Weird and challenging prob after vidcad replacement

GGP · Jan 3, 2003, 12:49 PM

Hi all,
I recently replaced the vid card in my Dell Inspiron 8100. The Mobility Radeon 7500 (M7) had to go and was replaced by a

Mobility Radeon 9000 (M9). Installation went fine and the new card was recognized immediately. Launching 3DMark2001 revealed

a performance boost of more than 30% from 4030 with the the M7 to 5700 with the M9!!! Weehooo.
BUT then the weird things started. Launching DX games showed no performance improvement at all, or even lower fps than with

the old M7. I tried UT (the old one), F1 2002 and NASCAR 4. Whereas N4 and UT gave me the same fps as with the M7, I lost

about 15-20 fps with F1 2002

. Although I know that 3DMark2001 is not beyond any doubt, a 30% performance increase should

be somehow visible in games.
Finally I switched to openGL (N4 and UT are able to run in DX and in openGL). And surprisingly found a significant increase.

UT went from 60fps with the M7 to 120fps with the M9 and N4 showed about the same increase in performance.

This happened under Win98SE with DX8.1b installed and the last but one Omega drivers. Ok, I thought, new drivers. I installed

DX9.0 and the newest Omegadrivers. Exactly the same phenomenon. Finally I installed the newest ATI drivers 9081 (7.83), again

with the same result. I busted DX9.0 and reinstalled it. I installed an ATI tweaker and played around with basically all the

settings, no improvement.

I have no idea where the bottleneck is. I don't understand the difference between the huge improvement in 3DMark2001 (which

is, I think a DX dependent benchmark) and the complete lack of improvement in DX games. On the other side the openGL speed

improvements show the abilities of this card.

Please help me solving this problem. I tried everything I could think of and definitely need the help of a computer wiz

around here.

I greatly appreciate any ideas of how to solve this problem.

Thanks a lot in advance, Guenther

digitalwanderer · Jan 3, 2003, 03:14 PM

Could we have some more of your laptops stats? CPU, memory, & what you normally have running in the background on boot? (Aside from all the normal stuff.

)

GGP · Jan 3, 2003, 03:25 PM

Oops forgot that. Here it goes

Dell Inspiron 8100
PIII 1.13GHz
256MB Ram
15" TFT UXGA (1600x1200)
Dual boot win98SE/XP prof
Old vidcard: Mobility Radeon 7500 64MB 4xAGP
New vidcard: Mobility Radeon 9000 64MB 4xAGP

I usually shutdown everything running in the background (UT, 3DMark2001) or I only have the controller software running (Logitech Wingman). Usually running a fan control util but tried the tests with or without it and didn't see any differences.

Please let me know if Imissed something, Guenther

digitalwanderer · Jan 3, 2003, 03:47 PM

Are you talking the 98se side or the XP side of things? 98se should be running/scoring better for you I'll wager, only 256MB of ram should be holding you back some in XP.

GGP · Jan 3, 2003, 04:56 PM

Yep, I'm talking exclusively about the 98SE side. I don't really care about the speed under XP since the XP partition is my working partition and the 98SE is my gaming partition.

Guenther

digitalwanderer · Jan 3, 2003, 05:28 PM

Dang, I wish I gamed with me 8500 more in situations like this.

Did you try having the games in question re-detect your new video card? Or did you check to see if any extra settings were enabled due to it being installed? (Every game is different and the only one I'm familiar with that you're wondering about is UT.) I'm wondering if truform somehow got enabled or something....

GGP · Jan 4, 2003, 04:38 PM

Yep, I tried to redetect the vid card several times. Hundreds of times to be exact since i tried all kind of resolution and color depths. I also tried tweakers to have better control over more settings and spent quite some time to try switching off/on all kind of settings. Truform is set to 'always off'.

I also installed F1 2002 on my XP prof partition and tried various drivers and got the same bad fps

phew, I'm running out of ideas and I'm also beginning to hate this card. Really thinking about going back to the good old M7. I mean who cares about 3DMark2001 if the games you like run worse...

Guenther

Zynge · Jan 6, 2003, 03:18 PM

I have the same problem, what did you do?

But, I already went back to my 7500 and it's the same way.

Really poor fps.

GGP · Jan 6, 2003, 03:34 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Zynge
But, I already went back to my 7500 and it's the same way.

Hi Zynge, what do you mean with this sentence? After going back to the M7 the fps were worse than before you tried the M9?????

So far I still have the M9 installed. Still hoping for a miracle

Guenther

Zynge · Jan 6, 2003, 04:16 PM

I installed a Radeon 9700 pro...

It had some issues with my mainboard. So, I took it out and put my Radeon 7500 back in.

Installed and re-installed everything. I even formated my harddrive and re-installed everything and my FPS is still too low.

I've used tweaking, Omega drives, overclocking, everything... my FPS will not come up. It's ok for normal operations, but when I get into a game, it drops just enough to make evrything choppy.

Did you resolve your FPS issue yet?

GGP · Jan 6, 2003, 04:37 PM

Nope, no luck yet. It's quite frustrating. Especially, since the card seems to be really fast with openGL and so crappy with DirectX.

Guenther

Jan 3, 2003, 12:49 PM	#1
GGP DriverHeaven Newbie Join Date: Sep 2002 Location: Zurich, Switzerland Posts: 6 Rep Power: 0	Weird and challenging prob after vidcad replacement Hi all, I recently replaced the vid card in my Dell Inspiron 8100. The Mobility Radeon 7500 (M7) had to go and was replaced by a Mobility Radeon 9000 (M9). Installation went fine and the new card was recognized immediately. Launching 3DMark2001 revealed a performance boost of more than 30% from 4030 with the the M7 to 5700 with the M9!!! Weehooo. BUT then the weird things started. Launching DX games showed no performance improvement at all, or even lower fps than with the old M7. I tried UT (the old one), F1 2002 and NASCAR 4. Whereas N4 and UT gave me the same fps as with the M7, I lost about 15-20 fps with F1 2002 . Although I know that 3DMark2001 is not beyond any doubt, a 30% performance increase should be somehow visible in games. Finally I switched to openGL (N4 and UT are able to run in DX and in openGL). And surprisingly found a significant increase. UT went from 60fps with the M7 to 120fps with the M9 and N4 showed about the same increase in performance. This happened under Win98SE with DX8.1b installed and the last but one Omega drivers. Ok, I thought, new drivers. I installed DX9.0 and the newest Omegadrivers. Exactly the same phenomenon. Finally I installed the newest ATI drivers 9081 (7.83), again with the same result. I busted DX9.0 and reinstalled it. I installed an ATI tweaker and played around with basically all the settings, no improvement. I have no idea where the bottleneck is. I don't understand the difference between the huge improvement in 3DMark2001 (which is, I think a DX dependent benchmark) and the complete lack of improvement in DX games. On the other side the openGL speed improvements show the abilities of this card. Please help me solving this problem. I tried everything I could think of and definitely need the help of a computer wiz around here. I greatly appreciate any ideas of how to solve this problem. Thanks a lot in advance, Guenther

Jan 3, 2003, 03:14 PM	#2
digitalwanderer Colour Commentator Join Date: May 2002 Location: Highland, IN USA Posts: 5,619 Rep Power: 0	Questions. Could we have some more of your laptops stats? CPU, memory, & what you normally have running in the background on boot? (Aside from all the normal stuff. ) __________________ WTF is up with the sigs?

Jan 3, 2003, 03:47 PM	#4
digitalwanderer Colour Commentator Join Date: May 2002 Location: Highland, IN USA Posts: 5,619 Rep Power: 0	Another question. Are you talking the 98se side or the XP side of things? 98se should be running/scoring better for you I'll wager, only 256MB of ram should be holding you back some in XP. __________________ WTF is up with the sigs?

Jan 3, 2003, 05:28 PM	#6
digitalwanderer Colour Commentator Join Date: May 2002 Location: Highland, IN USA Posts: 5,619 Rep Power: 0	Game settings. Dang, I wish I gamed with me 8500 more in situations like this. Did you try having the games in question re-detect your new video card? Or did you check to see if any extra settings were enabled due to it being installed? (Every game is different and the only one I'm familiar with that you're wondering about is UT.) I'm wondering if truform somehow got enabled or something.... __________________ WTF is up with the sigs?

Jan 6, 2003, 03:18 PM	#8
Zynge DriverHeaven Newbie Join Date: Dec 2002 Posts: 5 Rep Power: 0	Me too! I have the same problem, what did you do? But, I already went back to my 7500 and it's the same way. Really poor fps.

Jan 3, 2003, 03:25 PM	Thread Starter #3
GGP DriverHeaven Newbie Join Date: Sep 2002 Location: Zurich, Switzerland Posts: 6 Rep Power: 0	Oops forgot that. Here it goes Dell Inspiron 8100 PIII 1.13GHz 256MB Ram 15" TFT UXGA (1600x1200) Dual boot win98SE/XP prof Old vidcard: Mobility Radeon 7500 64MB 4xAGP New vidcard: Mobility Radeon 9000 64MB 4xAGP I usually shutdown everything running in the background (UT, 3DMark2001) or I only have the controller software running (Logitech Wingman). Usually running a fan control util but tried the tests with or without it and didn't see any differences. Please let me know if Imissed something, Guenther

Jan 3, 2003, 04:56 PM	Thread Starter #5
GGP DriverHeaven Newbie Join Date: Sep 2002 Location: Zurich, Switzerland Posts: 6 Rep Power: 0	Yep, I'm talking exclusively about the 98SE side. I don't really care about the speed under XP since the XP partition is my working partition and the 98SE is my gaming partition. Guenther

Jan 4, 2003, 04:38 PM	Thread Starter #7
GGP DriverHeaven Newbie Join Date: Sep 2002 Location: Zurich, Switzerland Posts: 6 Rep Power: 0	Yep, I tried to redetect the vid card several times. Hundreds of times to be exact since i tried all kind of resolution and color depths. I also tried tweakers to have better control over more settings and spent quite some time to try switching off/on all kind of settings. Truform is set to 'always off'. I also installed F1 2002 on my XP prof partition and tried various drivers and got the same bad fps phew, I'm running out of ideas and I'm also beginning to hate this card. Really thinking about going back to the good old M7. I mean who cares about 3DMark2001 if the games you like run worse... Guenther

Jan 6, 2003, 04:16 PM	#10
Zynge DriverHeaven Newbie Join Date: Dec 2002 Posts: 5 Rep Power: 0	I installed a Radeon 9700 pro... It had some issues with my mainboard. So, I took it out and put my Radeon 7500 back in. Installed and re-installed everything. I even formated my harddrive and re-installed everything and my FPS is still too low. I've used tweaking, Omega drives, overclocking, everything... my FPS will not come up. It's ok for normal operations, but when I get into a game, it drops just enough to make evrything choppy. Did you resolve your FPS issue yet?

Jan 6, 2003, 04:37 PM	Thread Starter #11
GGP DriverHeaven Newbie Join Date: Sep 2002 Location: Zurich, Switzerland Posts: 6 Rep Power: 0	Nope, no luck yet. It's quite frustrating. Especially, since the card seems to be really fast with openGL and so crappy with DirectX. Guenther