Bad G400 performance

[Eek!]

I've just got some new games and I noticed that my Matrox G400 singelhead 32 mb is performing so badly. For instance, I can't run NfS5: PU in 1024 x 768 with all options high. Formula 1 2000 isn't running smoothly even in 800 x 600! (Dunno the exact fps or 3dMark results. I'll maybe post them later.) Is this bad, or am I just too demanding?
My system:
Cerelon @ 466 (non o/ced) on Abit Be6 rev. 1
256 MB Toshiba Pc100 SDRAM
IMB 15,6 GB HD (udma 66, 5400 rpm)
Matrox G400 Singelhead 32 MB
Creative SoundBlaster Live! 1024 Player


[This message has been edited by Eek! (edited 05 June 2000).]

[This message has been edited by Eek! (edited 05 June 2000).]

[Maggi]

Gives us some input on your system details and we'll se what we can do ...

Cheers,
Maggi

[Eek!]

Ok here are some 3D Mark 2000 (demo) results

Overall Score: 1391

SYSTEM
CPU Intel Celeron A 466 Mhz
3D Accelerator Matrox Millennium G400 - English
Chipset Matrox G400
Resolution 768*1024
Z-Buffer Depth 32-bit
Frame Buffer Triple
Refresh Rate V Sync.Off
CPU Optimization D3D Software T&L

RESULTS
CPU Speed Display settings not 16 bit
Game 1 - Helicopter - Low Detail 31.3 FPS
Game 1 - Helicopter - Medium Detail 18.9 FPS
Game 1 - Helicopter - High Detail 7.0 FPS
Game 2 - Adventure - Low Detail 31.9 FPS
Game 2 - Adventure - Medium Detail 17.2 FPS
Game 2 - Adventure - High Detail 9.6 FPS
Fill Rate (Single-Texturing) 140.9 MTexels/s
Fill Rate (Multi-Texturing) 164.7 MTexels/s
High Polygon Count (1 Light) 855 KTriangles/s
High Polygon Count (4 Lights) 636 KTriangles/s
High Polygon Count (8 Lights) 493 KTriangles/s
8MB Texture Rendering Speed 112.3 FPS
16MB Texture Rendering Speed 107.3 FPS
32MB Texture Rendering Speed 82.5 FPS
64MB Texture Rendering Speed 72.1 FPS
Bump Mapping (Emboss, 3-pass) 47.5 FPS
Bump Mapping (Emboss, 2-pass) 66.8 FPS
Bump Mapping (Emboss, 1-pass) 126.3 FPS
Bump Mapping (Environment) 58.8 FPS


[This message has been edited by Eek! (edited 05 June 2000).]

[Nuno]

Yes, But you shouldn´t have skipped the low detail. The benchmark needs it to give the result.

Now let´s see... Generally speaking, you have to face that a celeron 466 isn´t really cutting edge nowadays. Most recent games have plenty of polygons, polygon geometry is calculated by the cpu (unless you have a GeFarce GTS twin cam turbo injection 16V), so in most cases, your cpu is slowing the system, not the G400. Run 3dmark2k, it has a LOT of geometry to calculate, so it really stesses your cpu most than your video card.

My Athlon 600 + G400 @ 150/200 does 2700 3dmarks (in win2k, ~100-150 more in win98) compare that with your celeron 466 running the same videocard.

G400 has some issues with nfs5 (at least the demo had). Something related to fog implementation, but the code in nfs series (and EA games in general) is a bit cheesy, so, not really sure who´s fault. Search the forum, there was a thread showing ho how to improve performance with nfs5

[impact]

First, if you mean the F1 2000 by EA Sports then forget about it. That game is a joke. It performs really badly on almost every computer and videocard.

For NFS5, you can get good frammerates at 1024x768 by hex editing the driver .dll to turn of fog and by enabling triplebuffering in registry. Check the FAQ forum for details.

[Nuno]

You might have posted a new reply instead of editing, now read your post and mine and see how it doesn´t make too much sense now

Now see what I am talking about: My Athlon is only clocked 30% higher and it scores around 100% more in 3Dmark2k. 3Dmark is a special case in SIMD optimizations, but a SSE-less celeron is lagging behind in terms of raw power. And you´ll see it more and more every new game.

Why not put a Celeron II 533 in that BE6 and clock it to 800 Mhz? Now that would be an rather inexpensive upgrade and a quantum leap in performance

[This message has been edited by Nuno (edited 05 June 2000).]

[Maggi]

not exactly what I meant ...

Anyway, 1st set you Zbuffer to 16bit (disable 32bit Zbuffer in PowerDesk options) then rerun 3D Mark in default settings, i.e. 1024x768x16bpp 16bZ triple buffering.

Post which BIOS your G400 is running, which driver you have installed and probably whether have have updated your MoBo BIOS or not. Also a list of your IRQ assignements could come in handy.

...

Why don't you OC that Celeron ?

Cheers,
Maggi

[seven]

not bad g 4000 bad c 466 i know i have one in the misses puter and i put it in here to check 3d mark 2000 and i got 1450 but with my celeron 2 600 @ 900 i get 3100
try an overclock u should get to 525 at least but really u need a bigger faster cpu to push that g 400 along
cya seven

------------------
hell yeah i love this g 400 max

[MadCat]

Yeah, its time for a new CPU my friend. my lowly G400 16mb @ 140/186 scores 2940 3dmarks when paired up with my celery 533 @ 896MHz. Its cheap and painless, and most importantly, fun!

------------------
This Signature Space FOR SALE / RENT

[Eek!]

(Nuno: Yes I edited the message)

Ran 3dMark2000 Default Benchmark with 32 bit z-buffer off like you told me. Now I got:

3DMark Result
1406 3D marks

CPU Speed 74 CPU 3D marks
Game 1 - Helicopter - Low Detail 31.5 FPS
Game 1 - Helicopter - Medium Detail 18.9 FPS
Game 1 - Helicopter - High Detail 6.8 FPS
Game 2 - Adventure - Low Detail 33.5 FPS
Game 2 - Adventure - Medium Detail 17.1 FPS
Game 2 - Adventure - High Detail 9.5 FPS
Fill Rate (Single-Texturing) 227.6 MTexels/s
Fill Rate (Multi-Texturing) 225.6 MTexels/s
High Polygon Count (1 Light) 851 KTriangles/s
High Polygon Count (4 Lights) 634 KTriangles/s
High Polygon Count (8 Lights) 488 KTriangles/s
8MB Texture Rendering Speed 183.9 FPS
16MB Texture Rendering Speed 166.5 FPS
32MB Texture Rendering Speed 100.8 FPS
64MB Texture Rendering Speed 54.8 FPS
Bump Mapping (Emboss, 3-pass) 92.3 FPS
Bump Mapping (Emboss, 2-pass) 116.0 FPS
Bump Mapping (Emboss, 1-pass) 201.7 FPS
Bump Mapping (Environment) 84.8 FPS

When I compared these results with those showed in Online ResultBrowser (from 3dmark), I noticed that, indeed, CPU does matter a lot: Athlon 650 would give 2556. But what I also noticed, is that I would get a score of 3113 with a GeForce card. Is this because GeForce is more CPU independant? That's a bigger and cheaper (I think) improvement, because for an Athlon CPU I would have to be a new mobo. Overclocking would be possible, I've tried 525 and that works, but there's no visible improvement in speed. Because my mobo (Abit Be6 rev. 1) doesn't have the option to change clock speed by 1 mhz, and the multiplier is locked, the next step would be 581. But then Windows doesn't boot. I already installed a better cooler, and of course I could buy Peltier systems and shit like that, but it would be much cheaper to buy a whole new CPU.

Sytem details:
I'm using the 5.53 drivers and TurboGL 5,41,6,1 (quite strange number, but this is what PDGUtil tells me).
OS: Windows 98.
PowerDesk options: Use Polygon Acceleration on, Use device bitmaps caching on, Use bus mastering on, Use 32-bit Z buffering off, Hardware color mouse pointer on.
BIOS Settings: AGP Aperture size: 128 MB, AGP 2x.
IRQs (in Windows): 03: SoundBlaster Live, PCI to USB Host Controller; 04: Realtek adapter; 05: ISDN Card; 09: G400, IRQ Holder for PCI steering; 11: Udma 66 controllers. (I only mentioned the most important ones).
For other system details: see first message.

[This message has been edited by Eek! (edited 06 June 2000).]

[Nuno]

Eek!

CPU is an important part of the system, but there´s more that can be done. Like tweaking the memory: 3dmark2k is very sensitive to it. I gained about 200+ 3dmarks by tweaking memory settings in the bios.

Geforce cards perform very good in 3dmark2k because this benchmark is very geometry intensive (at least in the medium/high detail scenes) and uses D3D T&L routines to get the job done. Geforce´s do T&L in hardware, that´s why the good results. BUT no really much out there uses T&L (or do you play Test Drive 6 that much) so the real world (current games) gains are not to dramatic if you change to a ge-Force.

That´s the reason why SIMD cpu´s score so much better than other cpu´s. If the video card doesn´t have T&L in hardware, the job is done by the cpu using SSE (PIII) or E3dNow! (Athlon).

IMHO, as I stated, the best thing you could do was to buy a celery 533A and bump it to 100 Mhz fsb...

[McGarnagle]

Just wondering what I'm doing wrong here. Just picked up a Cel2566 o/c to 850 but I'm getting really crappy scores on Q3. Heres my system

CII-566@850
Abit BE2-II
Seagate 20gb Barracuda II
Matrox G400 16mb DH (retail)
52 drivers, latest TurboGL
Soundblaster Live Value
128mb Infineon PC100
Piece of crap 10baset lan card

At fastest setting I only get 62FPS
At HQ I get 23 FPS

Really disappointed in the scores I get for the fastest setting as its only 3 FPS faster than when I hadmy c450. Fresh install of Win98SE. I haven't loaded anything else other than Q3. Any help appreciated.

[Moleman]

McGarnagle> Did you try and reinstall TurboGL? I think it needs to be reinstalled when switching from a Celeron to a Celeron 2 with SSE.

[McGarnagle]

This was a fresh install of W98SE. Just installed the Highpoint UDMA66 drivers, then the PD5.52, the Q3A followed by the TurboGL.

Is there anything I'm missing here? Is my 16mb card limiting me? I shouldn't think so for the fastest setting. But I'm getting like a 5% increase in preformance after increasing my processor speed almost 95%.(59FPS Fastest w/ c450 compared to 62 FPS Fastest w/ c850)

[spawn666]

@mcgarnagle

this cannot be, 23 fps on hq....
my old celery 450 beats out 30 fps and my shiny new bastard cel 850 pumps out 35. ok, this is not a huge advantage, but much more fps you get. there must be something wrong with your settings.

@eek
buy that cheap celeron 566 or 533a, and beat out 800-950 mhz out of this thingie. it is the cheapest upgrade you can make and the most painless. dont bother about the gefrog, they have image quality like crap or like vooboos.