[updated] my first nvidia card--drivers?

Hipnotic_Tranz · Post by **Hipnotic_Tranz** » Wed Jan 30, 2002 4:47 pm

I'm curious what the best drivers for the Geforce2 line is? I have a 32meg Quadro2 running the Detenator 3 (12.90) drivers and I'm getting pretty poor frame-rates. I ran the latest and these (older) drivers run better.

In Quake3, I'm getting 39fps on 800x600x32, medium geometric detail, and medium texture detail. All my other games run fine (q2@1024x768-66fps, q1@1280x1024-80fps) I'm happy with how all my other games are running but Quake3 is lacking bigtime I think. The machine it's running on is an Athlon 650, 192mb RAM, 30gig hard drive, SBLive! Value, GF2 Quadro2. Definitly a decent machine. I would have hoped to get atleast 50fps in 1024x768, 32bit color, medium texture. I consider 60+ perfectly fine and anything below that a little slow. But ~40fps isn't playable, I don't think. Specially once you get into battle with a few other people.

Is this feasable? Is it my hardware or the drivers? Which drivers are the best?

dadx2mj · Post by **dadx2mj** » Wed Jan 30, 2002 5:07 pm

Get teh newest from nvidia. Just about everybody got better performance when they went to the Det4 drivers.

Hipnotic_Tranz · Post by **Hipnotic_Tranz** » Wed Jan 30, 2002 5:42 pm

well I tried the new drivers again and they aren't any better. I put everything down to the lowest of the low on 640x480 and got 44frames. Only 4 frames more than when I had it on 800x600 everything maxxed. What da hell?

I'm beginning to think it might not be driver related. Would any BIOS settings have this much of an effect on frame-rates? Anything in windows? WHen the computer comes from a cold boot I have 95% free resources! Only explorer and point32 (Intellimouse software) are running. Like I said, the card works great in all the other games, but is horrible in Q3.

[edit]
and yes, I do play q3. I'm not just tryin' to score high in some benchmark. It really is not playable at this point

chottoED · Post by **chottoED** » Wed Jan 30, 2002 6:05 pm

actually i really think the bottleneck is the athlon 650... mebbe you can try overclocking it and see if there's an improvement? the #'s may not get too high as long as it's running in 32bit w/ the cpu at 650

also get the latest release patch for Q3A... if you are using win2k, get the latest update (especially sp2)

have fun w/ that rocking card you got!

p.s. can u list all the components you have? (exact models)

Hipnotic_Tranz · Post by **Hipnotic_Tranz** » Wed Jan 30, 2002 7:04 pm

Sup

Athlon 650
Abit KA7-100
192mb PC133 RAM
SbLive! Value
GeForce2
2 - 15gig IBM 75GXP's (were in RAID-0 but not currently)
40x CD-ROM (that is really dirty by the way--that or it's just a POS which I would believe also

)

Thats about it really. Running Win98SE from a fresh install (the vid card you sent me was the last component I needed for this "backup" machine) Running v1.30 in Q3 which is the latest from my knowledge. I could upgrade the CPU in this machine cheap but I'd have to pay for it since my parents think it's fine as it is (and I basically gave it to them to get them out of my room just for the internet).

But I need the [little] money I have now for a sub for my HT setup so this machine will just have to do. My comp is a 1.4 AthlonXP

I was just hoping for better scores. I'll have to play around with it. Runs great in all other games though, so thats good

dadx2mj · Post by **dadx2mj** » Wed Jan 30, 2002 7:50 pm

Might try checking out http://www.geforcefaq.com they might have to tip to help you out.

Busby · Post by **Busby** » Wed Jan 30, 2002 9:55 pm

I got 60fps using a Voodoo 3 and Celeron 366@550 at 800x600. Change it from 32-bit color and see what happens. 23.11 drivers are the best nvidia drivers out.

wet behind the ears · Post by **wet behind the ears** » Thu Jan 31, 2002 1:05 am

I['m guessing its the processor that is the bottle neck in your system. Go with drivers that work the best, regardless of age. Hell, when I was running WIN 98 I was running Det version 6.34's. The latest Quake update is 1.31. Check it out.

wbte/

Hipnotic_Tranz · Post by **Hipnotic_Tranz** » Fri Feb 01, 2002 3:15 pm

Originally posted by Busby
I got 60fps using a Voodoo 3 and Celeron 366@550 at 800x600. Change it from 32-bit color and see what happens. 23.11 drivers are the best nvidia drivers out.

Running 23.11 drivers Already tried putting it to 16-bit color and that didn't do a lick a difference (except made it look worse

) I dont think the CPU is the bottleneck so much as it's just not configured right or something. I had my AIW Radeon in this machine and was getting 60FPS before. Guess I'll just have to play around with it--even though I don't really know what it is I have to change.

chottoED · Post by **chottoED** » Fri Feb 01, 2002 3:32 pm

you can overclock the card...
there's no way you can fry the thing w/ all the extra cooling i put on it...
also... whatever you do - DO NOT CHANGE YOUR TEXEL ALIGNMENT SETTINGS
doing so screws up the fonts in your d3d games

rogue · Post by **rogue** » Fri Feb 01, 2002 10:52 pm

The cpu is definitely the bottleneck, sorry to say. No amount of tweaking will raise your fps above 50, with that CPU and Vid card combo. Q2 and Q1 are really old games, so its not a surprise that they run well. I would try running a different OS, preferably Win2k, and see if that does anything.

ji1831 · Post by **ji1831** » Fri Feb 01, 2002 11:27 pm

try this site (http://www.nvidia.com/view.asp?PAGE=pg_20010527321700) it said something about quadro video cards. it might help

Hipnotic_Tranz · Post by **Hipnotic_Tranz** » Sat Feb 09, 2002 3:31 pm

This is wierd.

Athlon 650
Abit KA7-100
192mb PC133 RAM
GeForce2

~40fps

PIII 450
192mb PC100 RAM
Geforce 256 (original)

~45fps

The second system is my friends. how is a slower computer with a slower/older video card getting more frames? Thus, I don't believe the CPU is the bottleneck as I've said all along.....(I know it is to a point, but c'mon--we're on the exact same settings in q3 and windows)

grumpy 1 · Post by **grumpy 1** » Sat Feb 09, 2002 6:19 pm

hey i may have overlooked this but can you tell me what mb your pc is running is it a via chipset a amd chipset or a amd via chipset combo
i used to run q3 on a athlon 700 and a geforce 2 and used to get awesome frame rates so i think something else is going on there

Cheers

Hipnotic_Tranz · Post by **Hipnotic_Tranz** » Sun Feb 10, 2002 1:21 pm

As stated in the above thread, I'm running an Abit KA7-100 (via chipset) with an Athlon 650 (classic--not a t-bird or anything).

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[updated] my first nvidia card--drivers?

[updated] my first nvidia card--drivers?

hey............

poor frame rates