Slow framerates: TNT2 M64 - Seems to be in PCI mode

Hi, system is:

Epox 8RDA+
Athlon 2600+
NForce2 ST chipset
AGP 8x, 512MB PC3200 @ 400Mhz
Galaxy TNT2 M64 32MB AGP, Detonator 44.03
WinXP home SP1

Got a problem with TNT2 card, here's the full info (sorry if it's
a little long, but you'll see I've tried all the stuff I should try):

On this, and previous rig (K6-3, Epox SS7 w/ Via Apollo Pro c/set),
this card is getting poor frame-rates in higher resolutions in all
my 3d games. This happened on both systems, XP and Win98SE on this
one, w98SE on the last. Card came with 43.something drivers, have
downloaded 44.03. Always kept up to date with mboard drivers inc. AGP.
According to diagnostics on both, AGP mode was selected... I'm
using a util. called RivaTuner to check stuff, and it says I'm
at 4x AGP (last system was 2x, all the diagnostics said so too).

Symptoms:
Any quake 2 or 3 based game dramatically loses framerate with
increasing resolution - eg. Quake 3 figures (fast & ugly mode):
320x400: ~ 280 fps
512x384: ~ 128
640x480: ~ 94
1024x768: 40 fps

Same goes for Q2 - under 40 at 1024x768, and that's with as much
as I can find turned to low settings. Everything's 16-bit, low
detail, low textures, gibs/blood off, you name it - it's off. Still
the low rates at 1024x768

My old system with a Voodoo3 on a K6-3 450 got 75 FPS in Q2 at
1024 x 768.

The only hint so far was in an options screen, how many MB did I want
for textures in PCI compatability mode? So RivaTuner tells me I'm
in AGP at 4x, and I've gone into BIOS, set AGP buss to 66mhz, init.
AGP display first, toggled EVERY AGP related setting (fast write etc),
and still won't go any faster (yes, toggled back afterwards).
So I suspect I'm in PCI mode. Further evidence - with RivaTuner, I
can turn off AGP mode easilly, and it then says this is PCI compata-
bility mode. Reboot, try Quake, and still exact same framerates.
Turn back to AGP, no change either. Not even a little bit. This
has got to mean I'm only getting PCI transfer rates, yes?

Salesman at shop has no clue, neither does anyone in Quake groups.
I'm REALLY stuck now, what is going wrong? I'm convinced this card
should not be SLOWER than my V3 on a K6, in this Athlon 2600+ PC!

All I can think of now is that this card has an actual fault.
There's no info about PCI mode on the Galaxy website (tried their
own drivers but they're just links to NVidia) at all. Can't see
anything at NV either.
I can't seem to find out if this card can have its BIOS flashed -
where's a site I can look for a flash utility? It's the only thing
left I can think of to try, exchanging the card will be difficult
(lost receipt). It's been this way since I got it months ago.

Can anyone shed any light on this? I'm right out of ideas.
Many thanks. Card has to last me a couple more months till I can
afford something better... want it to work right.
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"noise" wrote in message
. au...
Hi, system is:

Epox 8RDA+
Athlon 2600+
NForce2 ST chipset
AGP 8x, 512MB PC3200 @ 400Mhz
Galaxy TNT2 M64 32MB AGP, Detonator 44.03
WinXP home SP1

Got a problem with TNT2 card, here's the full info (sorry if it's
a little long, but you'll see I've tried all the stuff I should try):

That video card is a serious bottleneck. The problem is the card itself. It
simply will not provide ANY respectable performance in over 800x600x16. It's
extremely memory throughput limited (64-bit pipeline instead of 128), making
it effectively as slow as a TNT1. 32-bit is a wash. Won't ever happen,
unless you like slideshows. Do yourself a favor:

1) Uninstall drivers and remove card
2) Replace with one of the following:
GF3, GF4, Radeon 8500 or equivalent, softmoddable 9500 non-Pro
(here is what I recommend, works very well for me anyway:
http://secure.newegg.com/app/Custrat...tem=14-102-271 Don't know
who has any of these Down Under right offhand, tho...)
3) Hang old card on a string and use it as a piñata.

snip

OK you guys all seem to point at this being all the card can
do. I was pretty sure it was a card bottleneck, but the fact I
turn off AGP and there's NO slowdown for actual PCI mode made
me think I wasn't engaging AGP somehow.
I expected to be doing better than only just over half what
my old Voodoo3 (only a V3 3k) could do, with this better PC.

OK So no-one thinks this is a failure to get any kind of AGP
transfer rates? I'm not in PCI mode here? No resolution was even
a little bit slower when I switched off AGP, for any game.

Thing is, Quake 2 and Quake 3 *both* top out at 40 max at
1024*768.... that's why I thought it had to be bus transfer
rate. Even at 640x480, both games are really disappointing,
still behind that steam-driven old system... I'm just blown
away that this card is THAT crap.
(BTW CPU and system are overclocking a treat, great value - 20%
up for CPU and 400Mhz FSB, not even Barton core, with just one
voltage inc. and not a single hiccup in 2 weeks now. I'm happy)

I actually *liked* my V3, it still had the best 2d quality
in windows I've seen until Radeon. It also scaled up with CPU
grunt pretty good. Damn thing just died one day.

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Got a problem with TNT2 card, here's the full info (sorry if it's
a little long, but you'll see I've tried all the stuff I should try):

On this, and previous rig (K6-3, Epox SS7 w/ Via Apollo Pro c/set),


M64 cards only have a 64 bit mem bus, and they were slower than your
voodoo
3 which has a full 128 bit mem bus. Anything over 800x600 is going to give
you lousy framerates....
Beware the low end FX 5200's as well, as they are also crippled with a 64
bit bus and will give you no better performance than a much older
GF2/original Radeon era card.

Thanks for this, never actually knew that about the V3. It's just
hard to swallow that a PC with 5x the clock speed gets a *worse* frame
rate even in Quake 2 (two) from 640*480 up.

"noise" wrote in message
. au...
Thing is, Quake 2 and Quake 3 *both* top out at 40 max at
1024*768.... that's why I thought it had to be bus transfer
rate. Even at 640x480, both games are really disappointing,
still behind that steam-driven old system... I'm just blown
away that this card is THAT crap.

Even the GF2 MX cards are a killer for a good system - the TNT 2 is 2 gens
back from that. As to topping out when running at 1024x768 that is a direct
result of the 64 bit bus, and yes, the card is THAT crappy...:-)


(BTW CPU and system are overclocking a treat, great value - 20%
up for CPU and 400Mhz FSB, not even Barton core, with just one
voltage inc. and not a single hiccup in 2 weeks now. I'm happy)

I actually *liked* my V3, it still had the best 2d quality
in windows I've seen until Radeon. It also scaled up with CPU
grunt pretty good. Damn thing just died one day.


My old voodoo 4 is still running in my father in law's machine, and my
voodoo 3 is running in the person's machine I sold it to - still a good card
for UT and Q3 generation games as long as you don't want to run winXP...



Kris

"noise" wrote in message
. au...
OK you guys all seem to point at this being all the card can
do. I was pretty sure it was a card bottleneck, but the fact I
turn off AGP and there's NO slowdown for actual PCI mode made
me think I wasn't engaging AGP somehow.

When you turn off AGP DiME texturing, the AGP bus still acts as a fast DMA
command queue among other things. Besides, local memory (on-card) texture
management is still how it's usually done. You're more or less turning off
an unused feature. This is part of the reason AGP 8x is just feature creep
and sales hype. The reason PCI video cards are slower than their AGP
counterparts (even when they're in PCI mode) has more to do *usually* with
the more stringent inflight instruction timings and the contention for
arbiter timeslice with other peripherals linked to the PCI bus...especially
if one has a nice, fat bus-hogger like a SBLive card in the picture. Now
that we are no longer limited to a theoretical maximum of 133 MB/s, and we
have Vlink, MUTIOL, HyperTransport etc. in the picture, *one would think*
this would change. But the PCI spec timing scheme remains the same (every
peripheral chained to the PCI bus can have its theoretical max 133 MB/s
"say" per allotted timeslice), whereas on the AGP bus, the card can burst
for as long as maximum latency usually allows. Nonetheless, even the PCI bus
on that Epox mobo isn't in much danger of being saturated by that card...

I expected to be doing better than only just over half what
my old Voodoo3 (only a V3 3k) could do, with this better PC.

The V3 has a fatter memory pipeline, as someone else has already pointed
out. Its 16-bit performance is easily on par with the TNT2 with 128-bit
memory bus width (and better image quality too). Its 32-bit performance of
course was a no-show...

OK So no-one thinks this is a failure to get any kind of AGP
transfer rates?

Uh-uh. Nope.

I'm not in PCI mode here? No resolution was even
a little bit slower when I switched off AGP, for any game.

Nothin' from nothin' leaves ???

Thing is, Quake 2 and Quake 3 *both* top out at 40 max at
1024*768.... that's why I thought it had to be bus transfer
rate.

Could also be the video card hitting its ceiling...there comes a point where
the CPU can supply it with as much data as it wants, but the card, she is
maxed out and there ain't nomore...you know things are REALLY bad when the
*software* Q2 engine is faster...;-)

Even at 640x480, both games are really disappointing,
still behind that steam-driven old system... I'm just blown
away that this card is THAT crap.

Brother, I feel your pain...a newer card is definitely the cure...

(BTW CPU and system are overclocking a treat, great value - 20%
up for CPU and 400Mhz FSB, not even Barton core, with just one
voltage inc. and not a single hiccup in 2 weeks now. I'm happy)

Your system r0x0rs!

I actually *liked* my V3, it still had the best 2d quality
in windows I've seen until Radeon. It also scaled up with CPU
grunt pretty good. Damn thing just died one day.

snip

noise cam up with this on 7/15/2003 11:12 AM:

Those initials at the end of the board name are usually added features
of the board, ST more than likely means Serial ATA and MCP-Turbo,
which is the networking controller which would mean your board supports
firewire.
Which means you probably don't have a NF2 that officially supports 200
FSB, lots of people (not me though) are running the non-Ultras at 200 MHz.
No matter what kind of RAM you have you should be running your FSB and
DRAM clock in sync, 1:1 for optimal performance in dual channel.




Hi Inglo, I remember you from AGQ3, long time no see! Hope you're well.
Nice to see you again.

This board doesn't have SATA, that much is definite, there are just
two U.ATA 100/133 ports. That doesn't mean that the chipset doesn't
support the feature of course, but there is a list of chipset features
in the mboard manual and no mention of SATA (but I'm still wondering
if this late revision board has a newer chipset than the manual talks
about).
It does have the MCP-T and therefore Firewire and also 10/100 Ethernet.
I've read that there's support for dual ethernet connectors, although
just one is implemented on this board. From what I gather all these
peripherals by-pass the PCI buss altogether and receive data from the
CPU via the N-bridge to S-bridge high-speed buss, which might be either
LDT or something of NVidia's, but it's something many times faster than
the PCI buss. This is another big plus for the chipset.

It really blows me away how today's value systems can easilly cope
with semi-professional media work out of the box, of a sufficient
standard for presentation and broadcast. Such a board with fast 2-ch.
RAM would also be a good foundation for a more pro. system using
the more high-end video and audio equipment. That, and it's a great
time to be into 3d graphics as well, with cards like the top NV FX's
and Radeons of today. Exciting stuff.



The nForce2 boards are incredibly picky about memory, it took me three
tries with different brands to get it to boot at 166 FSB . I ended up
getting Corsair XMS PC2700, and right now my system is running stable at
12x175=2100MHz (up from 11x166=1833). But I think the stringent memory
is worse with what I've got, an MSI board. So be happy its working.
The memory ended up being the most expensive thing on this recent
upgrade, the mobo and AthlonXP 2500 were each about $90 but the paired
memory cost about $120. Next stop is a Radeon 9x00.
What sucks for me right now is I can't get dual channel to work, the
second channel slot on the board appears fried, so I can try a long
drawn out RMA or just live with it at single channel.
Which is not that bad because all the benchmarks I've run are almost
identical or better than reference memory (well they should be better
since its running at DDR350). And from everything I've read, dual
channel on the nF2 boards provides negligible performance increases
unless you're using the onboard IGP, where the GPU can take advantage of
the 128 bit bus.

--
"Crazy way to travel, spreading a man's molecules all over the universe."

Steve [Inglo]

"Inglo" wrote in message
. ..
noise cam up with this on 7/15/2003 11:12 AM:

The nForce2 boards are incredibly picky about memory, it took me three
tries with different brands to get it to boot at 166 FSB . I ended up
getting Corsair XMS PC2700, and right now my system is running stable at
12x175=2100MHz (up from 11x166=1833). But I think the stringent memory
is worse with what I've got, an MSI board. So be happy its working.
The memory ended up being the most expensive thing on this recent
upgrade, the mobo and AthlonXP 2500 were each about $90 but the paired
memory cost about $120. Next stop is a Radeon 9x00.
What sucks for me right now is I can't get dual channel to work, the
second channel slot on the board appears fried, so I can try a long
drawn out RMA or just live with it at single channel.
Which is not that bad because all the benchmarks I've run are almost
identical or better than reference memory (well they should be better
since its running at DDR350). And from everything I've read, dual
channel on the nF2 boards provides negligible performance increases
unless you're using the onboard IGP, where the GPU can take advantage of
the 128 bit bus.

--
"Crazy way to travel, spreading a man's molecules all over the universe."

Steve [Inglo]


Hmm, I have no idea about the dual channel problem. I don't suppose
there's a 3rd DIMM slot that gets around it? I suppose you've tried
that anyway. Or try investigating whether the DIMMs themselves are
at fault? This is over my head, but good luck. As you say, the dual
channel bit is of limited use, but I expect it depends what you're
doing with it - surely it's got to help anything that benefits from
RAM bandwidth? I don't know exactly what - databases, 3D Studio,
video editing and the like maybe.

This one's an Epox 8RDA+, love it to bits. I'm exceedingly happy about
the 200 FSB, that was an unexpected bonus. I have a feeling that this
memory just barely runs at its ratings, and was poor value - there's
friends of mine with PC3200 of half the price who get 7/3/3/2.5 at
400, I only manage 8/3/3/3 at 400 and anything better won't POST.
I can get the 8 to a 7 and the 3 to 2.5 at 333, but that sacrifices
the gains I made in FSB - I haven't done any Sandra testing yet but
when I do, I'll let that make my decision as to FSB. In any case,
there's better RAM on the way and I can't wait.

Memory was the one point of difficulty I had at all in setting up
this system - I could overclock stuff a long way and it wouldn't
flinch, but the RAM would only play at its most conservative settings.
Given the smooth start at 400, I have no doubt there's a little more
room to move yet, although I'm quite happy with things as they are.
I'll play around a bit more when I've got the PC3500.

Choosing a video card will be tough. THere's the outright speed of
the FX5900, vs. the great features of the Radeon 9x00's. I do a little
programming for OpenGL (and may even lower myself to DX) and it would
be nice to play with all those bells and whistles. ATI are supporting
OpenGL 2.0 today, whereas NVidia don't seem to be approaching that point
yet. I'm interested in GL 2.0 for the scene graph and improved imaging
features, or at least the little I know of them, so it would be nice.
If I see an announcement soon that NVidia's going to GL 2.0 then I'll
probably go with an FX5900. In fact I may even look at Quadro's, but
I have zero knowledge of them now. Suddenly I'm looking at doing
some real work with 3d Studio, a dream job for me, and it wouldn't
hurt to be using the kind of gear that the manufacturer intends for it.
Luckilly for me, I can't afford any of it yet so I'll have to find
out what I'm doing a little better first 8)

Cheers,
noisey
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