it actually was 3D mark 2001SE I just typed it in wrong, But the link that you provided to WIN XP drivers didn't work I think the site was just down. But I have gone to ATI.com and have the newest drivers. They are actually the BETA versions so I don't know if that will effect it. Anyway how can I get back to you on the configuration of my computer. And thanks for your help.
-
Welcome to Overclockers Forums! Join us to reply in threads, receive reduced ads, and to customize your site experience!
Tweaks-The Definitive Guide
- Thread starter Maximus Nickus
- Start date
OP
- Joined
- Oct 4, 2001
- Location
- Milton Keynes, U.K.
- Thread Starter
- #22
JesseFK said:
I checked the links and they seem ok, there "direct" links though, you can either post your system spec here, or PM me.
So I assume the problems are still there then....I'll rattle my brains when i have the system config!!!!
Maximus Nickus
OP
- Joined
- Oct 4, 2001
- Location
- Milton Keynes, U.K.
- Thread Starter
- #24
A reply is on its journey through the Network!
- Joined
- Feb 25, 2002
- Location
- New Zealand
there were a couple of win2k tweaks like using a large system cache and enabling UDMA 66 by default... these are registry entries do a google search.
As for video... disable video bios shadowing, disable video bios caching, as well as disabling system bios caching etc. These are totally unneccesary and just take up space in your mem/L2 cache.
my 0.02
As for video... disable video bios shadowing, disable video bios caching, as well as disabling system bios caching etc. These are totally unneccesary and just take up space in your mem/L2 cache.
my 0.02
OP
- Joined
- Oct 4, 2001
- Location
- Milton Keynes, U.K.
- Thread Starter
- #26
I've already covered all of that!
With regards to Caching, every system yields different gains/losses. So experiment with different settings and combinations.
Thanks for the contribution though!
M_N
With regards to Caching, every system yields different gains/losses. So experiment with different settings and combinations.
Thanks for the contribution though!
M_N
- Joined
- Jul 29, 2001
The Power Toys are off until April. pretty soon they'll be back . M$ (?) says that they are improving 'em.
OP
- Joined
- Oct 4, 2001
- Location
- Milton Keynes, U.K.
- Thread Starter
- #28
They are a great source for fiddling with your configuration!
But there is always the Manual way
But there is always the Manual way
- Joined
- May 3, 2001
- Location
- Virginia, USA
If you are in to tweaking your OS check out THIS site. This is one of the most thourough OS tweaking sites I have ever seen.
If you are looking for a tool similar to tweakUI but packed with a lot more tweaks, then check THIS out.
XSetup is by far the Granddaddy of all the tweaking tools. You'll like it.
If you are looking for a tool similar to tweakUI but packed with a lot more tweaks, then check THIS out.
XSetup is by far the Granddaddy of all the tweaking tools. You'll like it.
OP
- Joined
- Oct 4, 2001
- Location
- Milton Keynes, U.K.
- Thread Starter
- #30
Looks Good,
There added to the list!!!
M_N
There added to the list!!!
M_N
- Joined
- May 12, 2001
- Location
- Huntington Beach
I was looking at the registry tweaker program and I have a problem with this:
"Create a new DWORD value, of modify the existing value, named "SecondLevelDataCache" and set it to equal your L2 cache size in Kb's (decimal). "
I have an Athlon T-bird 1000 how much is the L2 cache?
"Create a new DWORD value, of modify the existing value, named "SecondLevelDataCache" and set it to equal your L2 cache size in Kb's (decimal). "
I have an Athlon T-bird 1000 how much is the L2 cache?
OP
- Joined
- Oct 4, 2001
- Location
- Milton Keynes, U.K.
- Thread Starter
- #32
T-Birds normally have 256kb cache, mine certainly does so nothing has to be changed.
To be sure either look in Sisoft Sandra 2002 (CPU info) or look at the BIOS boot screen, it should appear but only briefly after the memory check.
Or download AMDCPUinfo.
Good Luck,
M_N
To be sure either look in Sisoft Sandra 2002 (CPU info) or look at the BIOS boot screen, it should appear but only briefly after the memory check.
Or download AMDCPUinfo.
Good Luck,
M_N
- Joined
- Apr 21, 2001
- Location
- Las Vegas, NV
Think the name for the powrstrip file changed, sorry
Should be a simple matter of updating it to match the new name...
Should be a simple matter of updating it to match the new name...
OP
- Joined
- Oct 4, 2001
- Location
- Milton Keynes, U.K.
- Thread Starter
- #34
Thanks for letting me know, I'm on it
Edit:/ Links updated, Thanks!
Edit:/ Links updated, Thanks!
Last edited:
Guide to 3D settings (in game and drivers)
Antialiasing: Smooths jagged edges (jaggies) in games. ATI and Nvidia have different ways of doing this. ATi and Nvidia's versions of 2xAA and 4xAA are exactly the same. the method used is alled supersampling. than Nvidia has another option they dubbed QuincunxAA. this uses a different method called multisampling. and Matrox has added in a new way with Parhelia called Fragment AA. it only smoothes the lines, not the whole scene like the other ways do. this takes a much smaller performance hit, but is incompatable with some games.
Image quality: definately gives, AA just makes gaming way better. 2xAA is less effective but takes a smaller performance hit than 4xAA. Nvidia's quincunx is in between, and looks just as good as 4x IMHO
Performance: takes away big time. order of performance hit is 2x, quincunx, 4x.
Ansiotropic filtering: filters textures to make depth blur look better from all angles. A step above tri-linear filtering.
Image quality: Improves in order best to worst 8x (64 tap), 4x (32 tap), 2x (16 tap), 1x (bilenear or trilinear).
Performance: Takes away, but not nearly as bad as aintialiasing. performance hit increases as the numbers get higher.
Dynamic lighting: causes moving light sources (weapon blasts and explosions) to cast their light and shadow all over the environment and objects in it.
Performance: Takes away, sometimes substantially. Disable on older cards.
Image quality: gives a lot. definately a good thing to keep on if you can afford to.
Light maps and Vertex lighting: Light maps allow the video card to draw light and shadoeffects on existing textures in the environment. It works to the same degree as Dynamic lighting, but with the environmental light sources and not weapons fire. Vertex lighting turns every light on in the environment on and has all of the light and shadow effects on and pre-drawn to the surfaces, so walking between a light and a wall wont cast a shadow on the wall.
Performance: Light maps takes away, a lot on older cards. GF3 or higher (and Radeon 8500) can handle this fine at most resolutions. Leave vertex enabled on older cards.
Image quality: Light maps Give. makes games exremely more realistic, and IMHO much more fun to watch your shadow on a wall as you walk past it.
Geometric detail: The higher the setting, the more round curves and arcs look in the game. The lower, the more blocky things look. The higher this is set, the more performance it takes away. The performance hit while set on high on my Ti200 is very large, i cant play many games at 1280x1024 at 60+ fps with this setting on high.
Texture detail (quality): THe higher the texture detail, the nicer and more detailed (duh!) the textures skinning all of the polygons look. The performance hit depends on how much RAm your vid card has. If you have 64megs or more, crank it, this one wont usually hurt performance. On older cards with like 16megs of RAM, this can kill performance if set to high.
Bump mapping: adds rough, shiny, or bumpy surfaces to flat textures, without making the video card draw more polygons. this cant be changed in games, a game either uses them or doesnt.
Decals: effects in a game like bullet holes or blood and guts splattered on the walls. the more the better, but in multiplayer games too many can WRECK performance. I usually just leave the games default setting for this if its a number or turn it as high as you can till u start to see lagging.
Texture compression: Uses lossless compression to fit textures into video memory.
Image quality: gives. usually makes textures sharper and letters and words in textures much easier to read.
Performance: gives again, less memory needed=more textures in video ram and less swapping to system RAM
Volumetric smoke (or fog): Makes fully 3d fog instead of flat textures of fog floating around.
Image quality: gives, 3d rolling fog is cool
Performance: Takes away, can cause lag if say a whole bunch of grenades go off and blanket the area. most newer cards are fine with it.
Particle effects: pretty well self explanitory. If you have even a remotely new card just turn it all the way up. particles are cool looking too
add in info by MospeadasDark:
AGP fast writes and sideband adressing: fast writes and agp side banding are suppose to be new techniques of the agp bus to transfer data even faster...theoretically. However in practice it does nothing other than give severe stability issues for about 1% increase in performance, if even.
Triple Buffering: Makes the game look smoother and on newer cards run faster. Triple buffer lets the card render foreground, background, and..one scene that the card is currently working on.
Z-buffer: Saves memory bandwidth. Look at every pixel from your angle, the closer one(the one you see) will be in z-buffer and drawn. For transparencies the pixel in front and behind are combined.
The background hardly moves(ex: a sky), foreground is whatevr you look at, while the next frame is drawn. As opposed to drawing the background everytime with the foreground and next frame all at once.
I hope this helps with some misterious settings in the games and drivers panel. I would like to credit my main source for the in game effects explanations as the april 2002 issue of PC gamer.
Anyone with any other info on settings feel free to add to this thread. I know i will be adding more
-Malakai
Antialiasing: Smooths jagged edges (jaggies) in games. ATI and Nvidia have different ways of doing this. ATi and Nvidia's versions of 2xAA and 4xAA are exactly the same. the method used is alled supersampling. than Nvidia has another option they dubbed QuincunxAA. this uses a different method called multisampling. and Matrox has added in a new way with Parhelia called Fragment AA. it only smoothes the lines, not the whole scene like the other ways do. this takes a much smaller performance hit, but is incompatable with some games.
Image quality: definately gives, AA just makes gaming way better. 2xAA is less effective but takes a smaller performance hit than 4xAA. Nvidia's quincunx is in between, and looks just as good as 4x IMHO
Performance: takes away big time. order of performance hit is 2x, quincunx, 4x.
Ansiotropic filtering: filters textures to make depth blur look better from all angles. A step above tri-linear filtering.
Image quality: Improves in order best to worst 8x (64 tap), 4x (32 tap), 2x (16 tap), 1x (bilenear or trilinear).
Performance: Takes away, but not nearly as bad as aintialiasing. performance hit increases as the numbers get higher.
Dynamic lighting: causes moving light sources (weapon blasts and explosions) to cast their light and shadow all over the environment and objects in it.
Performance: Takes away, sometimes substantially. Disable on older cards.
Image quality: gives a lot. definately a good thing to keep on if you can afford to.
Light maps and Vertex lighting: Light maps allow the video card to draw light and shadoeffects on existing textures in the environment. It works to the same degree as Dynamic lighting, but with the environmental light sources and not weapons fire. Vertex lighting turns every light on in the environment on and has all of the light and shadow effects on and pre-drawn to the surfaces, so walking between a light and a wall wont cast a shadow on the wall.
Performance: Light maps takes away, a lot on older cards. GF3 or higher (and Radeon 8500) can handle this fine at most resolutions. Leave vertex enabled on older cards.
Image quality: Light maps Give. makes games exremely more realistic, and IMHO much more fun to watch your shadow on a wall as you walk past it.
Geometric detail: The higher the setting, the more round curves and arcs look in the game. The lower, the more blocky things look. The higher this is set, the more performance it takes away. The performance hit while set on high on my Ti200 is very large, i cant play many games at 1280x1024 at 60+ fps with this setting on high.
Texture detail (quality): THe higher the texture detail, the nicer and more detailed (duh!) the textures skinning all of the polygons look. The performance hit depends on how much RAm your vid card has. If you have 64megs or more, crank it, this one wont usually hurt performance. On older cards with like 16megs of RAM, this can kill performance if set to high.
Bump mapping: adds rough, shiny, or bumpy surfaces to flat textures, without making the video card draw more polygons. this cant be changed in games, a game either uses them or doesnt.
Decals: effects in a game like bullet holes or blood and guts splattered on the walls. the more the better, but in multiplayer games too many can WRECK performance. I usually just leave the games default setting for this if its a number or turn it as high as you can till u start to see lagging.
Texture compression: Uses lossless compression to fit textures into video memory.
Image quality: gives. usually makes textures sharper and letters and words in textures much easier to read.
Performance: gives again, less memory needed=more textures in video ram and less swapping to system RAM
Volumetric smoke (or fog): Makes fully 3d fog instead of flat textures of fog floating around.
Image quality: gives, 3d rolling fog is cool
Performance: Takes away, can cause lag if say a whole bunch of grenades go off and blanket the area. most newer cards are fine with it.
Particle effects: pretty well self explanitory. If you have even a remotely new card just turn it all the way up. particles are cool looking too
add in info by MospeadasDark:
AGP fast writes and sideband adressing: fast writes and agp side banding are suppose to be new techniques of the agp bus to transfer data even faster...theoretically. However in practice it does nothing other than give severe stability issues for about 1% increase in performance, if even.
Triple Buffering: Makes the game look smoother and on newer cards run faster. Triple buffer lets the card render foreground, background, and..one scene that the card is currently working on.
Z-buffer: Saves memory bandwidth. Look at every pixel from your angle, the closer one(the one you see) will be in z-buffer and drawn. For transparencies the pixel in front and behind are combined.
The background hardly moves(ex: a sky), foreground is whatevr you look at, while the next frame is drawn. As opposed to drawing the background everytime with the foreground and next frame all at once.
I hope this helps with some misterious settings in the games and drivers panel. I would like to credit my main source for the in game effects explanations as the april 2002 issue of PC gamer.
Anyone with any other info on settings feel free to add to this thread. I know i will be adding more
-Malakai
Last edited:
- Joined
- Apr 26, 2001
there r even so many things... i remember have seen something similar on internet, but the guide was only about the driver settings. ill try to find it out and post here.
also, there is something about the texture compression. not all the games and other 3d applications use the same texture compression and method. there is a problem with one named DXT1-DXT5 and nvidia videocards, this one will produce horrible color distortions - or, something like 16-bit textures in a 32-bit environment.
in general the texture compressions will make the rendering faster but the img quality will be reduced.
also, there is something about the texture compression. not all the games and other 3d applications use the same texture compression and method. there is a problem with one named DXT1-DXT5 and nvidia videocards, this one will produce horrible color distortions - or, something like 16-bit textures in a 32-bit environment.
in general the texture compressions will make the rendering faster but the img quality will be reduced.
- Joined
- Apr 21, 2001
- Location
- Las Vegas, NV
OP
- Joined
- Oct 4, 2001
- Location
- Milton Keynes, U.K.
- Thread Starter
- #38
Will Do, Thanks
Sorry about the delays, the Flu Bug got me
Sorry about the delays, the Flu Bug got me
- Joined
- May 9, 2001
- Location
- A hot spot in Ca
Good thread man. Keep up the good work.
Rob
Rob
- Joined
- Feb 15, 2001
- Location
- Harford, WI.
This is a GREAT thread, with some good info and AWESOME link's in it. But Just remember to back up your registry before modifying your registry. Or you could end up like me. I made a few adjustment's and never backed anything up before hand. I had to reformat and reinstall!Robbie said:
Oh, well gave me something to do. I will try the reg tweak's again though.Similar threads
