G400 Max - how it scales ??

[michal]

Hi everyone,

I have P3-500 with Matrox G400 Max (32 Mb) and I am running some pretty demanding flight simulation (Direct3D) in 1024x768 res. and 32 bit color. People here talk about 60 fps but I am happy when I can get 25. As a matter of fact it often drops to 10 when I am on final approach to an airport that has all the terminal buildings nicely rendered in 3D. I already have 192 Mb of RAM - seeing CPU prices go down I am thinking of replacing my P3-500 with something like P3-800. I wonder if I can expect any gain in frame rates and how much. Going from 500 to 800 Mhz is almost adding 60% more power - will it result however in at least 30% more frames per second ???
If it matters my mother board is Asus 3B-F (or 3F-B).

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Michael J.

[Jorden]

Hi Michal,

First welcome to the MURC. If you're at least as nuts as most of us are, you'll feel at home soon

Questions about your system:

• What game do you run? (Name)
• Under what OS?
• What do you have running in the background? Not only in the system-tray, but also in the Close Program menu under CTRL+ALT+DELETE?
• Did you try it without running programs as Seti, your AV or something that checks your (possible) NIC?
• What's your Max's BIOS and drivers?
• Can you give us the rest of your system specs?
• Did you try running at a lower resolution (800x600x32bit for instance), or at a lower colour-resolution (16bit)?
• What does your desktop run at? If 24bit colours, try running 16bit or 32bit.
• And last but not least, can you give us the famous IRQ list? On how to do so, check this link

I know it's a lot of info asked in one, but it helps us determining your possible problem.

Hearing from you

Jord.

[michal]

Hi Jord,

Thanks for your warm welcome. I already feel at ease ...

Going to you questions - I am at work now and some of this stuff must wait another 8 hours, but I can tell you what I know right now.

1. my desktop is set at 1024 x768 x 16

2. I do not have any virus programs running. When I run the game (I prefer to call it a simulator) I shut down everything except the explorer ( I use EndItAll utility).

3. I just upgraded to WinMe (from Win98SE) and also loaded the latest Matrox Power Desk (about 2 weeks ago). Upgrading the OS or changing drivers never had any noticable effect on the performance for me.

4. I am running FLY!2k (by Terminal Reality).

I frequent FLY- forums and can tell that I am not the only with problems like that. As a matter of fact even people with 800 Mhz system do have problems when scenery/weather gets too complex. But to give you the whole picture - my frame rates depend a lot on what I look at. FLY's instrument panels are very complex, but if I choose to fly with 'mini panel' or no panel at all and use generic scenery instead of custom detailed satellite scenery (like Geramny's Rhein-Ruhr area) my frame rates can go up to 50. Also visibility influences frame rates and viewing the plane from oustide helps a lot - but what pilot flies like that - sitting on the outside !.

So it is a very wide range. Specially fog-like weather (also dense clouds) effects or very complex mountainous terrain bring the frame rates to its knees. As far as I know my PC is in top shape and when I run some WinTune prgram - it tells me that my system is very well optimized. When I bought it about 15 months ago - it was almost top of the line. I have supposedly the best mother board available then (Asus P3B-F). I could run FLY with 800x600x16 with probably better performance but that would be no fun. Clouds look much, much better in 32 bits.
People often say I should replace the video card and go for GeForce which is much faster. But I love quality of matrox graphics. Therefore my idea to upgrade the CPU instead.

TRI (makers of FLY) know about some of the problems and they came up with this *.vcf files for individual cards that let you turn on/off things like mip-mapping, AGP textureing, etc. I have explored it extensively. It only helps so much. Turning AGP off does improve fps but quality suffers.

My hard drive is IBM's 13.5 GB. For optimum I/O performance I set my own HDD cache and I partitioned the drive so FLY has its own seperate drive. I also fixed the size of my swap file at 300 MB - Windows is not busy trying to manage the swap file size or location.

What I can't understand why everyone is using something like Quake for benchmarking computer systems. Clearly there are 'games' out there 10 times more demanding than Quake.

Best Regards,

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Michael J.

[Alec]

Hello and welcome, Michal.

While Jorden doesn´t reply, I´ll stick my nose in, if I may...

First of all, the G400 is a card than you can squeeze up to 800Mhz, roughly. This means that if you upgrade to a 800Mhz processor you´ll see differences in frame rates. From there on, the G400´s fill-rate is exhausted and a better processor won´t help much.

There´s probably nothing wrong with your system, you seem to have tweaked it very well. You just happen to be playing a very complex game with a demanding graphical engine that requires a fast processor and a top-notch card. G400 is a (relatively slow, comparing to cards of today) top notch card, but you don´t have a very fast processor by today´s standards.

Well, a quick tip is for you to set your game to 16-bit color. It certainly will speed up your game and won´t be much of an impact on the graphics. You must must compromise between image quality and speed, that´s the dillemma.

P.S. You can set your desktop to 32-bit, that´s for sure, it won´t slow your system down.

[michal]

Jorden,

To finish answering your questions - more technical stuff, let me know please if you spot anything abnormal:

My graphics BIOS: 1.3 - 20
Matrox Power Desk 6.14.051

OK, and this is my IRQ list:

IRQ 0 System timer OK
IRQ 1 Standard 101/102-Key or Microsoft Natural Keyboard OK
IRQ 2 Programmable interrupt controller OK
IRQ 3 Communications Port (COM2) OK
IRQ 4 Communications Port (COM1) OK
IRQ 5 U.S. Robotics 56K FAX INT PnP OK
IRQ 6 Standard Floppy Disk Controller OK
IRQ 7 ECP Printer Port (LPT1) OK
IRQ 8 System CMOS/real time clock OK
IRQ 9 IRQ Holder for PCI Steering OK
IRQ 9 IRQ Holder for PCI Steering OK
IRQ 9 Intel 82371AB/EB PCI to USB Universal Host Controller OK
IRQ 9 Promise Technology Inc. Ultra66 IDE Controller OK
IRQ 10 IRQ Holder for PCI Steering OK
IRQ 10 Creative SB Live! Value OK
IRQ 11 IRQ Holder for PCI Steering OK
IRQ 11 Matrox Millennium G400 DualHead - English OK
IRQ 12 PS/2 Compatible Mouse Port OK
IRQ 13 Numeric data processor OK
IRQ 14 Intel 82371AB/EB PCI Bus Master IDE Controller OK
IRQ 14 Primary IDE controller (dual fifo) OK
IRQ 15 Intel 82371AB/EB PCI Bus Master IDE Controller OK
IRQ 15 Secondary IDE controller (dual fifo) OK



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Michael J.

[Greebe]

Your IRQ's look fine here, except possibly for that double PCI steering entry on 9.

Other than running a faster cpu (800-900), you could also try OCing your Max with MGA Tweak and gain another ~5-10% beyond that

[Liquid Snake]

Actually, I think I've noticed two IRQ steering entries too when I have two devices on one IRQ. Doesn't seem to affect anything. The G400 scales to around 800MHz, so up to 800MHz, getting a new CPU will help. Also, you might want to try overclocking, as Greebe suggested.

[michal]

thank you all for informative answers. I will be watching this thread for even more advice but it looks like getting a better CPU would not hurt.

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Michael J.

[Dyre]

More power never hurts!

[Casper99]

My vanilla G400 hasnt crapped otu yet and i have a Celeron2 @ 850MHz i would go higher but my darn MB (CUBX) wont allow it with the Celeron2.
My guess is it is CPU scalable to around 900MHz and then it will bottom out, can anyone with a system capable of 850+ confirm this?

Cheers!

[Greebe]

There are diminishing returns above 800. Yes it will go a tad faster in some things, but not much in gaming. A P3 running 200mHz faster than my Athlon @850 scores only ~200 3Dmarks better.

[dZeus]

in Q3 800x600x16 bilinear, The fps increases linear from a Celeron 366@550 to a Coppermine 700MHz. When the Coppermine is overclocked to 933MHz, the fps doesn't increase that much any more... I guess the G400 vanilla tops out when running with a Coppermine around 750MHz (maybe 800).

On 640x480, scores probably increase more with even higher MHz CPUs, but who plays at 640x480 nowadays anyway?

[michal]

OK, but if I play at 1024x768x32 will I still see some benefit from having P3 800 ? I am asking because it sounds like the scalability is better with lower resolution and 16 bit color.

Michael J.

[dZeus]

at 1024x768x32, the fps is almost entirely dependant on the fillrate of the G400. Increasing your CPU speed won't make much difference, but overclocking your G400 will.

[michal]

Originally posted by dZeus:
at 1024x768x32, the fps is almost entirely dependant on the fillrate of the G400. Increasing your CPU speed won't make much difference, but overclocking your G400 will.

Am I to understood that since my preference is for 1024x768x32 I won't gain any fps when upgrading to a faster CPU ??? Assuming fillrate is the limiting factor under the circumstances, there must be then an optimum CPU speed, what is it ?