Hi everyone first post here....just got a quick question for all you Radeon gurus.
I recently called it quits with NVidia ditching my MSI TI4200 AGP 8x 128 meg card.

Went to a local PC store today and purchased an ATI Radeon 9800 Pro 256 megs of RAM.

I hooked it up, ran some benchmarks and get ~6000 in 3dmark2001 SE. I've seen people with machines with lower power than mine score higher. I installed the latest Omega drivers and have tried with both the Standard OpenGL and the Special OpenGL with a 2000 increase in 3dmarks while using the special drivers.

Any idea to why this is? I ran Aquamark3 and scored ~14000 whereas people with comparable systems to mine score in the 45k+ range.

System specs are...

WD HDD 120mb 7200 RPM IDE.
MSI 865PE Neo2-LS mobo.
Intel Pentium Celeron 2.4 ghz.
ATI Radeon 9800 pr 256 megs (the brand is ATI, not Sapphire or anything like that /shrug)
768mb PC2100 RAM.
Creative Soundblaser 16 PCI
Onboard LAN.

Everything is at default. No overclocking or anything.

Sorry if this is one of those "beating a dead horse" topics. I looked through several forum pages and didn't really find anything that matches my problem.

Thanks to everyone in advance, and hope we can get this situation sorted out together!

I have did some testing with various games I have. If anyone is familiar with these games maybe it will give some insight to diagnosing the problem.

Jedi Academy- Lags whenever anyone uses force push etc. Basically anything that makes like fog.
Eve Online- Lags anywhere just as much as my NVidia GeForce4 Ti4200 does.
Battlefield Vietnam- Lags on muzzle flashes.
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I have ran Driver Cleaner to clean out any old NVidia drivers left over. I also have updated my motherboard inf and whatnot. Have also tried the regular Catalyst drivers themselves.

Thanks in advance guys!
-Tri

Did you plug in the molex connector?

Quote: Originally Posted by Triiad System specs are... WD HDD 120mb 7200 RPM IDE. MSI 865PE Neo2-LS mobo. Intel Pentium Celeron 2.4 ghz. ATI Radeon 9800 pr 256 megs (the brand is ATI, not Sapphire or anything like that /shrug) 768mb PC2100 RAM. Creative Soundblaser 16 PCI Onboard LAN.

i cant stress this enough....welcome to pimprig....

edit, btw gorked, liked the layout of your sig so i tried my hand at something similar, imitation is the ultimate form of flattery...

Quote: Did you plug in the molex connector?]

Yeah, kinda figured that needed to be plugged in to even have the thing work at all =p.

Anyhow anyone have any ideas? Is it my CPU? To me that seems to be the weakest part of my PC as Celerons are a POS, but is a CPU really enough to hold back a video card that much?

Thanks for the welcome too

I know truform kills the performance on my 9600Xt , check to see its not enabled.

BTW, WElcome to PR

Quote: Originally Posted by TYCOON I know truform kills the performance on my 9600Xt , check tro see its not enabled.

Just checked it. It's off by default.

I have the same vid card and I dont score worth a ****. I can't figure it out but i don't care cause I don't Game, sorry not much help just declaring a similarity.

Damn, thats a toughie..

I know your CPU might be dettering performance but not that much...

In your Display options area go to SETTINGS > ADVANCED then go to the 3D tab and make sure the following is true for BOTH Direct 3d and OpenGL
Texture Preferences : High Quality (max to the right)
Mipmap detail : high quality (max to the right)
Wait for VSync : Always off (max to left)
TRUFORM : Always off (max to left)

Next go to the SMARTGEAR tab and make sure you're set for 8x AGP with Fast Write ON.

Ok, now head to your BIOS, make sure that you are again setup for 8x AGP with a 64mb AGP Apature.

You said you have the Omega's installed, use their overclocker tool to make sure you're card is at it's default speeds 378mhz core and 338mhz RAM I think? it's been a long time since I''ve been stock

If all that checks out I'm stumped... Make sure you've got a 9800 Pro and not some other card, that's all I can think of...

Turn off the pr0n dialers.

...No seriously though, cleanup background applications, when I game I have no more than 15 processes running.

Quote: Originally Posted by Arkangyl Damn, thats a toughie.. I know your CPU might be dettering performance but not that much... In your Display options area go to SETTINGS > ADVANCED then go to the 3D tab and make sure the following is true for BOTH Direct 3d and OpenGL Texture Preferences : High Quality (max to the right) Mipmap detail : high quality (max to the right) Wait for VSync : Always off (max to left) TRUFORM : Always off (max to left) Next go to the SMARTGEAR tab and make sure you're set for 8x AGP with Fast Write ON. Ok, now head to your BIOS, make sure that you are again setup for 8x AGP with a 64mb AGP Apature. You said you have the Omega's installed, use their overclocker tool to make sure you're card is at it's default speeds 378mhz core and 338mhz RAM I think? it's been a long time since I''ve been stock If all that checks out I'm stumped... Make sure you've got a 9800 Pro and not some other card, that's all I can think of...

Allright, running 3dmark2001 SE now. Will edit with results in a few....

Doing that boosted it to almost 9k....I've read that people with comparable systems get anywhere from 16-20k 3dmarks. What the heck gives?

Does this warrant a format? Is there any remote chance that it is still the NVidia drivers causing problems even though I removed them with Driver Cleaner?

[hijack]Something changed with my 9600Xt that no one could help me with, I was scoring 35,000 In Aquamark with what I would call "Medium" overclocking, after some reading and tweaking I decide to reinstall Windows Xp and Reset my BIOS and start from scratch with my new knowledge. Well after a 100 more MHz of CPU power, tighter RAM timmings and 10/10 MHz Increase on my graphics card I am getting 31,034...EVERY FREACKEN TIME???/????????!?!!#$!@$@!$#

Yours lags in areas mine does not, I dont know how positively it affects it but your ram could use an update. I don't have 3dmark2001 just 3dmark03. On Auqua mark I score @ 22326, which is an embarassment thats why I dont talk bout it much.

Its not so much that I am not scoring high. Its the fact that I paid 300 bucks for this thing and it BARELY outperforms my GeForce4 Ti4200.

Did you uninstall the nVidia drivers and run driver cleaner in safe mode to
remove the nVidia Driver Dregs BEFORE installing ATi drivers?

reformat, its always the best thing to do when upgrading a major part of ur pc

Quote: Originally Posted by mot19 reformat, its always the best thing to do when upgrading a major part of ur pc

Sad but true. Gotta love windows.

Well I spent all damn day trying to find my Windows XP Pro install cd.

Formatted....

And absolutely not one bit of performance increase over before I formatted. Tomorrow this puppy is going back to Microcenter. Should've known better not to stray from NVidia.

Thanks for the help guys.

WHAT!!!! going to give up already? what do you have the AGP settings at in BIOS? i mean there is ALOT more to this than a simple format, what driver version for ATi are you using? did you do ALL of the windows updates? Keep messing with it, you'll get it soon....

You're going to have to try harder than that.

Computer's are like ho's, they need to be slapped back in line every now and then...
as in you need to tweak with the settings, the BIOS would be a good place to start.

Honestly Triiad, try RMA'ing (exchanging) the 9800 first; might just have a messy one

Just a few more things;

Make sure you're BIOS has your Primary Display Adapter set to AGP. Also whats you're cooling like? if your temps are gawd aweful I think your vid card might downclock. Also how bout the PSU? if its some cheapo 250-300w'er you might be overloading it and thus screwing with the graphics card again.

BIOS updates may or may not help. The same with the newest drivesr for EVERYTHING