Depressing performance with new machine

[Chadder007]

IBHehasspywaretakingup50%oftheprocessor.

 

[Chadder007]

Originally posted by: Balin le Savage
Just curious, I have 2 Gigs of RAM, can I cheat any of that over to video RAM? ie, make the card use an additional 256 of that, or does the RAM have to be physically on the card?

Try increasing your AGP Aperture to at least 512. Also do you have the RAM sticks sitting in the Odd number slots? As in not side by side but having one slot in between.... Otherwise dual channel won't work for the RAM.
Though really....the overall problem is your Video card doesn't have 512 megs!!!

 

[RaiderJ]

Originally posted by: dguy6789
In case you guys didnt know, Id saying doom 3 uses 500MB of texture memory is 100% BS and nothing more then marketing.

Download a program that tests how much vram your using. I open up doom 3 with it set at 1024X768 ultra with my agp aperture set to 32MB. It runs 50+ fps. Now i set it to 512MB agp aperture, and run the game on ultra. Guess what, uses NO MORE RAM THEN BEFORE, and the same fps. This means the game DOES NOT even fill up my video card's 128MB of vram, let alone the 500+ it has to use as agp texture memory.

Dont believe everything a game company tells you about the game. They recomend my 9800 pro run at medium settings, yet when i run at ultra at 1024X768 with 16X af, it still runs at over 50FPS 90% of the time.

Doom 3 certainly uses 500MB of texture when they are uncompressed, which is what Ultra Quality does. The AGP aperture size has nothing to do with video card memory size.... it adjusts your system memory (not sure how). Ultra Quality causes problems because when you have more data than will fit on your video card memory, it is stored in system memory. When that data has to get switched, you get "texture thrashing" and thusly poor performance.

I call shens on your video card performance. You have magic 9800 Pro?

 

[Balin le Savage]

Originally posted by: Chadder007

Try increasing your AGP Aperture to at least 512.

Sadly, my aperture only goes to 256 (Asus A8V deluxe but I need to update to the latest driver.)
My memory is configured as you suggested, so it's working dual. I also see that on Post.

 

[Balin le Savage]

Originally posted by: NoGodForMe

Oh right. I'm using the A8V1008 drivers (latest non-beta from Asus.)
I didn't see many of the cache options mentioned here. Is that what you're asking?
[/quote]
I think he's asking if you loaded the AGP drivers from the Asus CD. I assume you did because you loaded the Marvel Lan driver to get your connection working right? It's on that menu of drivers to load, I'll have to get the exact wording of it, I'm at work right now. I think they're called Mini Port drivers.

[/quote]

Yes, I did load the AGP drivers from the Asus CD. Thanks for clarifying his question for me. I'm clearly new to this.

 

[Balin le Savage]

Do you know the difference btw chipset drivers and a bios revision? Amazing.

Thanks for the link, I'll install them after this post. No, I guess I didn't really know the difference. I mistakenly assumed that the Bios controlled all of the board's functions. Reflecting on the word 'drivers' however...makes me realize the error of my noob ways.

 

[Leper Messiah]

Originally posted by: RaiderJ

Originally posted by: dguy6789
In case you guys didnt know, Id saying doom 3 uses 500MB of texture memory is 100% BS and nothing more then marketing.

Download a program that tests how much vram your using. I open up doom 3 with it set at 1024X768 ultra with my agp aperture set to 32MB. It runs 50+ fps. Now i set it to 512MB agp aperture, and run the game on ultra. Guess what, uses NO MORE RAM THEN BEFORE, and the same fps. This means the game DOES NOT even fill up my video card's 128MB of vram, let alone the 500+ it has to use as agp texture memory.

Dont believe everything a game company tells you about the game. They recomend my 9800 pro run at medium settings, yet when i run at ultra at 1024X768 with 16X af, it still runs at over 50FPS 90% of the time.

Doom 3 certainly uses 500MB of texture when they are uncompressed, which is what Ultra Quality does. The AGP aperture size has nothing to do with video card memory size.... it adjusts your system memory (not sure how). Ultra Quality causes problems because when you have more data than will fit on your video card memory, it is stored in system memory. When that data has to get switched, you get "texture thrashing" and thusly poor performance.

I call shens on your video card performance. You have magic 9800 Pro?

seriously. My 9800np@ 470/370 with a A64 3200+@ 2.4 1GB ddr400, still only gets about 40fps on 1024x768. I don't even have AA on. AGP apeture size bookmarks that ammount of ram specifically for video textures, it doesn't make all that much of a diffrence these days, as progs will do that anyways. leave it a 1/4 of your total system ram for best performance.

 

[Regs]

John and team should of never called it "Ultra Quality". Nobody reads the manual ever. That's why the started not to sell games with them. Ultra quality = high quality with the textures already uncompressed. Does nothing really for the visual effects.

 

[Snoop]

Originally posted by: Balin le Savage

Do you know the difference btw chipset drivers and a bios revision? Amazing.

Thanks for the link, I'll install them after this post. No, I guess I didn't really know the difference. I mistakenly assumed that the Bios controlled all of the board's functions. Reflecting on the word 'drivers' however...makes me realize the error of my noob ways.

Well I appluad your efforts to learn about building pc's, I should not have worded my question that way as it was somewhat offensive, and didnt mean it that way. Let us know how it works after installing the latest "chipset " drivers, since u have already updated the bios, your system should be set and I doubt you will have trouble running doom 3 even at ultra settings.

 

[Snoop]

One thing I would think about If i were you is that with all these driver changes and bios tweaks, maybe you should just reinstall your system from scratch, eliminating any mistakes that may have been made on your initial installation and configuration of your system. Only do this if its not a ton of trouble; IE You have not spent days getting email, internet, networking, etc etc, to work correctly.

If you decide to go this route, here are the steps (I think your knowledge is probably more advanced than this but, figured it cannot hurt):

First, I would download all the latest drivers for your system (No Beta Drivers), including the latest Nvidia Forceware, Via Hyperion, I would get these both from the mfg websites (www.nvidia.com, www.viaarena.com) . Also get the latest drivers from the Asus site for your board (Both Realtek audio drivers, whatever Promise controllers you need, and the LAN driver)

-1.Go into your bios, load optimized setup defaults (or whatever they call it on this board). Being that you probably are not familiar with what many of the non-standard options (as most people are not), I would assume the asus engineers know what to set most things to. Eventually, I would explore changing some of these settings, but at this point it is more likely you will negatively affect the system than actually improve performance. Next, if you feel confident enough, go into the memory settings page an set them to what the manufacturer of your memory recommends, If you do not want to do this just set these to auto (Optimized setup will probably do this).

-2. Boot from the windows CD (you may need to change your boot order in your bios), format your drive, and then install windows.

-3. After installing windows, (you may need to install the Lan driver for internet, or your Promise ide/RAID drivers, I don?t know) go to windows update, download the updates (It could be argued to install your 4in1's/vid drivers before this, but I do not believe it makes much difference) After updating everything, Now install your 4in1's, then install your video card drivers, and then any other drivers for components of you computer (sound, capture devices etc)

-4. Run some benchmarks and compare your system with other similar setups!

 

[Googer]

Get over it, at this point in time no one can run DOOM3 at with good frame rates at high resolutions. also the DOOM3 engine is just as dependant on the CPU as it is on the GPU 40/60

 

[dguy6789]

Originally posted by: RaiderJ

Originally posted by: dguy6789
In case you guys didnt know, Id saying doom 3 uses 500MB of texture memory is 100% BS and nothing more then marketing.

Download a program that tests how much vram your using. I open up doom 3 with it set at 1024X768 ultra with my agp aperture set to 32MB. It runs 50+ fps. Now i set it to 512MB agp aperture, and run the game on ultra. Guess what, uses NO MORE RAM THEN BEFORE, and the same fps. This means the game DOES NOT even fill up my video card's 128MB of vram, let alone the 500+ it has to use as agp texture memory.

Dont believe everything a game company tells you about the game. They recomend my 9800 pro run at medium settings, yet when i run at ultra at 1024X768 with 16X af, it still runs at over 50FPS 90% of the time.

Doom 3 certainly uses 500MB of texture when they are uncompressed, which is what Ultra Quality does. The AGP aperture size has nothing to do with video card memory size.... it adjusts your system memory (not sure how). Ultra Quality causes problems because when you have more data than will fit on your video card memory, it is stored in system memory. When that data has to get switched, you get "texture thrashing" and thusly poor performance.

I call shens on your video card performance. You have magic 9800 Pro?

AGP Aperture allows a game to put video data into your system memory. If the game uses more then 128MB of vram, then the game would obviously start using the aperture memory, which it does NOT. If your video card runs out of vram, the game is supposed to start putting texture data into the aperture memory, but doom 3 never does this anywhere near the point of 500MB.

As for my magic 9800 pro, I dont believe it is magic, but I do indeed love it's performace. I have an Athlon 64 2800, 1.5GB of ram, and a 9800 Pro 128MB with Cat 4.12 drivers.

http://home.earthlink.net/~dguy6789/Doom%203%20Pics/



And these pics are run at 1024X768, Ultra settings(yea, ULTRA) and 16X anisotropic filtering, my 9800 pro is at stock clocks.

 

[RaiderJ]

AGP Aperture allows a game to put video data into your system memory. If the game uses more then 128MB of vram, then the game would obviously start using the aperture memory, which it does NOT. If your video card runs out of vram, the game is supposed to start putting texture data into the aperture memory, but doom 3 never does this anywhere near the point of 500MB.

Wrong. This is from Adrians Rojak Pot:

"Please note that the AGP aperture is merely address space, not actual physical memory in use. Although it is very common to hear people recommending that the AGP aperture size should be half the size of system memory, that is wrong!"

As for my magic 9800 pro, I dont believe it is magic, but I do indeed love it's performace. I have an Athlon 64 2800, 1.5GB of ram, and a 9800 Pro 128MB with Cat 4.12 drivers. And these pics are run at 1024X768, Ultra settings(yea, ULTRA) and 16X anisotropic filtering, my 9800 pro is at stock clocks.

Taking screenshots at that graphic level does not equal 50fps 90% of the time. Another user posted above with a 9800np and similiar components and didn't claim near that level of performance. Maybe you have an X800XT and are confused? I still call shens.

 

[dguy6789]

What am I supposed to do? I showed you some pics, and very rarely does it go below that. Yea agp aperture is never actively in use, but it is storage space, and that storage space is NEVER even close to being 500MB in doom 3 Period.

If I have an x800xt, then I got it for 200 bucks, and it gets 2500 marks in 05.

 

[RaiderJ]

Originally posted by: dguy6789
What am I supposed to do? I showed you some pics, and very rarely does it go below that.

FRAPs?

Yea agp aperture is never actively in use, but it is storage space, and that storage space is NEVER even close to being 500MB in doom 3 Period.

Maybe I should have bolded the quote...

"Please note that the AGP aperture is merely address space, not actual physical memory in use. Although it is very common to hear people recommending that the AGP aperture size should be half the size of system memory, that is wrong!"

Can you not read? The aperture does not store textures!!! The Ultra setting uses uncompressed textures that do take up more space... but you will not see that reflected in the aperture because it is not storage space.

If I have an x800xt, then I got it for 200 bucks, and it gets 2500 marks in 05.

 

[like a fox]

Originally posted by: Cassius105
no card out at the moment can run doom3 on ultra quality since it requires 512MB of video memory

Well...technically nVIDIA DOES make a 512mb card, the Quadro FX4400, and it costs around $2k also. But you get what you pay for (with the exception of sli nf4's ).

 

[dguy6789]

I DID use fraps.

 

[RaiderJ]

Originally posted by: dguy6789
I DID use fraps.

According to HardOCP's benchmark, they got an average of 50fps with a system similiar to yours, but had the setup on high quality, not ultra, and even had a faster clocked 9800XT (with an extra 128MB of VRAM). They also had the setup at 8xAF, not 16xAF.

I doubt that your setup (with a slower CPU & video card) outperforms theirs by such a large margin. If you are getting that average framerate, something has to be different.

 

[RealityTime]

Originally posted by: RaiderJ

Originally posted by: dguy6789
In case you guys didnt know, Id saying doom 3 uses 500MB of texture memory is 100% BS and nothing more then marketing.

Download a program that tests how much vram your using. I open up doom 3 with it set at 1024X768 ultra with my agp aperture set to 32MB. It runs 50+ fps. Now i set it to 512MB agp aperture, and run the game on ultra. Guess what, uses NO MORE RAM THEN BEFORE, and the same fps. This means the game DOES NOT even fill up my video card's 128MB of vram, let alone the 500+ it has to use as agp texture memory.

Dont believe everything a game company tells you about the game. They recomend my 9800 pro run at medium settings, yet when i run at ultra at 1024X768 with 16X af, it still runs at over 50FPS 90% of the time.

Doom 3 certainly uses 500MB of texture when they are uncompressed, which is what Ultra Quality does. The AGP aperture size has nothing to do with video card memory size.... it adjusts your system memory (not sure how). Ultra Quality causes problems because when you have more data than will fit on your video card memory, it is stored in system memory. When that data has to get switched, you get "texture thrashing" and thusly poor performance.

I call shens on your video card performance. You have magic 9800 Pro?

agreed. thats total bs man, your 9800pro does NOT run as you say it does. my 6800gt can do d3 at 1024x768 ultra pretty well. but consider the fps rating i get at those setttings, well, you're talking nonsense for some reason.

 

[Snoop]

Originally posted by: RaiderJ

Originally posted by: dguy6789
I DID use fraps.

According to HardOCP's benchmark, they got an average of 50fps with a system similiar to yours, but had the setup on high quality, not ultra, and even had a faster clocked 9800XT (with an extra 128MB of VRAM). They also had the setup at 8xAF, not 16xAF.

I doubt that your setup (with a slower CPU & video card) outperforms theirs by such a large margin. If you are getting that average framerate, something has to be different.

Anand has some Ultra setting benches as well (Doom 3 Ultra), could somone explain the compressed vs uncompressed maps setting as the article does not clarify this difference?

Edit- I assume these benches do not apply to single player though

 

[RaiderJ]

Originally posted by: Snoop

Originally posted by: RaiderJ

Originally posted by: dguy6789
I DID use fraps.

According to HardOCP's benchmark, they got an average of 50fps with a system similiar to yours, but had the setup on high quality, not ultra, and even had a faster clocked 9800XT (with an extra 128MB of VRAM). They also had the setup at 8xAF, not 16xAF.

I doubt that your setup (with a slower CPU & video card) outperforms theirs by such a large margin. If you are getting that average framerate, something has to be different.

Anand has some Ultra setting benches as well (Doom 3 Ultra), could somone explain the compressed vs uncompressed maps setting as the article does not clarify this difference?

Edit- I assume these benches do not apply to single player though

I believe it refers to the lighting map(s). IIRC, when those maps are uncompressed, the lighting looks slighty better, something akin to a JPG vs a BMP. Probably analogous to texture maps being compressed/uncompressed.

From what it looks like on the benchies, you can only have textures or maps uncompressed? Maybe Ultra quality implies uncompressed textures, thusly the benchmarks that have "uncompressed" maps have both textures and lighting maps uncompressed?

 

[dguy6789]

I am using cat 4.12 drivers, which I dont think they were, that could be a variable. Also win xp sp2, with all updates, other than that, I see no variable.

I never said my FPS is always 50, just most of the time, it will drop down a bit once in a while.

 

[Balin le Savage]

Originally posted by: Snoop
One thing I would think about If i were you is that with all these driver changes and bios tweaks, maybe you should just reinstall your system from scratch,

Thanks. I'll print out your suggestions and follow them. I think I'm going to wait until the new motherboard driver is released (it's in beta right now) but then I'll do it.