ati radeon x800 pro disappointment

[spawn]

Hello,

Recently I have replaced my graphical card. The old one was a geforce
4200 Ti, the new one ati radeon x800 pro and I am very disappointed.

For example I can't play doom3 at 800x600 without AA/AF !!!!!!!
Tomshardware mentioned a framerate of 84 fps, if I run the demo I have
have a framerate of 38 fps !!

I also have played with some opengl- and direct 3d settings, but it
doesn't matter.

My system:
P4 2.4 Ghz 512Mb Memory. Could i have more performance when I upgrade
memory ?

Thanks for the advice ...

Carlo

 

[kony]

Hello,

Recently I have replaced my graphical card. The old one was a geforce
4200 Ti, the new one ati radeon x800 pro and I am very disappointed.

For example I can't play doom3 at 800x600 without AA/AF !!!!!!!
Tomshardware mentioned a framerate of 84 fps, if I run the demo I have
have a framerate of 38 fps !!

Well if your target game was Doom3, you probably should've
gotten an nVidia card, but even so, x800 pro can definitely
run it far faster than 38FPS.

Seems you have some other bottleneck, either CPU or memory
or other system performance problems.

I also have played with some opengl- and direct 3d settings, but it
doesn't matter.

My system:
P4 2.4 Ghz 512Mb Memory. Could i have more performance when I upgrade
memory ?

I would've expected better than 38 FPS with 512mB memory,
but in general for modern game it does help to have more
than 512MB, and rarely even more than 1GB.

Is your memory PC133 or DDR? If PC133, it's probably too
low a throughput for the rest of the parts.

You might run Sisoft Sandra and check the CPU and memory
performance to see if they come near the reference numbers
in Sandra for a comparison.

How about other games? Do others show similarly low
performance? Are you using a new video card driver?

 

[spawn]

Well if your target game was Doom3, you probably should've
gotten an nVidia card, but even so, x800 pro can definitely
run it far faster than 38FPS.

Seems you have some other bottleneck, either CPU or memory
or other system performance problems.

According to me it's memory. When there is some movement ( opening a
door) the screen freezes for a second and at that moment there is some
activity on my disk.
Swapping ??

I would've expected better than 38 FPS with 512mB memory,
but in general for modern game it does help to have more
than 512MB, and rarely even more than 1GB.

Is your memory PC133 or DDR? If PC133, it's probably too
low a throughput for the rest of the parts.

It's PC800 RDRAM RIMMs. Very expensive memory

You might run Sisoft Sandra and check the CPU and memory
performance to see if they come near the reference numbers
in Sandra for a comparison.

How about other games? Do others show similarly low
performance? Are you using a new video card driver?

I didn't play other games. I ´ll try today.

I also run 3D benachmark 2005 and the score was 4200. According to me
this is not so bad. So I hope it's only doom3

To be continued ...

 

[kony]

According to me it's memory.

Then get some memory?

When there is some movement ( opening a
door) the screen freezes for a second and at that moment there is some
activity on my disk.
Swapping ??

Check Task Manager, it should show peak memory utilization
as "Commit Charge" "Peak".

If you have things running in the background before starting
up Doom3, you might consider killing those things. I dont'
recall the specifics but I"m fairly sure I was running Doom3
on a box with 512MB memory and a GF4TI card at over 40FPS @
800x600, but it had Win2k on it and not much else running
(wasn't a primary use system).

I also run 3D benachmark 2005 and the score was 4200. According to me
this is not so bad. So I hope it's only doom3

If you're setting the rest of the eyecandy to high(er)
settings, try reducing those as they may increase your
memory needs.

However, since you did apparently want to be gaming a bit
(else you'd not have bought the gaming-oriented video card),
it is a fairly safe idea that you will end up benefitting
from more memory and should add some.

 

[Quaoar]

Hello,

Recently I have replaced my graphical card. The old one was a geforce
4200 Ti, the new one ati radeon x800 pro and I am very disappointed.

For example I can't play doom3 at 800x600 without AA/AF !!!!!!!
Tomshardware mentioned a framerate of 84 fps, if I run the demo I have
have a framerate of 38 fps !!

I also have played with some opengl- and direct 3d settings, but it
doesn't matter.

My system:
P4 2.4 Ghz 512Mb Memory. Could i have more performance when I upgrade
memory ?

Thanks for the advice ...

Carlo

I do not think that you have installed the new card appropriately. You
should uninstall the old card driver from Device Manager, shut down,
replace the card with the new one, boot into simple VGA and then install
the new driver. ...or whatever ATI said to do in the installation notes,
which you might not have read.

If there is an on-board video adapter, you might have inadvertently
enabled it also. So, check BIOS setup and verify that the on-board card
is in fact disabled. (If there was one.)

Q

 

[spawn]

I do not think that you have installed the new card appropriately. You
should uninstall the old card driver from Device Manager, shut down,
replace the card with the new one, boot into simple VGA and then install
the new driver. ...or whatever ATI said to do in the installation notes,
which you might not have read.

If there is an on-board video adapter, you might have inadvertently
enabled it also. So, check BIOS setup and verify that the on-board card
is in fact disabled. (If there was one.)

Q

I was forgotten to mention, I did a clean installation. After replacing the
card I reinstalled XP.
And now I see I have also bad fps for Medal of Honor - Pacific assault - an
"old" game. I feel so bad ...

 

[spawn]

Then get some memory?

It's very expensive, costs more then the card. So I want to be sure it's a
memory-problem.

Check Task Manager, it should show peak memory utilization
as "Commit Charge" "Peak".

When I check Task Manager (doom 3 not running) I see in tab physical
memory - amount of total 523276 (512 MB) but available = 20000 all the other
is system cache. Is this a normal behavior ? It could be I translated the
terms not correct.

If you have things running in the background before starting
up Doom3, you might consider killing those things. I dont'
recall the specifics but I"m fairly sure I was running Doom3
on a box with 512MB memory and a GF4TI card at over 40FPS @
800x600, but it had Win2k on it and not much else running
(wasn't a primary use system).

I reinstalled windows, I only installed the drivers and directx9c then doom3
and i have the same problem.

 

[spawn]

I run taskmanager
before I started doom3
cpu 5 %
pagefile 182 MB

While playing doom3
cpu 80% - 100%
pagefile 512 MB

Can I conclude there is a lot of swapping and this action is very
CPU-intensive ?

 

[kony]

It's very expensive, costs more then the card. So I want to be sure it's a
memory-problem.

Well you just said it was.

When I check Task Manager (doom 3 not running) I see in tab physical
memory - amount of total 523276 (512 MB) but available = 20000 all the other
is system cache. Is this a normal behavior ? It could be I translated the
terms not correct.

Forget about that, reread what I wrote.
You will need to check after having ran Doom3.

I reinstalled windows, I only installed the drivers and directx9c then doom3
and i have the same problem.

Did you install modern drivers? If not, do so for all
things, not using windows default drivers for anything where
there is a more modern alternative, particularly motherboard
chipset, sound and video.

 

[kony]

I run taskmanager
before I started doom3
cpu 5 %
pagefile 182 MB

While playing doom3
cpu 80% - 100%
pagefile 512 MB

Can I conclude there is a lot of swapping and this action is very
CPU-intensive ?

No you need to do exactly what I wrote, not some other thing
instead.

 

[spawn]

No you need to do exactly what I wrote, not some other thing
instead.

OK I restart windows and no other tools or prgrams are runnning.

The peak value = 220.152 Kb

After running doom3

the peak value = 550.000Kb (the other time I saw 620.000)

I hope I send now the correct info.
By the way thanks a lot for helping me.

 

[kony]

OK I restart windows and no other tools or prgrams are runnning.

The peak value = 220.152 Kb

After running doom3

the peak value = 550.000Kb (the other time I saw 620.000)

I hope I send now the correct info.
By the way thanks a lot for helping me.

If that is the Commit Charge, Peak value, then yes your
system will benefit from more memory. Remaining question is
whether it's a good value to pour more $ into it with RDRAM
or put the $ towards a new one... since a gamer can never
have too fast a system.

 

[spawn]

If that is the Commit Charge, Peak value, then yes your
system will benefit from more memory. Remaining question is
whether it's a good value to pour more $ into it with RDRAM
or put the $ towards a new one... since a gamer can never
have too fast a system.

That was the reason I always played games on my xbox, but today pc games are
ore detailed. So I want to upgrade my pc.
But selling the pc and bying a new one is no option anymore, because I have
now a expensive AGP card which I never can use in a new system :-(

But mankind have to learn from their faults.

Thank you very much.

Carlo

 

[Quaoar]

I was forgotten to mention, I did a clean installation. After
replacing the card I reinstalled XP.
And now I see I have also bad fps for Medal of Honor - Pacific
assault - an "old" game. I feel so bad ...

Yep. Something is wrong. MoH Pac Assault should have no display
problems. Perhaps the card is DOA, or nealy so.

Q

 

[Random Person]

Your performance in Doom 3 also depends on where on the map you are and
whether there are a lot of lighting and environmental (like the toxic
mist in one level) effects.

Even with my "OK" system with a Radeon 9800 Pro, 1GB DDR333 RAM and an
AMD XP 2500+ CPU, I sometimes get ~1 FPS when I am firing the plasma
gun. I need to run to a different room to fight the monsters

I have of course tweaked the settings so the gun flashes are brighter
and have bigger radii, i.e. I have non-standard .pk files.

But there you go. It would be helpful to know where in the maps the THG
people were getting their reported framerates.

 

[kony]

Your performance in Doom 3 also depends on where on the map you are and
whether there are a lot of lighting and environmental (like the toxic
mist in one level) effects.

Even with my "OK" system with a Radeon 9800 Pro, 1GB DDR333 RAM and an
AMD XP 2500+ CPU, I sometimes get ~1 FPS when I am firing the plasma
gun. I need to run to a different room to fight the monsters

I have of course tweaked the settings so the gun flashes are brighter
and have bigger radii, i.e. I have non-standard .pk files.

I'd imagine you were also using significantly more demanding
detail levels and resolutions, possibly a high level of FSAA
or AF too? I vaguely recall running it on a GF4TI4600 which
did pretty well with reduced eye-candy @ 1024x768 medium
detail, though eventually framerates dropped under 20-25 and
required dropping down to 800x600 to play through it.

Since OP has bad FPS in another game too I suspect there's
somthing else wrong with the system setup, maybe screwy ATI
drivers and a driver cleaner should be used before
installing a new(er) Catalyst.

 

[spawn]

I'd imagine you were also using significantly more demanding
detail levels and resolutions, possibly a high level of FSAA
or AF too? I vaguely recall running it on a GF4TI4600 which
did pretty well with reduced eye-candy @ 1024x768 medium
detail, though eventually framerates dropped under 20-25 and
required dropping down to 800x600 to play through it.

What do you mean with "eye-candy" I don't know how to translate this to
Dutch. Is this a setting ?

<cut>

 

[Random Person]

"Eye candy" means the extra visual effects which are not required to
make the game work. They are there to make it look better.

Good food is nice to eat. "Eye candy" is nice to see ^^

 

[Gary Hendricks]

Hi Carlo

What about your other systems specs? The 512 MB memory looks a little
suspicious and on the low side. What about your hard drive?
Motherboard? Any idea how those are set up? They can affect performance
drastically too.

Personally I think if you want to get good game performance, you need
good components in the WHOLE system, not just the graphics card.

Best Regards,
Gary Hendricks
www.build-your-own-computers.com

 

[spawn]

Hi Carlo

What about your other systems specs? The 512 MB memory looks a little
suspicious and on the low side. What about your hard drive?
Motherboard? Any idea how those are set up? They can affect performance
drastically too.

Personally I think if you want to get good game performance, you need
good components in the WHOLE system, not just the graphics card.

Best Regards,
Gary Hendricks
www.build-your-own-computers.com

System Specs:

Dell dimension 8200 with latest firmware en bios versions

Intel P4 2.4 Ghz (400 Mhz)
512 RDRAM (pc800)
Intel 850 chipset
AGP 4x
80 GB ATA-66 HD

I have used the standard setup.
Nothing changed in BIOS.

Specs VGA

Colorpower radeon x800 pro
256 MB - 12 pipelines
450Mhz DDR / 475Mhz
installed the latest drivers.

In the meantime I have read something about:
the Intel Application Accelerator
Overclocking with ATItool
Flashing BIOS X800 pro to X800 XT

But I think, selling the pc and bying a new one was a better choice.
But damaged is done :-(