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Geek Culture / New GFX Card. How should I test it?

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Fallout
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Joined: 1st Sep 2002
Location: Basingstoke, England
Posted: 21st Aug 2003 18:59
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Well, the bad boy finally arrived (FX 5800). I've just finished installing it, installing DX9 and I got the newest Detonator drivers all installed. Wasn't exactly staight forward. As usual, changing your graphics card never works in the same way as laid out in the manual.

Anyway, it's all done, but what's the best way to test it all out? I can load up Morrowind and a bunch of other fairly intensive games. I might even see if I can download 3D Benchmark, so long as it wont take me all day. Whats a proper test of power though?

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Fallout
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Posted: 21st Aug 2003 19:05
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Btw, just tested one game out and it's running at twice the speed of my MX440. Was getting 180FPS on my MX440 and am getting 340FPS on my FX5800. Sounds all well and good, but I'd expect a lot more than twice the speed of an MX440, seeing as they're utter sh*te.

What's going on?

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Mentor
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Posted: 21st Aug 2003 19:06
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what games do you have?, load up the most graphicaly intensive one you have and turn everything to hi res and full effects, then see what happens, it should eat it for breakfast.

Mentor.
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Shadow Robert
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Location: Hertfordshire, England
Posted: 21st Aug 2003 19:36
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your driver CD will have the Dawn & Ogre demos on them...
Dawn is a damn hot lil fairy and the Ogre one cracks me up - eat the little imp thingie - then do the monkey LMAO

as for the speed, god know why its slow - but then i dunno what your were running.
theres a post below on new cards, in the code brackets i put the registry update to allow you to re-clock its core&memory.

alot of the FX ranges speed depends on your systems current settings, like CPU type (AthlonXPs get more speed than P4s) - DDR2 Ram also helps the link speed, Rdram always has to wait for syncing - also remember your using the standard not ti version...

and that the 440mx actually didn't have that much less speed than a 4200ti/radeon 9500pro

you could goto futuremark.com to get 3Dmark03 as that should push what it can do ... you should get around 4,500-5,000 marks for your card

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Ian T
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Posted: 21st Aug 2003 19:56
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Darn nVidia... those demos would work on my ATI card, if they didn't basically add 'new' shaders that are basically just made for an excuse for things not to work on their competior's cards. Cheap.

Anyways...

It's possible the sync rate for that program is locked at what you're getting.

Also, it's more than just the speed, your card has all the new shader power.

Check out nvidia's website for a lot of fun tech demos.

--Mouse

Famous (Avatarless) Fighting Furball
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Shadow Robert
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Posted: 21st Aug 2003 20:04
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the demo's work on the R480, but the ones designed specifically for 5800/5900 won't work still.

to be perfectly honest why would nVidia make demo's designed to show off thier latest technology on a competitors card?

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Fallout
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Posted: 21st Aug 2003 20:22
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Well, the proggy I tried was actually one of my own proggies in DB. That's the only proggy I have where I can remember the frame rate from the old card.

I just played Morrowind for a bit, and it plays a touch slower actually. Seems a bit smoother inside buildings, but the loading screens take longer (must be loading more detailed textures) and external frame rate is still a bit low, and jerky at times. I think that's mainly down to Morrowind having a crap and jerky engine though. The pixel shader effects on the water looked good, but apart from that the game looked exactly the same. Oh no, I tell a lie - I went into one cave and there was a nice realistic looking red fog, which actually made it impossible to see where I was going. I think developers get a bit obsessed with using effects sometimes.

Was going to download benchmark until I saw it was 170MB, and I'm on dial up. I think I have an older version on CD somewhere.

I heard the fan of the card is supposed to go into overdrive when you get into high intensity operations. When you boot up you can hear it power up, but after that, nothing. So I suppose it's not really being tested yet. I've got the extra power cable all plugged in.

I've got Unreal 2 I can check out actually. I think I used to have to turn the settings down for my old card on that one.

Anyways, last thing. There are no demos on the CD, so I'm gonna check out the ones from the Nvidia site. Also, I'm not sure if it was DX9b or what, so I'll try and make sure I have the latest version.

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Fallout
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Posted: 21st Aug 2003 20:33
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Btw, in my Media Centre, I can chose performance options of Aggressive, High Performance or Balanced. Which one do I want?

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Ian T
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Posted: 21st Aug 2003 20:49
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'to be perfectly honest why would nVidia make demo's designed to show off thier latest technology on a competitors card?'

Obviously they wouldn't do that, but there's a difference from that, and using cheap tactics to make them not work on other cards. Quite frankly they're as bad as Microsoft. Making new shaders that don't really have any new technology just to get a strangehold on any games made for their cards? Incredibly cheap.

--Mouse

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Fallout
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Posted: 21st Aug 2003 21:38
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That is the whole point of business though - to steal your competitors market. Any trick in the book is fine, so long as the consumer doesnt suffer.

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Shadow Robert
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Posted: 21st Aug 2003 22:47
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Mouse it has nothing to do with cheap tactics...
it'll run on anything that can handle the Shader Specifications in Hardware mode, the Dawn & Ogre demos' run on the R480.
They don't run very well, and the colours look all washed out and nasty ... but they run.

The 5800/5900 demos won't run at all, simply because even the R480 doesn't yet support nv3x specification shaders.
It's nothing to do with a cheap tactic, it just a simple fact that the Radeons just don't support the technology... its like trying to get a Standard Pentium to run an MMX application, it can't do it because its missing the 57 opcommands required.

and really ATi have been pushing that the GeForceFX series are far far slower than thier own equivilants which just isn't true - so who do you think is more underhanded here?

The company who is simply making technology demos for thier own hardware to show them off to thier best potencial or the company who are deliberately trying to damage the reputation (and have succeeded) of the competitors product?
nVidia's Cg will run on Radeon cards which really personally i think they should've made specifically for only GeForce cards - but nVidia don't do business like that, they never have and i doubt they ever will.

They let the technology speak for itself - which anyone who owns these cards will see that they do

Unreal2 is an awesome test for the FX ... as it runs fantastically on it, specially the simply grass and light shaders
i the Media Centre the IntelliSample rateings reffer to the FSAA settings -

Aggressive, High Performance or Balanced? are you sure you have the 45.23 drivers?

as it should read:
High Performance (3x3)
Performance (5x5)
Quality (9x9)

and thats the texel sample lookup rating ...
you should have available to you
2x, Quincunx, 4x, 4XS (Direct3D), 8x, 8XS(Diret3D)

the 5900 also has 12x available

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Fallout
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Posted: 21st Aug 2003 23:19
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The problem is, you never know if its all installed properly. Seeing as the manual always says "remove your old drivers, then install the new ones by running the SmartInstall program" which is complete bollocks. So you uninstall the old drivers, swap the cards over, reboot and windows automatically installs everything for you. Then run smart install, which is too late, and it doesnt even run (says invalid operation).

I gave up that whole step. Downloaded the latest detonators, which were 45.23, or at least were dated 13 August, and they says they've installed fine. I also downloaded the newest DX from the microsoft site and then reinstalled the Detonators again, just to be sure. But do the drivers actually have anything to do with the Media Centre icon on your taskbar, or is that another bit of software?

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Fallout
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Posted: 21st Aug 2003 23:26
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Btw, I tried Unreal 2, and it crashed during the first in game movie sequence, so now I'm downloading a patch for that, hoping it's a game issue and not a card issue. Wasn't looking particularly fast during that first real time movie though. And I still haven't heard the fan spin up, which means it must be running in low speed mode. (I read it only cranks up to full speed when necessary).

It's all a bit confusing seeing as the manual has no information in it except basic hardware info, and there isn't any extra info in the electronic manual either.

Also just downloaded NVmax to see what options it gave me for overclocking etc. and it doesnt reckon I have Detonator 4 drivers, even though it says I have in the Device Manager.

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Ian T
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Posted: 22nd Aug 2003 00:28
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That's odd... I would think you'd notice a huge difference. I did when I upgraded my video card!

Hey, then again, I had a TNT2 before so it's a bit of a bigger difference

You might want to check your card's details, see what it's running at, etc. See if you like things better with AA and AS turned up or down, try different settings of mipmap & texture detail, etc. It's fun

--Mouse

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lcfcfan
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Posted: 22nd Aug 2003 00:38
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Nice Card dude if you wanna test it out run 3d mark 2003 and watch the proxycon demo or download the doom 3 alpha off kazaa.

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Shadow Robert
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Posted: 22nd Aug 2003 01:25
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i never read the manuals that come with my cards... though admitedly usually i get OEM prototypes so i just get a CD and a bubble wrapped card.

i just throw in my card then do a hardware search and let it install the drivers on demand... and no NVMax no longer works with anything over Detonator4 - 45.23 are DetonatorFX, if it doesn't say that your using DetonatorFX then yes you've done something wrong and you'll be missing atleast 20% of your cards top speed, and no doubt its not just running at its base speed but probably the lowest for the card (which is 100Mhz ... std for yours should be around 600Mhz lol)

copy this to a txt file and rename it nvpatch.reg


make sure you got the DetonatorFX form the nvidia site itself, other sources are very unreliable - and make sure you got them right for the windows your using ... i really wouldn't recommend using anything except WindowsXP with an FX card.

Its just i remember how much of a pig it was getting my card working under WindowsME - infact i couldn't get it working with DirectX9 under WindowsME at all, it just wouldn't create the device.

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Fallout
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Posted: 22nd Aug 2003 02:17
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Actually found out what is was. For some reason I didnt have access to the clock speed functions in my display properties. I downloaded this little 100byte REG file and it opened up a clock tab. I then got to change it from its 2D mode (300mhz GPU 600MHZ ram) to its 3D mode (400mhz GPU 800Mhz RAM). I also did an auto-detect overclock and it seems to think the chip will run easily at 550MhzGPU and 960MhzRAM. I put that on, and it looks a bit blurred on the desk top so I dropped it back down.

Its strange though cos the fan still isn't in fast noisey mode, and the temperature is reported as between 49 and 51 degrees, when its max is 140 degrees before its overheating, so I'm still really confused. Surely the chip should be running fairly close to its max temperature to be operating optimally? I mean, it could literally be 3 times hotter before it overheats.

Anyway, I cracked on with Unreal 2 after installing the patch and it looked good. Smooth as, and the water looked very nice. All settings on max too (although my plasma won't go over 1024x768 so that's the max res for me). I've just remembered I have the Doom 3 alpha on a CD, so I'll give that a go now actually, cos that actually was slow as hell on my MX440, so it'll be a proper test.

As for benchmark and anything else over about 20MB - not on dial up! That means I wont be able to check those Nvidia demos either, until I get on broadband.

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Shadow Robert
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Posted: 22nd Aug 2003 11:46
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get a broadband mate to download them and burn 'em for ya
the Time Machine is one that is WELL worth the 70mb download even on a dialup.

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Fallout
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Posted: 22nd Aug 2003 15:14
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ARSE!!! I did just what you said. I got my IT manager mate to download 3D BenchMark at work. He's gonna bring it back tonight. He specifically asked me if I wanted anything else, and I said no, when I should've clearly said "The demos from the nvidia website!". hehe. Anyway, he's still gotta slave away until 5pm, so I'll phone him up now and add that to the list.

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