Need higher FPS with my GF4 MX440 64MB DDR...

[B4TMANN]

Hey all,
I think I need some help. I just bought an Abit GeForce 4 MX440 64MB DDR.

I love playing UT, Counterstrike, and Tribes2. It looks good in all the games but the FPS is down.

I just moved from a Voodoo5 5500 64MB AGP to this GF4 MX440. The FPS are worse in UT and Counterstrike. I thought it would be better. I am playing in D3D. I know that the voodoo's were all optimized for OpenGL....so no need to define all that for me.

Any Ideas. I really hoped this puppy would perform like around 100 FPS. I could get about 75FPS out of my voodoo any day.

I only get like 55-60 with this new card. WTF?

Please help. I'm about ready to smash this GF4 card.

By the way. I'm using Windows 2000 Pro on a PIII 650 with 512MB RAM.

A buddy of mine claims that if I load Windows ME/98 on that I will notice a HUGE improvement. Is this true?

I'm running Abit drivers for the Abit GF4 card. They came on the CD with the card. I tried twice to install the WIndows 2000/XP 23.11 detonator drivers. Both times....no dice.

At a loss.
Shall I ebay and go back to Voodoo 5 5500?



Thanks in advance..

 

[Huge]

Welcome to the boards B4TMANN

Unreal/UT was always optimized to run on a 3dfx board than on a nVidia/ATI implementation of openGL. I'm curious on why your frames in CS are low. Win2k, while being a better gaming OS than NT4, still isn't perfect for gaming. You will (probably) see higher fps in 98se. Which version of the drivers are you using?

 

[Neo]

Welcome B4TMANN,
Your friend is correct, you will get better FPS with 98 as compaerd to Win2k. Like huge stated its just not that optimized for gaming.

In the mean time you can check out guru3d
this tweak might get you up around 75 but its hard to tell for sure.
You also might want to try OC'ing it to get the extra out of it.

 

[B4TMANN]

First,

THANKS FOR THE WELCOME

I'm using the drivers that came with the Abit GeForce 4 MX440.

Abit has no newer ones on their website. I cant use the Win2000/XP ones directly from Nvidia. I can't get them to work. I tried installing them twice with no luck, so I went back to the Abit CD and installed from there.

I hope this is not the case, but do you think there is any possibility that I just have a "slow" PC? I really don't consider a PIII 650 to be slow, because my other box is a PII 350 but could this be the case? I would hope that a PIII 650 would run a GF4 with no problems and for sure run Unreal Tournament or Counterstrike with ZERO problems.

I just figured that if my Voodoo 5 5500 could get 75 FPS in UT and CS that the GF4 (even the MX440) could get 100FPS. I read some reviews that showed my exact card getting like 130FPS in Quake III running 1024x768 @32Bit. Which is what I run at in UT and CS. Hmmmm....

Thanks for the help so far.........but any other ideas?

 

[Kruz]

The MX version of the GF4 isn't much better than the GF2 if any... while the voodoo cards were optimised for openGL and preform much better in those games.
If you want to really notice a differance go with the Ti version of the GF4.. or if money is tight, get the Ti version of the GF3.

 

[Kruz]

OH YA! welcome to XIbase

 

[B4TMANN]

So...

Would you say that If I only play UT and CS that I'll get a better framerate and better looks from a Voodoo card?

I was gonna buy a GF2 Ti, but the GF4MX440 and 460 outperformed the GF2 Ti on some reviews I read....so I bought it.

Think I should ebay it and go for a Different card, or just go back to my Voodoo?

Again, Thanks for the WECOME

Laterz

 

[Huge]

I would say use the voodoo for unreal-based engine games, the GF4 for Quake-based engine games. When U2/UT2 come out, they will be optimized for nVidia chipsets. I kept my old v2's around even after buying a GF2 way back when just for UT.

 

[B4TMANN]

I thought that Quake and UT were both optimized for OpenGL. Hmmm....

So i shouldn't go by tests ran under Quake III if I play UT then huh?

I'm new at gaming and graphics cards. I'm a network engineer but usually we don't care about graphics We care about servers and RAID and such.

I've only been playnig UT for like 8 months. I just know that my Voodoo 5 5500 has been sweeeeeet as heck

Thanks again

 

[fury]

The Unreal engine has always been optimized for 3dfx cards. My old overclocked Voodoo3 2000 PCI damn near outperformed my overclocked Geforce2 GTS 64mb in lower resolutions. However, 55-60 is quite a low frame rate, even for a non-3dfx card. Do you have V-sync enabled? That could be the cause, especially if you've got framerate displaying all the time and even when you look at a wall you only get 60fps. As for the OS issue, it has been my experience that 98se and 2k play games at about the same speed on nVidia cards, I'm not sure how everybody else seems to have problems. I don't think you would get that big of an increase as your buddy is claiming. But, every situation is different. If you've got an extra hard drive to try out 98se on, go for it.

In the mean time, try other resolutions (lower and higher) and see if you get the same or very similar results (~55-60 fps).

What kind of monitor do you have?

 

[B4TMANN]

I'm using a 17" NEC Multisync Monitor.

I run all my games at 1024x768 @32bit.

Refresh rate is 85Hz.

What is V-Sync and where to I turn it off/on?

In UT i usually hit the "tilde" key and type "timedemo 1" for the FPS and I leave em on the screen. Is that bad?

Thanks again for the help to all of you

 

[fury]

I guess we could rule out V-sync then, because it would be hitting a ceiling of 85 if V-sync was the case.

Turning on V-sync tells the video card to wait until the next monitor refresh to send out the next frame. It causes some tiny lag, but produces a smooth flow of imagery, instead of letting the card send the frames to the buffer immediately after they're completed, when sometimes half of a frame has been written to the buffer by the time the next refresh occurs. This causes some breaking up of the image where the newest frame cuts off and part of previous frame is still left in the buffer.

It's a matter of personal preference whether you want maximum FPS or minimum image "breaking".

But I digress. There is no way to turn it off generally in Direct3d, you have to turn it off in the program, and so far, I haven't found out how to disable V-sync in UT. If you were using OpenGL in UT, this setting is in the Display Properties->Settings->Advanced->Geforce *->Additional Properties->OpenGL page, setting V-sync to "Disabled" or "Off by default"

No, doing timedemo 1 doesn't detract from your FPS. Apart from trying switching to OpenGL to see if that did any better, the next thing I would try in your quest to raise your FPS is to go to Display Properties, go to the Settings tab, click the Advanced button, go to the Geforce 4 MX tab, click the Additional properties button, and go to the Direct3d tab, and set Mipmap level to Best Performance. None of the other settings there will make a difference in performance. See if that nets you any better FPS.

 

[Acid]

GF4 MX is supposed to suck. But that's just what I've heard. Downgrading to 98 will be lest controllable (BSOD time baby), but you might get more FPS. I don't know.

I run my Kyro2 in XP, and it gets the same FPS (maybe even more) than the 9x/ME series.

 

[B4TMANN]

Holy COW

I think all is well now

I decided to change from D3D to OpenGL in counterstrike and also went into the config.cfg file and put a made max_fps=200 instead of the default number of 72.

I now get 100 FPS in Counterstrike. I hear thats the max for the game

-----------------

Next,

Do you folks play UT in D3D or OpenGL? (given you don't have a Voodoo card)

D3D looks way better but the framerate is slower and OPenGL looks worse but the framerate is better.

I'm now Happy with my GeForce 4 MX 440 64MB DDR.

Thanks a bunch all !!!

 

[gotfrag]

Hey all,
I think I need some help. I just bought an Abit GeForce 4 MX440 64MB DDR.

I love playing UT, Counterstrike, and Tribes2. It looks good in all the games but the FPS is down.

I just moved from a Voodoo5 5500 64MB AGP to this GF4 MX440. The FPS are worse in UT and Counterstrike. I thought it would be better. I am playing in D3D. I know that the voodoo's were all optimized for OpenGL....so no need to define all that for me.

Any Ideas. I really hoped this puppy would perform like around 100 FPS. I could get about 75FPS out of my voodoo any day.

I only get like 55-60 with this new card. WTF?

Please help. I'm about ready to smash this GF4 card.

By the way. I'm using Windows 2000 Pro on a PIII 650 with 512MB RAM.

A buddy of mine claims that if I load Windows ME/98 on that I will notice a HUGE improvement. Is this true?

I'm running Abit drivers for the Abit GF4 card. They came on the CD with the card. I tried twice to install the WIndows 2000/XP 23.11 detonator drivers. Both times....no dice.

At a loss.
Shall I ebay and go back to Voodoo 5 5500?



Thanks in advance..

easy answer : CS, go with OPEN GL ALL THE WAY! Never use D3D. Personally I dont use d3d in any games at all. Try the same with UT.

 

[fury]

In Unreal games, I use D3d because for some reason the opengl version is unstable. Everything else is done on opengl.

Batman, do you by chance have Detonator 21.81?

I've had a lot of problems with 23.11, i.e. it crashing my Win2k install.

If you can't find 21.81 at reactorcritical.com or somewhere, let me know and I'll upload it somewhere. It's the fastest and most stable Detonator release to date in my experience.

 

[B4TMANN]

fury,

I grabbed the 21.81 detonator set from reactorcritical.com.

Everytime I try to install them. The install finishes, and it reboots, and still junk resolution! Cant change it. Still standard VGA adapter. Hmmmmm...

I don't know why I cant use Detonator drivers with this dang Abit Card...

I'm running Windows 2000 Pro with SP2
PIII 650
512 MB RAM

 

[fury]

WTF?!

I've never heard of not being able to install Detonator drivers (except, of course, when the user does not have an nVidia chipset)

I'm fresh out of ideas.

Unless you'd like my assistance in solving the problem with the use of a sledgehammer

 

[B4TMANN]

Thanks to all for the help.

fury,

It's a Abit Siluro GeForce4 MX440 64DDR

I decided after the frustrations...........and finding out that a GF2 Ti will whoooop it, to buy a GF2 Ti and ebay the MX.

I sure have learned my lesson about MX cards..........don't buy em if you like to play games

Peace all