Slow 2D graphics performance in Windows 2003 Server

A

AlexT

I'm trying to set up win 2003 server, but I don't see a newsgroup for it.
Since I know it and XP are related, I'm posting here.

I have a nvidia Geforce 4 Ti4400 video card by PNY Tech., AGP 4x. It worked
great in Win 2000 for about three years. With 2003 it's not terrible but
slower. For example, scrolling a web page in IE is fine, but slower than it
used to be on 2000. The problem is very visible in the following
situations.

1. I right click on desktop -> properties -> settings tab. When I click on
Advanced button and move the mouse cursor around, first of all it takes a
few seconds for the advanced dialog box to come up and the mouse jumps from
place to place during this time. What I mean by jump, I move it
continuously, but it stays in one spot, then moves a little, then sits in
one spot a little bit more, then moves.

2. When I go to Start menu -> Shut Down (or log off), then move the mouse
around while the screen goes from color to B&W, the mouse exhibits this
jumping/lagging. It also does right after login, while everything is
loading.

I thought it must be IRQ conflict. System info showed that the card was
sharing irq16 with an enhanced usb controller. So I disabled that device,
restarted. Now the graphics card was the only thing on irq16. I still get
the same problem. I removed drivers, updated drivers, went to a previous
version of drivers. No change. Replaced the card with a newer mid-range
ATI card AGP 8x. The problem was less pronounced, but was still there. The
card was still on irq16. Actually, before I installed ATI drivers, sys info
showed the vga adapter on irq10, then after I installed drivers, it switched
to 16 again. I got a geforce 6600GT, again from PNY. I have the same
problem, as bad as on the old ti4400, even though the graphics chip is much
faster. 2d performance suffers as much. I'm thinking, what's so advanced or
requires so many resources to turn the screen from color to B&w? Shouldn't
this be pretty fast? Maybe it's a gdi problem?

I wanted to test 3d performance, so I tried doom3 demo and ran the
benchmark. The 6600gt card got 22 fps at 1600x1200, ultra high detail. It
would have gotten more if the disk was faster. Anyway, 3d performance is
fine. I can't figure out what's wrong with 2d. I'd reinstall windows if it
was an IRQ problem, but it doesn't seem to be.

Tried switching mouse to different usb ports, no change. Mouse was never
connected to the usb controller that was sharing irq 16. That controller
wasn't used for anything.
 
C

Cari \(MS-MVP\)

The correct newsgroup would be the servers newsgroup... however

a) People are not going to be terribly impressed there by your wanting to
play games on a Server operating system. A Server O/S is not designed for
gaming. It's designed for being a Server.

b) Everything is disabled by default in 2003. Have you enabled everything
in DirectX? Installed the latest DirectX? Installed the latest nVidia
graphics?

c) IRQ Sharing is the default in XP and 2003... see:
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;314068
 
A

AlexT

Thanks for your response
a) People are not going to be terribly impressed there by your wanting to
play games on a Server operating system. A Server O/S is not designed for
gaming. It's designed for being a Server.

I don't want to play games on it. I just saw that 2D performance wasn't
what it should be and decided to use some kind of 3d benchmark to see how 3D
performance stacks up. Even though a server system isn't designed for 3d
gaming it should provide good 2d performance especially with good hardware
support. I was running 2000 Std server before and it was better. That's all.
b) Everything is disabled by default in 2003. Have you enabled everything
in DirectX? Installed the latest DirectX? Installed the latest nVidia
graphics?

Yeah, I've got all the latest. The latest Via drivers, the latest nvidia
drivers, the latest windows updates, and DirectX 9c has all hardware
acceleration enabled.

See, when I install an OS from scratch, I expect it to perform flawlessly.
The problems I was talking about in my post are not life-threatening, but
they tell me something is wrong with system configuration. I have to
resolve this before I'm satisfied enough with the system to activate
windows. If I don't get things straightened out before activation deadline,
I'll just go back to 2000.

Thanks again for your reply.
 

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