Poor performance on a GeForceFX 5200!

[fuxifuxi]

Hello !

I have wanted to share with you my discontent. I have bought a GeForceFX 5200 card whose fillrate performance doesn't match my old
Creative Annihilator's (GeForce256 DDR) performance. I am working on an
intensive fillrate application and it runs at 180 fps on my old card and at 160 fps on the new 5200 card. I was astonished. I also have found a program that stresses fillrate on nvidia's site and my fillrate performance was about a third of a geforce 3 card.

The conclusion:

GeForceFX 5200 SUCKS !!!

It has the functionality I need, and its core is pretty strong, but memory is its gretest disadvantage.

[aapo]

Originally posted by fuxifuxi
I have wanted to share with you my discontent. I have bought a GeForceFX 5200 card whose fillrate performance doesn't match my old
Creative Annihilator's (GeForce256 DDR) performance.

Do you have FX5200 with a 64 bit memory bus, or is it a proper one (128 bit)? If it's a FX5200 with 128 bit memory bus, it should be a lot faster, so you probably need a driver / Windows reinstall. If it's the infamous 64bit-version, then there's nothing that can be done with it.

[fuxifuxi]

It has an 128 bit wide bus.

It was madeby Asus (model V9520)

[aapo]

Originally posted by fuxifuxi
It has an 128 bit wide bus.

It was madeby Asus (model V9520)

Hmm... The V9520 cards actually sold to customers seem to have somewhat worse memory clocks than advertised. It comes with 331 MHz DDR, when the advertisements claim 400 MHz DDR.

http://www.amdzone.com/articleview.c...id=1279&page=3

Furthermore, all 128 MB Asus V9520 do not necessarily have 128 bit bus. The normal 128 MB V9520 cards with 8 memory chips on board have 128 bit bus, whereas there is supposed to exist a variant with 4 memory chips (see link), which has a 64 bit memory bus. Add to this the slower-than-advertised memory clocks, which lead to a ridiculous bandwith of 2.7 GB/s, about one tenth of the today's top cards. Selling these cards would be an outright fraud IMHO.

[fuxifuxi]

Yes, my card has a 331 MHz memory clock, but has 8 memory chips.
Also, I have no idea why they sell it at 331 MHz, because mine is working at 406 Mhz (but it think standard memory frequency is 460)

[aapo]

Originally posted by fuxifuxi
Also, I have no idea why they sell it at 331 MHz,

That's easy. The memory chips used in the card are rated by the memory manufacturer to run at most 333 MHz DDR. If they would be run at 400 MHz DDR, it would be quite big overclock for the rams, and quite many of the cards would have overclocking artifacts right out of the box. This would cause a lot of RMAd cards, which they obviously don't want to happen.

[fuxifuxi]

Should I take the card and show it to my seller ?
It should be replaced since it does not meet the advertised standard...

[aapo]

Originally posted by fuxifuxi
Should I take the card and show it to my seller ?
It should be replaced since it does not meet the advertised standard...

I wouldn't bother, because the chips on your card actually can run the advertised speed with overclocking, if I understood you right. I think there is a problem with your setup, because it should be a lot faster than your GF256. Try first a driver cleaning / reinstall procedure, and if it doesn't help, check and fiddle with your computer's AGP settings in BIOS.

BTW, what 3dMark 2k1 scores are you getting?

[fuxifuxi]

My card works most of the time at least 2-3 times faster than my GeForce256, but only when the limiting factor is the geometry. When the fillrate is stressed and geometry is poor, the differences are minimal (when I don't overclock)

[Uttar]

Originally posted by fuxifuxi
My card works most of the time at least 2-3 times faster than my GeForce256, but only when the limiting factor is the geometry. When the fillrate is stressed and geometry is poor, the differences are minimal (when I don't overclock)

That doesn't sound right, considering the theorical specs of both cards.
Could you try a benchmark to give us MPixels/s numbers for 1 texture and multitexture scenarios? Such benchmark exists for example in 3DMark2001 and 2003.


Uttar

[fuxifuxi]

Here are my 3DMark specifications and results:




System Configuration
Operating System Microsoft Windows 2000

DirectX Version 9.0


AGP Rates (Current/Available) 2x / 1x 2x



CPU Intel Pentium III 601 MHz

FSB 100 MHz

Memory 128 MB



Graphics Chipset NVIDIA GeForce FX 5200

Driver Name NVIDIA GeForce FX 5200

Driver Version 6.14.10.5175

Video Memory 128 MB



Program Version 3DMark2001 SE

Resolution 1024x768 32bit

Texture Format Compressed

FSAA Disabled

Z-Buffer Depth 24bit

Frame Buffer Double

Rendering Pipeline D3D Pure Hardware T&L



Detailed Test Results
3DMark Score 2816 3D marks



Game 1 Car Chase - Low Detail 39.6 FPS

Game 1 Car Chase - High Detail 10.7 FPS

Game 2 Dragothic - Low Detail 49.5 FPS

Game 2 Dragothic - High Detail 31.0 FPS

Game 3 Lobby - Low Detail 45.2 FPS

Game 3 Lobby - High Detail 19.3 FPS

Game 4 Nature 12.7 FPS



Fill Rate (Single-Texturing) 249.2 MTexels/s

Fill Rate (Multi-Texturing) 652.0 MTexels/s



High Polygon Count (1 light) 18.6 MTriangels/s

High Polygon Count (8 lights) 2.9 MTriangels/s



Environment Bump Mapping 43.6 FPS

DOT3 Bump Mapping 32.9 FPS



Vertex Shader 33.1 FPS

Pixel Shader 39.7 FPS

Advanced Pixel Shader 23.2 FPS

Point Sprite 7.0 MSprites/s



The benchmark was run without overclocking my card, so at 250/331.

[stefan435]

With a Pentium3 600Mhz it is limiting the performance you will get from that Video card. Your CPU is a bottleneck, and cannot process the information from the Video card fast enough.