Ati cards and AGP FASTWRITES!

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Mikey20

Gawd
Joined
Aug 21, 2003
Messages
762
Whats the deal with the agp fastwrites is it better turned ON or OFF? Whats your experience with this setting?
 
Are you guys just screwing around?

As far as I know, it's better to have them on. As I understand it, fast writes are like a direct command to the video card, kind of how DMA is a direct disk to disk transfer. It avoids some of the system bottlenecks, and is therefore faster.
 
ok.. Im running an AIW 9600 Pro, and my fast writes were set 'on' by default (along with AGP 8x) in the SMARTGART tab when I installed it.

Why is it better to turn that off, and whats are it's effects on OR off?
 
It´s better to run off on nforce 2 mainboards since most often you get stability problems. In fact many ATI cards actually run faster with fast write off especially on nforce 2 mainboards which goes against old knowledge.

Just try it for yourself. If you are stable and get a performance increase with it enabled there is no reason on earth you should disable it.

However if you got trouble with your video card fast write is the first you should disable.
 
Glad you finally got an answer there. These guys are a PITA aren't they? :rolleyes:

Search probably would have turned up the answer, but wait, there is no search.

I always google whatever I'm looking for before I ask. To avoid those kinds of answers and because its faster.
 
yeah search has not been working for a while:( and for those of you who actually answered me thanks! sheeeeesh i can't just ask any question on these boards because the "leet" get mad :rolleyes: there is no more sense of community that this board once had :mad:
 
What is the deal with the search function? Is it a hardware issue? Sheesh I bet the community could chip in for upgraded hardware to fix that problem. So what's the deal? Anyone know?
 
considering how fastwrites really dont effect real word performance and considering it can cause problems, i dont see any reason to leave fastwrites on. GG
 
Originally posted by Nexx
considering how fastwrites really dont effect real word performance and considering it can cause problems, i dont see any reason to leave fastwrites on. GG
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Well because in real world performance it can give you a speed boost. As long as you don´t get stability issues :)
 
COD would not run on my pc for more than a few minutes with my 9800se AIW unless they were turned off
 
I benched 3dm2001 and 2003 and got no diff with on or off :\ i did the test with a 9700pro abit nf7-s, as far as i can tell i think agp fast writes only helps when you use the agp memory for textures?
 
I think on some mainboards even if you enable fast writes in reality it still isn´t enabled.

Have you run smart GART. Not that I believe much in it but when I turn smartwrite off it often says it´s on and vice versa.
 
I have a 9700 Pro and an A7N8X. I can run w/ fastwrites on without issue and it's 100% stable. However, like some others have said, I am actually faster with them off.

Just try it and see.
 
Yes i use smartgart and no it doesn't say that its off when i turned it on. I fixed that problems simply buy installing the latest motherboard drivers. I have tryed with and without fastwrites and i see absolutely no difference. My motherboard does support 8X agp and fastwrites by the way. But just as a saftey measure i have agp fastwrites to OFF. Eventhough i had 0 problems with stability in the past with it ON.
 
on my 865p i get:
fastwrites on: 17100
fastwrites off: 17300

so not much of a big deal really.

btw that 3dM2k1
 
Well, for best stability, set FastWrites to Off if you're using a non-Intel-chipset based motherboard. The FastWrites feature only works correctly on Intel-processor-based systems that run on Intel core-logic chipsets (e.g. a P4 system running on an i875P chipset).
 
usually if you having 3d app related instability issues, the first thing somebody will tell you is to turn fastwrites off ...but for the most part (as already suggested here) ..test them for yourself and see what works better for yuh
 
My system actually perfers fast writes ON. I gain 100 points on 3Dmark2001SE (no biggie), but more importantly, I have no artifacts when I run the benchmark. With the fast write off, I get artifacts at the same core and memory clock.
 
Originally posted by TFR
My system actually perfers fast writes ON. I gain 100 points on 3Dmark2001SE (no biggie), but more importantly, I have no artifacts when I run the benchmark. With the fast write off, I get artifacts at the same core and memory clock.
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Yes that is the normal case. Fast write on increase performance.
 
i actually had stability problems with fastwrite off, unreal tounament wouldnt play with them off. dont know about performance difference, havnt tried
 
Even with them on, the performance gains are almost negligable from what i've seen. I leave mine off.

I'll take stability over speed for $100 Alex...
 
Actually, I gave somewhat misleading info about the effect of FastWrites on ATI cards' stability. That info that I gave previously dated back to the early days of 4X AGP and the infamous Via Apollo 133A versus the Intel Caminogate (i820) chipset for Pentium III processors. On that Via chipset, NVIDIA's cards of that era only ran stable at up to AGP 2X even though the Via chipset supported AGP 4X on paper. And when the system defaulted to AGP 2X, FastWrites were automatically disabled - and often with no way whatsoever of re-enabling it.

Today, some Via and SiS chipsets still have problems with FastWrites enabled - in fact, with my two previous Via-chipset-based AMD Athlon XP-based systems, the 3DMark scores actually dropped by several hundred points with FastWrites enabled. With my current nForce2 Ultra 400-chipset-based system, enabling FastWrites had no effect whatsoever on the 3DMark scores.
 
on the 2.8ghz system in my sig, i noticed no stability issues (but never tested performance differences) so I just leave fast writes on.
 
Originally posted by emorphien
on the 2.8ghz system in my sig, i noticed no stability issues (but never tested performance differences) so I just leave fast writes on.
Click to expand...
same here - with IC7-G and with P4C800d... i guess i need to bench it, but... - don't fix it if it ain't broke! :D
 
Yeah me too i never benchmarked but also never had any stability problems with fastwrites On but just for saftey i leave it off
 
i leave it on with ic7g and 9800np...works fine dnt know if its quicker/slower tho
 
I got a better score by 154 pts in 3dmark2001. I also get tearing in the screen at anything above 300 (600mhz) mem clock with Fastwrites on. Only with the Bump Mapping test. With the alien guy sitting in the chair.

So its off now, will be playing some CS tonight and some other stuff to test.
 
Mikey, note the mobo in my sig. It has a VIA chipset and fastwrites don't bother it one bit. It just goes to show that you need to experiment, as others have suggested, cause no computer is or acts exactly the same. I agree that fastwrite on will yield marginally better scores--IF you get positive results from having fastwrite on. If you're after better benchmark scores, you would probably do better from overclocking your memory then messing with fastwrite.
 
Originally posted by Mikey20
i can't just ask any question on these boards because the "leet" get mad :rolleyes: there is no more sense of community that this board once had :mad:
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yes, we the members of the 1337 group look down on all members registered since jan 1 2003, and with a post count uner 2000.

if you don not meet these minimum requirements, we are required (in teh 1337 oath) to irritate, annoy, bother, and ridicule you.

on a side note (and coming dangerously close to breaking my oath i may add), i know what you mean about the old sense of community... that seemed to leave oh, about 19 months ago...

there are still places that the old ways live on you know....

:D
 
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