NVidia card performance issue - please help!

[Happo]

I have recently changed video cards from a s3 virge gx2 4Mb to a
NVidia TNT2 Ultra 32Mb. The problem is that I have seen no performance
increase at all! Running Need For Speed 3 I can only manage 512x384
with everything turned down, if anything it is slower than the old
card. I am using NVidia's latest driver ver 30.82 on Windows 98SE and
DirectX 8. System is AMD K6-2 300, 64Mb PC100 SDRam. I am assuming
this is not right and any ideas would be appreciated. One thing I
noted is the BIOS (Award V4.51PG) does not support 4X AGP acceleration
so it is currently set to 2X.

 

[jtl6713]

Although your new video card uses it's own memory, it still requires more processor power than your old 4MB card. You are a little shy on processor power in my opinion to get the full benefit of your new card. I would try all of the lowest settings on the card and see if you get better results. What kind of frame rate are you getting?

jlogan

http://www.eastauroracomputers.com

Joseph Logan
jlogan@emedrecovery.com

 

[Happo]

I agree with you on the lack of processor power and that is what i am trying to determine, because a friend has an old PII 166 w/12Mb Voodoo and NFS3 runs like a dream in 1024x768 with everything on, and he only has half the ram i do! I can tell you at 1024x768 w/ everything on i am getting 5fps which is obviously unplayable. Even at 640x480 w/everything off (down) i get 17fps i don't think this can be right, 300MHz CPU or not. Thank you for your help, I have just installed 4in1's latest AGP driver as well as flashed the bios but to no avail, i am flumoxed. A power supply prob i assume would be more evident than lack of performance, again, please any idea's??

 

[ceh4702]

You would be surprised in the performance increase you would get if you went to a PIII motherboard, with a Celeron 1.2 gig processor with 256k cache and a video card like a Visiontek Geforce2 32MB DDR GTS-V. This is a surprising video card at $48.00. Sometimes it is the motherboard which holds the video card back. Some motherboard processor combos just do not have enough power to acheive the full potential of the video card. When you compare a 300 speed processor to a 3 gig processor that is coming out you come to the conclusion thay you are running on about one tenth of the possible processing power that is possible. If you get a new motherboard my recommendation is do not buy a VIA chipset. I prefer Asus myself. The motherboard I am using is an Asus TUSL2-C. P4 would be even better. If you do not like my post feel free to point out your opinion or my errors.

 

[paparazi]

I am more than a little confused!
If you have an AMD K62 300 it must be on a socket 7 motherboard.
So how can you be using Via 4in1 drivers for this old chipset? (intel, via or Ali) I'm probably wrong but I thought Via 4in 1's were for the K7 processors, Durons and Athlons? or do they cover older Via chipsets as well?
Anyhow, I agree it is your processor and old chipset that are a bottle neck for your graphics card.
I can remember seeing somewhere how older drivers actually work better and produce higher performance when used on these older motherboards.
Martin Please let members know if there advice has helped any.

 

[zedzorander]

The 4in1 drivers are for all Via chipsets. This is quoting Via's support site.

zed

 

[Happo]

Thanks people, all is well now, had to manually change the 3D settings from software rendering as the game does not specifically support that card. I still have a problem in that the system only remains stable for about 45 mins or so with the new card before I get pixels all over the screen where they shouldn't be and the whole lot freezes up completely. When I reboot the system generally won't run at all and I get a message saying 'problem with display adapter, settings do not match your hardware' and reverts to default windows settings. The thing is the system still crashes after a few minutes in the same fashion. If I turn off the computer and let it sit for half an hour or so it will run for another 45 mins or thereabouts when the whole process is repeated. I have thought about overheating but think that is highly unlikely as the ambient temperature here at the mo' is about 16C (61F) and it has been running with the case off ever since I got the new card. I have also heard the power supply (230Watts) can be an issue, but it crashes whether the system is under load or just sitting there doing nothing. I am currently in the process of upgrading every driver I can and trying through trial and error to deduce the problem. I increased the minimum swap file size to 300Mb because I know the RAM is in short supply, but to no avail, does it sound like a RAM problem though? I fully realise that with my setup I am pushing faeces uphill but would like to get it working none the less, so any ideas or hints would be most appreciated.

 

[LeoP]

Hi!
I guess i'll check my CPU first if the heatsink is firmly attached and the fan is Ok. Then, i'll check if I have an ALi Mainboard, cause u have to install an AGP driver i think... I'll check my video card too, if its overclocked ....

Reinstallation from scratch might help =).

 

[paparazi]

It may help to smear a bit of thermal paste between the heatsink and CPU (I think you will find it has NONE) heat wasn't much of an issue around that era but paste will definately help get rid of CPU heat to the sink.
TNT2's also run very hot! I have fitted several Voodoo 3's and TNT's with a 40mm fan salvaged from an old 486, you can just fasten them to the heatsink with short screws between the fins. Martin Please let members know if there advice has helped any.