Registered: Aug 2000
Location: San Francisco Bay Area, CA
Posts: 458

Video performance

I'm getting issues with my video card. If I enable AGP fast writes, it doesn't boot. And I can't run it faster than AGP 1x. The thing does work fine (as long as I run everything in Direct3D rather than OpenGL), I just want to squeeze more performance out of it before I resort to overclocking.

(I suspect it's because I'm running a Creative Labs GeForce 256 DDR on an ASUS K7V Athlon MB with an AMD Athlon 800mhz.)

Any ideas?

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-Method Dan

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Registered: Aug 2000
Location: 54.60°N 5.70°W
Posts: 1950

Well, re your post in the TCP/IP thread, I've been in consultation with my ass, and I don't see the problem. The K7V Athlon MB is AGP 4x enabled, which is exactly what the GeForce 256 DDR is capable of.

I've read the techie shit for the AGP card and as far as I can tell, you really need to have at least a bx chipset on your board. The bus needs to be crunching at 100MHz for the fast writes to work, so one obvious solution is to have a gander at the BIOS setup and make sure the settings are what they should be. When I changed motherboards in my comp here, I had to tell it that it was a 600MHz PIII with a 100MHz bx chipset. It should be fairly obvious when you hit [del] or F1 during boot.

Other than that, my ass is out of ideas. Just do the usual shit, if you haven't already. Go here and make sure you have all the latest drivers etc.

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There is no music any more.
Music was assassinated on the 8th December 1980

[edit: hangover = inability to code UBB tags]

[This message has been edited by Pangloss (edited 09-30-2000).]

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Registered: Aug 2000
Location: San Francisco Bay Area, CA
Posts: 458

I actually just updated my drivers, but I'll try the new Detonators. I'll poke around in my BIOS some more and consult the old man, he's an engineer, he's good at fixing shit like this. (I've been meaning to ask him to get my Live Drive working too.) Thanks for the tip.

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-Method Dan

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Registered: Aug 2000
Location: Long Beach, CA
Posts: 862

here are some other possibilities:

have you installed the via 4-in-1 drivers?
do you have the latest Asus bios?

I have almost the exact setup you specified (SDR instead of DDR) and my AGP won't run higher than 2x - but on an 800, it's not really noticable. I haven't messed with fastwrites - i'm not sure if they are enabled or not, but seriously, 2x w/o fastwrites is MORE than enough for pretty much anything that exists on most computers today.

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Registered: Jul 2000
Location: Nanaimo BC, Canada
Posts: 1525

Yeah, but if you are going to spend that much on a video card, then you at least want to get all the performance out of that you paid for! I hope someone posts a fix for this, I am thinking of getting the exact same setup for my next machine. . .

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Anger=Red

"Every evening I died and every evening I was born again. Resurrected."

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Registered: Aug 2000
Location: San Francisco Bay Area, CA
Posts: 458

Exactly, dude. I want to be able to turn on all the graphic eye candy and run in high-fuckin-res and still get at least a good 30 or 40 fps in Counterstrike.

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-Method Dan

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Registered: Aug 2000
Location: Long Beach, CA
Posts: 862

http://www.tweak3d.net/faq/

check there
if they don't have an answer, i don't think you're gonna find one any time soon.

there's a section on ways to get agp 4x working with the via chipsets.


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d0n't click this link!

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Registered: Aug 2000
Location: San Francisco Bay Area, CA
Posts: 458

Yeah, I mostly figured it out, though I still get lockups in Direct3D apps when I have fast writes on.

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-Method Dan

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