GeForce 2 GTS 32MB Poor Performance!

[Steel Talyn]

det3 1241
Win ME
128 PC133 CAS3
1GHz PIII
Gateway Performance 1000

I am having poor performance issues with my Video Card with Games such as Alice, Sacrifice, and Torment. The problems I am having are Choppy Movies and Movement of Charachters. I have moved games to their lowest settings and still have anomolies. I have all GeForce settings in Display Properties set to default.

Any Ideas, I have been Troubleshooting this machine for 3 days now. I even tried loading GeForce GTU Tweaker at Fastest performance which also apeared to offer no performance changes.

Thanks

[Infinitus]

You might want to try and get some more RAM. I can't remember what I had when I got Alice, but I'd get at least 35fps on a p3-800 with a Geforce Plus 64Mb. My system started out with 128 but I upgraded to 384 and then 512 within 6 months. Can't say i've noticed much difference between the last 2 stages, but the jump from 128 was definitely worth it!
BTW my system is not overclocked in any way (damned difficult to do with my components)

[Hellmund]

What installs did you do for each game, I remember I had to wait a LONG time on loading and for movies when I only did small installs of Torment. You can edit the torment.ini and put paths in for each CD, e.g just dump the CD contents in a folder and route to them. I've played all 3 of those games smoothly with 128Mb RAM.

[eagle1]

Have you tried any benchmarks?
DO you have a m/b with Via Chipset?
It could be the 4 in 1 drivers or card settings!

Are you running FSAA? , etc.!

[the xenon]

Hey ive got this video card. When i first installed it with drivers from MSI it was bad i would say. I got low score on 3dmark 2001, i was disapointed. Than i got drivers new drivers not from MSI but the latest detanator drivers. And wow the benchmark score increased by like 15%

download drivers from here: http://www.guru3d.com/

hope it helps

[MistralBurn]

I had the same problem with very poor performance at even the lowest settings. It turned out that my motherboard was running AGP version 1.0. This only puts out 2.5 Amps of power, which was ample power for older AGP cards, but today's cards (GeForce2) requires 4 to 5 Amps of power. The AGP version 2.0 chipsets put out 6 Amps of power at 3.3V which is ample. I found that I get acceptable performance only in OpenGL. Any DirectX video runs very poorly. I hope this helps with your diagnosis.

[Steel Talyn]

It is an Intel 815 Chipset, I loaded the Ultra ATA driver which increased some performance, but not much. I used Sandra 2001lt for benchmarking, everything seems to be running up to standards as far as the CPU is concerned. No off the wall tips or errors. Torment Videos are better now, but Alice is still choppy and so is Sacrifice. I want to see if anyone had any clues why I get such poor performance.

I must admit though, the machine is running Alice and Sacrifice better than my AMDK6/2-550, 384MB PC100, STEALTH 540S XTREME 32MB VIA MVP3 but no where near to what I would expect with a 1GHz PIII, 128MB PC133, with a MSI StarForce 815 GeForce2GTS 32MB!

[Steel Talyn]

I should have an AGP 4x slot. The Detenator 3 drivers 12.41 really didn't improve performance. I really wish Nvidia would release the Detenator 4 drivers sometime SOON. Any other ideas?

Goin' NutZ

[RobRich]

Make to completely FSAA within the nVidia control applet, as even 2x anti-aliasing can bring a GTS to a crawl in modern games.

Check this out as well:

http://www.sysopt.com/articles/gftweak/index.html

Robert Richmond

[Steel Talyn]

Rich,

Could you explain what is meant by FSAA?

[Infinitus]

I thought AGP 2.0 and AGP 4x were different things. One is the version of AGP and the other is the transfer rate of the AGP/mobo interface or something like that. Although if you have AGP 4x it probably means that you must have AGP 2.0 to run it at that rate so they go hand in hand.

As for FSAA it means Full Screen Anti-Aliasing. This basically means that it gets rid, or at least minimises, the jagged lines you can see at the edges of the objects in games. The higher the setting, the more hardware intensive. Therefore the slower the refreshes and the frame rate.

If I'm wrong about any of this please correct me!

[scout62]

Make sure vsync is disabled or set your refresh rate to the highest setting your monitor will handle (may stress the hell out of your monitor though)

[gwinters]

You might try the 12.90 drivers. I noticed my benchmarks were higher with them than 12.41 and the image quality is MUCH better.

[arjay13]

Did you benchmark your hard drive to be sure that it is running up to snuff? What do you have running in the backround?

[Steel Talyn]

Where did you download drivers 12.90, the most current on Nvidia's website that I found were 12.41. Also, nothing is running in the background.

[Rabs]

Download the appropriate chipset drivers for your MB. Either via or intel. That should sort it

Ahh just a thought, don't use the resolution and bit depth that your desktop is using.

If Desktop is at 1024*768*16 then run the game in 32bit. And vice versa.

[MistralBurn]

don't use the resolution and bit depth that your desktop is using.

If Desktop is at 1024*768*16 then run the game in 32bit. And vice versa.


That's an interesting concept, Rabs, I never heard of anything like that, could you explain what the significance is of it? I'm not trying to put you down or anything, it just really struck me as interesting, because I run my games in 32 bit (when i can) and my desktop in 32 bit.

[Jeffy]

Ok, i can almost the same stuff as you n play sacrifice at least. this is wut you need to do:
1.install the latest intel software installation utility, which installs all the inf files for the chipsets
2. install the latest ata intel drivers
3. reinstall 12.41 drivers
4. use nvmax and edit everything to the speedy settings, turn side band on, oc it
5. install the latest update of sacrifice (very important because later updates use different renderers for land)
6. try to oc your p3, i see a really big performance increase when my p3 is @ 166 or 190 mhz fsb
7.play in 16 bit color
btw, it will get really choppy when alot of creatures are on the screen, it will make even a gf3 crawl. press f8 to see fps. anything above 18 is acceptable for sacrifice, it's ok to go under 15 when it is crowed with creatures cause there is alot of polygons to be drawn.

[Jeffy]

also, this maybe the problem, change the agp aperture size to 64 mb or 128mb.

[Rabs]

Re: Mistralburn

I've found and so have some other local games players that some games run significantly slower if you're running in the same resolution and bit depth as windows.

I've proved this on my GF3 and Soldier Of Fortune.

I was playing in 1024*768*32 and I thought the game was juddering slightly. A quick mode change to 1280*1024*32 and the game's alot smoother. Emporer Battle For Dune does this also.

Any thoughts?

[Hellmund]

I thought AGP 2.0 and AGP 4x were different things
All 2.0 compliant AGP slots are AGPX4, the older slots 1.0 were only capable of 1X-2X.

[Steel Talyn]

Alright, still having problems, I installed 384MB PC133 now. Video Logos for games like Torment are still choppy, Alice is still choppy when using the Jacks, Sacrifice is still a bit unsteady (especially during video scenes and appears to run anywhere from 24 - 86 FPU's depending on whats going on.

I have tried out Video drivers 12.41, and 12.90 and 14.10 from http://guru3d.com/geforcetweakutility/ and the recomended gateway drivers for the GeForce2 GTS/Pro 32MB card.

I loaded GeForce Tweak GTU from http://guru3d.com/geforcetweakutility/ attempted to use fastest settings, quality settings, disabled vsync, disable FSAA, and other individual componenets, drop screen resolution, raise openGL textile memory to 47MB (max allowed in display properties, did the same for Direct3D), O/C Video Card, replaced DX 8.0a, reloaded game patches. Removed Gateway GoBack, Lowered Windows Recovery space to Minimum. Verified my meager Bios Setup settings were correct (not much relating to graphics, just a choice between PCI and AGP, kinda sucks really), disabled SMART for HDD's.

I have verified that there are no Intel 815 Chipset Updates for my Motherboard. I have loaded the Intel Ultra ATA driver, my HDD benchmarks a bit lower than SiSoft Sandra lt's results, but I suppose that is from space written on the disk.

Ok I am outa breath now. Does anyone have more of a clue than I do. I am going to loose my mind here!

Thanks Everyone!


UPDATE: Situation resolved for most things. I am going to leave the PC here for the time being until D4-DAY arrives.


[This message has been edited by Steel Talyn (edited 09-10-2001).]