HELP! Albatron GF4 4200 Plus PROBLEMS

[Kosmic]

I upgraded today to a EPoX 8K5A2, Corsair pc3200 512 stick of ram, sparkle PSU, along with an Albatron GF4 4200 Plus. Supposed to be an awesome card, but it's driving me nuts.

I installed the stock 3032 (I think...) drivers off the CD, and tried updating to 3082. Everything LOOKS fine in regular windows 2000, but in Jedi Knight 2, the image quality is pure crap, like huge blocky pixels instead of smooth colors. Plus the problem of not being able to overclock higher than 300/660 without major artifacts in PCmark2001, AND a top pcmark score of 8064 at 300/600. I have tweaked some of the settings and tested a bunch to see if they make any difference in how my JK2 looks, but I get no love.

Can somebody tell me if I just got a bad card (the thing barely overclocks compared to the 350/700+ that I've seen around here) or if I need the 4072 (win9x only...not win2k) drivers.

Heeeelllllp meeeeeee. LOL

Thanks in advance,
K1

 

[Kato]

How is your cooling?
Try uninstall the Detonator, reboot, search for nv*.* and kills everything it found, then install the Detonator again.

 

[Kosmic]

Thanks Kato. your OC is one of the reasons I bought this card.

My cooling is good...definitely lots of airflow through the case. I'll try what you said and uninstall the card, delete ALL NV drivers and then re-install.

What settings are you running as far as Direct 3D and open GL?

K1

 

[Kato]

As far as direct3d and opengl, when I bench, I disable fog table, mipmap detail level at best performence; Vsync always off, Anisotropic filtering disabled...

For basic tweaking, refer to this thread

 

[Kosmic]

Ok, I've read the threads and articles within them and have adjusted my settings accordingly. What I'm really after is a good 3Dmark score AND good gaming performance. I finally got JK2's settings tweaked to a resonable place, but still noticed a lot of video card lag...but that was before applying all the tweaks, turning OFF the AA, vert, etc. I set the clock at 300/650 on the card and am running my rig at 10x180 with 2-2-5-2 on my memory right now. (What good is corsair pc3200 XMS if I can't flog the **** outta it? ;-) )

I'm gonna reboot and see what I get.

Thanks Kato.

K1

 

[Kosmic]

SUCCESS!

Many thanks, Kato. I'm at 11658 3D marks now, which is really about what I was shooting for. (11-12000) The card is at 300/655, which is about as high as I can push it right now before getting artifacts in 3dmark. Maybe after it's broken in a bit I can go higher. What did you clock at right out of the box? Did you use any software to do a burn in on your Albatron?

K1

 

[Dissolved]

Re: SUCCESS!

Many thanks, Kato. I'm at 11658 3D marks now, which is really about what I was shooting for. (11-12000) The card is at 300/655, which is about as high as I can push it right now before getting artifacts in 3dmark. Maybe after it's broken in a bit I can go higher. What did you clock at right out of the box? Did you use any software to do a burn in on your Albatron?

K1

sisoftsandra, loop 3dmark 1million times, etc etc..
ive seen ppl hitting 320/720 with this card Stock.

 

[Kato]

Good to hear
Right out of the box I clocked it at 320/690, perfectly stable.
And now with the cooler temp in area, I was able to clock it at 330/725 last night, but still not at its limit. A friend my mine, mcc, clocked his card at 340/730 something(he is at the top 10 for AXP/TI4200), so you can see there are still rooms for improvement. Like what Dissolved said, looping 3dmark or the demo is a good burn-in test