FRAME RATE WOES

[bigpoppapumpg]

I see all the benchmarks with quake 3 scores in the upper 100's fps, jedi night scores well over 100 and UT2003 near 100 for geforce 4 ti4600's and fast pc's. I just upgraded my computer to an xp1800+, 256 MB DDR ram, 7200 rpm 80 gig HD, and a gainward geforce 4 ti4200. This system should be fast enough to get very high frame rates in all current generation games. I benchmarked my system with pcmark 2002 and my geforce overclocked to core 293 MHz/memory 572 MHz which is about as fast as it is stable and I got these results: (cpu 4325,mem 2584,hdd 645)

I also ran 3d mark 2001se with my geforce 4 overclocked to it's maximum(any higher and it crashed) of 295/575 and got 8787 which is a respectable score.

My problem is I'm playing UT at 32 bit color and 1024x768 resolution with all features turned on at maximum quality and i'm only averaging between 60 and 72 fps. That seems very low to me, especially when similiar rigs are getting 180 fps or more on Quake 3. I bought this system so I could play UT 2003 and hopefully doom 3 with a decent framerate. If my current rig is only getting 70 fps on UT, does that mean it will be to slow for the next generation of games????

 

[Unolocogringo]

Your harddrive score is very low for your system .Have you installed the motherboard drivers. Defragmented the harddrive latelyetc. These make a lot of difference in benchmarking and games.

I aint signing nothing!!!

 

[bigpoppapumpg]

Actually one of my test runs was as low as 520 for HDD. I'm running a freshly installed version of win xp pro. I run the maxtor 7200 rpm HD off an ata 133 pci card. I did need to install drivers for the card. I believe I've done all that needs to be done for drivers, but yes I do believe my HDD should perform much better. I have 2 partitions on the HD, the primary being 3 GB which the OS is installed on, and the rest being the second partition where all programs and data are stored. the primary partition is formated with NTFS and the extended partition is a hold over from a previous installation of win 98se and is formated in fat32. the benchmarks are installed on the fat32 partition but when pc mark 2002 does the HDD tests I believe it reads and writes to the windows directory cuz I got a message during the test that storage space was low on the drive...and there is 50 GB free on the fat32 partition. Not sure if any of this actually matters though!!!

I've been looking through the geforce 4 ti4200 overclocking posts and it seems that mine overclocks to about average levels. HOWEVER, people with slower or similiar systems to mine are getting 10K or better 3dmark 2001 scores. Why is mine so slow??? I've seen 2 guys with xp 1600's, same memory, same hard drive, same graphic card NOT overclocked get 10K on that test... im starting to hate my rig!!!

 

[eden]

There are indeed many things that could be stalling this comp's performance, and for that I greatly recommend you go to the Win98 forum, or look on the web for the best ways to fully get the most out of a system.

Personally I have no experience in UT, I only saw it a few times at some friends' house, however I can only establish a theory that the FPS you get, 60 and 72, are the cap of your refresh rate. Try using 85hz, then tell us the FPS. I know Half Life games cap FPS, and you need some unlocking code to show the true FPS. (In flamethrower's case, his Quadro DCC did 700FPS in Open GL Couterstrike!)

Now I personally can recommend some things:
1: Flash BIOS
2: Use system optimizing programs like Norton SystemWorks 2002, as for the Win98 version, they really are helpful.
3: From point 2, use the defrag program in it, Speed Disk, use Registry Optimizer, and other things.
4: Try adding more RAM, it could be you have too many things open, and I know that stalls my XP1600+ with a Ti200's performance sometimes.
5: Get the latest Nvidia drivers, 29.42.
6: For the drive, go lookup the manu's website and ask them about its performance, and how you can improve it. Make sure you use UDMA 133, though I dunno if Win 98SE is gonna support it well.
7: Go to BIOS and make sure AGP 4X is on, set AGP apperture to 256MB, though I recommend that you upgrade to 512MB RAM so as to not use the entire RAM for the card (hurry, 256 doesn't cost a lot now), and make sure Fast Writes and Sideband Addressing is OFF.
8:Go to the Advanced Settings in the Display properties, then go to your GF4's settings, then make sure AA is OFF (NOTE: your GF4 may have more options than my Ti200 in these sections):
In Direct 3d: Enable Fog Emulation should be checkmarked.
Set Mipmap quality to High Image Quality, not BEST. Try Blend also, if you don't mind a little less image quality, and I do mean slightly less.
Then go the Open GL tab: Check all except Disable Support for enhanced CPU instruction sets and Force 16-bit Depth Buffer.
Default Color Mode should be 32bbp. Buffer flipping is Auto-Default here. Vsync should be OFF. Aniso should also be OFF, as it takes a big performance hit on GF cards. Leave anything else untouched, Apply and press OK.

9: (OPTIONAL) With this system, IMO WinXP would be worth using on it. You got a perfect processor for it (not cuz it says XP!), your card might benefit more in WinXP's drivers (I heard gaming sometimes is better on XP), WinXP handles memory more efficiently, so make sure to get 512MB RAM and the system will fly fast, and games will arguably have good or better performance.

Could you specify more of your PC speccs please?

These are basic methods to improve, I don't have Win98 SE anymore, so I am no longer that much into it. I do recommend as previously said, to check the web for performance increasing methods, without resorting to OC, as it won't fix the problem but will only hide it, kinda like denial.


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Intel and AMD sitting under a tree, P-R-O-C-E-S-S-I-N-G! <P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by Eden on 07/21/02 01:22 PM.</EM></FONT></P>

 

[bigpoppapumpg]

thanks for the info eden, except you must have missed my post which specified i am running win xp pro. I have 256 MB DDR ram which seems like enough, i doubt 512 would be that much faster. the mobo is a few months old, no bios updates are avaiable yet. I'm using the newest drivers for the geforce 4. system optimizing programs slow down your computer, more garbage running in the background. when I play or benchmark i have NOTHING at all running in the background. agp 4x is on, all my bios setting are optimized.

I'm very interested by that guy who told me my HDD score was very low. that could indeed be a big problem, I don't know what a good HDD score should be, or what might be wrong with my setup. any ideas???

 

[eden]

That could be, but also because 256MB DDR is a bottleneck in XP. I had that and it was too slow and horrible. Go ahead to 512MB, I guarantee there is more performance to be squeezed.

Also you mentioned you needed a PCI card to use ATA133?
You don't even need ATA133 btw, and I suspect the PCI is slowing it, though I personally do not know how this works and am just theorizing.

PS: In reference to Rick's answer, you should go ahead as well with my tip number 6 which will help.

--
Intel and AMD sitting under a tree, P-R-O-C-E-S-S-I-N-G!