Need help with KT133+win2k

[Nuno]

Hi there guys
I´ve been busy rebuilding my system. I went for a deal upgrading my Gigabyte 7-IX+K7 700 to a thunderbird 900 (wich I already unlocked using the L1 grafite trick ) and a generic KT133 mobo (maily waiting for AMD 760+DDR, now that I have an unlocked TB). It´s a "Lucky Star" mobo, a OEM manufacturer that had some fancy reviews about their no thrills but stable products.

I reinstalled WinMe and Win2k (both were screwed up with the AMD750->KT133 change, oh the joys of plug and play...). WinMe is just fine, stable and all things faster (well. maybe at 640x480 )

Now with win2k is a diferent story.

First it was a nightmare to get it working. After too much trial and error - I just got a black screen after installinmg G400 drivers - I found that only if I force AGP2X in the registry (MGA.AGPFlags 00 00 00 00) it works. AGP2x works fine with winME.
And now I got it working, D3D seems to be fine (performance increased overall) but OpenGL is a nightmare. All Quake2 engine based games (Q2, HL, kingpin) have TERRIBLE performance, unplayable due to annoying stuttering. Q2 640x480 timedemo is about 40 fps! (but fine in winMe with something around 160 fps). Q3 is playable, but lost too much fps (like from 83 fps to 60 fps, fast settings. Not good when you went from a 700 to a 900Mhz cpu).

So I don´t get it. Any fix for this? I´m using latest drivers for everything, VIA 4.25(1), MS VIA AGP fix, blah blah

[Nuno]

Hi there DosFreak

Yes, I´ve preety much tried everything, and I found some minutes ago something very interesting.

I´ve tried beta 5.06 opengl ICD and it works fine. I mean, performance is nothing special (as it wasn´t when 5.0x drivers were released) but the stuttering is gone.

So I think the problem lies in Matrox ICD. But I honestly wasn´t aware of some major problems between 5.1x/5.2x/5.3x ICD´s and Via chipsets. Q2/3/Half-life performance was roughly on par with winMe with my previous setup (AMD750).

Other OpenGL apps *seem* to be working fine. I tried Treemark from Nvidia (huge strss on the drivers) and it is faster than before (as expected)

So to sum it up: With my current setup (KT133) only 5.0x ICD´s work fine with Quake games. Anyone already found this out? Any fixes/workaround?

PS: (I should have listen that voice in my head that kept telling: Don´t buy VIA Don´t buy VIA Don´t buy VIA)

[This message has been edited by Nuno (edited 23 December 2000).]

[DosFreak]

I know what you mean. I've been waiting all year for this Christmas so that I could get a dual board. Well here it is and I still am not happy with the dual solutions......

3 days ago I ordered a Abit VP6 with 2 700E's. I've done tons of research and asked around. Plenty of people have been happy with this board but I just feel slightly nauseous when I hear Dual & VIA in the same sentence. I hope it turns out alright.

[Rob M.]

What do you have your texture detail setting to? I've found that VIA's AGP implementation is awful at best, when I changed from BX to my KX133 I had to put the detail slider down one to keep the framerates up.

[Nuno]

The texture slider (q3) is one notch below max, as it was before.

But the point is: VIA AGP seems reasonable, as I get around 80 fps in 3dmark2k in 64 MB tex rendering test (WinME). In WinME everything works just fine, OpenGL performance is higher with this combo than with AMD750+K700. Just a quick example, it scored around 130 fps Q2 timedemo demo1.map2 now it scores around 160 (The G400 still scales from 700Mhz to 900Mhz, go wonder). Q3 scores are the same 800x600x32 up (clearly fillrate limited), but higher in lower res, where more cpu power still does the trick.

So I don´t think it´s an hardware problem, but something in Win2k+KT133+VIA drivers+Matrox OpenGL ICD (5.1x/5.2x/5.31) is terribly wrong when running Q2/Q2 engine/ Q3 games. It worked fine with the AMD750 board, thought.

What I would like to know is that if someone with a similar sytem (KT133+TB+win2k) has the same problems or if something is wrong with my setup that I still couldn´t figure out.

Thanks guys, keep sugestions coming, please (I just started to play HL oposing force...)

[This message has been edited by Nuno (edited 23 December 2000).]

[DosFreak]

Well I do know that when I had a G400 I had the same fps in 98 & 2000. 1024X768 32bc All settings to MAX=20fps

This was on an Abit BE6 rv1. P3550@630.

[Rik]

Don't forget this often overlooked AGP fix from the MS site: http://support.microsoft.com/support.../Q270/7/15.ASP
It can help in some circumstances.

[DosFreak]

1. Are you sure it updated your VIA AGP driver?
2. Check this site out: http://tech.actihost.com/w2k.htm has some neat tips for KT133 chipsets.
3. Have you tried the Via 4.26 drivers? It updates your IDE,AGP drivers. (The IDE drivers don't do so good on some VIA mobo's, the AGP driver is EXCELLENT)
4. Have you downloaded all the updates from Windows Update site and installed the VIA fix?

[Nuno]

Yes, I tried that, no effect.
I still couldn´t figure it out. I´ve tried MDK2 benchmark (opengl) and it went from 46 to 52 fps, so that´s ok.

The problem is only with quake games. All d3d apps work fine. And I tried the games with default .cfg files, just in case, and it´s the same story.


Then again, no one with a KT133 using win2k out there?

[Rob M.]

I've got win2k on my kx133 via mb working fine, so it's certainly something to do with your setup, try playing with the agp aperature setting in the BIOS.

[Nuno]

Nope. Still no go.

[Nuno]

Maybe the problem lays in VIA agp drivers? In dxdiag I get "AGP texture acceleration - NOT AVAILABLE" - this with DX8.

Anyone?

[Liquid Snake]

I am in the process of setting up my friend's 1GHz Tbird system. It has an ASUS A7V (KT133) and a 1GHz TBird. I am installing Win2K right now, I will let you know how it goes.

[DGhost]

One thing i have noticed in Win2k is that unless you tell the device manager to update the drivers, it will continue using the default ones - even after you installed the 4 in 1's. just goto the CPU to AGP controller in device manager and tell it to search for a new driver - should find it without a prob.

[Nuno]

Yes I tried to install it manually, it reports via driver 5.0.0.404, I think it´s the correct version. The problem still persists, though.