CPU bottlenecking?

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Shaft,

Things *are* looking up then, good. :cool:

Great having these software programs to help figure things out & improve performance. I personally like 'Fresh' UI & Diagnose: they're small, but packed with info. :grinthumb

Seems like the ATA-100 card is a logical choice: if it isn't getting from the HD to the card fast enough, doesn't matter how fast the card is. :rolleyes:

Let us know how it works & your new benchmarks, please.
 
Shaft,

Since that card is from Dell, as your computer, & since they have it on their website & it is so reasonably priced: I *think* it is a wise investment *IF* it will fit & the cables will hook up. :grinthumb

I think it's nice that Dell offers the card as an upgrade instead of just leaving you to your own sources as so many other companies do. Nice warranty offered too. :cool:

I also noticed it supports Ultra DMA, too.

Enjoy!
 
Well I got my card today and installed it flawlessly. I did some hard drive benchmarks and was amazed at the improvements (3DMarks improved to 6751 and the Freshdiagnose HD benchmarks shot up dramatically), but it didn't help my original problem :(. There is still noticible slowdown in the same areas.
 
Shaft,

Glad the card installed & has made a difference. Shame it didn't solve your problem entirely, but I'm sure it is $ well spent! :grinthumb

Could you do me a favor? Run FD 'Graphics Adapter' benchmark & 'Processor' benchmark > save > copy & paste them here? I'd like to see the pixels & flood fills on the card, among the other items, & the CPU info ... please. :cool:

The HD's are moving the data, the PIII should process it just fine (IMO), the vid card is more than capable ... what is left? AGP & RAM? Seems, based on what you are saying, that 'in close' it is rendering fine. Complex polygons (CPU's job) aren't the problem then. Wide open spaces (lotsa texture, right?) is. Texture can be allocated to *system* RAM. Could the ECC be too slow & you need to allocate more texture to the card & less to the *system* for textures? Just a thought.

I want to upgrade to that (or the 133) PIII, so I'm interested if it is the CPU or memory or AGP or ... :rolleyes: You've seen improvements on getting the info to the PIII quicker already. It appears to be doing its job.

Hang in there,
 
ECC is turned off and my AGP aparture shows no diff. bet 256 and 64.

CPU Bench Result
WhetStone FPU 1,564 MWIPS
DhryStone ALU 2,839 MDIPS
Speed 1007 MHz

Benchmark Result
Random Pixels 700 KPixels/s
Lines 438,333 Lines/s
Circles 9,244 Circles/s
Rectangles 21,035 Rectangles/s
Texts 309,553 Chars/s
FloodFills 3,775,840 KPixels/s
Draw 34,678 KPixels/s

Benchmark Info
Device Name MSI MS-StarForce GeForce4 Ti 4400 (NVIDIA GeForce4 Ti 4400)
Device ID \\.\Display1\U0
Benchmark Mode 800 x 600 pixels
Color Depth
 
Shaft,

Thanks. :)

Your CPU looks to be where it should be compared to mine & the 'reference' CPU's FD furnishs, IMO. Here's my Celeron & you smoke me on FPU (no SSE 4 me) as you should & you nearly dbl my ALU w/less than dbl my mhz.

My CPU Bench Result
WhetStone FPU 480MWIPS
DhryStone ALU 1,523MDIPS
Speed 566 MHz (oc'd 500)

The card looks killer (compared to my GF2MX40064) in everything but floodfills, to me.

Benchmark Result
Random Pixels 433 KPixels/s
Lines 314,666 Lines/s
Circles 4,828 Circles/s
Rectangles 13,066 Rectangles/s
Texts 192,956 Chars/s
FloodFills 2,972,480 KPixels/s
Draw 19,046 KPixels/s

Benchmark Info
Device Name NVIDIA GeForce2 MX/MX 400
Device ID \\.\Display1\U0
Benchmark Mode 800 x 600 pixels
Color Depth 16 Bit

I realize FD isn't 'perfect' & these #'s can change slightly each time FD is run, but hopefully someone else can see this & will run their Ti & let us know if your FF's are 'normal' or not (& anything else) & maybe figure out what is the hang up. :confused:

Sorry I don't have any answers. :(
 
Helluva week.

Sorry for my late reply, but I had a rather nasty registry error that knocked my internet connection down for a week. I completely formatted my HDs and installed XP, so when I get all my software installed I'll run some more tests/benchmarks.
 
The problem is still there. It must be a limitation of my mobo or something to that extent. I really am enjoying XP and it's stability though!
 
Shaft,

You like XP huh? I've heard its a: 'love it or hate it' thing, but Win98SE has been excellent for me for yrs so I haven't even experienced XP yet. Glad it is stabile for ya & we know that ATA card is helping things too. :grinthumb

BX chipsets are kinda old. They were screamers in their day but ... That & the AGP2X ... ??? Maybe XP has a 'work around' or something to help. :cool:

Have a good one,
 
hmm.

Well here are my thoughts after reading the entire thread. AGP 4x offers little real improvement over AGP 2x, about 5-10% I believe it is. One thing I didn't see posted here, though you very well may have done this is check over for the latest patches for the games themselves, and windows xp. It seems that you should be screaming hardware wise. Though the BX chipset itself is long in the tooth, it is advisable to upgrade that mobo, processor, and ram.

Also one thing I just thought of. The Geforce 4 cards are starting to become known for slowing under heavy load. It appears not to be brand specific as well. I have been reading some boards to see if anyone else has had a similar problem to yourself and it seems this is becoming a more common problem. I think that this might be caused by a power supply unit that just can't cut it. What is the rating on your PSU? if its 250W then that could very well be the problem right there. I have read of people having this problem even with 300W psu's though. The Geforce 4 is one power hungry bugger it seems.

I hope some of that helps, it is nearly 2:30 am for myself so if I am not making sense please forgive me.

Good luck!

Ayasha
 
I always keep everything up to date (OS, games, hardware drivers, etc.), so it can't be that. From reading on the Delltalk message board, I believe the stock PSU is 200W. I read a few of the posts and it seems that many people have used all the system's power outlets without any problems. Replacing the PSU is really a last-resort option for me (aside from a new mobo, which isn't gonna happen), so I hope there is something else I could do.

Here is an excerpt from one of the posts:

The Dell PS can actually supply more 3.3v and 5v power than many 300 watt PS (they just have less 12v power, however your video card does not use 12v power).
 
I managed to squeeze a few fps out by tweaking my ram with cacheman...so could this be RAM bottlenecking? My ram is ECC, but ECC is disabled.
 
PSU

A 200W Power Supply. I really do think that is it right there. If this was my system at home, I would replace that 200W PSU. Honestly. The Geforce 4 is a very power hungry GPU, and along with everything else in your system will use more then 200W under a heavy load, which will affect system performence, and in some cases cause the system to lock up. Again, if it was my system I would replace that 200W PSU.

Ayasha
 
Shaft,

Vassil just got a Ti 4200 64mb card & his #'s tripled mine. Your 4400 didn't tho'. The odd thing is his card only had 50,000 more lines than mine but yours has 124,000 more. His floodfills double yours & his random pixels (1,200) almost does, tho'. :confused:

I don't have any answers, but I do think you should try to find another computer to install the card in & run Fresh again on it. Anyone on the Dell boards running a Ti 4400 & experiencing the same problems? :(

MSI isn't any help? Your floodfills should be ~8.2million, not 3.7.

Hang in there bud,
 
Dells use different PSU connectors anyway, so it would be very expensive to replace.

If it was my video card, how are my 3DMark scores so high? They're higher than average for my computer specs. And rendering those 3D environments is more realistic than drawing what it does in the Fresh Diag tests. There are people on the Dell boards that have no problems with the power supply, as it is supposed to be very efficient. I'm on a limited budget, so I need to pinpoint the problem and take care of it. I never get system lockups, btw, even when completely maxing everything out...so my PSU can't be that bad.
 
get a new card

Well at this point. Take the card back in for a new one. Say it is defective. Then if the new card does this get a refund and save a little more for a 4600
 
That's not gonna happen. You must not have read this, but I had the problem with my Geforce 2, also.
 
Shaft,

I'd forgotten your GF2 was doing this also. :rolleyes: Too many 'other' things, ya know?

Something I'm not familiar with, but I read a thread mentioning it here: AGP apperture size. I don't remember anyone mentioning it in this thread & I'm not sure if you can adjust it on your machine, but I thought I'd mention it & maybe you can research it or someone may read it here & discuss it. :cool:

If I find any info on its effects & settings, I'll post here & let ya know. ;)
 
I can set it to 64 and 256, but there's no difference in performance. The vid card has 128mb of ram on it, so it probably doesn't utilize much system ram.
 
Shaft,

It happened to me! My vid card messed up yesterday. I ran Si Sandra & it said the same things: no 3D hardware acceleration, etc. :(

I went to 'start' > 'run' & typed in dxdiag.exe. It ran Direct Draw but would NOT run DX! I went back into Si Sandra & opened up Direct X. It showed I had 3 monitors hooked up. 2 'default' monitors & the actual 1 monitor I have. Huh? It showed one 'default' monitor was controlled by my on-board video & one was controlled by the GF2 MX400, but w/o DX capabilities. :confused:

I right clicked on 'My Computer' > 'properties' > 'Device manager' > 'display adapters' & found my 'on-borad' chip was 'enabled'. I had disabled it in all hardware profiles & had to do it again. I then clicked on 'monitors' & found 3 there. 1 was disabled by disabling the 'on-board' chip, but I had a 'default' monitor' that shouldn't have been there. I removed it!

I rebooted the system & rechecked & the 'on-board' & the 'default' it controls were still disabled. The GF2 & the monitor I have were enabled. Good. I then ran dxdiag.exe again & couldn't run DX! Direct Draw worked fine tho'. Hmmm :(

I checked to make sure DX8.1 was installed (it was) & decided that maybe changing drivers might help. I had been running 29.20 but had a zip file of 28.32. It was late & I was tired so I installed 28.32 right over 29.20. No Det Destroyer, remove program or nothing. :knock:

It worked! Si Software shows 2 monitors, 'Device Manager' shows 1 disabled, dxdiag.exe runs Direct Draw & DX again! :cool:

I installed a 256 RAM chip 2 days ago & evidently it somehow (I'm thinking) caused Windows to detect another monitor & assigned the GF2 to it w/o the DX extensions. Maybe nwiz (the nView manager) got corrupted in the 29.20 driver too ??? & that is how I got all those monitors showing up. Running 'Fresh' only showed a slight 'drop' because it was running the correct card (GF2 w/DX) & monitor, but the game I tried (that is how I knew something was wrong) was on the bad 'default' monitor. :(

So, I'm running the 28.32 driver right now & it has allowed me to oc to 220 (29.20 'locked' @ 220) & 'Fresh' is even higher than before. I've shut down nView also since I only have 1 monitor hooked up. I ran 29.20 for 6-8weeks w/o any problems, but I'm staying w/28.32 for now.

HTH,
 
I have 3 default monitors showing up, but I don't have an onboard chip. I've tried multiple drivers (including the 28.32's, but now I'm on the new 29.42's), but they didn't help. I'll try disabling those default monitors to see what happens.

I disabled the monitors and noticed what seems to be a slight increase in performance. It didn't completely solve the problem, but it seems to have helped.
 
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