AGP Troubleshooting HELP

Greetings,

I thought I'd throw this enigma out here and see if there is anyone who could help me out.

I just recently upgraded my motherboard. Here are my current specs:

P4 2.66Ghz
FSB = 533Mhz
1 Gig DDR266 RAM
Albatron PX865PE Pro motherboard
Geforce 4 TI 4800 (AGP 8x)
Windows XP SP-1

I have the latest drivers from nVidia, and for the Intel Chipset.

Now, the nVidia AGP settings show that the CARD and the BIOS all run at 8X. But it states that the OS is running at 2X!!!! When I had the Intel 845GBV board using the same exact video card, it showed as all running 4X, just fine.

What happened!?!

So far...I have found that some people have had this problem. The Specs are somewhat similar.... some have had a TI 4800 and others have had the 865PE chipset. I cannot determine where Windows has the AGP setting.

Anybody know what REG key this might be, or how to fix this?

Thanks!

Gaikotsu

I have been hearing about Nvidia problems with XP for a couple of months now and I am thinking that there may not be a fix for what you see. Some people say it's normal and live with it. Others say Nvidia has to do an update again.

Good info here: http://forums.viaarena.com/messageview.cfm?catid=6&threadid=57051&enterthread=y

It shouldn't really matter much.

Bandwidth going through the agp doesn't impact performance much as all the work is done internally on the card.

You only use the agp bandwidth when the vidcards memory is full, so it has to go and use your main ram. If this ever happens no matter if you are on 2x, 4x or have a big extreme PCIe - you're screwed, because the latency going between the card and your main ram is always going to be far higher than travelling to the internal ram on the card.....

whew.. that make sense?

Bottom line, you shouldn't be impacted too much in this day and age ... yet.

Future games will struggle on a 4800 in any case.


As an aside, the damn nice looking HL2 will run just dandy with your vid card due to some clever programming. Newer cards will use dx8.1 or dx9.1 with all there rich features, meaning for better looking graphics. Meanwhile, your version of HL2 will run on dx7, which doesn't include all the fancy features. Hence you get a mega fps boost, at the expense of a little graphical loss. End result - game runs nicely for you.

Well, the only thing I am really loosing is the special shaders that come with the FX series of boards.

I Don't have HL2 yet. I play Doom 3 and Far Cry. Doom3 seems to run pretyt smooth, except in a few places. I have it on Medium setting at 1024 x 768 @ 100hz refresh.

I was merely concerned about bottle necking.

Who would ever think people here would be giving better computer than maybe 9/10 techie sites. I can just picture the posts:

"2 Nvidia 6800 Ultra SLI no problems with v74239.23893 drivers. Your card is LAME!!!"

"FLAME"
"FLAME Back"
"FLAME"
Dead thread.


Anyways, do you have an nforce2 motherboard? I remember reading maybe, that updating some chipset-related drivers fixed that problem on nforce2 motherboards at least. As I don't have that video card or that motherboard however, I didn't read into it in that much detail, and so I could just be thinking of something else.

In all due respect to the boys at id (god love em).... Doom3 wasn't that good


/awaits flames




Sure it looks candy enough in parts - where it isn't too damn dark, but the gameplay became far too repetitive and lost all impact.
Walk into room. Monster spawns behind you. Turn around kill monster. Repeat over and over.
I played it for awhile then the game crashed, and I never bother loading it again.

HL2 is much of the same. Doesn't really stand out gameplay wise. Sure looks nice again... but same repetitive walk here kill that gameplay.


So I'm not really into the repetitive style of games...

Yet I'm now addicted to World of Warcraft. Earlier I posted a thread asking if I should get it... I did... became hooked.
All you do is just run around - kill monster - gain exp - repeat.
What's the bloody difference???? Maybe it's the orcs.

I'm now planning on playing a stripper character. I'm going to play a petite little female priest. Strip off all my armour and run around the woods in the little thong bikini she wears underneath.

It's a living.


(WoW doesn't seem to stress the PC too much).


Word of advice to all the PC geek wannabe's out there.
DON'T SKIMP ON RAM!!!

My PC - I bought the generic rubbish ram for el cheapo prices. All ends of problems. Didn't click that the ram was the cause. Replaced nearly every other part in the vain hope it was one of them that was the problem.

Was about to go whole hog and upgrade the works - new cpu / mobo / vid card / case... but was planning on salvaging my gig of ram. It's compatible with the updated parts.

Then a gear suddenly rolled over in my mind and I thought - what the hell, I'm going berserk on every other part - I'll get some top quality ram as well.

The store where I was to buy all the super parts for cheap, only had generic ram. Hence I went somewhere else after work in advance to get super ram. Easy to transport - didn't need to take the car out on the weekend - just pick it up on the way home.

Super ram = 1 gig Corsair 3200 CL2 for $350 AUD

I thought what the heck - and put it in with the old PC I was about to replace... Not a crash since. Runs absolutely perfectly.
I'm not going to upgrade anymore. No need.
Buying the super ram, saved the need to buy super parts which would of cost $1500 AUD.... and if I had of put the super parts in with the old rubbish ram, the computer would still have been crashy in any case and I'd right now be close to committing myself.

Moral:

Buy super ram!!!!!

Make it your number one priority when upgrading. Don't skimp on ram - it's the most basic part to which everything else on your PC relies. Quality ram may cost $50 more than generic rubbish ram... but it is worth every bit of that for the pure extra stability quality ram provides.



This message brought to you by Corsair - number one in Ram.

Much truth there, jejejeje!

Doom3 - nope! Bought it, played it twice - boring!

And ram, I agree! Buy good ram, but check if the ram you want has any "issues" with your motherboard.

I spent some money on 1 gig of Geil ram - my pc runs perfect!

Wow, you guys are pretty harsh on Doom3

I personally love blowing things away. My favorite type of stress releiver To HELL with plot, it only gets in the way of a good frag-fest .

Seriously though, I thought Doom3 was awesome. I know you guys didn't play it all the way through to figure out a few 'surprises' that they put in it. First off, it was a novel idea that depending on what 'difficulty' setting you used, is how the game unfolds itself. If you put it on easy or the next step up, you got the typical monster comes from behinds, etc. PLay it on hard, and the game changes entirely. No more predictable monster spawning. SOme areas that were closed to you before, are now open, and vice versa. Monsters plow through walls more often rather than spawing. Also, different monster types spawn where as before they didn't. ALso, if you visit the MODs that are out there and find the Trent REznor Audio files.....one phrase. Oh My Gawd! 10 times better.

Anyway, enough of my ranting.

You might be right about the RAM. It's DDR266 and it wasn't Cheap. It was Viking RAM and it was 150 dollars (US) a stick of 512mb. It has withstood overclokcing on the voltage, and latency without fail. However, with this new motherboard I can support faster RAM. It is entirely possible that my processor and RAM cannot handle the I/O speed of 8X AGP and so is **** to bottle neck somewere.

I will be upgrading the RAM as well as processor soon, so we'll see:)

Well....I wish I could say that the RAM fixed the problem. I'll never know until I get a new processor . I got some DDR400 RAM but my current processor cannot support the bandwidth and thus Windows won't load. So I had to clock it down to 266:(. BUT HEY, it kept the multiplier settings which allow me to overclock the CPU to 3.0ghz! Woo Hoo!!

YEah right......nobody's excited except me