High Expectations 2... Still brokenhearted

Smiling

Ok first off, thanks for all of the responses to my previous post. That being said....

I bought a Power Color 9700Pro before, was extremely disappointed. My specs were:
1800AthlonXP
Soyo Dragon Ultra Platinum KT-333
512MB DDR PC2100
PowerColor Radeon 9700Pro
300Watt PS

I took some suggestions I got here about this and that... and I returned my 9700Pro and purchased some new Hardware. My new Specs are:

2400AthlonXP
Soyo Dragon Ultra Platinum KT-333
512MB DDR PC2100 (soon to be replaced with pc2700)
Saphire Radeon 9800Pro
500Watt PS

Im still disappointed. Framerate drops down to 40 in Soldier Of Fortune II, never goes past 166, but bounces all lover, especially low if someone peeps are on the server. Call Of Duty...just as bad. I turn all the antialliasing (<---spelled wrong?) up, and details up in FarCry demo, and the beotch doesnt even run!! Have to run it at the lowest low. My bud can run all that shit high with his 4200TI card...

Im at my wits end, and I refuse to buy a new board. Do I truely just have way to high expectations. I mean Max Payne II runs at like 50FPS, sometimes 30. Shouldn't I be getting 150!!!???

I dunno, I'll post my 3dmark2003 and 2001 scores in a few. I'm starting to feel like I should have gone (gag) NVIDIA.

Smiling

New Scores:
3D Mark 2003- 5210
3D Mark 2003- 12507

DarkFoss

Your ram's definately your major bottleneck. When you get your 2700 ddr you can expect around 15K in 2001se and 53xx a bit more if you oc. I'd buy 3200 ddr it will run at 333 and the price difference isn't much. The board will still be holding you back a bit though. If you want higher benches and faster,smoother gameplay at some point the board will have to be upgraded as well.

Judas

something else is causing the problem...your results aren't as high as they should be..... and my own opinion... is that i really don't think the SOYO board is helping.... What order did you install the software.. (windows).... more system specs....?

BWX

Get an NF7, some faster ram, and Barton 2500- problem solved.


I'm getting this ram, I just ordered it today, - the ram in my sig is good, but the new OCZ limited edition runs 400mhz @ 2-2-2-7 and has the BH-6 chips- getting it in two days.

OCZ platinum limited edition
http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProduc...log=147&depa=1

Ev!L-aLphA

said there exactly!

Smiling

mo hardware eh? Not right now, I'll just have to be content for now I guess. Seems to me that my current hardware is more than enough for current games to run at the high settings, higher FPS than i'm getting right now. A game like soldier of fortune 2 with a minimum requiredment of a 16MB video card, and a Pentium 2 should blaze away at 150FPS constant with my system specs....

Could be by board is actually going bad in some way or another.

Question 1, im not an overclocker, what should by AGP be set to? Its currently set to default, which is 1.5V.

Question 2, when I start my computer it takes about 10 seconds to get video and see the post. Strange thing. I've seen computers display a blank screen for a bit, and then only display video when starting Windows, but never no video, then 10 seconds later you see the memory test.

Zardon

well firstly no need to get a 2500 barton you just bought a 2400XP and the differences between a 2500 barton and a 2400Xp will be minimal certainly for playing games anyway. benchmarking is a different story however but I wouldnt be worrying too much about 3dmarks - lets work on getting your games running smoothly first.

im almost certain its your ram and mobo unless you have a 9700 hardware fault ----- my advice is to get yourself an abit Nf7s and some decent DDR3200 and pump the FSB up to 200 . if you sell your current ram it wont be a massively expensive repurchase. If you dont need SATA the abit Nf7 is extremely cheap now, especially with the release of the AN7 --- as for voltages dont touch the AGP voltage, no need. are you overclocking the 2400 XP?

a few questions - soldier of fortune 2, what resolution are you running it at and are you running with with AA and/or AF?

your post comment, are you hearing a post beep immediately? or is it taking 10 seconds to hear the beep at all? if you hear a beep immediately and are waiting on video it could be your monitor is slow to sync into the signal.

Smiling

Nope not over clocking the proc. I dont know how to overclock any of my components, and honestly it doesn't seem needed, especially this situation. As I said before i'm swapping my pc2100 for pc2700.

The idea of buying a new mainboard seems a bit extreme. Tom recently did a comparision between the new Athlon platforms, and i'll let you view the results yourself.

http://www6.tomshardware.com/motherb...303/index.html

My board (KT-333) stayed pretty close to nforce2 the whole way through.

The game im referring 2, soldier of fortune II, uses the Quake 3 engine, and i've never seen any options for fsaa. I tried Omega drivers and stock drivers.

And as far as the post, , I guess I should plug in my speaker wire so I can answer about the beep. Is that pretty strange that it waits so long for video tho or what...

BWX

Oh yeah, no need for 2500 Barton, when I looked at your system specs I scrolled all the way to the top and saw the 1800xp-

I have an 1800xp with a good stepping and I run it at 2.2ghz most of the time. I'm sure that 2400 xp will be just fine, and will probbaly OC great if you want to OC. The reason you need a new mobo for better performance is because then you can run pc3200 ram and a 400mhz front side bus (FSB), which makes all the difference in the world, if fact I just upgraded from an 1800xp (palimino)- a Gigabyte GA-7dx+ and pc2100 ram-
I also play SOFII Multiplayer allot, and even with my system specs now, when I run 1024 by 768 resolution, tun all the in game graphics to max, set antialiasing to 6x and anisotropic to 16x in the ATI control panel (CP), I can still see dips into the 60's and 70's during very heavy battles- but that's fine, and very playable. Most of the time I'm running 125 to 300fps though.

Also in the SOFII console type com_maxfps 0 to unlimit the FPS. The NF7 is an awesome mobo and really is faster than what you got there because it can be very easily tweaked.
This ram: here is also awesome and would be a great way to go. It uses low (or tight) timings which make it faster than other higher (looser) timing ram *edit- at the same speed in mhz. (that's what the 2-2-2-7 means)
You will see a bug difference if you get better ram and an Nforce2 motherboard. I just did and see a huge speed increase in all games- especially SOFII- it runs like quake1 does on your PC now. New games also fly, where I'd get 60fps average before I'm getting 120 now- just from raising the Mem and FSB speed.

Even now if you can't get that mobo and ram right away you can very safely tweak your system and OC a little bit to get more performance. Plus, 5200 and 12000 in 3dmark isn't that bad for what you have- it should run SOFII without problems as it is, but under very heavy battles you might see some slowdowns (especially in the map Shop1 on the roof) - I still see that dip into the 50's to 60's some time.

*edit*
http://www.pcstats.com/articleview.cfm?articleID=873 <--a good article about mem timings

Sterling

The benchmark results you linked show the NForce2 about 10% faster than the KT-333. That, combined with your very slow RAM, and resulting slow FSB are going to drag you down.

Have you already ordered the PC2700? If not I'd get some PC3200 or PC3500 instead. It will help a good bit now and will help a ton later if you upgrade to an NForce2 board.

People are recomending the NF-7 and I second that. In addition to the 10% boost in stock speeds the NF-7 is a super overclocker. Overclocking's not nearly as hard as people make it out to be. There are tons of websites out there dedicated to overclocking to help you on your way, even some NF-7 specific sites. I'd say you'd get at least a 20% boost in frames per second from the motherboard upgrade alone, and another 20% from upgrading your RAM and FSB. Then another boost from overclocking your CPU.

Lots of little things add up quickly. You can't just upgrade one part of your system and expect it to work at maximum potential.

DarkFoss

Don't forget that Tomshardware guide is 11 months old . The rev 2 Nforce2 boards weren't out.. not to mention about 10 bios revisions and several driver sets.. I guarantee... The performance increase is more than 10 percent. Atleast for now get the 32-3500 ddr as other have suggested not the 2700.

BWX

or this:
OCZ Platinum Limited Edition Dual Channel 184 Pin 512MB(256MBx2) DDR PC-3200 - Retail
Cas Latency: 2-2-2-7
Support Voltage: 2.7V

Plus, look at the review in the DH news about it. This stuff has the BH-6 Windbond Chips! This is what you want!- 243mhz @ 2-2-2-5! 250mhz @ 2-2-2-5 @ 3.4v! Get these before they are GONE.
News

Mine are in the mail, I should get them tomorrow. The XMS is good too- but Newegg has the v1.2, the v1.1 are the one with the BH-5 chips- and they are gone.

the review
"Because I volt modded an Abit IC7-Max3 motherboard specifically for "extreme" testing, I did try higher voltages. With a memory voltage of 3.4V (which is very high and has the possibility to kill your memory), the OCZ PC3200 Platinum Limited Edition memory would do 253 MHz while running 2-2-2-5! Of course since most motherboards max out at a much safer 2.8V, I only benchmarked the board at 240 MHz FSB. Still, that's pretty impressive none the less!"

I think you need these, even if you don't get that high of an OC, even 235 @ 2-2-2-5 is gonna fly with SOFII or any other game for that matter. Games love low latency memory-