Kyro II = Big trouble!!!

[Novdid]

I got my Hercules 3d Prophet last Friday and have been thru a lot of problems since.

First off. I want to tell you that everything works... but very slow.

I have a feeling that everything on the 3d side is slow and all the benchmarks I have done confirm this. I have tried all the three MS OS´s and the problem of inadequate 3d performance remains. The problem seems to be that that the OS can´t find the AGP port. It assigns the 3d prophet to IRQ 9 (PCI) and that IRQ is shared with a whole lot of other components.

IRQ

1 Keyboard
6 Floppy
8 System time
9 ACPI
9 3Com Etherlink XL 10/100
9 3D Prophet 4500 (PCI)
9 Aureal Vortex 8830 Audio (Vortex2)
9 VIA USB host controller
9 VIA USB host controller
9 Win2000 Promise Ultra100 (tm) IDE controller
9 Vortex AU8830 Multifunctin PCI Platform
12 Mouse
13 Mathematicsprocessor
14 Primary IDE
15 Secondary IDE

As you see it is sharing IRQ with many many other components. When you install Powerstrip it detects the card on the PCI bus, and in DxDiag the AGP Button is grayed out.

Performance:

Q3:
Starts of with 50fps in 640x480 and declines to 40fps in 1600x1200. You maybe think that I have a really slow CPU, but keep in mind that it is a 1,33GHz T-bird. That´s about the only Opengl app i have in the house for the moment. Notice that the results are exactly the same in W98, WME and W2K.

3dMark2000:
I know this suck but anyway LOOK AT THE SCORE: 2700 3dmarks.
I know that 3d mark heavily relies on T&L... but once my computer flipped and gave me 6007 3dmarks. But then it strangely went down to 2700 again. The flipp came in W98SE. This is the default setting.

3dmark2001:
In W98SE during the "flipp" I got the result 2612, but now in 2K I get 1213. In the other runs (not during the flip) in w98 i got around 1200-1400. This is also the default setting.

GL_ext_reme:

Results:
--------
Overdraw/HSR:
-------------
Overdraw factor 3, back to front: 60.49 fps
Overdraw factor 3, front to back: 74.79 fps
Overdraw factor 3, random order: 68.28 fps
Overdraw factor 8, back to front: 23.94 fps
Overdraw factor 8, front to back: 32.69 fps
Overdraw factor 8, random order: 30.03 fps
Fillrate:
---------
Pixel fillrate: 200.82 MegaPixels / s
Texel fillrate: 240.22 MegaTexels / s
T&L/High polygon count static display list:
-------------------------------------------
Pure transform: 5060804 vertices / s
2 point lights: 1993576 vertices / s
8 point lights: 939192 vertices / s
2 directional lights: 3059514 vertices / s
8 directional lights: 2310632 vertices / s
High memory bandwidth load/texture cache efficiency:
----------------------------------------------------
One 1024x1024x32 texture: 149.03 fps
Four 1024x1024x32 textures: 153.46 fps
This is also way lower than it should be.
All tests were carried out with V-sync off
All the other games work good... but again very slow.
The system specs:
Athlon 1333
Asus A7V133
Hercules 3D Prophet 4500 64MB
Aureal Vortex2 SQ2500
3Com Etherlink XL 10/100
IBM Deskstar 60GXP 41GB
Mosel Vitelic 7ns PC133 Cas2

I have put down a lot of work choosing good parts when I put the computer together and I am truly pissed that the prophet won´t work properly.


[This message has been edited by Novdid (edited 29 May 2001).]

[Raptor^]

ACPI in Windows 2000 means that all your cards appear on the same IRQ as the ACPI controller. This is nothing to worry about.

What VIA AGP drivers do you have installed? It sounds like you
a) don't have any at all
b) don't have a recent enough version to work with Kyro II.

I'm don't own a T'bird, but thats what it looks like to me. Someone that knows more about Athlons and KT133 mobos would be handy though

[CHHAS]

Something is very wrong there, your GL_ext_reme scores resembles the scores a TNT card would get very much, strange indeed.

[Nuno]

Novdid: As you can see in "My Kyro II review" thread, there´s something wrong with your system. Those aren´t typical KyroII numbers.

Try removing the sound card. Try forcing a non-ACPI install. Disable all video shadowing/caching on the bios and set AGP to 2x. Set video to UC.

As for the AGP grayed out, that´s normal. KyroII can alocate only 64Mb memory. So if you already have 64 memory on board, It can´t alocate more memory than that, so AGP texturing is disabled by the drivers. 32 Mb boards can alocate 32 Mb more over the AGP bus.

[kyosuken]

i get my kyro2 today, but don't have the time to try it for now...

from what i know via 4 in 1 may be good but it may be the worst thing ever, every time i installed them i found my system with no agp at all, and no d3d and no ogl... (i have a g400 max and a g400 16 mb)

this was with my abit kt7a, never happened on my msi k7t pro... so for now i will stay without them and try out my kryo when i'll have some time.

Ken

[Novdid]

I have the via 4in1 4.31 (the latest). I also have the latest drivers for my Kyro and of course the latest bios release (1004).

Maybe I should try an older 4in1 driver. I'll get back to you on that.

[Gurm]

It could be a dodgy card. However, other things to consider:

1. Under win2k, DO NOT INSTALL ANY 4-IN-1 DRIVERS. NONE. NOT ANY. Instead, install SP2. Don't believe me? Some definitive (albeit quick) tests were done at 2CPU.

2. It's probably your sound card. Since Aureal is no longer in business, you can hardly expect them to have checked Prophet compatibility against a Vortex chip.

3. Kyro2 in general doesn't suck. In fact it rocks pretty hard in my machine.


------------------
Listen up, you primitive screwheads! See this? This is my BOOMSTICK! Etc. etc.

[Novdid]

I have the swedish version of win2K. Can you install a english SP2 on that?

I´ll try to disable my soundcard and see if the audio is a prob, but I hardly believe that´s it.

[Technoid]

I disagree With Gurm, Via 4 in 1 should be installed, but not the Ultra dma IDE driver.
And in case of The version, i should recomend 4.29 as the 4.31 has a bios patch that might screv your pci register settings..

An English SP2 should not be installed on a swedish W2k!!!!!

And forcing W2k to install in NON acpi mode should only be done on Older chipsets that does'nt support it in hardware.

You might check if it's properly seated in the AGP port.

[Gurm]

Technoid,

Not to be argumentative, but which part of the 4-in-1 would you suggest using, if not the IDE? The AGP driver? The one in SP2 is newer and better than the one in 4.29/4.31, and just as fast (as borne out by the test results at 2cpu). So which other part of the 4-in-1 is worth installing?

- Gurm

------------------
Listen up, you primitive screwheads! See this? This is my BOOMSTICK! Etc. etc.

[Novdid]

I took out the soundcard, and the results didn´t change. And if I want later drivers I can always get the latest Videologic SonicVortex2 drivers. They still have support for the card. Both of the cards follow the same reference design.

What can I do now? What's left to do besides switching out the card?

[The PIT]

Via drivers don't go any where near my win2k install since they just cause trouble. Bar the pci registry patch.
I've used the latest ide drivers under win98se which gave a slight performance increase.
Under the 4.31 you have a choice whether to install the patch or not which may prevent data corruption.
What I'd be tempted to do is to uninstall all the via stuff. Uninstall the Kyro drivers and let it be detected as a standard vga. Re-install the Kyro and then re-install directx. It may also be worth checking what amount of AGP memory you've got allocated in the Bios and try various settings.

[kyosuken]

well i have it finally !

what can i say, smooth and fast !

but i have some trouble too :P, whenever i use texture compression i get horrible artifacts... textures are completely messed..

(i use the very last drivers) may be i should go with the 7.89 one.. will look further..

ken

[Technoid]

And I Definitly thinks that installing a English language version SP2 on a Swedish language W2K is a very BAD thing to do...

[Novdid]

I tried to install the 7.89 drivers and suddenly my computer is twice as fast as before. But I still think the results are low. I will post some benchmarks in the other benchmark section and compare the results with your results. But it seems to be a driver issue here. But strangely enough everybody with rigs resembling mine haven´t encountered any of the problems I have.

Here is my GL_ext_reme results with the older drivers.

Results:
--------

Overdraw/HSR:
-------------
Overdraw factor 3, back to front: 251.21 fps
Overdraw factor 3, front to back: 251.09 fps
Overdraw factor 3, random order: 251.12 fps

Overdraw factor 8, back to front: 217.75 fps
Overdraw factor 8, front to back: 218.17 fps
Overdraw factor 8, random order: 217.89 fps

Fillrate:
---------
Pixel fillrate: 211.75 MegaPixels / s
Texel fillrate: 346.86 MegaTexels / s

T&L/High polygon count static display list:
-------------------------------------------
Pure transform: 5206778 vertices / s
2 point lights: 1365694 vertices / s
8 point lights: 508341 vertices / s
2 directional lights: 2898929 vertices / s
8 directional lights: 1925235 vertices / s

High memory bandwidth load/texture cache efficiency:
----------------------------------------------------
One 1024x1024x32 texture: 162.50 fps
Four 1024x1024x32 textures: 159.53 fps