Updated 4.36 4in1's

[Guru]

Viahardware: "Via has today released an updated version of the new v4.36 VIA 4in1 drivers. According to documentation in today's release, the original v4.36 release changed the IDE filter driver from 1.10 to 1.20 and fixed graphics errors on the KT133/KT133A chipsets. Today's release also adds enhanced stability for the KM133 chipset."

http://downloads.viaarena.com/drivers/4in1/4in1436(3)v(a).zip

[Indiana]

And give us our daily 4in1s....

[The PIT]

and our bsods so we can pull our hair out while trying to figure how to get that lovely thunderbird rolling.

[CHHAS]

The more 4in1's I see the more I'm glad I switched to a SIS 735 platform.

[The Rock]

I just bought a KT266A chipset board + Athlon and I haven't installed the 4in1s yet. Everything seems great so far. What the hell am I missing by not installing these crappy things, besides the instability?

Bart

[Indiana]

I don't have any instability on my KT266 either, even though ( ) I have the 4in1s installed.

I guess installing the inf and the AGP is safe, otherwise you might get slow AGP transfers or bumping back to desktop in AGP intensive appZ (sorry, read too much from MatroxAngerMe, I guess) - this is at least ONE area where 3DMark actually is a good test...

But DON'T install the VIA IDE thing. It's slower than the one provided by M$ here and prevented me from burning even one single CD successfully.

[The Rock]

Indiana:

My 3Dmark2001 score is 7222. If it aint broken....

Bart

[DuRaNgO]

hmmm, seems a bit low, 8460 here

[The Rock]

HOLY !@#$%^&*!! I got some tweaking to do. My stats are a bit worse than yours though:

AthlonXP 1800+ retail
Asus A7V266-E mobo
768megs Nanya DDR ram (cas2.5)
ATI Radeon 8500 retail

Since I refuse to overclock and don't have an unlocked CPU, I'm stuck at 7222 for now. What tricks are you pulling to get that score man? Do you use the 4in1s at all?

Bart

[Indiana]

Hmm, I got 8040 out of my OEM (at 270/270, no other tweaks) Radeon8500 with an AthlonXP@1540.
You're using the latest 5.13.3286 (Win2k) drivers? What OS?

[The Rock]

Windows XP is the OS. Driver version is 3286.

Bart

[Indiana]

So maybe it's the (with the current drivers) somewhat unfortunate combination WinXP/Radeon8500.
Do you have 32Bit Z-Buffer enabled or 24Bit (faster, kind of standard for comparision since most NVidia cards in MadOnions databse are benched with only 24Bit ZBuffer)?

8399 3DMarks with 24Bit Z-Buffer
8123 3DMarks with 32Bit Z-Buffer

P.S.: The Radeon8500 OEM was running at 290/275 (core/mem)

[The Rock]

I haven't overclocked the 8500, so mines only running at 275/275 (confirmed by Powerstrip). I run the default benchmark and I never tinkered with the Z buffer. This kinda has me mystified. I thought I had a great score, and the tests all ran smooth, but now I'm beginning to wonder whats up with my system. Did you overclock your system at all? Tweak out the memory timings or anything? I left my new machine alone and haven't tweaked a thing.

Bart

[Indiana]

1. Yes, I have overclocked most every component in my comuter... . But then I wasn't really at the limits with an FSB of 142 for the AthlonXP. The only thing that was at the limits is the Radeon8500, since it's an OEM the mem won't do more than 275 (=your Retails speed), the core does about 290 without artifacts which is higher than your 275.

2. But still I even got a 74xx when running 3DMark2k1 after I freshly installed the card (that was running at 250/250 then), so your score is not way off, but it's still more on the lower end, especially when thinking you have a KT266A which has quite a bit higher RAM bandwidth than my KT266 (3DMark is VERY sensible to mem-speed).

3. If the card works now, don't mess with it. Who really cares for 3DMarks2001? There's a point when something is "fast enough", there's no reason in pushing it faster and making things unstable.

[The Rock]

Well, usually I don't care about benchmarking either. BUT I'm not sure whether its the Christmas season affecting me or not, but I have this strange urge to utterly obliterate the 3DM2001 score of some nvidiots I know. I'm am SICK of those people, and I'm getting sick of morons bashing ATI who've never even owned an ATI card. It appears I will have to get better Athlon cooling and crush them. Thanks for the info.

Bart