terrible frame rate with x850 pro

dood23

Just reformatted with fresh install of windows. Struggling to get ~25-30fps in CS 1.6, and I'd be lucky to get anywhere near that in Source games. Updated video card drivers, not too sure how to update any other drivers. I think that may be the problem, I don't really know.

CPU: Intel Pentium 4 2.53ghz
MOTHERBOARD: L4S5MG+- SIS651 chipset
RAM: 1gb DDR PC2100
VIDEO CARD: Ati radeon x850 pro 256mb
WINDOWS VERSION: XP pro
DIRECT X: 9.0c
VIDEO DRIVERS: Radeon Omega Drivers v4.8.442
GAME RESOLUTION: 800x600
GAME COLOR DEPTH: 32bit
V-SYNC: always on for OpenGL, application preference for D3D
INTERNET CONNECTION: cable

I should be running CS 1.6 like butter. I don't remember the performance being that poor before the reformat though.

IvanV

Did you disable the integrated graphics adapter? It's very weak and if it's not disabled then it may explain the performance you're getting (with an X850 Pro, you should be running CS 1.6 in 800x600 at whatever your monitor's refresh rate is; actually, you should be able to go up a couple of resolutions and still achieve that).

If the above is not the case, you may want to check the following:

Just to rule out any potential internet connection problems, have you tried playing offline?

Also, are there any games or benchmarks that behave and perform normally?

As for other drivers, the ECS's website has two separate pages for L4S5MG/651+, but as far as I could see, the drivers on both are identical, so you may download from either ECS Web Site or ECS Web Site, the AGP driver is right at the top, though you may try installing others as well.

Good luck.

dood23

Refresh rate is 75. There's no integrated graphics adapter that I can see. Performance in other games is unusually low too.

Internet is fine.

I'll try those drivers and see what happens. Thanks

dood23

Downloaded AGP driver, there's an improvement of around 10fps. Not what I was looking for, but it's a start.

Dark Lord

you did install the motherboard chipset drivers, right?

Vikingod

What settings are you running your games at? Are you using AA or AF?

tcman

You have installed the newest motherboard and AGP drivers for the motherboard? And in what AGP mode is it? 2x, 4x or 8X AGP?

And what psu do you have? Make sure you got a psu with at least 22 amps on the combined 12V. The X850Pro alone consumes around 60 watts.

And if I am right, you can unlock more pipelines on the X850Pro, from the 12 pipelines to 16 pipelines (to a radeon X850XT) which will give you a significant performance boost. The only way to do it is flashing (risky) the videocard with a bios with the extra pipelines enabled. Maybe more people at DriverHeaven with more experiences of flashing videocards, especially the X800Pro/X850Pro series, can help you more.

(a reminder: flashing the videocard will void the warranty on the card and you flash it on you own risk.)

Good luck!

IvanV

Let's don't confuse the guy, tcman, an X850Pro is more than powerful enough for CS 1.6 (heck, a GF4 MX would do just fine), so there is no need to resort to unlocking the pipelines (it may improve things a bit if all goes well and the locked pipelines are not defective, but the card should run this game without any problem and has done so in the past, so it's not the issue we're dealing with, plus it could add new problems).

That said, I am running out of ideas. No heavy processes in the background? No warning signs in Device Manager? The PSU can cause all sorts of issues, but if it worked fine before the format, then I guess that's not it.

Dark Lord

speaking from a bit of experience, an x800pro is powerful enough to run CSS at 1024x768 , maxed out, with 6xAA.

dood23

I installed everything from that ECS website Ivan linked as well as everything I could find from the SIS website. AGP is in 4x, that's the highest my mobo goes. It doesn't support fastwrite either.

I did this already

I don't have any warning signs in Device Manager, I have these however:

http://img90.imageshack.us/img90/6305/devicedl1.jpg

I've heard that it's normal to have those question marks for people that did not install Omega drivers over official ones though.

I'll try rolling back to 7.6 drivers.

Occultist

Newer catalyst mangle performance or general functionality of somewhat older cards, especially agp ones. Try usning something like 6.12

dood23

both 7.6 and 6.12 were pretty fruitless, I'm starting to run out of ideas too. :/

Occultist

You're missing something big in driver installation, as these questionmarks in device manager indicate...
Uninstall the video drivers, setup mobo drivers first, then install catalysts...