Weird Performance:

[Poochie]

I think this is quite unusual:

I have two installations of WinXP, one everyday usage and one very clean
just for gaming.
I also have a 3D Tweaker that came with my card (ATI Radeon 9600 Pro 128
MB), which is useful cuz it has a very small 3D animation that keeps me
informed about the current performance telling me the framerate of its very
little 3d demo.

Well: I usually get 650-750 fps...

If I reinstall the 3.9 drivers right after the reboot I get 1000 (Wings of
fury (3dmark2003) gets about 90).

If I reboot again I get 700 (74 in Wings of fury).

Sometimes I even get 600-550, and changing a random setting of the video
card with its appliance (monitor that goes off for a sec and comes back on)
gets me back to 700-750... but never 1000.

Reinstalling the drivers over the old installation will get me back to 1000
and wonderful experience in gaming!!

(I never actually overclocked it during these tests...)

Can someone explain this??

PS: In the non-clean winxp I always get no more than 700.

Thanks, Poochie

 

[RamFan]

It sounds like something is being reloaded after booting. Go to task
manager and note all running processes. If I was guessing, the installer is
closing down some process (anti-virus ?) that restarts after you reboot.

 

[Cobblers!]

I think this is quite unusual:

I have two installations of WinXP, one everyday usage and one very clean
just for gaming.

You have two copies of XP? I was doing this too until MS informed me
that you can only have one installation of XP even if it's on the same
PC. I was using a mobile rack and put a copy of XP on two hard drives.

 

[Poochie]

It sounds like something is being reloaded after booting. Go to task
manager and note all running processes. If I was guessing, the installer is
closing down some process (anti-virus ?) that restarts after you reboot.

Closing every user application won't help even for a bunch of frames... no
hint...

 

[Vellu]

Just a guess, since I'm not an expert on driver functionality, but...

Could it be that on the first reboot after driver installation, not all
features of the card are yet enabled (like the ones in Catalyst options, 3D
section) since the driver hasn't initialized the card fully. But on the
second boot the Cat's have been fully initialized and all features enabled.
I have no idea if it works like this, could be total fantasy...

Since I haven't noticed anything similar myself (I don't really care for
benchmarks anyway, so I don't run them much) could be something else in your
system that's causing this behaviour.