Poor G400 perf. in Quake2

[brettw]

I am at the end of my rope. I upgraded to a
G400 (from a G200) recently. I have yet to
get benchmarks coming anywhere close to
those obtained in various reviews. Maybe
someone can spot something I've missed.

My system consists of:

AMD K6-III/450MHz
Soyo 5EH SS7 100MHz mobo
G400 AGP (32Meg)
256M RAM
Yamaha OPL-3 Soundcard

The G400 is at IRQ15 (secondary IDE unused).
I have AGP 2X enabled in BIOS, and forced
through registry settings. I have the AMD
Quake 3.20 3D-NOW! patch applied. Matrox
drivers 5.30.

The MAX FPS I see, with sound off, is 39.2
-- it doesn't really change from 640x400 to
800x600 (both 16bit).

I *think* I should be getting 50+ FPS or
higher (80+?). I've tried every tweak and
patch I can find, no diff. Someone please
HELP, or at least confirm that you've seen
the same thing!

Brett Wooldridge
brettw@io.com

[ClawZ]

Ok are u using default gl drivers or tha 3dfx ones, do u have tha latest GL miniports running? Tha g400 has a problem with openGL games so dont expect yah benchmarks to be as good as say a voodoo3 or anyfink, i was getting better benchmarks using me old viper550 than this g400, still its a f*%king great card, very pleased.

Celeron 433o/c541, 128meg Ram, g400 32meg, mx300

[brettw]

3dfx drivers? Under quake I select
"3DNow! opengl" (this is after having
applied the AMD patch). I would imagine
that selecting "default opengl" wouldn't
get me much (might even hurt), correct?

I realize that OGL is not the G400's forte,
but the numbers I see other people post for
similar hardware are nearly double what I'm
seeing.

Thanks,
Brett

[Rogier]

brettw, no K6 here but maybe some reference material: My Celeron 300@450, Abit BH6, 128Mb, G400DH system does 68FPS at 800x600x16 (32 bits same), 60FPS at 1024x16 (57 at 32bits).

- Tried the Vsync option of the Matrox Tweak Utility already?
- Have you uninstalled the G200+drivers before upgrading to the G400?

Happy hunting!

[Wombat]

It's kind of a long shot, but can you get the G400 down to a lower interrupt? You want it to be 9 or higher, but right now, the devices on 9,10..14 all have priority over it. It might help if the G400 weren't so low on the list.
Just keep it above IRQ 8.

-Wombat

[Wombat]

Also, is bus-mastering on? You may be fine at AGP2x, but many can't handle it, and revert to 1x. 2x is sometimes a sign that bus-mastering isn't on.
Just something to check.

-Wombat