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#1
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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"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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