Frame Rate Problem/New video card suggestion

[Ghaz]

Okay, I have an AMD Athlon 850mhz not OCed yet. Mobo is a Asus K7V, have 512mb pc133 Generic ram. Video card is a Asus Nvidia 64MB AGP V7700 DDR SGRAM. Maxtor 60 gig 5400, Integrated sound (soon to be x-gamer). I have win2k installed and have the newest drivers for mobo, 3d card(detonater drivers). When I run 3DMARK2001 I get a majorily ****ty score for the system that I have. I get around 950. Using their recommended settings as well. My games and graphics look just okay, but I want them to look awesome. If I cant get any good suggestions to improve my current card I wanted to see if you could all give me some suggestions on the best video card out there. I am looking for the best performance in DVD, tv in/out, video capture and games. Price is not an object, I just want the best for the system. I am considering the Geforce 3, RADEON 64MB DDR VIVO and the Hercules Prophet. Any other suggestions, plus advantages/disadvantages would be kick ass. Thanks for any further help or suggestions, these forums rock.

[Ghaz]

bump, pretty plz

[expaddy]

Is it possible that your processor is now the bottleneck in the system. Maybe try a small overclock and see if you get any improvement:rolleyes:

[Ghaz]

I have tried it, OCed it to 950 or so, no good. I am gonna get a GFD and try that, maybe get the processor to 1gig or so, see how i score then. Anyone else comment on my topic?

[BSizemore]

I had the same problem with my system, very low 3dmark2001 score. I have an Athlon T-Bird 800 with 256mb of ram, and a Geforce 2 GTS 32MB card, and I was only scoring a 595! I updated my AGP miniport drivers, and my score went up to 2700. Made a huge improvement in framerates in all games as well.

[Eil Atan]

yeah, the problem is probably the miniport drivers... I had the exact same problem when I first started using my system, I was getting scores in the 2000's in 3DMarks2K1... Then I got the suggestion from somebody on here to get the miniport drivers, and... booya! 5588 in 3DMarks2K1... so that's probably the problem... I have provided the link to the drivers below... just download the driver pack and the top, it'll detect what you need... :)

http://www.amd.com/products/cpg/bin/

that should do it! :)

[Ghaz]

Hey thanks alot! I will try that when I get home and tell ya'll how it goes. My fps went anywhere from 1-25 max in the benchmark, pretty dam sorry if you ask me. I also had a bad thing happen the other nite. Added another 256mb of ram and it freaking caught on fire. I saw a small flame! So I yanked it out and now I have 2 unuseable dimm slots :(:( Thats the last time I get taht generic ram :(

[Sohryu Asuka Langley]

I hope you plugged it i with no power running to the board, and if it wasn't seated right then it might stuff up.

[Ghaz]

OF COURSE. I work for dell computers as a tech, I know what I am doing. I was grounded, it was unplugged and it was put in correctly. When I turned the machine on it freakin blew a flame! So they wont replace it or the mobo, so I am screwed. So its a 512mb pc133 ram chip for me now, no other ram slots available, bah :(

[Ghaz]

Okay I got home and installed the mini-port drivers. First of all, I tried to install the package that checks for what you need and it said I had no amd components, which is very untrue. So I installed just the mini drivers for win2k, which is what I have, and it made no difference. I also uninstalled my video drivers and installed the newest detonator drivers again. I have the newest dirext x, etc. Still nothing, plz I neeed help, still scoring 950 or so on 3DMARK2001. PLZ HELP, any suggestions.

[Ghaz]

Okay I switched to win98 se, installed direct x8 and the detonator drivers and I scored like 2.2-2.5k, I forget now, but dam! Any suggestions on making that better, or maybe making the score higher in win2k?

[fordracr]

Originally posted by Ghaz
Okay I switched to win98 se, installed direct x8 and the detonator drivers and I scored like 2.2-2.5k, I forget now, but dam! Any suggestions on making that better, or maybe making the score higher in win2k?


Yeah WIN2k is great for alot of things, but unless you got a supercomputer I would say stick with 98. Win2k is very much a buisness software. I know you are completely aware of this, however being so it pages to the swapfile a TON. I also have a ton of ram, and it doesn't matter to Win2k if you have 64 ram or 1024. Win2k will page almost at least 50 megs to the swapfile. This is very inefficient, and thats why I run 98 over 2K cause in 98 I can disbale the virtual memory completely, which forces windows to run off of ram instead of the slower hard drive. Keep in mind ladies and gents, even the SCSI 15,000 RPM cheetah is about 20 times slower than some halfway decent generic ram. SO if you running 3d apps with virtual memory it will cost you some speed. Stick with 98, and disable that virtual memory.

[Ghaz]

Ya I have virtual memory disabeled in win98, thought that have something to do with that in win2k. I knew games ran better in win98, but I had a huge difference in performance. I also tried installing mini port drivers, but it said no amd components detected. I dont know why it would say that, its way wrong. Anyways, I scored around 2.6k in win98 with my current configuration, if anyone has any tips to increase that, please share.

[funnyperson1]

that cant possibly be only win2k problem....i have a rage fury pro, and still get 1100 in win2k...