On Fri, 18 Jul 2003 14:52:19 +0300, Mario Kadastik
wrote:

Hello,

I have a Asus card with nVidia FX5200, PC2700 memory and Athlon XP 1700+
with WinXP+DX9 and 44.67 driver. I am having problems in games with fog
or smoke rendering. While the game runs smoothly at 1280x1024x32 and all
other effects (lens flare, rain, water animations) are just fine, then
whenever there is a bit smoke and I look through it, then I get around
3-5 fps. As soon as I look away from the smoke I have again normal FPS.
I have not detected this behaviour on any other effect, just the fog.

I have seen this issue on Battlefield 1942 patch 1.4 + road to rome and
on GTA Vice City.

Any ideas wether this is expected behaviour or a problem somewhere ?

Expected.........fog-effects hog GPU power.

(I
don't remember having this problem with my GF4MX440 and this was a DX7
card).

Any help is appreciated,

Mario


The FX5200 is a slow card. To get an exact comparison you need to
prune the effects back to those available on the MX440. Use NVtweak or
similar.

You probably should have considered a FX5200Ultra or better for your
chosen screen-resolution and game software (and your FPS tolerance-
threshold)..

You also may have purchased the 64-bit data-path variant of the FX5200
(non-Ultra).............same memory capacity (128Mbytes or 64Mbytes)
but less-expensive to manufacture..........

64-bit data-path == memory bandwidth 3.2Gbytes/sec
128-bit data-path == memory bandwidth 6.4GBytes/sec

Quite a few FX5200 (non-Ultra) manufacturers omit the memory bandwidth
on their specs and I challenge you to see that figure on the retail
box. Deliberate ?? Do not confuse 128-bit processing with 128-bit
data-path. If you do not see a clearly-stated memory bandwith spec. on
a manufacturer's data sheet, watch out..........

BTW, all FX5200ULTRA boards that I have come across clearly boast
their memory bandwidth, normally around 8.0Gbytes/sec --- and thus
definitely 128-bit data-bus, with the higher memory-clock speed.

Well-informed as to desired performance and actual video card specs
before purchase makes for greater happiness after purchase............

John Lewis