ATI 9800XP incredibly disapointed

[Guest rcarlson123]

This thread has me wondering if I might be able to get better framerates with my setup. It's not nearly as bad as Josh's, but I do slow to about 10 or 15 when there are lots of clouds. Anyway, perhaps I should do more tweaking.Jim, love your sig quote ... I'm reading that book currently. (Clear and Present Danger.) :)

[Guest Ray CYYZ]

Basically, OFF is telling you the AGP port is disabled. It renders your great AGP card back into a 5 your old PCI card pretty much.run dxdiag, look at the display tab. Force the modes to enabled (you will probably have to reboot your machine).Screen should look like this coupled with the above ATI screen.http://forums.avsim.net/user_files/60438.jpgRay

[Guest OneTinSoldier]

Hi Ross,Glad to hear you liked my sig there, hehe. I haven't read the book, but I think it's a great Harrison Ford movie! ;) I have the VCR tape of it. Just recently got a DVD player so maybe I'll get the DVD sometime.Cheers,Jim

[Guest vspeed]

Ok narrowing it down. Thanks a million guysWell, DXDIAG, here is a screen shot, should explain my problem. http://barefootdrummer.tripod.com/dxdiag.jpgJosh

[Guest ToMy Li]

Tabs mate... Do you recommend Vide Shadow off into the BIOS? Why exactly please...? I have turned it off...

[Guest Ray CYYZ]

Josh, please list ALL your hardware so I can isolate what is causing the failure. It is probably a motherboard bios setting, but without knowing what motherboard, I can't have you mess around in the settings ;)Ray

[Guest Buck Bolduc]

When you uninstall (remove) old video drivers they sometimes remain ghosted in the system. Keep hitting the F8 key while booting to get a menu option to boot into "Safe Mode". After booting into safe mode go into "Device Manager"/Hardware Tab. Your video card should be listed under "Display Adapter"Right click click or highlite and go to it's properties page.Often you will see the old driver ghosted in there.Remove it again, usually works the second time from Safe Mode.Video drivers and USB devices seem to want to remain ghosted like that. The result being file corruption.Regards

[Guest OneTinSoldier]

Hi,I just saw and realized that I forgot to leave the link to my FS2004 and WinXP Optimization Guide V2' in my orginal reply here. Doh! :-doh Sorry 'bout that. Ok, well if Josh or anyone else is interested in it, here's the link...http://forums.avsim.net/dcboard.php?az=sho...topic_id=173789Cheers,Jim

[RonC 0]

Hi Josh, One thing I didn't see recommended is the water effects and or details. I set mine to low and it more than doubled my frame rates.One thing that I am personally disappointed with this card is the shimmers and jaggies. I don't know how people are tweaking there cards to alleviate this problem but I think I have tried just about everthing to no avail. Blue skiesRon CIntel P-4 2.8 Gig1 GB PC3700 Dual Channel RamATI Radeon 9800 Pro128MB19" MonitorSB Live ValueForcefeedback StickIs it ever enough?http://www.precisionmanuals.com/images/forum/supporter.jpg

[Guest vspeed]

Yeah the shimmers and jaggies are annoying. I dont know how people get thoue out either. I use the control panel thing in ati, and i have all the quality settings all the way up, and its still jaggy, but not as bad as if I didnt do it, or set the slider way down to performance over quality. I got everything figured out. I re-installed my opearting system. Here I am 6 hours later, after all of my programs are installed again. I went to look in ati's control panel, and the agp is enabled to 4x, finally. dxdiag, is showing agp as enabled. Its a miracle. Now to test flight sim and see whats gonns happen there. Thanks for everyone's helpJosh

[Tabs 2,790]

On video and BIOS shadowing - this copies an image of the card's (or the main system's) BIOS to system RAM, allowing it to supposedly perform faster - I think this only had an effect back in the old days when the system bus speed was so slow that it actually made a difference. It can cause problems if Windows or a program tries to write to the memory registers that are occupied by the BIOS image. Every BIOS guide I've ever seen tells you to turn it off and I always have...Back to the problem - that AGP Texturing being grayed out in DXDIAG is not good. This is the problem with proprietary componets that companies like Gateway tend to use in their systems. You have no idea what the motherboard is and you're reliant on them for drivers etc - if you build your own or go with a high end prebuilt machine like an Alienware at least you know what's in your system and you can use the chipset maker's reference drivers for everything.For some reason your AGP slot isn't functioning properly - this could be drivers, could be BIOS settings, or could be a conflict with the built in display adapter. The built in video SHOULD disable itself when you plug in an AGP card, but I have no idea how this particular one works because it's probably not a standard motherboard... What exact model of Gateway is it? I might be able to figure something out if I can go look at the support page for it on their site.

[Guest vspeed]

True! I had a computer that I bought from Comp USA a while back. It was a "home built" one by them. It was a hell of a computer, till the hard drive messed up, the power supply freaked out and the P4 processor overheated and burned up. So I got this one, and when I get the other one fixed, it would make a great "gaming only" computer, and have this one for internet, and the like. In any case, I dont know what model this is. I cant find the model numer anywhere on it. However I did the gateway thing, where it scans your system for insalled hardware, and I will paste the information. I think the mobo is Intel 82845 if that sounds familiar. I tried to find bios updates to no avail. But since AGP is finally working I dont think I need them, yet. Thanks for offering to search on the support page for me. Here is what gateway found. And yes, Alienware rocks!! Maybe one of these days I can get one!-CD and DVD DrivesSAMSUNG CDRW/DVD SM-348B (7/1/2001)-Floppy Drive UpgradeFloppy disk drive (7/1/2001)-Floppy Drive ControllerStandard floppy disk controller (7/1/2001)-Hard Drive ControllersIntel 82801DB Ultra ATA Storage Controller - 24CB (7/2/2001)Primary IDE Channel (7/1/2001)Secondary IDE Channel (7/1/2001)-Hard Drives UpgradeMaxtor 6Y080L0 (7/1/2001)-HidclassMicrosoft HID-compliant consumer control device (7/1/2001)Microsoft HID-compliant consumer control device (7/1/2001)Saitek X45 Flight Controller HIDSaitek X45 Flight Controller USBHID-compliant device (7/1/2001)USB Human Interface Device (7/1/2001)USB Human Interface Device (7/1/2001)-Input Devices UpgradeMicrosoft PS/2 Mouse (7/1/2001)Microsoft HID-compliant mouse (7/1/2001)Standard 101/102-Key or Microsoft Natural PS/2 Keyboard (7/1/2001)HID Keyboard Device (7/1/2001)-MediaAnalog Devices SoundMAX Integrated Digital Audio (4/4/2002)C-Media CMI8738/C3DX PCI Audio Device (11/27/2002)Microsoft Unimodem Half-Duplex Audio Device (1/26/1999)Standard Game Port (9/23/1998)-Modem UpgradeU.S. Robotics 56K Voice Host Int (7/1/2001)-PortsECP Printer Port (LPT1) (7/1/2001)Communications Port (COM1) (7/1/2001)-SystemIntel 82802 Firmware Hub Device (7/1/2001)Intel 82801DB PCI Bridge - 244E (7/2/2001)Intel 82801DB LPC Interface Controller - 24C0 (7/2/2001)Intel 82801DB/DBM SMBus Controller - 24C3 (7/2/2001)Intel 82845G/GL Processor to I/O Controller 2560 (2/1/2002)Intel 82845G/GL Processor to AGP Controller - 2561 (2/1/2002)Microsoft ACPI-Compliant System (7/1/2001)ACPI Sleep Button (7/1/2001)ACPI Multiprocessor PC (7/1/2001)-Universal Serial Bus (USB) UpgradeIntel 82801DB/DBM USB Universal Host Controller - 24C2 (7/2/2001)Intel 82801DB/DBM USB Universal Host Controller - 24C4 (7/2/2001)Intel 82801DB/DBM USB Universal Host Controller - 24C7 (7/2/2001)Intel 82801DB/DBM USB 2.0 Enhanced Host Controller - 24CD (6/1/2002)USB Root Hub (7/1/2001)USB Root Hub (7/1/2001)USB Root Hub (7/1/2001)USB Root Hub (7/1/2001)USB Composite Device (7/1/2001)Josh

[Tabs 2,790]

Josh,Ok the fact that it's an 845 chipset just told me everything I needed to know - first off, you only have AGP4X, the Radeon is an AGP8X card. I puzzled though because you said you set 8X in the BIOS - according to the specs for every variant of the chipset on Intel's site, none of them support AGP8X. It should clock down to 4X, but you're gonna see decreased performance. (though not as bad as what you were getting) AGP8X support didn't go into the Intel chipsets until the 848P. It also appears that you got the older "B" model Pentium 4 chip that doesn't have hyper-threading or the other improvements made with the current "C" version of the CPU.So basically, you could probably try the Intel reference driver for the 845 chipset and see if that solves any of the problems. If not, you're probably looking at upgrading your CPU, mobo and RAM to the newer standards to be able to use the card. (this is precisely what happened when I bought my Radeon - I first tried it in my old KT266 mobo with AGP4X and it was so unstable that I thought the card was bad. As soon as I put it in my new nForce2 mobo with AGP8X though, it's worked flawlessly since. I'd get a bigger power supply while you're at it too - at least a 430W. Antec is a good brand for those.

[Guest Raffael]

>You have something screwed up. The fact that a slower video>card works better pretty much tells you that.>>Here's the absolute worst case I can produce with my 9800XT,>this is EVERYTHING 100%, all sliders, distance draw radius>extended, etc with maximum video abuse (6x/16x) @ 1600x1200.>FS9 is eating 389 Megs of ram in this shot.>>Notice no lock at so nothing is disabled within FS9 to try and>pull up the frame rates.>>http://forums.avsim.net/user_files/60317.jpg>>RayIn your post you said that at the worst you get 15 fps in FS2004 with your 9800xt.I'm thinking about updating my PC, or actually just HOW to upgade it, not if.My current specs are:P4 2.4GHZ1 GB RAM PC 3200Radeon 9800 SEAsus P4P800 Deluxe moboWin XP homeI'm pretty sure I will upgrade to a 3.0GHZ P4. Would it be useful to upgrade the videocard as well? To 9800Pro? Or wouldn't it be that big difference?What are your other specs apart from 9800XT? I think your system is where I want mine to get to, thats why I ask.Thanks a lot,Raffael Schmidtr.schmidt@oerk.atPS: Anyones suggestions are VERY welcome!!!!

[Tabs 2,790]

Raffael,The video card is actually the weakest link you have there in those specs - the 9800 SE is really deceptive, because it's not really a 9800 - it only has 4 pixel piplines instead of the 8 that the 9800, 9800 Pro, and 9800XT have. It actually gets outperformed by the 9600XT in most of the benchmarks I've seen. Going to a 9800 Pro will definitely help you out. I didn't get the 9800XT when I upgraded even though I had the option because there's just too small a performance difference between the Pro and the XT to justify spending close to $300 more...If you can stand to wait, ATI is releasing their all new chip (probably gonna be the Radeon 9900) within the next few months, and I've heard that it's going to be at least 150% the performance of the 9800XT with some new features supported too.A processor upgrade will help you as well, but I don't think by quite as much as ditching the 9800SE will. If you're willing to try it, the P4 2.4C that you have is an amazing overclocker and with a good heatsink/fan you could get it up to 3+Ghz with no problem at all. Read up on it at www.ocforums.comRyan