Help!!! My old Vanta outperforms my new GF2MX!!!

[Brunajs]

I just bought new GF 2MX. I am very disappointed by its performance in several games. Till now I owned 16 MB Vanta OCed to 150/125 MHz (M64 level), my new GF2 in some games doesn't even approach it's performance (!!!), in other games there is same or little gain.

Here are few examples:

In NFS 4 (800x600x16)Vanta gave me 30-50 FPS, GF 2 MX only 17-35 FPS.
In UT (800x600x16)Vanta 35 average, GF2 same.
In GP 3 (800x600x16) only 25% performance gain

What's going on? I tried different driver versions of course, from det. 6.48 to 10.x beta, nothing changed.
3DMark 2000 gives me (only?) 60% performance gain after upgrade.

I feel f...ed up. On Cel. 566@850 MHz, 128 SDRAM I was expecting much more!!!

Can anyone give me an advice? Or I'm going to sell this GF2 and buy some TNT2 PRO.
Thank You.

 

[Zer]

Which GeForce 2 MX did you buy?
If you bought a 100 or a 200, or a "Lite", you essentially got a card with the same memory bandwidth as a Vanta, I do believe. You'd want an MX-400 or at least make sure it has 64-bit DDR or 128-bit SDR memory...

 

[Brunajs]

Huh, I really don't know! In pricelist the card was described as "GF2 MX, 128 bit, 32MB". I see nothing more in manual or on the box. Where can I find this information?

 

[Brunajs]

Hey, can anybody tell me how can I find what type of GF2MX I own???

 

[OmegaXero]

Most video cards have some form of identification on the card itself. Look the card over and chances are you'll find the logo of whoever made it. As for your performance...something certainly isn't right. I'm thinking it is more of a game related issue than anthing else, considering that 3dm2001 took a huge jump. By chance are the OC'd settings for your Vanta being applied to your GF2MX? That will kill performance.

 

[Brunajs]

- Most video cards have some form of identification on the card itself. Look the card over and chances are you'll find the logo of whoever made it.

There is heatsink/fan combo on the chip. I can't look at it.

- By chance are the OC'd settings for your Vanta being applied to your GF2MX?

I reinstalled drivers several times, GF2 is running at it's default frequency.

 

[dragonballgtz]

Here

 

[Brunajs]

Holy sh.t, that's it, exactly! Thanx for that link.

 

[dragonballgtz]

your welcome

 

[MANKOU]

Brunajs, you made me temporarily happy. My TNT card, overclocked, is as fast as the TNT2VANTA cards.
SOOOOOO, my TNT is AS FAST AS A GEFORCE2MX.

 

[MANKOU]

Just kidding of course - -

 

[OmegaXero]

Ok, a few more things. First off, make sure you visit www.viatech.com and download the latest drivers for your chipset if you haven't done so already. Make sure in the bios that "fast writes" are turned off. For some reason this can really kill the performance of some cards (I'm not exactly sure why). Also, make sure that the "video bios cacheable" option in your motherboard's bios is DISABLED. This can cause instability and a performance hit. Other than that, I'm running out of suggestions. Anyone else have any wiz bang ideas?

 

[vss1980]

In terms of BIOS options, performance enhancing options are making sure that 'Assign IRQ to VGA' is enabled, and playing around with the 'AGP aperture size' between the values of 64MB and 128MB usually gives extra performance.
Also if you have a VIA motherboard and are using old chipset drivers (like ones that came with the motherboard CD), try downloading the new VIA 4-in-1 drivers from their web-site. This may help.

 

[Brunajs]

OK, I checked that site closely, looked at memory detail enlargement: 128 bit chip is marked "Samsung 052 K4S643232C-TC55". Chips on my piece are marked "Samsung 109 K4S643232E-TC60" So I assume I have 128bit SDRAM, but with 6ns accestime, not 5.5. Also, after enabling coolbits I found my "GF2 MX" is underclocked to 155/155. I can overclock it to standart 175/166, so the only performance loss should be caused by slower memory then. I CAN'T BELIEVE IT MAKES IT SLOWER THAN VANTA. Also, there should be said, performance in SOME games is fine: Rally champ. 2000 runs 800x600x16 at 40 FPS, with Vanta it was giving me 35 FPS at 640x480x16. I'll try to make some tweaks in BIOS, see you then.

 

[Brunajs]

Just one more thing: why, do you think, is the GPU equipped with heatsink/fan when it runs under specs and can be safely overclocked to 200/180? (I tried, but it gave no noticeable performance boost).

 

[vss1980]

I dont think your performance problems are due to the card being underclocked. Obviously this hurts it, but compared to a Vanta on a clock-to-clock basis, an equally clocked GF2MX should still go much faster.

 

[Jwyatt]

From the sounds of your discription you have an OEM card. The majority of those are clocked lower than retail...or is it the other way around?................hmm I dont think so. the reason being. An OEM card is made to put in an OEM machine. Thuse the manufacturers dont want to have ANY troubles in a long long long long long long long time.

Im not making this up...I read it somewhere. Really did I promise