G400 MAX, VIA Apollo Pro 133 AGPset - Terrible FPS

[Relentless]

HELP!
I have just got my new computer with this supposedly wonderful graphics card and im getting TERRIBLE frame rates... such as using the Geiss pluggin for WinAMP and getting 15 FPS in 640x480 16Bpp.

I have a:
Intel Celeron 433 - not overclocked
iWill VD133 Motherboard - VIA Apollo Pro 133 AGPset
Matrox Millenium G400 Max
Turtle Beach Montego 2 Sound Card
NE2000 Realtek ethernet card

Im Running:
Windows 98 (not Special Edition)
PowerDesk 5.41
TurboGL 1.00
VIA 4-in-1 Driver version 4.19

I have tried everything and I have not got decent frame rates using any program/game. I also cannot set the appature to higher than 128 because the bios does not have a higher option. I have verified that there are no conflicting IRQs after recieving an email from the Matrox Help people. Video Shadow is off.

Please Help

[UncleJoe]

Is busmastering enabled in your G400 settings ? 15 FPS in 640x480 16bpp sounds very low for any G400 card. What other tests you have run ? Results ?

J.

[Wombat]

How much RAM do you have? Did you touch the opengl32.dll file?

[Ryuhei]

I have a motherboard with the VIA Apollo Pro 133A chipset and my FPS in Q3A is right about where it should be. Even a G400 MAX isn't going to give you GeForce FPS, but I think it should be higher than what you're getting. I play Q3A at 1024x768 with all options except texture detail cranked to the max. Texture detail is one notch down from the top. I get 31 FPS without the turboGL.

Mike

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PIII 667MHz
Tyan S1854 mobo, 256MB PC133
Matrox G400 MAX, SB Live! X-gamer
6x/32x SCSI DVD-ROM, 10,000RPM 18GB SCSI HD

[Gurm]

Update:

Geiss is ENTIRELY a 2D program, which is 100% dependent on your CPU speed and doesn't use your G400 AT ALL.

In addition, 16-bit mode is ESPECIALLY slow for Geiss, as indicated in the readme. You did read the readme, didn't you? Tsk tsk.

- Gurm

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

[rylan]

Yeah, if its a 2D program, then it is entirely CPU dependant at Gurm said. And being that (again as he said) 16-bit is a lot slower than 32bit when using CPU rendering, as it has to convert the 32-bit words down to 16-bit before it does the computations.

[Gurm]

Geiss is absurdly power-hungry. On a P3-450 at 800x600 it turns in around 12fps with a G400 MAX!

Try something else, you'll be pleasantly surprised. Geiss is really designed around cards and CPUs that don't exist yet.

- Gurm

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

[Relentless]

Bus Mastering is enabled
I have a Celeron 433 with 128mb Ram
I have not tampered with any files.

Q3A is unplayable (jerky) with latest drivers on reasonable resolution.

As for GEISS performance, i am only getting:
320x200 32bpp: 43FPS
640x480 32Bpp: 13FPS

As for other tests, with 3D WinBench 2000 on the 3d performance tests:
<2 FPS for the racetrack test
10 FPS for the island test


However, i am going to fix the problem.... im changing over my motherboard for one without the VIA chipset tonight

[vanguardian1]

Relentless, I can easily say something is not configured correctly when your system acts like you state. No offense intended, but switching motherboards is a easy expensive solution, that is more of a waste than anything.

I will grant you, I don't care much for via chipsets myself (although the kx133 seems to be half-way decent for the athlons), their chipset isn't half as bad as you seem to be thinking.

[Genom]

Sadly, I was on IRC the otehr day with Relentless and was trying to help him out. I tried runnign Geiss on my machine and while running identical res, I was clocking a steady 60 FPS at 640x480 in 8 bit color, I know ym CPU is higher end, but wouldnt think thered be a 45 FPS difference there.

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Asus P3B-F, P3-450~600, 256MB PC133 8ns SDRAM, G400MAX (yay!) at 160Mhz, Teac 58S CD-R, Toshiba SM-1002 DVD-ROM, Toshiba 40X SCSI CD-ROM, 8.4GB IDE primary drive, 9GB Micropolis Tomahawk UWSCSI, 9GB IBM U2WSCSI, 18GB U2WSCSI Cheetah, Diamond MX300, 3COM 10/100TX, 3COM Gaming Modem, Adaptec 2940U2W

And a partridge in a pear treeeeeeee.

[Relentless]

Thanks all you guys for helping me. It is now working very nicely. I swapped my motherboard over for free (its so useful knowing people at a computer shop) and instantly, even before re-installing, im getting very nice FPS. Such as in Q3A im getting between 40-90FPS (average about 75-80FPS) in 800x600 32Bpp.

My other reason for changing motherboards was because of my old ISA network card which conflicted with my soundcard unless it was in a specific PCI slot, however if the sound card was in that slot it conflicted with the Bios-assigned G400 IRQ.

But its all working well now... so thanks for any suggestions you made