Radeon 9800pro stuttering and low 3dmark 2001 scores

Hi there all!!

This is my first ever post so please be gentle with me!!

I have just bought a Radeon 9800 pro to upgrade my PC from a 9200 SE. I removed all original drivers for the previous card (used Driver Cleaner) and re-installed the latest Omega drivers again.

My problem is that:
a) When playing painkiller I experience occasional stuttering of the game. Not to the point of being unplayable but damned annoying!!

b) My 3dmark 2001 score is only 12,500 with all effects turned off. I have seen postings for 16,000 odd so I know I should be getting higher than this.

I would like to know if there is anything I can do to stop the stuttering and bring my 3d Mark score up to scratch.

My Specs are:-
Athlon XP 2800+
ASRock K78SX Mobo
512 meg PC2700 RAM
40 gig Seagate Hard Drive
Evesham Radeon 9800 pro 128meg
AGP Apeture 128meg
If I have left any important information out, let me know.

Waiting for your expert Opinion.

First off the bat - welcome to the forum/s, Spartacus32.
I'm assuming you have AGP x 8 enabled.
Did you try any other drivers ?
ATI's Cat 4.7's are excellent.
If it's an option, you could try increasing your v-agp as an outside poss.
Is your rig overclocked ?

The Staph

welcome to the forums dude! any ways, like staph said, make sure its agp 8X not 4X... check if "fast writing" is enabled or not one thing to think about is the rest of your system...if it cannot feed the video card info fast enough, it doesnt matter if you have the fastest video card in the world..it will be held back by your PC... "ASRock K78SX Mobo 512 meg PC2700 RAM" thats the only place i see a weak link in...im not sure on those components, but pc 2700 could be better, and i've never heard of asrock... i'd look into a little upgrade maybe...

WELCOME to our forums!

To help you get the absolute best in response, I'm gonna move this to the ATI forum.

Turn Fast Writes off, if it is on, set AGP aperture to 128mb, 8X AGP & make sure AGP is 66mhz too. Also set your refresh rate to the highest it'll run (85mhz or more is best) @ the resolution you use. See if that stops the games staggers & if not > try it w/v-sync enabled.

Game settings & 3DM settings are vastly different for most of us (we want a high score & don't care what it looks like) & the above are game settings.

HTH.

PS: Boardsportsrule, Asrock is Asus's 'budget' division.

gotcha..thanks

i've had a problem before where the omega drivers completely turned off agp for my 9800 pro. It was showing 8x in bios, but off in windows. Go to ati control panel and check to make sure that 8x agp is set in windows as well. I've had good things with the omegas 4.7, not sure how the new ones perform though.

Quote: i've had a problem before where the omega drivers completely turned off agp for my 9800 pro. It was showing 8x in bios, but off in windows

bingo........that theres the problem

you should be able to go to asrocks website and download the latest mobo drivers for your board, that will fix you up no end my friend.....i had the same problem, 13k out of my 9800xt lol, i was like, "hmmmmmmmmmmmmmm"

p.s, welcome the forum dude, hope you enjoy it here

edit: you might wanna uninstall your omega's prior to installing the mobo drivers, then reinstall the omega's afterwards, i know its a ball ache, but better to be safe than sorry, PEACE

Hi Guys!!

Just to update you all. My system is not overclocked at all. I had major trouble getting 8x AGP to work but yesterday I downloaded the up to date SIS chipset drivers and now it works fine. My 3D Mark score has gone up to 13,650 now so still not quite good enough. Although, Painkiller doesn't seem to stutter any more and runs smoothly with all AA and AF turned on.

I am going to flash my mobo with an up to date bios next and see if that helps.

One other thing. Thanks to all of you for the help so far and for making me feel very welcome. I will take all of your advice on board.

P.S. I have my card powered from the Hard drive power lead. Will this affect the amount of power my card is using?

Once again, thanks to everyone.

I don't know about others, but I think the motherboard you have is your bottlenec "ASRock K78SX Mobo". Sounds like some SiS chipset or some other mutant. Most people here use nForce 2, and that's as good as you can get with Athlon XP, some use KT600, and most people stay away from SiS because they're not as good as the mainstream chipsets like nForce 2 or KT600. I think that's creating your bottleneck right there, kind of like using a Celeron with a new X800 card if you know what I mean.

Anyway, you should try a 3DMark2003 or AquaMark3, those are much more accurate benchmarks than 3DMark2001SE.

Disaster has struck!!!

Power supply decided to fry itself earlier today! it was only a standard 350 watt unit that came with the case so I am not too surprised. left puter on whilst playing Painkiller with full effects and went downstairs to do some work. Came back up 1 hour later and...............strong smell of cordite and one knackered power supply.

Oh well, have invested in 500watt PSU and fitted it in - now working perfectly (for now).

I think you may be right about the mobo - it is SIS chipset and bought cheap off ebay. Will have to change it (once I have enough money after buying 9800 pro AND new PSU!!)

I've got the same problem with my rig. But I have a Asus A7N8X-VM
XP 2400/266 2X512 PC3200 DDR BBA Radeon 9800 Pro. I'm not even getting to 13000. My old Ti 4200 got over 11000.

Quote: you should be able to go to asrocks website and download the latest mobo drivers for your board, that will fix you up no end my friend

Quote: I had major trouble getting 8x AGP to work but yesterday I downloaded the up to date SIS chipset drivers and now it works fine. My 3D Mark score has gone up to 13,650 now

update/reinstall your mobo drivers

Quote: Originally Posted by ajruck
I've got the same problem with my rig. But I have a Asus A7N8X-VM
XP 2400/266 2X512 PC3200 DDR BBA Radeon 9800 Pro. I'm not even getting to 13000. My old Ti 4200 got over 11000.

Mark the box "Application ..." or "Standardeinstellung" in the drivers menu under D3D and OGL and u'll get much more points. Had once the same prob, I always benched with AA/AF 2x and asked myself "what the heck"

danke.