Problem with Graphics Card

[Daniel]

Hi

I have a P4T Motherboard, Windows XPSP2,
a P4 1.3 gig CPU and 768 meg ram, the latest DirectX.

I have just replaced a Geforce 2 64 meg card with a BFG 5500 oc 256 meg
card and got no improvement in performance at all.
The BFG help site tell me I need to use the latest driver
for the AGP mini port on the motherboard.
I have searched the Asus site but cannot fond a driver for
the AGP mini port on the site.

Can anyone point me in the right direction or give
advice in this matter.

thanks

Daniel

 

[Roland Scheidegger]

Hi

I have a P4T Motherboard, Windows XPSP2,
a P4 1.3 gig CPU and 768 meg ram, the latest DirectX.

I have just replaced a Geforce 2 64 meg card with a BFG 5500 oc 256 meg
card and got no improvement in performance at all.
The BFG help site tell me I need to use the latest driver
for the AGP mini port on the motherboard.
I have searched the Asus site but cannot fond a driver for
the AGP mini port on the site.

Can anyone point me in the right direction or give
advice in this matter.

Maybe you're expecting too much, if you're comparing that to a GeForce 2
GTS (not mx, you didn't say). A GF FX5500 is the same as the fx5200
(save minimal faster clock), which isn't really faster than a GF4MX. And
the GF4MX isn't a lot faster than a GF2 GTS neither...
However, when you enable AA/AF it should be somewhat faster.
And new games should be faster, and possibly (depending on the game)
look quite a bit better.
Also, your games may be cpu limited in low resolutions - a P4 1.3
(possibly even with sdram?) really isn't all that fast...

Roland

 

[Paul]

Hi

I have a P4T Motherboard, Windows XPSP2,
a P4 1.3 gig CPU and 768 meg ram, the latest DirectX.

I have just replaced a Geforce 2 64 meg card with a BFG 5500 oc 256 meg
card and got no improvement in performance at all.
The BFG help site tell me I need to use the latest driver
for the AGP mini port on the motherboard.
I have searched the Asus site but cannot fond a driver for
the AGP mini port on the site.

Can anyone point me in the right direction or give
advice in this matter.

thanks

Daniel

You are CPU limited. The card you had was probably a perfect
match for the 1.3GHz processor. The latest Tomshardware charts
show CPU limitations, even on an ATI9800pro, when using an
Athlon64 4000+ processor. Your processor is 3x slower than that,
so until you do something about the processor, no miracles
will happen.

Performance depends on each subsystem. A slow subsystem forms
a bottleneck, the "rate limiting" step. Say you bought a length
of fire hose, some adapters, and a 1/2" garden hose. When
connected together, the end result is, you don't get very
wet, very fast. Even though you did use a length of fire hose.

As an example, look at the two charts here:

http://graphics.tomshardware.com/graphic/20050705/vga-charts-pcie-05.html

There is a 1024x768 "low resolution" chart and a "1280x1024"
chart. At 1024x768, from the FX5900XT card upward, there are
no additional FPS to speak of. The reason is, the Athlon64
4000+ simply cannot produce enough data to keep the video card
busy rendering frames. Now, when the resolution jumps to
1280x1024, there are more pixels for the video card to process.
At that resolution, a 6800GT is the right match for the
Athlon 4000+ processor being used. Using more video card than
that, doesn't appear to make big strides in performance.

In your case, the processor is 1/3 of the processor used in
the charts. No matter what video card you used from the
Tomshardware charts above, that video card will be operating
in the "flat zone", so no improvement.

There is an older, better chart for describing this problem.
Take a look at this one:

http://graphics.tomshardware.com/graphic/20030120/vgacharts-04.html

In that case, an Athlon 1000 owner tries different new video cards.
The grey bars show the slow rate of increase in performance, for
the expensive video cards being used. The curve for the Athlon
2700+ shows more steepness, meaning the more expensive video cards
are doing something, due to the faster processor.

For processor upgrades, your officially supported options are here:
http://support.asus.com.tw/cpusupport/cpu_support_right_master.aspx?type=1&name=P4T&SLanguage=en-us

An unofficial option, is this Upgradeware 423-478 adapter:
http://www.upgradeware.com/english/product/p478/performance.htm#p478oc

You can get a 2.8GHz/FSB400/512KB cache S478 processor here $189
http://www.powerleap.com/Processors.jsp

Depending on your budget, a platform change might help, at least
in terms of allowing faster processors to be used. The price of
some of those options is pretty steep. You might consider using
DDR memory, as the price will not be going up for another month
or so (but a price increase is coming - some plants are switching
production from DDR to flash or something).

HTH,
Paul

 

[Daniel]

You are CPU limited. The card you had was probably a perfect
match for the 1.3GHz processor. The latest Tomshardware charts
show CPU limitations, even on an ATI9800pro, when using an
Athlon64 4000+ processor. Your processor is 3x slower than that,
so until you do something about the processor, no miracles
will happen.

Performance depends on each subsystem. A slow subsystem forms
a bottleneck, the "rate limiting" step. Say you bought a length
of fire hose, some adapters, and a 1/2" garden hose. When
connected together, the end result is, you don't get very
wet, very fast. Even though you did use a length of fire hose.

As an example, look at the two charts here:

http://graphics.tomshardware.com/graphic/20050705/vga-charts-pcie-05.html

There is a 1024x768 "low resolution" chart and a "1280x1024"
chart. At 1024x768, from the FX5900XT card upward, there are
no additional FPS to speak of. The reason is, the Athlon64
4000+ simply cannot produce enough data to keep the video card
busy rendering frames. Now, when the resolution jumps to
1280x1024, there are more pixels for the video card to process.
At that resolution, a 6800GT is the right match for the
Athlon 4000+ processor being used. Using more video card than
that, doesn't appear to make big strides in performance.

In your case, the processor is 1/3 of the processor used in
the charts. No matter what video card you used from the
Tomshardware charts above, that video card will be operating
in the "flat zone", so no improvement.

There is an older, better chart for describing this problem.
Take a look at this one:

http://graphics.tomshardware.com/graphic/20030120/vgacharts-04.html

In that case, an Athlon 1000 owner tries different new video cards.
The grey bars show the slow rate of increase in performance, for
the expensive video cards being used. The curve for the Athlon
2700+ shows more steepness, meaning the more expensive video cards
are doing something, due to the faster processor.

For processor upgrades, your officially supported options are here:
http://support.asus.com.tw/cpusupport/cpu_support_right_master.aspx?type=1&name=P4T&SLanguage=en-us

An unofficial option, is this Upgradeware 423-478 adapter:
http://www.upgradeware.com/english/product/p478/performance.htm#p478oc

You can get a 2.8GHz/FSB400/512KB cache S478 processor here $189
http://www.powerleap.com/Processors.jsp

Depending on your budget, a platform change might help, at least
in terms of allowing faster processors to be used. The price of
some of those options is pretty steep. You might consider using
DDR memory, as the price will not be going up for another month
or so (but a price increase is coming - some plants are switching
production from DDR to flash or something).

HTH,
Paul

Okay, bad news I guess but thanks for your help.

regards

Daniel