Radeon 9800 Pro Perfomance

Thordon

I recently bought a PowerColor Radeon 9800 Pro 128mb 256bit from Komplett. The computer I intend to use it in is a Compaq Presario S5160UK with the following specs:

2.7ghz Celeron
768 DDR333 RAM
MSI MS-5566 Mainboard
300w noname PSU

The performance is not what I expected, average 20fps on U2XMP, max settings, and from what I hear, this is way below what it should be. I originally had a 250w PSU in it and was told that it might be the cause, I installed a 300w one I had lying around but it made no visible difference.

To test if it was the computer and not the card, I tried the same card in another computer:

1.1ghz Athlon (non-XP)
1gb SDRAM 133
Compaq brand Mainboard
250w noname PSU

The performance boost was VERY visible, 40-50fps under the same conditions.

Based on my knowlege of computers, this dosent seem to make sense, I know celerons arent supposed to be good for games, but its 2 years newer, the clock speed is more than double the athlon, and the ram is much better, I expected it (at the very least) to be equal.

What am I missing?

tuxy

you see its not "celerons arent supposed to be good for games"
its celerons are a complete disaster for games
even a duron that u can picvk up for about 35 euro will kick a celrons ass in games

what you need is a pentium 4
something like this http://www.komplett.ie/k/ki.asp?sku=300059&cks=PRL
if u decide to get a p4 make sure you get one with a 533 fsb as the 800 fsb ones are not compatable with your memory (and probably motherboard as well)

Col_Loki

Celerons are bad but there shouldnt be that much of a difference IMO. It should be atleast equal. Run 3dmark'03 if possible and post results?

tuxy

ya i 3d mark he should do a bit better since it mainly tests the 3d card
but running a game with the ut2 engine on a celron will work out very bad

Thordon

3dMark2003 is ~180mb, Im already over my monthly download limit .

Btw, I was wrong on the memory on the celeron, its actually DDR400, if that makes a difference.

To test the effect of the computer on performance, I used my Radeon 9600 (non-Pro/XT) in the celeron and the athlon, on the celeron I got 16fps average, and on the athlon I got 30fps average, that would indicate that the computer is holding the card back, and as tuxy said, celerons are just crap

I wish I could confirm the cause of the bad performance before going out and buying a p4.

OfflerCrocGod

NOT that bad there is something wrong with your computer and I would guess it's software related - the celeron and duron should be at least equal. The figures you are reporting are very odd

Mutant_Fruit

no no no! The Duron is MUCH better than the celeron. The celeron is ONLY good for word processing etc, it really falls down in gaming etc.

The duron is a much better all round chip, but even still i wouldn't get one. AMD XP's are cheap enough that you can pick up a mobo, good fan and 2500+ (and overclock it to at least 3000+ speeds) for under 160euro.

Thordon

Its possible, I get some strange dll errors when I start up, I dont use this computer so I dont know what state its in, ill run a virusscan and install a fresh OS and see if that helps.

tuxy

Originally posted by OfflerCrocGod
- the celeron and duron should be at least equal.

http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=1927&p=14
nope

but Thordon you should fix you windows install it should help things

Mutant_Fruit

the slowest AMD XP (the 1700+ @ 1.466ghz) beats the fastest Celeron (at 2.6ghz) with a LARGE margin most of the time.

Takes no genious to figure that one out... Celerons SUCK ASS.

The Real B-man

just crap for games good option if your building for mess about pc but at 400mhz fsb :mad:

tuxy

Originally posted by The Real B-man
just crap for games good option if your building for mess about pc but at 400mhz fsb :mad:

not realy a good option at all u might as well get a low end athlon xp

Creamy Goodness

look at his power supply too!!

i'm sure that's not too healthy for a 9800pro

Mutant_Fruit

nah, that power supply should be grand.

I had 2 hd's, 2 optical drives, 4 pci cards, 1 Radeon 9600pro and an AMD 1800+ running off a 200watter.

Col_Loki

Bad an all as the celerons are thats just crazy. The 1.1ghz AMD isint that strong to show double the performance. Theres something else wrong , going on those figures that would mean the celerons would be compared to a Pentium 500mhz........... well you know what im saying.

Did you try other games? 3dmark '01 mabye? SiSandra is also good to check and see if your CPU is running on par.

[Edit] Yea PSU looks very weak for a 9800pro......... but wouldnt it reboot if its a power issue? As apposed to reducing the speed of the card ? So it must be ok.

Thordon

I installed a new OS, there seems to be a slight improvement, but its still way behind the Athlon, Im downloading 3dmark 2001 now, ill post the results on both PC's.

Also, I have a PSU coming in a few days that I planned to use with an A64 system I'm building, 420w, I can try that in the celeron and see if it helps.

Thordon

Oh, one thing I noticed, when I was moving the 9800 pro beetween PC's, the heatsink (on the card) and power cable (from the card) werre very hot, is this normal?

Thordon

3dMarks 2001 Results:

Celeron: 8883
Athlon: 7707

I tried Warcraft 3 on the celeron, I couldnt find a way to display fps, but Im sure it was staying near the refresh rate as I could not see any slowness at all.

Based on the results and on WC3, it would indicate that the celeron just dosent like the unreal 2 engine, it seems like a fairly memory intensive game, but 3/4 gig should be enough I would think.

Im happy that the celeron is actually faster, but I'd still like to know why it dosent perform consistently from game to game.

BKtje

Unreal engines are very cpu intensive so with a weak cpu (dont matter what the card/ mem speeds are) its gonna do badly.

tuxy

ya that game engine seems to like amd processors as well

btw its normal for a 9800 pro's heatsink to be extremely hot, they realy should of supplied better heatsinks with those cards

Dempsey

Originally posted by tuxy
you see its not "celerons arent supposed to be good for games"
its celerons are a complete disaster for games
even a duron that u can picvk up for about 35 euro will kick a celrons ass in games

Celeron's are bad but the Prescott Celerons are a vast improvement over the Northwoods.

Get a P4 for it, better off

BKtje

Amd processors are better for games in general from how they are designed.

Dempsey

the board he has will probably take a P4, not sure though. Check you chipset

Thordon

Motherboard: http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/genericDocument?lc=en&cc=us&docname=c00019945
Chipset: http://www.intel.com/design/chipsets/845ge/index.htm?iid=ipp_desk_chip+prod_845ge&#Features
Processor I should get: http://www.komplett.ie/k/ki.asp?sku=300059&cks=PRL

The chipset supports 533mhz FSB, so the 2.4ghz p4 with said FSB should be compatible, or am I misinterpreting the spec?

Mutant_Fruit

spot on, the perfect chip for your motherboard.

EDIT: Are prescotts different to the northwoods (or wahtever theyre called). I'm not sure if a presscott would fit...

EDIT2: Just e-mail komplett to be 100% sure. They should be able to tell you within an hour.

Thordon

Going by this page, it would seem, as long as its 533mhz FSB, it dosent matter whether its the normal p4 or the HT one (could be the distinction between northwood and prescott), as both support the 845GE chipset.

unkel

Originally posted by Thordon
The chipset supports 533mhz FSB, so the 2.4ghz p4 with said FSB should be compatible, or am I misinterpreting the spec?

Correct. Make sure you get the 533 FSB CPU (P4B) though if you can still find it new. Alternatively, consider spending a bit more money and get a P4C or a P4E and a new motherboard, or go the AMD 64 route

That cpu would set you back maybe an additional €50 (compared to a P4B) plus €100 for a decent mobo, but you could sell your old mobo/celeron combo

Money well spent imho

Originally posted by Thordon
3dMarks 2001 Results:

Celeron: 8883

Probably the worst score in the world for a rig with a 9800 pro

Dempsey

I make sure you have Hyper Threading. Prescotts run hotter but you wont be overclocking with that board sooo.

Changing his board will also require a new PSU and Case.

unkel

Originally posted by Dempsey
Changing his board will also require a new PSU and Case.

Ah, so HP/Compaq also play the Dell game by using non-standard mobo's?

Thordon

Its already cost 220 for the card, I dont want to spend another few hundred building a new PC around it. The 150 euro p4 seems the best course.

But one thing worries me, if I do upgrade, would the performance increase be a lot, like 2x at least? I see some people on the forums (from their sigs) have p4's in their gaming rigs, so Im guessing its fairly good. Dont want to assume the end result would be good like I did with the celeron :dunno:

Mutant_Fruit

this is a proper chip you're getting , you will get a large speed boost, probably at least 2x, and ingame fps should rocket by well more than 2x.

btkm8unsl0w5r4

Forget about the processor. You should be getting a much better framerate than that even with a celeron on a 9800 pro.
Try: driver updates
Disabling AGP fastwrites
Setting AGP apperature size to 64mb or 32 mb
Check you control panel settings and ensure that AA and AF are not on
Get a athlon 64 or Xp if you are serious about gaming, they kick ass in gaming benchmarks against p4's

Dempsey

P4's are good. The differences between them and A64 is only noticable in benchmarks. A64's need proper 64-bit support and it doesnt look like its gonna be anytime soon

Thordon

Driver updates: Downloaded latest before I made this post
Disabling AGP fastwrites: What? lol, where do I do that?
Setting AGP apperature size to 64mb or 32 mb: see above
Check you control panel settings and ensure that AA and AF are not on: That ATI Control panel thing?
Get a athlon 64 or Xp if you are serious about gaming, they kick ass in gaming benchmarks against p4's: Good, cause my A64 system is arriving in a couple of days , this PC is not mine, its my brothers.

btkm8unsl0w5r4

In the BIOS press delete or f1 as the machine boots up to access the BIOS config screen, They are all different but try under advanced chipset properties for AGP properties. Yes A64's rule enjoy yours.

Dempsey

Why are you bothering with that pc then?:D

tuxy

maybe he wants some lan gaming with his bro
i think a new p4 would be the best value upgrade

btkm8unsl0w5r4

See we all get upset about which processor is better the fact is they are all overpowered for todays applications (except the next gen games). 2.7 gigahertz machine wheither a celeron or p4 or the athlon or duron or athlon 64 equivalent should get better results from the great graphics card. Something is wrong with the system. I would bet the BIOS settings regarding AGP
As for 64 bit support. I have the WinXP 64 preview installed and the media encoding is much faster, games are slower due to poor driver support but the proper drivers and OS will be out soon so beware 32 bit land your day are numbered. With the A64 not only do you get an outstanding processor now, but when the 64 bit OS and 64 bit compilled appilcations come out you get a free 15 -20% speed boost. Win win. Nothing wrong with P4's dont get me wrong I have one on my other machine.

Thordon

The BIOS is compaq, not much you can do, the only thing I could find related to graphics way primary display, which was set to PCI, I set it to AGP and ran PCMarks2001 again, got a score of 9003, no significant difference. Would it be possible to flash a better BIOS on, the motherboard isnt compaq brand so Im guessing they added their own BIOS.

Thordon

I was browsing around the ATI Control Panel, and I found the AGP settings, theres a slider with Set AGP Speed: Off 1x 2x 4x, and a checkbox with Fast Write: On/Off, its currently set to Off on both

I tried changing it to 1x, 2x, and 4x, it prompted me to restart each time and I did, but it reverted back to off, as described in the help file:

"...if new settings do not take effect after you have manually changed some of the SMARTGART™ settings, it is because you have attempted to configure your system to an unstable state."

Could the BIOS be blocking the changes?

Edit: I just found the edit button

Edit 2: Downloaded an Intel Chipset 'thingy' (not sure what it did), and my AGP is now running at 4x with fast write on, 3dMarks 9976, clear improvement

OfflerCrocGod

Originally posted by Thordon
Edit 2: Downloaded an Intel Chipset 'thingy' (not sure what it did), and my AGP is now running at 4x with fast write on, 3dMarks 9976, clear improvement

I knew it was software related not hardware, but I'd still expect* more then that, those scores could be beaten by a 9600 pro on a better processor can you overclock?

<edit>*would hope for; this is a celeron:)

Thordon

An update, found this thread:

http://forums.beyondunreal.com/showthread.php?t=125918

The system in that thread is similar to the celeron, it seems like intel just dosent like the engine.

I'd like to sort out the AGP aperture stuff, I saw some benchmarks done with changing that and at certains settings (seemingly random) there was a drastic loss in performance. Ive been looking for a _real_ bios to flash on so I could edit the settings, anyone know a good place to find BIOS updates?