Graphics card seriously underperforming

phaxx · 11-06-2002 7:15pm #1

Bought a 3D Prophet Kyro II 4500 64mb from a friend around a month ago, and I'm having trouble getting it going properly.

System specs:
AMD Duron 700 (not overclocked), Abit KT7, 2x128mb sdram, SB Live 5.1, yadda yadda.

I'm getting 1360 3dmarks (2001), but with my voodoo 3 3000 I had previously I was getting ~1200 - something must be wrong, the voodoo is ancient and has a quarter of the ram.

I've just reinstalled win2k, dx8.1, latest via 4-in-1 drivers, and latest kyro II drivers, no change in performance. (Nothing else installed when I ran the benchmark)

AGP bus is capable of running at 4x, but the card only supports 2. I've seen reviews of the card and it was getting well over 2000 3dmarks, and was on a par with a gf2gts

What am I doing wrong?

po0k · 11-06-2002 7:28pm

A mate of DooDee's had a similar problem.
Afaik he fixed it by messing with some setting in the display properties.
Might be the tile rendering thing.

Fiddle.

PPC · 11-06-2002 7:31pm

Hmm i hear the the Kryo chips we're a budget card but thats rediculous.

Try the OcUK forums in their graphics section.
I've seen loadsa people with that problem.

phaxx · 11-06-2002 7:33pm

Hm, I see no options for tile rendering in the list of d3d/ogl options... Can you find out from yer man there what he did please?

JustHalf · 11-06-2002 9:50pm

Phaxx, tile-rendering is the way that the Kyro renders the scene. It's unlikely to be in the driver options as the card is built to render using that method.

phaxx · 12-06-2002 12:32am

Ah. I knew that.

*cough*

I was given this: http://www.3dspotlight.com/tweaks/kyro2/index.shtml and will work my way through that and let you know what happens.

phaxx · 12-06-2002 1:01am

I followed all the recommendations given there for performance, and now I get even less - 1295!

_CreeD_ · 12-06-2002 6:38am

If I remember rightly this is a misleading bug. I'm not sure if it was Kyro drivers or in 3dMark 2001 itself.
What's your actual game performance like?

Saruman · 12-06-2002 4:48pm

It may be nothing to do with it but the sb live has issues with the Via chipset that can effect gameplay.. i dont know if it effects a graphics card performence or if its some lag between soundcard and mobo that causes the bad performence.. like i said probably nothing to do with the problem. As for the results compared to a voodoo 3... there is a big difference here... the V3 was 16 bit only! Your Kyro will be 32bit colour.. so is there an option in 3d mark (have not used it in ages) to set it to 16 bit only test.. or would setting windows colours to 16 but do it... anyway that would give you better results.. also check for postings of other kyro cards with 3d mark.. maybe on their website.. some of them do online postings so see if others have similar results or is it just you!

JustHalf · 12-06-2002 5:26pm

Surely the speed in Quake III matters more to you?

Inspector Gadget · 12-06-2002 5:30pm

...I have a 3D Prophet 4000XT (your card's little brother, also a Kyro-based card) and Duron-based rig (800@1000) - would you like me to give that machine a run through 3DMark to see what I get for the sake of comparison?

Gadget

phaxx · 12-06-2002 7:30pm

Game performance is okay, could be better, hardly any difference between that and the voodoo.

I only recently got the sb live (last Friday) and the performace was the same, so that isn't the problem.

As for 16bit versus 32bit, the Kyro performs all colour operations in 32bit, and then converts back to 16bit if necessary, so the 32 bit performance is actually better than the 16, and the 16 bit ends up looking great, if I ever wanted to use it.

Gadget, sure, if you have it handy I'd appreciate knowing your score.

JustHalf: Quake III? pah, Lego Racers 2.

Side note, the matrix/max payne game in 3dmark 2001 has some rendering problems, the enemies/bulletholes are rendered over the pillars when they're actually behind them. This doesn't happen anywhere else.

donaloconnor · 12-06-2002 8:47pm

Originally posted by phaxx
AGP bus is capable of running at 4x, but the card only supports 2. I've seen reviews of the card and it was getting well over 2000 3dmarks, and was on a par with a gf2gts

ARe you sure that AGP is enabled in the BIOS?

Kali · 12-06-2002 9:57pm

Originally posted by donaloconnor
ARe you sure that AGP is enabled in the BIOS?

Was there a point to this post?
I mean if agp was disabled his card wouldn't be detected.
I should really delete this type of post.. but please think next time

donaloconnor · 12-06-2002 10:13pm

oooops

sorry wasn't thinking there. I'm embarressed. I'll think next time..dunno whats up with me. a little tired.

Saruman · 13-06-2002 9:33am

Maybe what donal meant was is the primary display device set to AGP? If it was set to PCI the system would still work but it may not fully utilise the card.. again depends on the motherboard.. possibly the card is 2x, the mbd is set fo 4x though?(or vice versa) Dont know if that would make a difference but its possible i suppose. And im not sure about your mobo but does it have AGP fast write?

Inspector Gadget · 13-06-2002 12:03pm

Originally posted by phaxx
Gadget, sure, if you have it handy I'd appreciate knowing your score.

Okay, I'll suck down a copy of 3DMark 2001 and a copy of the latest Kyro drivers and give it a lash tonight, with the clock throttled back to 700MHz.

The comparison should be relatively close if I do this - I'm running Win2K with DirectX 8.1 and the latest 4-in-1s (on an Epox 8KTA3+ board, admittedly, but it's a KT133a chipset, so it should be close to yours - yours has a KT133 chipset, yes?) However, I'm using a Turtle Beach Santa Cruz (also known as a Videologic SonicFury) instead of a Sound Blaster - apparently SB's have been known to cause problems in VIA systems.

I'll have some results for you about lunchtime tomorrow...
Gadget

[EDIT]Silly question, possibly, but I've just noticed that there's a "regular" and a "special" edition of 3DMark2001 - which one were you using?[/EDIT]
[ANOTHER EDIT]Never mind - it seems it would have to be the SE flavour if you want to test DX8.1[/ANOTHER EDIT]

Gerry · 13-06-2002 12:26pm

Ok, lets get this straight. Primary display agp or pci tells the bios which graphics card bios to load first as the primary vga card, IF AND ONLY IF you have a agp AND pci graphics cards in the system. Otherwise it makes no difference.

Captain Halibut · 13-06-2002 4:14pm

This may or may not help (or make sense), but with the same card I was getting all manner of gip from general DVD/video playback (i.e. nothing). BIOS settings to AGPx2, AGP first boot device etc; but at 32bit75Hz colour. I dropped to 24 bit and everything cleared up. Even allowed me to bang refresh up to 85Hz. Give it a bash anyway.

MiCr0 · 13-06-2002 4:21pm

make sure that v_sync is disabled
i lots 50fps after ungrading the drivers and forgetting to re-disable it

po0k · 13-06-2002 5:40pm

Phaxx....Thrax sez:
"I don't know, I just fiddled about with the settings"

Like I said, Fiddle.

donaloconnor · 13-06-2002 6:13pm

Originally posted by Saruman
Maybe what donal meant was is the primary display device set to AGP? If it was set to PCI the system would still work but it may not fully utilise the card.. again depends on the motherboard.. possibly the card is 2x, the mbd is set fo 4x though?(or vice versa) Dont know if that would make a difference but its possible i suppose. And im not sure about your mobo but does it have AGP fast write?

yeah i was kind of saying that in the begining but then ur man kind of turned me off that idea

Inspector Gadget · 14-06-2002 12:40pm

...and I know what's going on.

(Firstly, for phaxx, I did a benchmark on my box - 3D Prophet 4000 XT, Duron 800@1000, 512MB PC150, Epox 8KTA3+ - and I got an average (over 3 runs) of 1771 with the version 1.4.14.28 Kyro drivers and 1753 with the version 1.5.15.84 drivers)

The big problem here is simple; 3DMark2001 is intended to test DirectX8 performance, but the Kyro chips in question are designed to meet the DirectX 7 spec, which means (amongst other things) no hardware Transform & Lighting (T&L) and no Pixel Shaders.

Because of this, 3DMark2001 will skip some tests when running on the Kyro cards and as such the numbers will be way down.

Also, if you re-run the tests, does the string of text describing the video tests end in the words "D3D Software"? Mine did... and if yours does the same it means that your score has more to do with your Duron being used to render your video instead of the graphics card.

So, basically, 3DMark2001 isn't a good test for those cards.
Hope this helps,
Gadget

Gerry · 14-06-2002 5:18pm

Perhaps give quake3 a shot?

phaxx · 14-06-2002 7:04pm

Ah ha. Everything performs well, but I was thinking that perhaps I got such a low 3dmark score the card could perform better, but now it seems it's okay. Case closed, ta.

_CreeD_ · 15-06-2002 9:08pm

Only about 20 posts after I suggested it was just a glitch between 3dmark and the card, and nout serious....Sometimes I wonder just how many folks have me in their ignore list

phaxx · 15-06-2002 11:26pm

Oh yes, so you did. Oops.

astrofool · 16-06-2002 2:50am

I don't think not having a TnL engine counts as a glitch _CreeD_

"My phone appears not to have any wheels"

Graphics card seriously underperforming

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