT after about 15 minutes of normal 2D work, the screen goes blank, sometimes with the monitor clicking as it tries to find a stable mode to work in. When the PC is restarted all seems OK and the PC will be stable indefinately BUT AquaMark score is back low again.

So it seems there is a slight difference between the 2 video cards. If we just had the results of the friend's card the obvious assumption would be that the card is overheating and then giving a fault. BUT, this would not explain why my card does not give the correct 3D performance enen when everything is cold.

Could it be the PSU at fault. I measured votages as reported before. Could my friends Radeon need just slightly lower voltages and therefore works for a while, but then as the temperatures rise the voltage supply drops below a critical level and then the card faults. On restart, when still warm the voltages are at a level that stops it being initialised as an AGP card and thus immediately gives poor 3D results?

The above events was not a one off. I have repeated it 3 times.

Also, if when the screen goes blank, if I switch off for about 30 minutes, when restarted 3D AquaMark performance is correct, but the card "switches off" about 5 minutes later.

Does anyone know whether the voltage level effects the way a Radeon initialises.
Does anyone know what minimum voltage should be on the 5 & 12 volt line.

 

[meljor]

check your cards cooling and ad new thermal past. try it in your friends computer, when it works like it should it is definetly your psu. voltages may look fine but it probably can`t give enough amps.

like i said before, athlon64 requires a better psu for 12v.

you can also try to undervolt your cpu and underclock it a little. also underclock the cards gpu and mem. when it gives you better or equal scores compared to your current ``hot`` situation it`s your psu not handling the amps at full speed.

 

[Mondoman]

You're forgetting the south bridge and MB components. It/they could be marginal, working well enough when cold to allow your friend's board to work at top speed for a while before failing as it/they heat up. Your graphics cards aren't exactly identical -- a small difference could be enough to explain the change in performance, but the underlying cause would still be a MB issue IMHO.

 

[cdawson]

Mondoman, you are right - it's the motherboard.

Another friend was kind enough to lend me his ASUS AV8 motherboard. I put everything I had been using with the ECS KV2 board onto the ASUS and it worked fine from the start. Both video cards giving performance as they should with no deteriation with time.

Many thanks to all those who have spent the time to add their comments to this thread.

One unexpected observation though: Some people's perception of ECS motherboards is poor performance - sure this motherboard has a fault so quality is an issue, BUT the performance of the ECS is better than the ASUS AV8.

Both boards have exactly the same chipset, but AquaMark gave the following score with alll other hardware the same, Athlon 64 3800+, stock speeds and default bios settings (I tried changing some BIOS options but with little effect)

ECS GFX 5451 CPU 10759 Total 43490
ASUS GFX 5358 CPU 9912 Total 42180

That seems a big difference in CPU score.

Any ideas or thoughts?

Regards
Clive

 

[alcattle]

I agree that ECS has good products, when they work, they are an excellent value. The quality issue has been too big to ignore, so they get low marks. I have several ECS MB around here and I really have not had a bad one yet.