Best drivers for K6-3, G400 MAX???????

[hella356]

Ok, let's try to put our heads together on this one. On my rig the MAX is a LOT slower than a standard TNT card. I got the G400 to use with a RR-G, but I didn't think it would be such a dog in this system. It was fast in a K7-700 rig, but nothing plays very well on the K6 with the MAX. I mostly play driving games like NFS 3 & 4, Nascar 3, etc., and these aren't as tough to run as Q3, UT and such. I'm sure the BIOS settings are ok, the MAX is on IRQ 11 with no conflicts. I know the MAX is CPU dependent, but can it be 30% or so slower than a regular TNT? 3DMark99 & 2000 are a lot slower, but most importantly EVERY game I've used needs to be run at lower resolutions and with detail settings cranked down. DOH!! I hope I'm doing something wrong or else I have to be hating games until I get an Athlon. If anyone has any tips on the subject I'd be stoked. Thanks.

WIN 98
AMD K6-3 400
Epox EP-MVP3G-M
256 Mb RAM
Adaptec U2W SCSI
IBM 9.1 GB 10K RPM U2W
G400 MAX/RR-G
Xitel Storm Platinum A3D
3Com NIC
Plextor 8/20 CDR, 32X CDROM

[Zwisch]

Do you have the latest and proper patches installed for your motherboard?? Also is your card sharing it's resources with any other devices?

Z

[hella356]

I have installed the latest VIA patches. The MAX is sharing IRQ 11 with "IRQ Holder for PCI Steering". There are 2 other instances of "IRQ Holder for PCI Steering" on IRQs 5 & 9. Is there anything wrong with this config? Thanks.

[RAB]

The IRQ stuff is OK. The IRQ Holders are normal. What are your 3DMark2000 scores? For a G400Max and a K6-III 400, they should be around 1600 at the default setting.

RAB

[jackzod]

Irq steering is the busmaster, so there's no problem there. Did you tried a search on this board with the search option, I think this subject has been talk about in the past.
BTW, what drivers are you using (5.31 are the best one for K6 users).

[This message has been edited by jackzod (edited 24 February 2000).]

[jediphoenix]

I got a score of 1340 in 3dmark2000 using a K6-2 450 128 megs sdram and a Matrox G400 32 SH with 5ns sgram. Is that score bad for a K6-2 450

------------------
<A HREF="http://jediphoenix.iscool.net/
" TARGET=_blank>http://jediphoenix.iscool.net/
</A>

[jswcpm]

I have a score of 1700 in 3dmark2000 using a K6-3 450 overclocked to 500 (5x100) on an Asus 5a w/ 128 megs sdram and a Matrox G400 32 Max = also overclocked Max to 105%.

Clock Speed is very important - the newer K6 2+ 550 due out 2Q 00 will most likely boost performance....using 4.12.01.1500 - latest setup for windows 98.

[hella356]

Here are my results for 3DMark 99 MAX & 2000:

3DMark 99 MAX
Resolution: 800*600
Color Depth: 16-bit Color
CPU Optimization: AMD 3DNow!(tm)
Z-Buffer: 16-bit
Frame Buffer: Triple buffering
Refresh Rate: VSync Off
Looping: Disabled
Texture Format: 16-bit, 4444 RGBA
3DMark Result : 3,007 3DMarks
Synthetic CPU 3D Speed : 5,955 CPU 3DMarks
Rasterizer Score : 2,484 3DRasterMarks
Game 1 - Race: 36.0 FPS
Game 2 - First Person: 25.8 FPS
Fill Rate : 247.1 MTexels/s
Fill Rate With Multi-Texturing : 244.6 2MB Texture Rendering Speed: 348.6 FPS
4MB Texture Rendering Speed: 272.3 FPS
8MB Texture Rendering Speed: 180.3 FPS
16MB Texture Rendering Speed: 127.5 FPS
32MB Texture Rendering Speed: 63.1 FPS
Bump Mapping Emboss, 3-pass: 98.6 FPS
Bump Mapping Emboss, 2-pass: 127.0 FPS
Bump Mapping Emboss, 1-pass: 148.3 FPS
Point Sample Texture Filtering Speed: 110.9 %
Bilinear Texture Filtering Speed: 100.0 %
Trilinear Texture Filtering Speed: 65.8 %
Anisotropic Texture Filtering Speed: Not Supported
6 Pixel/individual: 533.8 KPolygons/s
6 Pixel/strips: 2,123.9 KPolygons/s
25 Pixel/individual: 540.6 KPolygons/s
25 Pixel/strips: 2,069.7 KPolygons/s
50 Pixel/individual: 612.8 KPolygons/s
50 Pixel/strips: 1,452.1 KPolygons/s
250 Pixel/individual: 471.2 KPolygons/s
250 Pixel/strips: 553.2 KPolygons/s
1000 Pixel/individual: 165.6 KPolygons/s
1000 Pixel/strips: 191.2 KPolygons/s

3DMark 2000
3D Accelerator Matrox Millennium G400 DualHead - English
Resolution 1024*768
Z-Buffer Depth 16-bit
Frame Buffer Triple
Refresh Rate V Sync.Off
CPU Optimization AMD 3DNow!(tm)
3DMark Result 1330 3D marks
CPU Speed 64 CPU 3D marks
Game 1 - Helicopter - Low Detail 26.4 FPS
Game 1 - Helicopter - Medium Detail 15.2 FPS
Game 1 - Helicopter - High Detail 4.2 FPS
Game 2 - Adventure - Low Detail 37.7 FPS
Game 2 - Adventure - Medium Detail 17.5 FPS
Game 2 - Adventure - High Detail 9.8 FPS
Fill Rate (Single-Texturing)270.3 MTexels/s
Fill Rate (Multi-Texturing)268.5 MTexels/s
High Polygon Count (1 Light)813 KTriangles/s
High Polygon Count (4 Lights)747 KTriangles/s
High Polygon Count (8 Lights)662 KTriangles/s
8MB Texture Rendering Speed223.4 FPS
16MB Texture Rendering Speed179.1 FPS
32MB Texture Rendering Speed101.2 FPS
64MB Texture Rendering SpeedNot enough AGP memory
Bump Mapping (Emboss, 3-pass)64.7 FPS
Bump Mapping (Emboss, 2-pass)98.0 FPS
Bump Mapping (Emboss, 1-pass)186.0 FPS
Bump Mapping (Environment)89.6 FPS

I didn't use the TNT with 2000, but in 99 it got about 4300 3DMarks, Game 1 - Race: about 45 FPS, Game 2 - First Person: about 35 FPS.
I wouldn't care about the benchmark scores if games were just as fast, but they are noticably slower. Maybe I'm just screwed for now. I'll try overclockin the MAX, maybe that will help. Thanks for the responses.

[hella356]

I tried running the MAX at 115% and the scores were LOWER. DOH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Mechanix]

When you said you tried all the patches from VIA, did you mean the latest 4in1 drivers? If not, try them! Also, the AGP miniport driver should be installed prior to the video card drivers. I hope this helps some...

[hella356]

I did install the latest 4-in-1 drivers before the 5.41 G400 drivers. Think an earlier version of the G400 drivers might be better? I hate to think that I'm stuck with a $250 video card that is so slooooow with my CPU. I expected a card with 32MBs of 200 MHz RAM + 166MHz core to be the equal of a card with 16 MB of 125 MHz RAM + 90 MH core card. Was I crazy to think that? I knew the CPU was a factor, but this it ridiculous. I like the Rainbow Runner, though.

[rylan]

I have a similar setup to you.. K6-III 450, Epox MVP3G-M and 256mb with G400MAX.

You should definately be getting noticably better performance than a TNT card.
Make sure that you have totally removed the drivers from your previous video card, and use the Matrox PD Uninstaller to clear out the G400 drivers, then do an install of your G400 drivers again.
Also, get the latest VIA agp VxD support drivers.. I believe it is version 4.00 for the agp support now, and install in TURBO mode. I think those just came out a couple days ago, and work well with PD5.41

[hella356]

I never had the TNT in this Windows install, and I did the standard Matrox uninstall and VIA 4in1 upgrade. It doesn't make sense.

[Bixler]

Hella:

I don't KNOW why, but here's a quote from one of the Matrox Beta Boyz from another thread, talking to a K62 333 owner:

You should be running 5.30 + the TurboGL.
5.41+AMD=no work
5.50=beta...for a reason
TurboGL will not work on most (all?) SS7 systems with 5.41 or 5.50.
5.50 has known opengl problems with the full ICD.

You can read the whole thread here:
http://forums.murc.ws/ubb/Forum5/HTML/007551.html

Don't feel so bad, I'm still stuck with 4.33 drivers for my ole G200 Marvel.


[This message has been edited by Bixler (edited 25 February 2000).]

[hella356]

I guess I'll try the 5.30, although I don't have any problems with the current setup other than the speed. Everything works fine, just slow framerates. I don't think I use any OpenGL games anyways.