Ati Radeon 9800 Pro

[duherman]

I just bought a ATI RADEON 9800 PRO 2 months ago. I've always heard of good things about it.But right now it feels like i was still playing with my old Geforce 2 MX. The FPS i get in Natural-Selection or Counter-Strike is always under 50. My System Specs are OS:Windows XP Proffesional Intel Celeron 2.0 Ghz  768 MB Of Ram. I Have all the latest drivers, including the Omegadriver. Could someone help me figure out this problem. I really want to get the benefits of this card, i didnt waste my money for something that gives me -50 fps.

[Malevolent]

Make sure you have fps_max 100 enabled. Windows XP also likes to screw with refresh rates. There's a thread on the NS forums that can fix the refresh rate problem (it also tells how to get a good framerate). The only thing that would really slow your system down is your processor, but I don't think it would slow it down that much.

Thread 1

Thread 2 - Try looking at this thread. I haven't looked at it myself.

EDIT: Forgot to say what would slow his system down. Fewlish me.

[Isamil]

Your processer is majorly bottlenecking that card.  Its a very CPU dependent card, when I got it having a 1.2 ghz Athlon something, my old Geforce FX 5200 was much better.  I upgraded to an Athlon XP 2800+, 512MB of RAM, etc.

But I really see no way how you could get all the benifits on a celeron.  Big question though, what happens in other games?  HL sometimes has problems with the big ATI cards, its usually fixable though.  But if the performance is really bad in other games to, then I'd say CPU bottleneck.

[duherman]

Only reason i have this proccesor is cause my old one overheated. It was a Intel Pentium 4 1.6 Ghz. It was much better than this one but i cant upgrade to any higher proccesor cause my motherboard is out dated so they wont fit. Right now i have no money so i cannot buy a new motherboard.

[Isamil]

A P4 1.6ghz?  I didn't even know they made them so slow...

[duherman]

Just to tell you my computer is 3 years old

[Mr.Bill]

Must also take into consideration that half life is very slow and that it's engine already limits itsef. mind you 50 is a bit exssesive, for me on that same card Ill get about 68 - 73 tops.

[Isamil]

Theres no way the card would really be of any worse on anything not at least a 2gz P4 or AMD 2000+.

[confused!]

im running the same card but getting 100 fps, solid.(radeon 9800 pro256mb)

course my processor is a bit beefier(3200xp-64bit)
driversets are key for radeon cards.

i suggest the most recent one, casue it works ok for me, and if that doesnt help try an older one. some times the older driversets can do amazing things for hl frame rates.

also set ati_npatch to 0
and ati_(?div?) to 0
on that last one there are only 2 ati_ options and both should be set to zero
as well this will prevnt the puffy rt look and reduce model poly counts.

also what resolution are you running at, sometimes running at lower resolutions can be bad too.  try 800x600 and 1024x768 if you haven't.


finally in your bios check to make sure you have your agp aperature set to 8x, i know that my old main board really liked 2x and that wasnt a good thing

[Mr.Bill]

yeah max_fps worked, silly me

[duherman]

I play on 1024x768. I'm really concerned about this though some people have worse cards then me and they get a fps of 100 all the time, I just hope i didnt waste my 300 dollars buying this card and this is really helping me guys. Even if there hasn't been any performance increase, I just would like to thank you all for all this support. Thanks Everyone...

EDIT

I just checked the bios and it didnt say agp aperature anywhere all i found was agp aperature size - then it was set to 128 (128 mb i asume) and how do i tell if i have ddr ram or sd ram

EDIT

I decided to run a scan to see if my drivers were up to date and here are the statistics

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Driver Detective has successfully scanned your computer and has determined the following:

Correct Drivers Installed: 40%        WRONG Drivers Installed: 60%
 
 

Driver Detective and WebXscan have determined that your system has a SIGNIFICANT amount of updates needed and recommends that you UPDATE YOUR DRIVERS NOW FOR YOUR SYSTEM TO RUN AT PEAK PERFORMANCE.
 
 
Device Groups/Devices    
 

Mice and other pointing devices
Microsoft USB Wheel Mouse Optical (Just Updated)

Display adapters
RADEON 9800 PRO    
RADEON 9800 PRO - Secondary    

Network adapters
Realtek RTL8139 Family PCI Fast Ethernet NIC (Just Updated)

Universal Serial Bus controllers
Intel® 82801BA/BAM USB Universal Host Controller - 2442 (Need Update)    
Intel® 82801BA/BAM USB Universal Host Controller - 2444 (Need Update)    

Sound, video and game controllers
Intel® 82801BA/BAM AC'97 Audio Controller (Need Update)    

IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers
Intel® 82801BA Bus Master IDE Controller (Need Update)    
USB Root Hub  

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

So what do the last 4 items i need updating do? Do i need to update them? and its impossible to find any of these last 4 drivers....

[Isamil]

Also, did you properly uninstall the old drivers?

[Mr.Bill]

Oh, Something I figured out, r_speeds and show_fps give you 2 different numbers, show_fps (I think thats the command) shows your actual fps I think, R_speeds shows what you could get... I think thats whow it goes
so sme people could be looking at dif things

[duherman]

yes i properly uninstalled the old drivers. But these last 4 drivers i can't find. I either have to pay for some site to get them.... Intel site doesnt even have it :S and i use net_graph 3 in game to show fps and all

[rad4Christ]

But these last 4 drivers i can't find. I either have to pay for some site to get them.... Intel site doesnt even have it

[snapback]33409[/snapback]

Go here: http://downloadfinder.intel.com/scripts-df...49&DwnldID=7948

This is the INF update for all intel boards, for AGP, PCI bus as well as IDE interfaces.

[duherman]

Thank you. You are a time saver!

EDIT

It says am missing a driver update for them still and it says i need a driver update for Realtek RTL8139 Family PCI Fast Ethernet NIC too. I thought i just installed one...