Radeon 9800 Pro Problem - a bottleneck?

[jrnewquist]

My Dell Dimension 8100 (1.5 GHz P4 / 512MB of RAM / 4x AGP) ran Quake 3 with a GeForce2 Ultra pretty well for its time - FPS at 1024x768 were well over 100 with that card. But it was time to upgrade, and I selected the ATI Radeon 9800 Pro 128MB.

However, after installing the 9800, I noticed that things felt consistently sluggish. The FPS rating at *all resolutions* under Quake 3 maxes out around 90. 640x480 all the way up to 1600x1200. Weird.

Performance with other video games is similarly choppy - from Morrowind to Rise of Nations to Freelancer. The card is clearly not delivering the performance it is capable of.

I've tried deactivating all the optional bells and whistles (FSAA, etc.) - no difference. Installed today's new Cat 3.5 drivers - no difference. I've tried a different monitor - no difference.

Any ideas what might be going on here?

 

[daddywags214]

Yeppo, you have a processor bottleneck. That ancient P4 is a decent processor, but you need at least 1.8-2.0gHz P4 or at least an AMD Athlon XP 1700+ to truly get everything from that card. But if QIII is all you play, you don't really need to upgrade, because 90fps should be enough.

Tit for tat, butter for fat, ATi's dog kicks nVidia's cat

(Maximum PC)

 

[cleeve]

If you want a second opinion, read daddywag's post and put my name at the end of it.

A 1.5 Ghz P4 is barely faster than a 1.2 Ghz Athlon. You need some more horsepower, dude.

 

[jrnewquist]

More processor: check.

But how does this explain the video performance of games like Quake 3 and Dark Age of Camelot and whatever else actually *going down*? You'd think that with all other things equal (they are), adding a better video card would improve my graphical performance - not dececrease it.

Do you agree?

 

[cleeve]

Newer GPU's rely more heavily on the performance of the CPU. They work closely together.

The newer high-end cards usually work poorly with older hardware, to a point.

An Athlon 1800+ or P4 2Ghz should show what the card's capable of.

 

[shadus]

Several thoughts occur, one is reinstall your OS. nVidia drivers don't play well with ATi drivers.

Second thought is, you need a much faster processor and probally faster ram also, chances are those two places are your bottle neck.

Shadus

 

[jrnewquist]

I don't buy it, guys.

For two reasons.

(1) Previously, I got *way* better FPS on all my games than I did before. I have a hard time believing that newer vid cards actually load the CPUs so much more that I'm throttling at *exactly* 90 FPS on all Quake 3 resolutions.

(2) According to the following THW chart, I should be seeing 192 FPS with my system under a Radeon 9700 Pro... and I've got an 9800!

http://www.tomshardware.com/cpu/20030217/cpu_charts-22.html

I've got to think that something else is going on here.

I'll try wiping the system and reinstalling XP, and I'll report back.

In the meantime, I'll investigate motherboard replacements, should it need to come to that.

Thanks!

 

[jrnewquist]

Update...

No help. Installed XP, updated to SP 1.

Installed newest Intel chipset AGP drivers. Installed Catalyst 3.5 - XP vid drivers plus control panel. Installed Q3A, updated to latest patch.

Result: no change.

If you watch Quake 3 FPS, it maxxes out around 90, but the timedemo results in ~65 FPS at all resolutions.

I guess a call to ATI tech support is in the stars. People with machines just like mine are getting 2-3 times the level of performance, so something must be fishy with my setup - or the card itself.

Damn that there isn't a software widget setting that would explain this.

Interesting note: I left the perf meter running while I ran Q3A. When I quit, I did see that CPU was pinned at 100% during the run of the app... which tends to lend credence to the CPU bottleneck theory, the THW results I mentioned above notwithstanding. Crazy!

 

[Willamette_sucks]

Type this into the quake 3 console...
/com_maxFPS 300

Also make sure vsync is disabled.

Thankyou very much.

"Every Day is the Right Day." -Pink Floyd<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by Willamette_sucks on 06/25/03 00:36 AM.</EM></FONT></P>

 

[mondschatten]

Hi. Some questions for you. I remember a number of years ago video cards first started receiving their own microprocessors (before fans were being used on the cards) that were supposed to relieve the burden on the computer's cpu. Is that trend reversing or did it never really materialize?
If so, does that mean it is essentially a necessity to buy a high-powered cpu if you want good results with a mid to high-level video card? I've been out of the tech industry for about 5 years now so this may seem like a stupid question. Thanks.

 

[Willamette_sucks]

You're exactly right. That is a dumb question.
A newer better card shouldnt perform WORSE, but it may not perform any better, depending on the circumstances.
In his case, it should perform much better, I think hes probly just being gay.

If he'll take my advice in my last post I think he will find his quake 3 fps is much higher than 90

"Every Day is the Right Day." -Pink Floyd

 

[lhgpoobaa]

I had a similar deal to you... went from a Geforce2Pro to a R9700pro.
BIIIIG difference in performance!
CPU is 1750Mhz OC'ed AMD though with 167Mhz DDR, alot more grunt there.
I did have problems with lockups though... Most likely to do with the old Nvidia drivers.

Best if you do a fresh install of windows.
Its recommended.

<b>Melb_angel: PooBaa's <A HREF="http://www.secretarythemovie.com" target="_new">Secretary!</A></b>

 

[mondschatten]

Ha! Thanks for agreeing with me on the potential stupidity of my question. However, I think you may have forgotten the expressed purpose for adding these high-powered chips to video cards some years back. The reason given by video card manufacturers for these new chips was to relieve the cpu burden and allow gamers to purchase less powerful, less expensive computers. It was a great idea although it may have gone by the wayside.

With regard to the idea that a newer card should never perform worse than an older card on an older system, I disagree with you. If the older card was designed to do take over most of the calculations and was less dependent on the cpu for processing power, then a gamer would not need as powerful a system. When the newer card replaces the old, if it's processing power is more heavily tied to the computer's cpu, one might very well see a marked decrease in overall gaming performance. This is only true for older games, of course.

Anyhow, I still don't have a definitive answer to my original question - Are today's mid and high-level video cards designed to work off of the cpu and so do not do as much processing themselves? Then does that mean gamers should only buy relatively high-end systems even when buying a mid-level video card such as the Radeon 9600 PRO or the GeForce FX 5200 Ultra?

 

[cleeve]

Well, I had a look at Tom's VGA charts. It was interesting that 95% of the time cards performed with the same "heiarchy", regardless of the CPU used. There were some exceptions however, sometimes CPUs would change places:

http://www6.tomshardware.com/graphic/20030120/vgacharts-02.html

I guess there's no easy answer... probably the amount of CPU codependance is based on the hardware architecture of the GPU.

But after checking those charts out, it seems obvious that your framerates should be way higher than what you're getting.

Do you have Vsync enabled maybe? This would limit your FPS to your monitor's refresh rate...

------------------
Radeon 9500 w/256 bit memory bus @ 367/310
AMD AthlonXP 2000+
3dMark03: 3439