Help me find my GeForce4 Ti 4600 bottleneck

[rhipidon]

What is with my system? I only get on average 40fps in UT2003 and horribly choppy graphics in Battlefield 1942. Here are my system specs:

Abit KX7-333 /w latest BIOS and VIA 4in1s
AGP 4x & Apature set to 128mb
512 MB Samsung DDR @ 333mhz
Athlon XP 1800+ @ 1610 (280 mhz bus, 140fsb x2)
PNY Geforce 4 4600 @ 324/729
Detonator 40.41
WinXP Pro /w SP1 installed
10281 3dMarks in 3DMark 2001 SE
SoundBlaster Live 5.1 /w latest drivers
Dlink DWL-520+ Wireless PCI Network Card
Western Digital 40 gig 7200 RPM Hard Drive /w UDMA100 enabled
Plextor 16x CDRW
Pioneer A04 DVDR
Maxtor 30 gig 5200 RPM Hard Drive /w UDMA66 enabled

Any ideas? I just can't figure out what my bottleneck is.

[McBane]

have ya tried the 30.82's?

the 40s have some issues with the game....its in the readme...

[rhipidon]

Yeah I just tried them. Performance was even worse unfortunatly. :(

[Gator]

have you tried the stock speeds on your GF4, maybe something is messing it up. If that doesnt work, then try putting your FSB at 133, it might not like the overclock in some games

(me shrugs)

[pelly]

How do you have those HD's hooked up?

What drive do you have your pagefile setup on?

Hopefully, your OS and games are loaded on that 7200rpm drive...If you can get everything onto that one drive....take out the 5400rpm drives ( temporarily ).....

Ensure that the 7200rpm HD is the only device on the primary channel......

Go into Control Panel-Hardware-Device Manager and check the properties for the Primary IDE Controller.....Here, you want to make sure that the current transfer mode is Ultra DMA5 ( ATA100 )

Go and try this out and let us know how things turn out....I'm almost certain it has something to do with the setup of the HD's...

Good luck!

:D

[rhipidon]

Thank you so much for the replys! My OS is on the 7200rpm/UDMA 5 Drive, and in Device Manager I confirmed that it was in fact UDMA Mode 5. That hard drive (master) shares IDE channel 1 with my 16x Plextor CDRW, which is running Multi-Word DMA Mode 2. The 5200rpm drive is the master on the 2nd IDE channel and is running UDMA Mode 4, and the slave on that channel is my Pioneer A04 DVDR running UDMA Mode 2. I really appreciate all the help and ideas. I'm at a loss as to what it could be!

[saturnotaku]

If your DVD-RW is running in UDMA mode, I would swap it with your CD-RW to see if that helps. Or, you could put both hard drives on the primary and your optical drives on the secondary channel.

I have my system set up this way (2 Seagate HDD's running UDMA mode 5; Plextor CD-RW and Pioneer DVD-ROM on IDE 2 running UDMA mode 2) and it's worked really well.

[randsom]

how old is your install of xp,os peformance degrades after time(affects gaming pefoRmance), especially if you install and uninstall alot of software or applicatons, run directx diagnostics, see if any problems exist.
I am curious whether you have stabilty problems, or any conflicts
somewhere

www.viahardware.com

has a great faq on the kx7-333.with alot of info on exactly these kinda problems.

ps i had the same issue with win2k(i just upgraded to xp pro), the way i could fix it was to reformat

[FastM]

Originally posted by rhipidon
What is with my system? I only get on average 40fps in UT2003 and horribly choppy graphics in Battlefield 1942. Here are my system specs:

Abit KX7-333 /w latest BIOS and VIA 4in1s
AGP 4x & Apature set to 128mb
512 MB Samsung DDR @ 333mhz
Athlon XP 1800+ @ 1610 (280 mhz bus, 140fsb x2)
PNY Geforce 4 4600 @ 324/729
Detonator 40.41
WinXP Pro /w SP1 installed
10281 3dMarks in 3DMark 2001 SE
SoundBlaster Live 5.1 /w latest drivers
Dlink DWL-520+ Wireless PCI Network Card
Western Digital 40 gig 7200 RPM Hard Drive /w UDMA100 enabled
Plextor 16x CDRW
Pioneer A04 DVDR
Maxtor 30 gig 5200 RPM Hard Drive /w UDMA66 enabled

Any ideas? I just can't figure out what my bottleneck is.

What resolutions are you trying to run the games in? hows yer 3dmark2k1 score?

[rhipidon]

10281 3dMarks in 3DMark 2001 SE, and I usually run @ 1280 x 960. My Windows XP install is only 2 days old.

[FastM]

Im not really sure how to help you, but im curious if you did any benching Before installing the 4in1's after your fresh XP install.

With my MSI TI4200 64meg and a AXP 1900+ / KT266A Nothing overclocked with no AA or AF i Average around 40fps in UT2003 Demo @ 1280x1024. Gets a little jumpy but playable.

[Blakhart]

You could try:
16 bit colour
aa and af off
lower res
lower refresh (say 75 Hz or slightly faster as minimum)
disabling enhanced cpu instructions in opengl
lower ram timings
setting fast cpu decode to off
trying a different driver
trying the game in question at bios and vid card defaults, just to check.


just some thoughts

ps

via could not pay me to install any 4n1s other than those that are in xp or 2k natively...

[FastM]

Originally posted by Blakhart
lower refresh (say 75 Hz or slightly faster as minimum)

via could not pay me to install any 4n1s other than those that are in xp or 2k natively...

Uh Refresh rate? But totaly Agree i wouldn't let any VIA software near my system since WinXP. Im my experience they have only caused problems.

[Blakhart]

The refresh rate, if too high, can be a performance detriment to the vid card. As an ensample, my friend gets a higher score in 3dmark(yuck) with 85 Hz than with 100Hz. This on a gf4ti4400.

[SurfMonkey]

Is this a recent upgrade to the GF4? There may be issues with previous drivers if that is the case.

What other processes do you have running in the background, programs like Virus Checkers, SETI, etc may cause stuttering. I have this problem when I am running SETI and Apache web server plus a few other progs.

The SB Live also has/had a few issues with interrupt stealing across the PCI bus. If everything else fails; uninstall the SB and remove it from the machine. If that cures the problem try re-installing it in another slot.

Run DXDiag from the start menu, if you look at the display section it will give you the lowdown on your card. It will also tell whether AGP support is active, if it isn't then you have an issue with your MB drivers. Try re-installing the VIA set.

Good Luck...:)