Is my Vooodoo 3 screwed?

[snow patrol]

I?ve suddenly noticed this quite major problem with my Voodoo 3 3000, which I?ve owned for about one year. Basically, I?m noticing the problem in Quake 3, which is giving me horrible frame rates when I select the maximum texture detail (i.e. slider all the way to the right). For example, here are some timedemo 1 scores:

800x600 ?normal? ? 77.8 FPS
as above, but with ?max textures? ? 32.3 FPS

Now, I?ve been happily playing Q3A on and off for the past 7 months or so at 800x600 with max textures and getting at least 70FPS. This is on my 500e-->667/P3V4X/128megs.

I?ve checked the driver is the latest, and I?ve also made sure GL Extensions are on.

The thing is, I reckon I know what it might be?. Overclocking. Until yesterday, I hadn?t bothered to overclock my Voodoo 3 at all, but yesterday I cranked her up to 183Mhz, without any additional cooling, just to see how it would perform. I ran the 3D Mark 2000 benchmark, but there was serious pixel popping and it froze after about 3 minutes. I clocked back down straight away.

So is there anyway overclocking could have somehow damaged the memory (or some of it) on my card? Remember, it only seems to be in Quake 3 (UT/Rogue Spear/3D Mark 2000 seem fine) and only at Maximum texture detail. (This never happened before).

If my memory was screwed, would this perhaps be what I might expect to see? Or is it something else? Thanks for any input?

 

[vss1980]

You could have scarred the memory for life. Sometimes pushing an overclocked device higher than normal reduces its ability to maintain the same level of overclocking.

Have you tried re-installing the computer. I noticed that once a program crashed from overclocking, it would not benchmark as fast as before.... formatted, reinstalled and bang the numbers were back.

 

[snow patrol]

Hmnn, no I haven't tried formatting, and frankly I'll be damned if I'm going to unless I'm absolutely desperate!

Ah hell...I don't play Q3A that much any way, and I suppose 3rd texture detail isn't bad. This will make my new graphics card in a few months, all the more sweet

Any other suggestions or general thoughts though?

 

[snow patrol]

Yeah, it just seems wierd that the only problem seems to be in Quake 3 and only at the maximum texture detail. Odd. Very odd :Q

Maybe I should just reinstall Quake 3 or something. I'll try it tomorrow.

 

[Tominator]

A Format and fresh install will do wonders!

 

[snow patrol]

Bollocks to that (well, for now anyway!) I'd rather play with lower detail textures than reformat my hard disk right now!

 

[TimTim]

DAMN SNOWY, sorry to hear that. Hope it all works out, keep us posted!!

 

[snow patrol]

This'll just make my new video card (the one I'm getting in a few months ), all the more sweet. And indeed all the more justifiable

I suppose that's one way of looking at things!

 

[snow patrol]

Well, let's put it this way. The card I'm going to get next is:
a) not released yet
b) not the voodoo 5 6000



It might be the next Geforce, or possibly the Matrox G800. I want something that will be pretty much top of the range when I buy it, although I'm not willing to spend TOO much on it (think: current price of a 32meg GTS). If possible, I'd quite like something with dual display capabilities.

 

[acebathound]

You sure your drive doesn't need to be defragmented or anything like that? Dumb stuff that would make Windows (or games) run slower..

Has performance dropped in other games? If you have a friend that could try it out for you, that'd be a great way to test it as well.

 

[snow patrol]

Yup, I'll give defragging a go as well. Thanks

 

[mschell]

Format the HD???
Defrag the disk????
I've heard of some wacky suggestions on these boards but those cut the cake.
It sounds like the overclocking utility altered the registry settings pertaining to the video card. Sometimes registry keys can be changed and nothing short of deleting them and re-installing the drivers will fix the problem so try a complete manual driver uninstalation.
Most video card drivers have a specific .xxx file extension. It's a simple matter to use the Windows Find utility to look up these files and zap them. Then use Regedit to find any keys associated with the card and delete them as well.
Oh yea, you can't be using the video cards drivers when you do this, doing the operation from Safe Mode or switching to the SVA drivers will be necessary. Reboot the computer - reinstall the drivers and you're performance should return. - M.

 

[filmore crashcart]

Mschell is right.... I dl'd a "registry tweaker" patch for my Geforce2 and all it seemed to do was screw up performance and D3D. Trying to reinstall the backed up registry values didn't work. Only way to get back to normal was change to SVA, go into safe mode, and delete everything in the registry related to nvidia. Went back in, reinstalled the drivers and everything was back to normal.

 

[snow patrol]

wow, it worked I owe ya one mschell - thanks for helping out.

 

[acebathound]

mschell> I'm sorry for the "wacky suggestion," but I looked over his description quick and must've missed the overclocking bit (or misinterpreted it). Common sense would tell you that if something worked fine b/f you tried tweaking it and started messing up afterward, that the problem must've been related to the tweak. As far as defragging goes, sometimes it could help, but I've really only seen it help a hard drive when it's really messed up from moving around or deleting large files--I had a drive I thought was going to die with the noises coming out of it..and it was very slow with opening/working with programs; Defragged it and it worked great again.

Anyway, I apologize for my error..can't be thinking clearly 100% of the time I wouldn't have normally replied here again, but I thought it was a bit rude crapping on our suggestions when we're only trying to help out. If you know the answer, just post it and explain the situation you had that someone like me may not have had. The only way you knew exactly what to do was actually having had the problem occur yourself. I'm not saying my "defrag" reply wasn't a lame answer (as I said, I mis-read the original post and looking back on it, defragging is about as lame as I could get), but your "wacky suggestion..cut the cake" almost implies I am a newbie, which I can assure you I am not. Leave the discrediting up to me..geez that was LAME--defrag???! Thanks!