Geforce4 ti4400 very BAD performance !!!

[Bigcris76]

Hello, I have a problem with the Geforce 4 Ti 4400 I have recently bought to replace an older GF2 GTS 32MB. When I play games, Grand Theft Auto 3 for example, the game seems to be choking, making very short breaks during gameplay. This is very annoying, and even my old Geforce2 with only 32MB of ram did not do that. Other new games like Jedi Knight2 or Medal of Honor run ok, but I don't see much of a difference compared to my old video card. I am suspecting there might be some tweak I need to do. I have an Athlon 1.2GHZ 266FSB, with an Abit KT7A motherboard, 512 MB Sdram. I have tried installing the latest VIA 4in1 drivers, the latest Nvidia drivers but to no avail. I have also played around with the AGP mode from 4X back to 2X, tried turning sideband addressing on and off. I also played with the AGP apperture size in the BIOS and tried 64MB, 128MB and 256MB. Still no difference. PLEASE HELP

[grimfandango]

I dont know but I think you need atleast 1.4 ghz for the Gf4 ti series..

:(

[uncle_jimbo]

1st, it really takes 1.5ghz for a ti4400 fully use the cards power, so there may be a bottleneck in your system
2nd, try updating drivers
3rd, make sure vsync is off

if none of this works, return the card and try a geforce3 ti500 or 200, that may eliminate the bottleneck and improve performance

[RamonGTP]

His processor is definatly NOT the problem... Weather or not it takes FULL advantage of the card is arguable, but irralavent because its still MORE than powerfull enough to run games like GTA3 without a hitch. There are some games however that for whatever reason don't work all that much better with newer video cards vs older ones... My GF2MX400 performed almost just as well as my new GF4 Ti4400 in Unreal Tournment... However, there is a HUGE difference when I play RTCW. What I would recomend is this:

1) Make sure you have the latest detonator drivers for that video card, you can find them at www.nvidia.com

2) Make sure you have the latest AGP drivers for your motherboard. If you're MB is using a VIA chipset, go to www.viatech.com and download the latest 4in1 drivers.

3) Make sure you have the latest Direct X version, which I believe is 8.1

4) Try reinstalling the game

5) Check online, see if there are any patches/updates for the games you're playing.


Leave the AGP setting to 4x. Good Luck.

-Ramon

[DocEvi1]

em, this might be obvious, but you did uninstall your old card, right? Even better you installed your OS again, and started afreash.

Please tell me you didn't just swop cards and install the new one

Stefan

[maximus02143]

ther is a link from the readme file on the cd

[DocEvi1]

http://www.sysopt.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&threadid=107556

that link from the readme/my post don't work.

Stefan

[Bigcris76]

thank you guys for the help. However I had already applied the Windows XP fix to my system. I am still puzzled. Maybe I will try to reformat my harddrive in order to get rid of old drivers that may be left over from my Geforce 2 card.

[uncle_jimbo]

drivers from the gf2 couldnt br the prob, the nvidia drivers are unified

[couch potato]

the graphics card might be overkill for the CPU

[uncle_jimbo]

as i said the ti4400 could be creating a bottleneck, and therefore, slowing you computer down

[Fritz44]

That choking you describe is indicative of having Microsoft Office Fast Find loading at startup. I'm not sure if you even have it installed, but if you do I'd turn it off:

Type msconfig in the Run line.
Go to the Startup tab and find the Fast Find checkbox.
Uncheck it and reboot.

Fritz44

[$1500-P4 gamer]

Did you turn off virus scan and all running apps. in the background first?:eek:

[Bigcris76]

guys I have reinstalled Win XP after formatting the harddrive. Same thing !!! no change whatsoever. I have disabled Antivirus but that did not help. Now someone suggested turning off fast find for Microsoft Office but I don't have that installed anymore now that I have reformatted the HD. so....I am still waiting to see how I can solve this. My friend said it might be the ram memory? Ihave 512 MB and video aperture size set at 256. Does that mean there is only 256MB available to the system? BUt even then it should work fine. And I have tried 128MB aperture without luck !!!!

[JeffD]

Hi Bigcris76,

Sorry to hear of your continuing problems.

Here's a few more questions/thoughts that if may help in diagnosing your problem.

Which would best describe your problem:

1. During gameplay the framerates drop to very low levels (ex. from 60fps to 15fps) but then recovers back up to the original speed over a short period of time. This may be occuring during heavy action or other intensive video scenes. In this case maybe your video settings (what do you generally run at, 1024x768 with NO AA?) are too extreme. Turn off various features such as FSAA, drop down a resolution level or two and see if this clears up the problem.

2. During gameplay framerates NEVER drop below...say 60fps but there are what's called micro-pauses where the game stutters but never has time to really drop to a low framerate. This is the infamous stutter that searching Google will yield many hits. It's also not just Nvidia but ATI that has this problem with certain computer configurations. The source of the problem is as diverse as the number of computer configurations out there but one question would be have you played around with refresh rates (monitor and drivers)? Sometimes this can cause the problem noted. Let me suggest searching Google for more information on people with the same problem.

http://groups.google.com/advanced_group_search

3. When you see this problem are you playing these games over a network/online or just single player (or both)?

4. What sound card do you have? Good old SBLive cards (not Audigy) have been known to not play nicely with VIA chipset motherboards. To see if the sound card is playing a role uninstall the card (for that matter uninstall all non-essential hardware (NIC, TV, modem, etc.) and play the games to see if the problem still exists.

Here is a good test to see if it is a BIOS setting/motherboard/video card/drivers/game issue only:

Remove system of all non-essential components. Format drives. Fresh install of operating system. Install any motherboard related drivers. Install video drivers. Install 1-2 games. Play. Do not install any additional software such as Anti-virus, Office apps, tweaking progs, etc.

5. Have you tweaked XP to turn off many of the services that are running in the background eating up system resources? Keep in mind these services are running on top of any software you loaded that starts up at boot so if you install many programs maybe one or more of them are casuing performance issues. If you haven't tweaked this area yet then check these links out:

http://www.techspot.com/tweaks/winxp_services/services-2.shtml

http://www.blkviper.com/WinXP/servicecfg.htm

http://www.geocities.com/ziyadhosein/xpserv1.htm

Hope the above helps.

Regards,

JeffD

[BobyJo]

Jeff is right. GTA3 is bringing a lot of systems to thier knees. There are some other games that are in this catagory also. Morrowind in one, not as bad as GTA3, and some fixes have been made available for Morrowind at this time.

There are several gaming forums out there, and I think you will see a lot of people that are having the same problems with this game.
Maybe someone on one of these forums can give you some pointers on how to make this game play better for you.
Hope this helps.

[RobUK]

I don't think its your PC at all Bigcris76, because i am also experiencing this probelm and it seems to be getting worse! Heres my system spec :

AMD AthlonXP 2000+
MSI KT3 Ultra ARU - KT333
256MB Crucial DDR333 (PC2700) RAM
MSI GeForce3 ti200 128mb DDR
Creative SB Live 5.1 player
80gb Maxtor Hard disc ATA133, 7,200 rpm, 2mb cache
Mitsumi CD-RW 4809te
Pioneer 106s DVD-Rom
Diamond SupraExpress 56e pro external modem
Samsung 753dfx 17" monitor (1024x768 @ 85Hz)
Realtek 10/100mbps network card

I'm running the latest Via 4in1 drivers, Dirextx8.1, det 21.83 and WindowsMe.

I have WinXP on dual boot, i installed the M$ patch and GTA seems to run fine with no stutters.

But in winme i cannot get it to work, i have also tried re-installing windows but the same problems persist.

Hopefully there will be a patch out soon for WinME or for GTA3

RobUK

[Bigcris76]

thanks guys for all your replies. I guess I have to live with this for now. it's not really that bad after all. Return to Castle Wolfenstein runs very smoothly now. And I have also gotten the new Detonator XP driver from Nvidia that just came out today, if any of you are interested. I have tried 3dMark 2001 SE with them at default settings at 1024x768 and got 7950 Marks. is that good for my Athlon 1.2 Ghz and GF4 4400? later guys

[uncle_jimbo]

it seems about right

[Benssax]

My computer runs GTA3 with no problem very smooth no kinks. Never kinks on any game. (GTA3 runs off the CD ROM) what cdrom do you have..

1.0Ghz PIII
Gforce2 Ti
256mb ram


No problems..

[Bigcris76]

I have a Pioneer 16X DVD-Rom it runs very well and I doubt this is the problem. My hard drive is a Western Digital 120GB 7200Rpm with 8MB cache ram, and I think this runs fine also. At some point I am going to change my motherboard, it may be that the video card and the motherboard may have some sort of conflict. who knows.......

[germanjulian]

GTA 3 engine was designed for the PS2, not PC, thats why u have those weird very short lock ups when playing!!!!! even i have them Athlon xp1900 geforce 4 763MB ram when playing with lowest resolution!!!! its just the game!!!!!!

[snowfall]

GTA 3 engine was designed for the PS2, not PC, thats why u have those weird very short lock

I have totally NO problems with GTA3 running on a 1.875ghz p4, gf3 ti 200 and 256DDR

[123eskk]

with a same version of graphic card driver , same hardware & everything same except OS..................


3DMark ALWAYS DROPPING little bit !!!

example
Win 98 - 2500 3Dmark
Win Me - 2200
Win XP - 2000

[RobUK]

well i tried GTA3 on WinXP for the second time, after my first successful load and nothing happend. When i double click the GTA3 icon it doesn't do anything. So i tried loading it from the actual directory on my pc's hard drive and still nothing. I had an image saved of my WinXP partition with GTA3 installed but not yet used, so i restored the partition and GTA worked fine. Came out of GTA and tried to load it again and nothing happened again.

This game seems really crappy for stability/compatibility.

Never mind a patch will hopefully appear soon

RobUk