Do I have a system bottleneck?

[Rand Al'Thor]

I recently changed my Radeon 9800Pro to an Radeon X850, but the problem I
was having has
not gone away and performance-wise there is little improvement. The problem
is that when playing Doom 3 and F.E.A.R. everthing gets jerky when mobs
appear, even sometimes when just turning corners? (using same game res/audio
setup as with the 9800Pro). Could this be due to my processor cache size. I
have no idea what difference cache size makes :-(

I did uninstall and reinstall latest vid drivers

Any help be most appreciated.

Alan

SYSTEM:
P4-3.2Ghz 512k cache
Intel D865GLC mobo
1Gb DDR400 - XMS3200 Corsair matched ram
200Gb SATA HD

 

[Mike T.]

I recently changed my Radeon 9800Pro to an Radeon X850, but the problem I
was having has
not gone away and performance-wise there is little improvement. The
problem
is that when playing Doom 3 and F.E.A.R. everthing gets jerky when mobs
appear, even sometimes when just turning corners? (using same game
res/audio
setup as with the 9800Pro). Could this be due to my processor cache size.
I
have no idea what difference cache size makes :-(

I did uninstall and reinstall latest vid drivers

Any help be most appreciated.

Alan

SYSTEM:
P4-3.2Ghz 512k cache
Intel D865GLC mobo
1Gb DDR400 - XMS3200 Corsair matched ram
200Gb SATA HD

That's most likely a bogus BIOS setting stored in CMOS, or you need to
update the chipset drivers for the mainboard, especially the AGP driver.
Try loading performance or "optimized" defaults in the BIOS. Then make sure
that the system is still booting OK. Then go to the intel web site and
download the latest chipset drivers for the mainboard and install those.
Out of curiosity . . . have you run 3dMark03 on this system? The 9800Pro
should have scored about 5400 or better, if everything is working fine. The
X850 should do SIGNIFICANTLY better than that, breaking 10,000 at 1024X768.
Or, if you prefer 3dMark05, the X850 should get close to 6000 at 1024 X
.. -Dave

 

[Skybuck Flying]

Try increasing the aperture size in the bios to it's maximum

Bye,
Skybuck.

 

[Pepper von Evil]

I recently changed my Radeon 9800Pro to an Radeon X850, but the problem I
was having has
not gone away and performance-wise there is little improvement. The
problem
is that when playing Doom 3 and F.E.A.R. everthing gets jerky when mobs
appear, even sometimes when just turning corners? (using same game
res/audio
setup as with the 9800Pro). Could this be due to my processor cache size.
I
have no idea what difference cache size makes :-(

I did uninstall and reinstall latest vid drivers

Any help be most appreciated.

Alan

SYSTEM:
P4-3.2Ghz 512k cache
Intel D865GLC mobo
1Gb DDR400 - XMS3200 Corsair matched ram
200Gb SATA HD

Doom 3 was designed to work best with nvidia cards, and there really is a
difference when playing it on nvidia cards vs ati. Not sure about F.E.A.R.
though. The current crop of Radeons don't support Shader Model 3.0 (which
Doom3 uses) but they do support another feature of shader model 2.0 that
nvidia's for some reason are having trouble with. So it's not your Proc's
cache size, it's just the game not being designed to work with your kind of
video card.

Pepper

 

[The Outsider]

Doom 3 was designed to work best with nvidia cards, and there really is a
difference when playing it on nvidia cards vs ati. Not sure about F.E.A.R.
though. The current crop of Radeons don't support Shader Model 3.0 (which
Doom3 uses) but they do support another feature of shader model 2.0 that
nvidia's for some reason are having trouble with. So it's not your Proc's
cache size, it's just the game not being designed to work with your kind of
video card.

Pepper

Doom3 played smooth for me on both a 9800pro and an X800XL. One system
was a P4 3.0ghz and the other is an AMD64 3500+.

 

[Rand Al'Thor]

ty Mike for your info:

The 3DMark05 gave me a respectable score of around 5850 when I run it twice
at 1024x768 with no AA, but that would be the graphic card result and not
much else, so I don't think the graphic card is at fault here, I'll check
for new drivers but I think I am up to date with them. Not too sure what I
can touch in BIOS without making a mess of it tho

Interestingly, does this mean that I would have no idea what sort of cache
my proccessor has?

Alan

 

[Bob M]

Try increasing the aperture size in the bios to it's maximum

Bye,
Skybuck.

I don't play Doom 3 but I do play Fear. I run a 9800Pro. Disable
shadows in the game and I guarantee Fear will run great for you.

Bob

 

[Pepper von Evil]

Doom3 played smooth for me on both a 9800pro and an X800XL. One system
was a P4 3.0ghz and the other is an AMD64 3500+.

Dare I ask what settings you were using with the 9800pro and Doom3? I had
one of those in my machine as an interim card (my friend let me borrow it)
and I got really disappointing results (my box is a P4 3GHz o/c 3.6 1GB ram
etc).

Pepper

 

[Rand Al'Thor]

Well, all my probelms have gone away, and I can't believe why!

I've always been led to believe that if u have a vid card with lots of ram
then your AGP aperture setting should be set to minimum, i.e. not use up
system ram. I had this set to 4mb in the BIOS because I already had 256Mb on
board vid ram. I changed the BIOS AGP setting to maximum (256Mb) and now no
problems.

So the way I see it, with bump mapping and all the trimmings that high end
vid cards give, 256Mb vid ram is just not enough these days!

Alan

 

[David Maynard]

Well, all my probelms have gone away, and I can't believe why!

I've always been led to believe that if u have a vid card with lots of ram
then your AGP aperture setting should be set to minimum, i.e. not use up
system ram. I had this set to 4mb in the BIOS because I already had 256Mb on
board vid ram. I changed the BIOS AGP setting to maximum (256Mb) and now no
problems.

So the way I see it, with bump mapping and all the trimmings that high end
vid cards give, 256Mb vid ram is just not enough these days!

Alan

FYI, the AGP Aperture setting in BIOS is a 'limit' on how much it will let
the card have, if it asks for it, but it isn't allocated unless the card
asks for it so you're not using up RAM, unless the card needs it.