Sub-par performance...

[Slayn]

I just got a Radeon 8500LE. I know its not the newest or best card, but its all I can afford. I get pretty bad FPS in Neverwinter Nights, and I got a score of 7626 with 3DMark 2001SE. Is this a low score? I am thinking maybe its the rest of my computer. I have the following:

1000 Mhz Athlon T-Bird
ECS K7VZA 3.X ( its a kt133a )
384 SDRAM

And my video card is overclocked to 306 core 300 memory.

Is my system to blame? One more thing, I cannot get 4x AGP to work on this motherboard even though its supported.

[funnyperson1]

its your system....my system in sig gets 7800 3dmarks with 8500 ar 285/300.....you need ddr to really show the power of the Athlon....though i dont know what you mean by low fps in neweverwinter nights.....explain the actual fps....

[DaddyB]

It is probably the rest of your system that is holding you back but 7500 isnt that bad, thats about the same as i get on my rig with my AIW radeon not OC'd (230/380). NWN and morrowind run really slow no matter what card or comp you have.

Try getting the newest BIOS for your motherboard and the newest chipset drivers to clear up that no AGP 4x thing but even if you cant get it to work its only a matter of 1 or 2 FPS.

[Slayn]

My fps in NWN jumps around alot, basically 15-40 fps in 800x600 with 2x AA. And I have the latest BIOS and VIA 4 in 1's and 4x still wont work. Oh well, if you say its only 1-2 fps thats fine. Anyways, I thought it would be my system. This SDRAM I got is crap, its cheap PNY stuff and I run it at CAS3 and pc133, even though its rated at pc100. Well, I guess Ill get a job and save up for the nforce 2 ( or kt400, we shall see ). Thanks! ^_~

[SemiCycle]

I just did a search for systems around you clock speed with the same video card. I capped the SPU speed at 1050Mhz. The highest score was 7542. You seem to be okay.

[drewthomas14]

kinda off the subject but DaddyB, does you morrowind lag at all. mine does. maybe its because my computer is kinda old. but it still lags in places on my friends computer and his is farely fast(amd xp 2000+ 256mbpc2100ddr msi gforce4 ti4200 128mb msi kt3 ultra-2)

[DaddyB]

I have seen a lot of people talking about AGP 4x being disabled with certain cards when it worked with older cards. I read at viaarena.com a while back that some chipsets and vid cards werent agreeing so vid card makers included something in the drivers to disable AGP 4x if it detected a via kt133(among others) I believe some motherboard makers had this same feature in certain BIOSs. the vid card makers blamed via for poorly implementing agp 4x and via said it was the vid card makers, so the vid card makers said screw you via by disabling 4x until via fixed the problem... Via says the problem is fixed but the vid cards or motherboards apparently still have it disabled. If you contact ATi support they may be able to tell you why you cant use it 4x but they may tell you what I just said or pass the blame off to the motherboard or chipset maker.

EDIT: LOL here (http://www.viaarena.com/?PageID=3&faq=5&Search=4x) is some info about what i am talking about... seems VIA still blames ATi and Nvdia.

drewthomas14 Yeah it kinda lags a little but morrowind is so huge that it can only load the area immediatly around you into the RAM... when you travel around the map the game will pause for a second or 2 to load the area you are entering. Indoors i get good FPS constantly, outdoors it can change a lot it goes from 25-45 in some spots but in others i get good frames (i have my frames capped at 75 FPS).

If you go to C:\program files\morrowind you will see a file named morrowind.ini, you can open that file and edit it (you might want to make a backup of that file b4 you change anything). you can change "dont thread load=0" to =1 to stop it from pausing to load so often but that just means when it does start loading it will take longer. you can also change the linear and quadratic lighting part to look like:

UseLinear=0
LinearMethod=1
LinearValue=3.0
LinearRadiusMult=1.0
;
UseQuadratic=1
QuadraticMethod=2
QuadraticValue=4.0
QuadraticRadiusMult=1.0

That will use quadratic lighting instead of linear which gives me much better frames outside. The game still kind of lags sometimes during dust storms and rain but usually my fps stay above 40 or 50 @1152x864.

[Slayn]

LOL Thats funny! It says that its ATI's fault over there... so is there anything to do about this, or are VIA/ATI/NVIDIA just ****ed off at each other and want to ruin my 4x AGP :P

[funnyperson1]

Originally posted by Slayn
LOL Thats funny! It says that its ATI's fault over there... so is there anything to do about this, or are VIA/ATI/NVIDIA just ****ed off at each other and want to ruin my 4x AGP :P

try the omegacorner drivers for the Video Card....they seem to fix issues with a lot of people.....also about the 4X try using powerstrip to enable it

[OC Noob]

I tried NWN with everything turned up in the ATI interface (exept AA was 4x not 6x) and everything turned up in the game settings. With the 9700 it was VERY laggy. I had to turn the setting in the ATI interface down, except for AF which I left @ 16, and left everything maxed out in the game settings and the game runs great and looks as good,visually, as it did when I could barely walk.

I'm not sure if it was more than my card could handle or if there was some kind of a problem bewteen the game and the ATI settings. You may try doing this tho. Its worth a shot anyways.

I just need to figure out how to unlock the shinny water setting in Dungeon Siege now and I'll be set. Anyone know how to do it, for some reason the game won't let me check that option. I thought it was because my G2 MX didn't support it, but the 9700 must.

[Slayn]

Well I know that shiny water doesnt work in NWN with ATI cards, supposedly its an nvidia only extension. But they are working on it, the dev's have posted screenshots of shiny water on ATI that they are working on.