I have an X1950pro AGP and on install Smartgart defaults AGP Write to Off.
Before you ask if I'm not mistaking it with Fastwrite, lemme say "no".
Wether I set FW on or off, I get the same performance and stability, but I've read somewhere that normally AGP Write should always be On for optimal perfs.
I thought it could be one of the reason I get slightly (but still noticeably) lower framerates than on my my 6800NU.
If anyone has a similar card, please tell me what's your default value for this setting, and/or if it performs better when set On.
Drivers, but not visible in Catalyst control panels. You need to run smartgart with this way:
%SystemRoot%\system32\ATIPRBXX.EXE /g
(everythings greayed out for me in this one though...)
Or if you're using Atitraytool. Hardware > Smartgart (that's the only panel that actually works for me)
I think you may want to reinstall your drivers...whenever ATItray tools or ATItool fails to read something (or I can't hear my fan) then somehow my drivers have become messed up and it's time to reinstall them. (and possibly use the ATI catalyst uninstaller before doing so).
That's weird man, here it's set to "On," just like everything else, with the exception of FW. What drivers are you running? Have you tried the 8.1 with the hotfix?
Was running on Cat 7.8 (and prior) when I noticed that, now running Omegas based on 7.12 (which already includes the AGP hotfix), I'll try 8.1 when Omega version will be released.
Maybe it's a compatibility issue with my mobo... but BIOS is already flashed to build 13 (14 is only an old beta with no changelog to tell me if it's worth applying) and I regularly update my chipset drivers
I have never updated my BIOS XD...then again I don't have AGP card so I can't help much anyways...
All I know is when running 8.1 ATItool suddenly lost control of the card (kernel misscomunication or something like that) and I was forced to reinstall both ATItool and 8.1 to give control over my fan (and my whole card) back to ATItool.
I'm using AtiTRAYTool, it's a different software, and PCIE cards don't have to deal with PCI/AGP Read/Write settings... thanks for trying to help though.
Weird, I'm having a Via chipset as well. I never really noticed anything weird concerning my videocard, though this was the first time I checked these settings. Being a menu whore I'll probably have checked them out earlier and most likely everything was set to "on," otherwise I would now remember doing some research about it myself.
Also, I've been using both Catalyst and Omega driver the past 6 months and I didn't notice any difference in performance, only how it went down the drain once I started playing at my monitor's native resolution. This really makes it hard benchmarking performance, since I don't play at 1024 anymore.
"This really makes it hard benchmarking performance, since I don't play at 1024 anymore."
Well I dunno if it's the tweaks in Omega or simply the generic update, but RE4 slows downs a bit less since I switched to it, so I'm gonna stick with it for a while ^^'
"you aren't running a Via based chipset are you?"
A7V8X-X mobo -> Via KT400A...
8x works fine here, I'm not sure switching back to 4x to get AGP Write back (if ever it works) is better than having it off on 8x. Maybe I'll try later if I'm too bored though, just in case. Thanks for the suggestion
I'm sorry, but I'd rather ressurect this than create a new topic.
I've *cough* upgraded to x1950 Pro on my VIA KT600 mobo and now I'm having exact same problem. I'm hoping that maybe some of you have since found better solution for your Radeons. I'm not sure if anyone still remembers older VIA chipsets, but it's worth a try.
So, I installed a clean WinXP with the newest Hyperion Pros. VIA hasn't updated their AGP bus driver since 2003, but sure enough, I tried all kinds of differnt versions all the way down to Retro 4.43. None of them allow me to use AGP Write. I also tried different combinations of VIA and Catalyst drivers: 10.2 is the newests; went down to 7.2 -- no dice .
I did try reducing to x4 and disabling Master WS 1 Read/Write in BIOS. Still doesn't happen. I know that VIA may cause all kinds of flaky issues and sometimes struggles with faster stuff. I don't mind using x4, but this AGP Write could at least pop itself to the on position to make me even consider this upgrade a somewhat good idea.
Anyone remember dealing with this? It's a fairly common issue back from the days, but I'm running out of ideas gathered from other sources. Please no "buy new motherboard."
Don't remember if I found a workaround. Probably not, else it's likely I'd have posted about. Turns out this GPU was very bottlenecked by my CPU anyways (Athlon XP3000 at the time), hence the poor performance
Well, it appears that AGP Write is basically the ability of your GFX to write directly into RAM. The x1950 Pro has 512MB, so that's plenty enough for most of the older titles I'll be catching up with. AGP Read seems to be more important, as Radeons don't use Fast Writes, so everything goes through CPU->RAM->GFX anyways.
Insterad of looking at what GART reports in my software, I think the real question is how did your card perform in practice? I mean, just because GART says something is off, it doesn't necessarly mean anything for gaming. I have Athlon XP 3200+, and it's recommended by Sapphire for this card along with decent DDR400. Might be a bottleneck, yes, but nothing super noticible in non-SS2-and-multicore-optimized titles from the 2004-2008 range.
Were you generally happy with this Radeon? Any problems in emulators? OpenGL2? Something you wanted didn't run?
I don't remember much, it was ages ago. I mostly bought it to play newer games (when Source engine was still quite new) and the lack of SSE2 on the AthlonXP made it obvious that my GF6800 wasn't what I needed to upgrade to get better fps, as at best, I saw only less slowdowns (due to more VRAM) but no speed boost in most games.
As for emulators, on that crap CPU, the only console I could play was PS1, with maybe an exception for Disgaea on PS2, because the graphics are close to what a PS1 could easily render.
Honestly, because of that bottlenecking, it felt like a waste of money on both the card and a PSU upgrade
Thank you, Mr. Killjoy. However, I think you're exaggerating the crappiness of Athlon XP. It doesn't perform well in benchmarks because these are optimized towards Intel's inventions. That being said, Fallout 3 and The Witcher are examples of games which aren't optimized for SSE2 extensions, and the older engines these games were based on didn't really support dual core.
All I currently need is a chance to finally play PCSX with OpenGL2 and some older games up to 2007. Anything newer than that is mostly an insult to my intelligence. Oblivion and Skyrims and the likes. Fallout 3 is an exception here because of nostalgia. And The Witcher because of that tiny surge of support I felt for Polish game developer and their stand on DRM (GOG.com).
ePSXe ran pretty fine, PCSX2 ran Disgaea and that's it (but that was CPU related obviously). Not all newer games are stupid, but yeah, I know what you mean here...
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