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FX5900XT in older motherboard with "slow" CPU



 
 
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  #1  
Old September 7th 04, 09:11 PM
Martin Maat
external usenet poster
 
Posts: n/a
Default FX5900XT in older motherboard with "slow" CPU

Hi.

This was going to be a call for help but as I was writing the message I got
an idea and now I have no problem anymore. So it became a happy report,
perhaps useful to others in a similar situation.

After reading some reviews, I bought this wonderful FX5900XT board (from
Point of View). The mere looks of it are worth the 199 Euros I spent. But
since it fitted the AGP slot in my computer I figured I might want to play
some games on it too.

My PC isn't the latest thing on the market, it is an Asus K7V with an
original Slot-A Athlon 650 Mhz and the video card to be replaced is a
GeForce2 GTS which served me well for some four years now.

Before anyone wants to give me the song and dance about putting a top notch
card like the FX5900XT into a crappy old PC like mine being pointless, save
it. I just started to hit a number of games that wouldn't run anymore due to
the mere DirectX7 capability of my old system and felt the need for
something more current. Frame rates weren't even a (big) problem (most of
the time) and I felt like getting this neat device, hoping it would make it
easier for me to postpone the major system upgrade I have in mind to some
later moment at which Athlon64 prices may have come down a little and the
full-fledged chipsets and 939 socket boards are more affordable.

So, now for the problem...

I got distorted images in Windows straight away, as if the Windows were
painted and it started to rain terpentine on them. Moving the mouse made it
worse until I could not read text anymore. If I'd grab the caption bar on
some window and dragged it, the machine would lock up.

If I started a game, it didn't take very long until the machine would lock
up either. If I were real quick I could just get a glimpse of those cool
fancy DirectX9 water effects before the whole thing broke down.

My first thoughts were that the card would propably be bad. Then I spoke to
my neighbor whom I had helped out the other day with his brand new PC (which
has a inferior FX5200 that I could now look down on in full satisfaction). I
asked him if I could try the card in his machine, he agreed, and the card
turned out to be trouble free. Brilliant picture, no prolem whatsoever.


I did plug in the power connector (incidently I forgot to do so in my
neighbor's PC and the card still worked fine, although I didn't try to run
Far Cry in 1600x1200 or anything like that). I tried both the latest and the
53-something driver versions. My power supply is new, a 350 W AOpen which
looks like good quality overall. What could be wrong?

The lock-ups due to dragging and the corrupted image pointed in the
direction of AGP traffic. The card should be able to handle anything from 2x
to 8x AGP, the motherboard is limited to 4x AGP which showed up as the
current speed if I looked at display properties. I decided to go through the
BIOS to see if I could somehow lock down the AGP speed to 2x to see if that
would make any difference.

Apperently, I could choose between 4x and 2x. After setting the AGP bus to
2x things looked a lot better!

I started dragging windows, having TV on simultaniously, no problem. Time
for the goodies: games!

My favorite game of the last couple of years is Max Payne. I played "Max
Payne 2" start to end three times on my GeForce2 and it performed relatively
well considering it is a modern game, it has a real clever and efficient
engine. Call of Duty either uses a rather blunt engine or is just done
poorly, I couldn't play that properly even on 640x480 on my hardware while
it didn't look much better then Quake 2. Apart from that it is really boring
but I guess that is a personal thing. With "Max Payne 2" I had to go
moderate on featudes, medium quality and 1152x864 was about what it could
handle but even then I was really impressed by the graphics, it was the
prettiest game I had seen on my machine. And that was "only" GeForce2 with
T&L.

But now I had the big guns! I started the game and immeditely went to video
settings to max out everything: high quality. Furthermore, 1280x1024 seemed
appropriate, I was Mr. Power Graphics now. The results were most impressive.
I saw a whole array of visual effects I had never seen before. Blasts,
smoke, spaying blood, an effective after-glow in movements expressing Max's
half consciousness as het stumbles down the hospital hallways... This is
beautiful! And no hickups or shocky behavior whatsoever.

Then I tried Splinter Cell, a game that wouldn't run at all on the GeForce2.
Jeeezzz, they really made some progress in the gaming industry while I
wasn't looking! Also on maximum quality and 1280x1024, fluently!

Mind I am still running an old Athlon 650 MHz. All that crap about the need
for a balanced system, that you shouldn't combine the top card with a slow
CPU, it's nonsense! Apperently, modern games lean so heavily on the graphics
hardware that you actually do get away with a relatively slow processor.

I was already anticipating shelling out 700 Euro's on new hardware just to
match the graphics card. No way Jose! I am just fine for the next couple of
years with my Athlon 650 MHz and mij FX5900XT, thank you! The results of
just a graphics card upgrade are more than satisfying, I can recommend it to
anyone who is considering spending money on a new PC just to play the latest
DirectX9 games.

Regards,

Martin.


  #2  
Old September 7th 04, 10:20 PM
sp
external usenet poster
 
Posts: n/a
Default

i got a 5900xt in my P4 2.8GHz rig. FarCry runs at about 60fps on medium
detail. run 3dmark2001SE on your machine and post the results (default
setting). It would be interesting how many marks your rig gets.

sp

"Martin Maat" wrote in message
...
Hi.

This was going to be a call for help but as I was writing the message I
got
an idea and now I have no problem anymore. So it became a happy report,
perhaps useful to others in a similar situation.

After reading some reviews, I bought this wonderful FX5900XT board (from
Point of View). The mere looks of it are worth the 199 Euros I spent. But
since it fitted the AGP slot in my computer I figured I might want to play
some games on it too.

My PC isn't the latest thing on the market, it is an Asus K7V with an
original Slot-A Athlon 650 Mhz and the video card to be replaced is a
GeForce2 GTS which served me well for some four years now.

Before anyone wants to give me the song and dance about putting a top
notch
card like the FX5900XT into a crappy old PC like mine being pointless,
save
it. I just started to hit a number of games that wouldn't run anymore due
to
the mere DirectX7 capability of my old system and felt the need for
something more current. Frame rates weren't even a (big) problem (most of
the time) and I felt like getting this neat device, hoping it would make
it
easier for me to postpone the major system upgrade I have in mind to some
later moment at which Athlon64 prices may have come down a little and the
full-fledged chipsets and 939 socket boards are more affordable.

So, now for the problem...

I got distorted images in Windows straight away, as if the Windows were
painted and it started to rain terpentine on them. Moving the mouse made
it
worse until I could not read text anymore. If I'd grab the caption bar on
some window and dragged it, the machine would lock up.

If I started a game, it didn't take very long until the machine would lock
up either. If I were real quick I could just get a glimpse of those cool
fancy DirectX9 water effects before the whole thing broke down.

My first thoughts were that the card would propably be bad. Then I spoke
to
my neighbor whom I had helped out the other day with his brand new PC
(which
has a inferior FX5200 that I could now look down on in full satisfaction).
I
asked him if I could try the card in his machine, he agreed, and the card
turned out to be trouble free. Brilliant picture, no prolem whatsoever.


I did plug in the power connector (incidently I forgot to do so in my
neighbor's PC and the card still worked fine, although I didn't try to run
Far Cry in 1600x1200 or anything like that). I tried both the latest and
the
53-something driver versions. My power supply is new, a 350 W AOpen which
looks like good quality overall. What could be wrong?

The lock-ups due to dragging and the corrupted image pointed in the
direction of AGP traffic. The card should be able to handle anything from
2x
to 8x AGP, the motherboard is limited to 4x AGP which showed up as the
current speed if I looked at display properties. I decided to go through
the
BIOS to see if I could somehow lock down the AGP speed to 2x to see if
that
would make any difference.

Apperently, I could choose between 4x and 2x. After setting the AGP bus to
2x things looked a lot better!

I started dragging windows, having TV on simultaniously, no problem. Time
for the goodies: games!

My favorite game of the last couple of years is Max Payne. I played "Max
Payne 2" start to end three times on my GeForce2 and it performed
relatively
well considering it is a modern game, it has a real clever and efficient
engine. Call of Duty either uses a rather blunt engine or is just done
poorly, I couldn't play that properly even on 640x480 on my hardware while
it didn't look much better then Quake 2. Apart from that it is really
boring
but I guess that is a personal thing. With "Max Payne 2" I had to go
moderate on featudes, medium quality and 1152x864 was about what it could
handle but even then I was really impressed by the graphics, it was the
prettiest game I had seen on my machine. And that was "only" GeForce2 with
T&L.

But now I had the big guns! I started the game and immeditely went to
video
settings to max out everything: high quality. Furthermore, 1280x1024
seemed
appropriate, I was Mr. Power Graphics now. The results were most
impressive.
I saw a whole array of visual effects I had never seen before. Blasts,
smoke, spaying blood, an effective after-glow in movements expressing
Max's
half consciousness as het stumbles down the hospital hallways... This is
beautiful! And no hickups or shocky behavior whatsoever.

Then I tried Splinter Cell, a game that wouldn't run at all on the
GeForce2.
Jeeezzz, they really made some progress in the gaming industry while I
wasn't looking! Also on maximum quality and 1280x1024, fluently!

Mind I am still running an old Athlon 650 MHz. All that crap about the
need
for a balanced system, that you shouldn't combine the top card with a slow
CPU, it's nonsense! Apperently, modern games lean so heavily on the
graphics
hardware that you actually do get away with a relatively slow processor.

I was already anticipating shelling out 700 Euro's on new hardware just to
match the graphics card. No way Jose! I am just fine for the next couple
of
years with my Athlon 650 MHz and mij FX5900XT, thank you! The results of
just a graphics card upgrade are more than satisfying, I can recommend it
to
anyone who is considering spending money on a new PC just to play the
latest
DirectX9 games.

Regards,

Martin.




  #3  
Old September 8th 04, 03:27 AM
Raj
external usenet poster
 
Posts: n/a
Default

Cool, on my 2nd machine I will slap in my ol Geforce 3 ti500 (slot 1 p3 450)
see what kind of 3d it can score lol
"Martin Maat" wrote in message
...
Hi.

This was going to be a call for help but as I was writing the message I
got
an idea and now I have no problem anymore. So it became a happy report,
perhaps useful to others in a similar situation.

After reading some reviews, I bought this wonderful FX5900XT board (from
Point of View). The mere looks of it are worth the 199 Euros I spent. But
since it fitted the AGP slot in my computer I figured I might want to play
some games on it too.

My PC isn't the latest thing on the market, it is an Asus K7V with an
original Slot-A Athlon 650 Mhz and the video card to be replaced is a
GeForce2 GTS which served me well for some four years now.

Before anyone wants to give me the song and dance about putting a top
notch
card like the FX5900XT into a crappy old PC like mine being pointless,
save
it. I just started to hit a number of games that wouldn't run anymore due
to
the mere DirectX7 capability of my old system and felt the need for
something more current. Frame rates weren't even a (big) problem (most of
the time) and I felt like getting this neat device, hoping it would make
it
easier for me to postpone the major system upgrade I have in mind to some
later moment at which Athlon64 prices may have come down a little and the
full-fledged chipsets and 939 socket boards are more affordable.

So, now for the problem...

I got distorted images in Windows straight away, as if the Windows were
painted and it started to rain terpentine on them. Moving the mouse made
it
worse until I could not read text anymore. If I'd grab the caption bar on
some window and dragged it, the machine would lock up.

If I started a game, it didn't take very long until the machine would lock
up either. If I were real quick I could just get a glimpse of those cool
fancy DirectX9 water effects before the whole thing broke down.

My first thoughts were that the card would propably be bad. Then I spoke
to
my neighbor whom I had helped out the other day with his brand new PC
(which
has a inferior FX5200 that I could now look down on in full satisfaction).
I
asked him if I could try the card in his machine, he agreed, and the card
turned out to be trouble free. Brilliant picture, no prolem whatsoever.


I did plug in the power connector (incidently I forgot to do so in my
neighbor's PC and the card still worked fine, although I didn't try to run
Far Cry in 1600x1200 or anything like that). I tried both the latest and
the
53-something driver versions. My power supply is new, a 350 W AOpen which
looks like good quality overall. What could be wrong?

The lock-ups due to dragging and the corrupted image pointed in the
direction of AGP traffic. The card should be able to handle anything from
2x
to 8x AGP, the motherboard is limited to 4x AGP which showed up as the
current speed if I looked at display properties. I decided to go through
the
BIOS to see if I could somehow lock down the AGP speed to 2x to see if
that
would make any difference.

Apperently, I could choose between 4x and 2x. After setting the AGP bus to
2x things looked a lot better!

I started dragging windows, having TV on simultaniously, no problem. Time
for the goodies: games!

My favorite game of the last couple of years is Max Payne. I played "Max
Payne 2" start to end three times on my GeForce2 and it performed
relatively
well considering it is a modern game, it has a real clever and efficient
engine. Call of Duty either uses a rather blunt engine or is just done
poorly, I couldn't play that properly even on 640x480 on my hardware while
it didn't look much better then Quake 2. Apart from that it is really
boring
but I guess that is a personal thing. With "Max Payne 2" I had to go
moderate on featudes, medium quality and 1152x864 was about what it could
handle but even then I was really impressed by the graphics, it was the
prettiest game I had seen on my machine. And that was "only" GeForce2 with
T&L.

But now I had the big guns! I started the game and immeditely went to
video
settings to max out everything: high quality. Furthermore, 1280x1024
seemed
appropriate, I was Mr. Power Graphics now. The results were most
impressive.
I saw a whole array of visual effects I had never seen before. Blasts,
smoke, spaying blood, an effective after-glow in movements expressing
Max's
half consciousness as het stumbles down the hospital hallways... This is
beautiful! And no hickups or shocky behavior whatsoever.

Then I tried Splinter Cell, a game that wouldn't run at all on the
GeForce2.
Jeeezzz, they really made some progress in the gaming industry while I
wasn't looking! Also on maximum quality and 1280x1024, fluently!

Mind I am still running an old Athlon 650 MHz. All that crap about the
need
for a balanced system, that you shouldn't combine the top card with a slow
CPU, it's nonsense! Apperently, modern games lean so heavily on the
graphics
hardware that you actually do get away with a relatively slow processor.

I was already anticipating shelling out 700 Euro's on new hardware just to
match the graphics card. No way Jose! I am just fine for the next couple
of
years with my Athlon 650 MHz and mij FX5900XT, thank you! The results of
just a graphics card upgrade are more than satisfying, I can recommend it
to
anyone who is considering spending money on a new PC just to play the
latest
DirectX9 games.

Regards,

Martin.




  #4  
Old September 8th 04, 09:56 AM
Martin Maat
external usenet poster
 
Posts: n/a
Default

sp wrote:
i got a 5900xt in my P4 2.8GHz rig. FarCry runs at about 60fps on
medium detail. run 3dmark2001SE on your machine and post the results
(default setting). It would be interesting how many marks your rig
gets.


:-) I guess there will be significant differences but whether you have 30
fps of 200 fps, that would hardly effect the experience.

I don't have 3DMark2001SE but I am curious enough to look it up and check it
out, I will be back with the results.

Martin.


  #5  
Old September 8th 04, 10:51 AM
sp
external usenet poster
 
Posts: n/a
Default

my comp manages 14,000 marks in that test. my machine has been seriously
tweaked for gaming. None of my components have been overclocked, i dont
have the money to replace parts if they burn out so i leave them as they
are. here is the spec of my comp.

P4 2.8GHz
512MB DDR333 RAM
80GB Maxtor Diamond max 6
30GB Maxtor Diamond max 6
leadtek A350XT TDH (FX5900XT) 128MB 256bit memory interface

before i had this rig i had a lower spec rig which was

P2 400MHz
256MB PC133 RAM
2*30GB HDD
Geforce 2 Pro

this used to get me about 1,600 marks which isn't bad cause it could run c&c
generals at a slightly lower speed. It also managed max payne 1 with
everything on high (NoAA) and give a reasonable frame rate.

post your 3dmark results cause it would be interesting to see what your
machine gets


sp


  #6  
Old September 8th 04, 11:31 AM
Martin Maat
external usenet poster
 
Posts: n/a
Default

sp wrote:

i got a 5900xt in my P4 2.8GHz rig. FarCry runs at about 60fps on
medium detail. run 3dmark2001SE on your machine and post the results
(default setting). It would be interesting how many marks your rig
gets.


Okay, here's the 3DMark2001SE rating for my K7V Athlon 650 MHz with
FX5900XT:

I hit "benchmark" right after installation, default settings like you said.
It says 4179.

Martin.


  #7  
Old September 8th 04, 12:14 PM
Martin Maat
external usenet poster
 
Posts: n/a
Default

Martin Maat wrote:

i got a 5900xt in my P4 2.8GHz rig. FarCry runs at about 60fps on
medium detail. run 3dmark2001SE on your machine and post the results
(default setting). It would be interesting how many marks your rig
gets.


Okay, here's the 3DMark2001SE rating for my K7V Athlon 650 MHz with
FX5900XT:

I hit "benchmark" right after installation, default settings like you
said. It says 4179.


I remembered I had a profile active locking quality to maximum settings. If
I let the application control the settings I get 4886.

I guess quality is relatively cheap on slower CPU's because the GPU would be
waiting for the CPU to feed it most of the time, leaving enough time for it
to make the picture a little prettier. I think I'll just lock it to maximum
quality from now on.

Martin.


  #8  
Old September 8th 04, 06:45 PM
sp
external usenet poster
 
Posts: n/a
Default

my old geforce 2 pro in my p4 got about 5000 marks. that is a pretty good
score for a cpu at that speed. if u upgraded it it would shoot through the
roof. iu had a laugh and run it on my system here are the detailed results
of each test with my gf FX5900XT

3d mark marks 14649.0
game 1 low 221.1
game 1 high 73.2
game 2 low 257.0
game 2 high 138.4
game 3 low 205.7
game 3 high 91.1
game 4 87.8
fill rate single 1414.5
fill rate multi 2836.7
high polygon 1 light 88.8
high polygon 8 light 24.0
bump mapping 159.7
DOT3 bump mapping 216.1
vertex shader 158.6
pixel shader 191.5
advanced pixel shader 108.5
point sprites 32.1

They are mainly in fps. click show details when you get the results page
and scroll down a bit to get the details.

Again that is a good result for your machine

sp


  #9  
Old September 8th 04, 09:10 PM
Martin Maat
external usenet poster
 
Posts: n/a
Default

sp wrote:

click show details when you get the results
page and scroll down a bit to get the details.


This time I watched the tests as they were performed. I was particularly
impressed with the outdoor scene that has all the foliage and light. The
frame rate is displayed all the way in this one, it never dropped below 40
fps, peaked to 90. Good enough for me for another couple of years. Who needs
new CPU's while we have new GPU's coming out? :-)

Here's the full report for my K7V Athlon 650 MHz AGP 2x FX5900XT system:

DISPLAY
Platform NVIDIA GeForce FX 5900XT
CPU Optimization D3D Pure Hardware T&L
Width 1024
Height 768
Depth 32 bit
Z-Buffering 24 bit
Texture Format Compressed
Buffering Double
Refresh Rate 60 Hz
FSAA Mode None

OPTIONS
Show Title Screens Yes
Continuous Benchmark No
Benchmark Run Count 1
Demo Sounds Enabled Yes
Continuous Demo No
Game Sound Effects Enabled Yes
Game Music Enabled Yes
Game Detail Level Low

RESULTS
3DMark Score 4901
Game 1 - Car Chase - Low Detail 50.8 fps
Game 1 - Car Chase - High Detail 13.1 fps
Game 2 - Dragothic - Low Detail 95.9 fps
Game 2 - Dragothic - High Detail 48.4 fps
Game 3 - Lobby - Low Detail 56.7 fps
Game 3 - Lobby - High Detail 24.5 fps
Game 4 - Nature 57.2 fps
Fill Rate (Single-Texturing) 1413.8 MTexels/s
Fill Rate (Multi-Texturing) 2837.3 MTexels/s
High Polygon Count (1 Light) 61.4 MTriangles/s
High Polygon Count (8 Lights) 18.6 MTriangles/s
Environment Bump Mapping 135.6 fps
DOT3 Bump Mapping 145.0 fps
Vertex Shader 57.5 fps
Pixel Shader 93.8 fps
Advanced Pixel Shader 103.0 fps
Point Sprites 32.1 MSprites/s

SYSTEM INFO

System Info Version 2.2
Installation ID 0x00000000
OEM ID

CPU INFO
CENTRAL PROCESSING UNITS
Manufacturer AMD
Family Athlon(tm)
Internal Clock 651 MHz
Internal Clock Maximum 651 MHz
External Clock 100 MHz
Socket Designation SLOT A
Type Central
Upgrade unknown
Capabilities MMX, CMov, RDTSC, 3DNow!, Extended 3DNow!
Version Model 2, Stepping 1
CPUID 0x00000621

CACHES
Level 1
Capacity 128 KB
Type unknown
Type Details unknown
Error Correction Type unknown
Associativity unknown

Level 2
Capacity 512 KB
Type unknown
Type Details unknown
Error Correction Type unknown
Associativity unknown

DIRECTX INFO
DirectX Version 9.0

DIRECTDRAW INFO
DirectDraw Version 5.03.2600.2180

DISPLAY DEVICES
Description Primary Display Driver
Manufacturer NVIDIA
Name NVIDIA GeForce FX 5900XT
Total Local Video Memory 128 MB
Total Local Texture Memory 128 MB
Total AGP Memory 64 MB
Display Driver nv4_disp.dll
Display Driver Version 6.14.10.6177
Driver WHQL Certified No
Max Texture Width 4096
Max Texture Height 4096
Max User Clipping Planes 6
Max Active Hardware Lights 8
Max Texture Blending Stages 8
Textures In Single Pass 8
Vertex Shader Version 1.1
Pixel Shader Version 1.4
Max Vertex Blend Matrices 0
Max Texture Coordinates 8
Vendor ID 0x10de
Device ID 0x0332
Sub-System ID 0x00000000
Revision 0xa1


  #10  
Old September 8th 04, 10:23 PM
Phil
external usenet poster
 
Posts: n/a
Default


"sp" wrote in message
...
my comp manages 14,000 marks in that test. my machine has been seriously
tweaked for gaming. None of my components have been overclocked, i dont
have the money to replace parts if they burn out so i leave them as they
are. here is the spec of my comp.

P4 2.8GHz
512MB DDR333 RAM
80GB Maxtor Diamond max 6
30GB Maxtor Diamond max 6
leadtek A350XT TDH (FX5900XT) 128MB 256bit memory interface


Seriously?

I get around 13'500 with my Ath XP 3000+, 512MB DDR333 and Gainward Ti4800SE
(128MB).

Sure mine would be blown away at DX9, but still....


 




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