P3V4X Alert: Stupid VIA Busmastering Tricks

[paulcs]

I've got 256 MB of RAM, and the problem still shows up. I can't provide more detailed benchmarks, as I spent so much time getting things back up to speed after yesterday's experiments:

Quake3/AGP Aperture 128: 77.0
Quake3/AGP Aperture 256: 61.3

3DMark 2000/AGP Aperture 128: 3734
3DMark 2000/AGP Aperture 256: 3003

I just ran the AGP aperture 128 tests now. This was after a warm boot back into Windows. The 64 MB texture rendering test worked.

PIII 600E @ 800 MHz
256 MB Crucial CAS2 PC133 RAM (7E)
Guillemot TNT2 Ultra (3.84 Detonators)
P3V4X (4.17 AGP/4.20 Busmastering)
Turtle Beach Montego II (Vortex 2)

Paul
paulcs@flashcom.net

[KRSESQ]

At long last! Some answers I might be able to use! My system uses a FIC VA503+, AMD K6-2 300,Marvel G200 AGP-TV, and 17.2 gig Maxtor UDMA 2 hard drive, running Win95B.
The long running problem has been that with Device Manager only showing a "Dual PCI IDE Controller", and the hard drive identified as "Generic Type 47" with the DMA box checked, The Matrox video benchmarking utility reports an average transfer rate of 8.5 MB/sec. If I installed any VIA busmastering drivers, the hard drive would identify properly, but the video transfer rate would drop to 1.5 to 4.5 MB/sec. The video would stutter and be unusable.
I will try the above fix and report the results.
Who wants to live forever?
KRSESQ

[KRSESQ]

I knew it was too good to be true!
I started by trying to update the "Standard Dual PCI IDE Controller" driver by directing the computer to the "Win9x" directory. The machine would have no part of that. Then I ran the VIA Bus Master setup, figuring I could go in afterwards and change the driver.After I did this, the "VIA Bus Master Controller" showed up in Device Manager, and the Hard drive ID'ed correctly. Then I tried to "Update Drivers" according to above instructions. The machine reported "no updated drivers found".
The revision number on the drivers for the VIA Apollo MVP3 chipset is 2.147, the date is 1-24-2000. I just downloaded these drivers from the VIA site. Once again my access time tanked, dropping to 2.24 MB/sec. I uninstalled the VIA drivers, going back to "Standard Dual PCI IDE Controller" and "Generic Type 47 (DMA) and benchmarked again: 8.99 MB/sec. I rebooted and benchmarked again and got 9.23 MB/sec.
I realize this benchmark software is probably not that accurate, but under the circumstances it's accurate enough. The pertinent question is, is this considered optimal performance for a UDMA Mode 2 hard drive?
I guess this is one of those situations where "if it's broke, don't fix it!"
LOL
KRSESQ
P.S. A sudden thought: What might the "Max-Blast Plus" hard drive utility I had to install (To properly ID the hard drive in BIOS) have to do with this? BIOS ID's the hard drive as UDMA MOde 2. Without Max-Blast the hard drive isn't recognised by BIOS at all.
Please don't tell me I have to flash my BIOS!

[This message has been edited by KRSESQ (edited 22 April 2000).]

[dwright]

I tested the agp size changes with 3dmark 2000 in win98se and win2000. With win98 and agp set at 128 I have an increase from 2880 to a score of 3261. With win2000 I do not see much of a change (3113 with 256agp; 3139 with 128agp). Also the 64mb texture test works in win98se.
He are the details of the best run:
3DMARK 2000 PROJECT FILE
SYSTEM
P3V4X - bios 1003 win98se with drives from the ASUS cd
Processor Type Intel Pentium III
Processor Speed 800MHz
Total Physical Memory 256MB
Display:
Type: Internal
Width: 1024
Height: 768
Depth: 16-Bit
Buffering: Triple
Z-Buffering: 16-Bit
Refresh Rate: VSync Off
Texture Format: 16-Bit

RESULTS
Platform: Internal
3DMark Result: 3261 3D marks
CPU Speed: 250 CPU 3D marks
Game 1 - Helicopter - Low Detail: 66.2 FPS
Game 1 - Helicopter - Medium Detail: 45.9 FPS
Game 1 - Helicopter - High Detail: 20.2 FPS
Game 2 - Adventure - Low Detail: 60.0 FPS
Game 2 - Adventure - Medium Detail: 47.8 FPS
Game 2 - Adventure - High Detail: 31.7 FPS
Fill Rate (Single-Texturing): 269.9 MTexels/s
Fill Rate (Multi-Texturing): 268.4 MTexels/s
High Polygon Count (1 Light): 2678 KTriangles/s
High Polygon Count (4 Lights): 2459 KTriangles/s
High Polygon Count (8 Lights): 2217 KTriangles/s
8MB Texture Rendering Speed: 224.5 FPS
16MB Texture Rendering Speed: 216.9 FPS
32MB Texture Rendering Speed: 168.0 FPS
64MB Texture Rendering Speed: 113.0 FPS
Bump Mapping (Emboss, 3-pass): 99.0 FPS
Bump Mapping (Emboss, 2-pass): 126.7 FPS
Bump Mapping (Emboss, 1-pass): 226.4 FPS
Bump Mapping (Environment): 94.7 FPS

Thanks for the tip on AGP aperture size.
David

[DentyCracker]

KRSESQ, it seems very strange that the bios won't recognize the drive. I have a VA503+ (that I.m typing this from and it recognizes my Seagate 20 GB just fine. It also recognized a 20 GB UDMA2 Maxtor that I installed for testing (before putting it in a machine I was setting up). The other part of the problem may be Win95. Anytime I can't just use fdisk to partition a drive, I know something is wrong