Problem with Radeon 9600 running slow on Via motherboard

[Fred]

I recently upgraded my computer to this:

P4PB 400-FL motherboard
simpletech 512MB PC2700 memory
Visiontek Xtasy 9600 128MB AGP
2.4Ghz Intel Celeron

I first put in the Visiontek video card with the old equipment to do a
benchmark. I then put in the new processor, motherboard, hard drive, &
Visiontek card. I installed a clean install of Windows XP on the new
hard drive. When I benchmarked the system with 3DMark2001, my new
configuration runs slower then my old AMD 1300 system (6475 with 2.4
Ghz & 7426 with AMD 1300). The CPU & memory scores are much higher in
PCMark, so the system isn't running slow overall. I've installed the
latest motherboard 4in1 drivers, flashed to the newest BIOS for the
motherboard, tried the Visiontek drivers, ATI's own drivers, the
omegacorner.com drivers (which failed to install). I've checked the
AGP voltage (1.5v). I tried turning off "fast write" in SmartGart. I
can't figure out what has gone wrong.

The Visiontek manual says the card should use IRQ 10 or 11, but I
don't see a way to force the card to use this IRQ in the BIOS, and
Windows XP won't allow me to disable "choose automatic settings" in
Device Manager and change the IRQ manually (I have admin rights). Can
this one IRQ detail be slowing down the video card that much? Has
anyone come across a conflict with this VIA motherboard and Visiontek
9600 (or is running them just fine)? Any other suggestions? Thanks for
any help.

I bought and put together the same processor and CPU for someone else,
and they score higher on 3DMark2001 with their older Radeon 8500 card.

 

[ernie samulaitis]

what score are you getting? im currently running

a pentium 4 1.7 533fsb
ddr266, 512mb
ati radeon 9500 overclocked to a 9700
intel motherboard

and im only hitting at about 8990. what are you getting on 2001 3d mark

regards

 

[Chimera]

I recently upgraded my computer to this:

P4PB 400-FL motherboard
simpletech 512MB PC2700 memory
Visiontek Xtasy 9600 128MB AGP
2.4Ghz Intel Celeron

bugger! must be some reason. Back to the IRQ thing, usually its not a
problem with plug & pray systems, but occasionally there can be some
nonsense. When building machines, there is a taboo about using the PCI slot
directly below the AGP. Earlier AGP boards used to share system resources
between that PCI slot and the AGP. Not so sure whether this is still an
issue, but I still avoid it. Also, I'd try removing any non-essential parts
from the system and trying, maybe you have a network card or a cheap
soundcard that is hogging the PCI bus.

 

[Fred]

On 3DMark2001 I scored 7426 with the AMD 1300 and scored 6475 (about
1000 less!) with the Intel 2.4 Ghz Celeron. My system is running
noticably faster with non-video related stuff (compression and
database stuff). My main concern was having video benchmarks dropping
so much, while everything else is faster.

 

[Fred]

bugger! must be some reason. Back to the IRQ thing, usually its not a
problem with plug & pray systems, but occasionally there can be some
nonsense. When building machines, there is a taboo about using the PCI slot
directly below the AGP. Earlier AGP boards used to share system resources
between that PCI slot and the AGP. Not so sure whether this is still an
issue, but I still avoid it. Also, I'd try removing any non-essential parts
from the system and trying, maybe you have a network card or a cheap
soundcard that is hogging the PCI bus.

The only other card in the computer is a PCI network card on the PCI
slot farthest from the AGP. The sound is on the motherboard. The video
card is using IRQ 16, which is shared with the network card (can't
seem to change IRQs). Benchmarking was done while not doing any
networking, internet, or anything else.

 

[Chimera]

The only other card in the computer is a PCI network card on the PCI
slot farthest from the AGP. The sound is on the motherboard. The video
card is using IRQ 16, which is shared with the network card (can't
seem to change IRQs). Benchmarking was done while not doing any
networking, internet, or anything else.

2 cards, and plug & pray decides they should share an interrupt!! that
sucks

 

[Fred]

2 cards, and plug & pray decides they should share an interrupt!! that
sucks

What's even funnier is that Visiontek says the video card needs to use
either IRQ 10 or 11, and IRQ 11 isn't being used by anthing in my
system!

 

[Paradox]

"Fred" wrote in message

P4PB 400-FL motherboard
simpletech 512MB PC2700 memory
Visiontek Xtasy 9600 128MB AGP
2.4Ghz Intel Celeron

I first put in the Visiontek video card with the old equipment to do a
benchmark. I then put in the new processor, motherboard, hard drive, &
Visiontek card. I installed a clean install of Windows XP on the new
hard drive. When I benchmarked the system with 3DMark2001, my new
configuration runs slower then my old AMD 1300 system (6475 with 2.4
Ghz & 7426 with AMD 1300). The CPU & memory scores are much higher in
PCMark, so the system isn't running slow overall. I've installed the
latest motherboard 4in1 drivers, flashed to the newest BIOS for the
motherboard, tried the Visiontek drivers, ATI's own drivers, the
omegacorner.com drivers (which failed to install). I've checked the
AGP voltage (1.5v). I tried turning off "fast write" in SmartGart. I
can't figure out what has gone wrong.

The Visiontek manual says the card should use IRQ 10 or 11, but I
don't see a way to force the card to use this IRQ in the BIOS,

I don't know this Mobo but there is often an 'Assign IRQ for VGA' setting
that should be enabled. Also, if the Bios has the option 'PNP OS installed'
try turning it off.

Rob

 

[Chimera]

What's even funnier is that Visiontek says the video card needs to use
either IRQ 10 or 11, and IRQ 11 isn't being used by anthing in my
system!

thats plug & pray for you. You'll have to keep playing around with bios &
system settings, but Im sure I managed to manually assign IRQs on an XP box
at one stage

 

[JAD]

'PNP OS installed' NO

Yes and:

Reset configuration data to YES

 

[JAD]

and all the via 4 in 1 done/

'PNP OS installed' NO

Yes and:

Reset configuration data to YES

 

[TMack]

I recently upgraded my computer to this:

P4PB 400-FL motherboard
simpletech 512MB PC2700 memory
Visiontek Xtasy 9600 128MB AGP
2.4Ghz Intel Celeron

I first put in the Visiontek video card with the old equipment to do a
benchmark. I then put in the new processor, motherboard, hard drive, &
Visiontek card. I installed a clean install of Windows XP on the new
hard drive. When I benchmarked the system with 3DMark2001, my new
configuration runs slower then my old AMD 1300 system (6475 with 2.4
Ghz & 7426 with AMD 1300). The CPU & memory scores are much higher in
PCMark, so the system isn't running slow overall. I've installed the
latest motherboard 4in1 drivers, flashed to the newest BIOS for the
motherboard, tried the Visiontek drivers, ATI's own drivers, the
omegacorner.com drivers (which failed to install). I've checked the
AGP voltage (1.5v). I tried turning off "fast write" in SmartGart. I
can't figure out what has gone wrong.

The Visiontek manual says the card should use IRQ 10 or 11, but I
don't see a way to force the card to use this IRQ in the BIOS, and
Windows XP won't allow me to disable "choose automatic settings" in
Device Manager and change the IRQ manually (I have admin rights). Can
this one IRQ detail be slowing down the video card that much? Has
anyone come across a conflict with this VIA motherboard and Visiontek
9600 (or is running them just fine)? Any other suggestions? Thanks for
any help.

I bought and put together the same processor and CPU for someone else,
and they score higher on 3DMark2001 with their older Radeon 8500 card.

Unlike 3DMark2003, 3DMark2001 is cpu dependant so you should have obtained a
substantial improvement. There is clearly something not right with your
setup. However, your problem does NOT, repeat NOT have anything to do with
which IRQ it uses. Your card would almost certainly run fine without any
IRQ unless you are doing stuff like video capture and anyway WinXP is
designed to handle IRQ sharing. (If there was any real IRQ conflict you
would be experiencing no-boots, crashes, lockups etc.). The first things to
check are all the 3D settings - make sure vsync is off and that all tweaks
are set to maximise performance rather than quality. Get hold of powerstrip
and use its 'adapter information' function to check that sidebanding,
fastwrites and x4 agp (or x8 if card and board support it) are enabled - if
not then use powerstrip to enable them (assuming that your board supports
them and that you have enabled them in bios already if your bios has
settings for them). Also make sure that you have an adequate agp aperture
setting - 64MB works well with most cards and you may actually get a slight
decrease with larger settings but it is worth trying several to see what
works best.

Good luck
Tony

 

[TMack]

The only other card in the computer is a PCI network card on the PCI
slot farthest from the AGP. The sound is on the motherboard. The video
card is using IRQ 16, which is shared with the network card (can't
seem to change IRQs). Benchmarking was done while not doing any
networking, internet, or anything else.

IRQ 16 is a 'virtual' IRQ - real IRQs only go up to IRQ 15. Anything above
15 is a virtual IRQ generated by the OS (WinXP in this case) which is mapped
onto an appropriate real IRQ by the OS. The use of IRQ 16 simply shows that
WinXP is managing IRQs effectively.

Tony

 

[TMack]

2 cards, and plug & pray decides they should share an interrupt!! that
sucks

Thats what the OS is designed to do - it manages IRQ without the need for
each card to have an individual IRQ. For example my Win2K system reports
that graphics card (Radeon 9500), sound card, NIC and USB are all assigned
to IRQ11 (this is the standard IRQ used by win2k) but everything works
flawlessly.

Tony

 

[TMack]

What's even funnier is that Visiontek says the video card needs to use
either IRQ 10 or 11, and IRQ 11 isn't being used by anthing in my
system!

Your card will be assigned irq 10 or 11 at bootup - however, your OS will
assign a virtual irq such as IRQ 16 (there is NO physical irq 16, the range
is 0-15) as part of is inbuilt irq management ability.

Tony

 

[TMack]

thats plug & pray for you. You'll have to keep playing around with bios &
system settings, but Im sure I managed to manually assign IRQs on an XP box
at one stage

The whole point of plug and play is that you DON'T have to "keep playing
around with bios & system settings" unless you are using old or badly
designed hardware. IRQ sharing is standard practice in OS's like win2k and
winXP and is rarely a source of problems. However, there is much ignorance
about irqs (as this thread demonstrates) which can lead people to believe
they have a problem becasue their OS reports different cards sharing the
same irq.

Tony

 

[TMack]

what score are you getting? im currently running

a pentium 4 1.7 533fsb
ddr266, 512mb
ati radeon 9500 overclocked to a 9700
intel motherboard

and im only hitting at about 8990. what are you getting on 2001 3d mark

regards

Do you mean overclocked to 9700 speeds or do you mean software modded to
9700? With an overclocked non-pro 9500 and an AMD Barton 2500 at 2.15GH I
can get slightly over 11,000. 3DMark2001 is cpu dependant so the faster
processor would account for much of that so your score doesn't seem too bad
if you are simply overclocked. However, if you have a card that is modded
to full 9700 spec your scores seem rather low.

Tony

 

[JAD]

Plug and PLAY OS to NO
reset configuration DATA to YES

almost every video card that Has crossed my path has used IRQ 11. When it doesn't, I usually find that the options above were set
oppisite to what I posted. On some of the newest boards the 'reset config data' option was not present..so I changed the PNP OS
option to Yes. Usually sorted the IRQ thing out. If this is just a matter of squeezing FPS's then never mind, as that is always a
waste of time, IMO.