just got my 9800 pro any tips?

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paintballpro98

Gawd
Joined
Jan 20, 2002
Messages
544
my 128mb 9800 pro just came in!!11 i reformatted installed the latest drivers from ati's web-site. Played battlefield at 1152x864 in a 32 player guadal canal with 8x aa and 4x af and it went smooth, but a 50 player wake with no aa or af dropped into the 30 fps range at times which isn't too bad but i expected better (i know i have at least a few bottlenecks)
3dmark 2001 i got 12827 which is about 3000 points higher than my old card.

my questions do these numbers look about right?
any drivers or tools that will give me a big performance gain?
does my card overclock well with stock cooling?(cheapest 9800pro on newegg)
and finally
what is my biggest bottleneck

system's in my sig
and thanks for any help
 
I would also like to know the bottlenecks, as my system is very similar to yours, and I'm wondering what to upgrade next.
 
the only overclock you're going to be doing is probably a Multiplier bump... that RAM is also a bottle neck, you wont have very good throughput at 133fsb (266). I'd get some faster ram, and then bump the multiplier down (if necessary) and bump UP the FSB. It'll give you a little more memory bandwidth, and you can probably get those clock speeds way up there if that's a Tbred-b
 
Originally posted by paintballpro98
not really sure of the core i got it in august 2002 though
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It's most likely a Palomino core - which doesn't overclock worth crap. Tbred-core Athlon XP's have just begun shipping in new systems around that time.
 
would some pc3200 ram give me a very noticeable performance boost or am i going to have to upgrade proc and ram to get a gain
 
i get 17k in 3dmark01 with my non-pro, make sure you turn off all AA and AF when testing


i am running a 3.4ghz P4 though so that could be why im so high
 
CPU and RAM are your bottlenecks now.

Overclocking greatly varies with card, brand and luck, some won't go above 400 no matter what cooling, some will go to 480. Some need extra cooling, some coudln't care if you water cooled it. 9800pro OC range greatly differs.

Use cat 3.10's for now, the 4.1's aint' really what there cracked up to be.

You can try to bump up that 2100+ but you won't get far, even if its Tbred. It really depends on your mobo and if your power supply is up to snuff. Also your RAM is your big determing factor of OC potential. With just 266DDR in there, don't expect a big difference either way.
 
If you can get that FSB up you should notice a significat increase. You may not need to worry about your ram (Depending on how old it is.) I had some very ccrappy PC2100 that would run 180 @ 2-2-2-5. If your ram is recent, you may have luck with it. I used to run a Duron 1.2 (Default 100FSB) at 172 FSB and the diffrence was huge even though the total mhz were about the same(7*172=1204). I picked up about a third in 3DMark2k1 with that and an overclock on my GF3.

e_t
 
your ram and ur cpu are huge bottlenecks IMO, overclock that sucker and get something faster than crap pc2100
 
If you can get that FSB up you should notice a significat increase. You may not need to worry about your ram (Depending on how old it is.) I had some very ccrappy PC2100 that would run 180 @ 2-2-2-5. If your ram is recent, you may have luck with it. I used to run a Duron 1.2 (Default 100FSB) at 172 FSB and the diffrence was huge even though the total mhz were about the same(7*172=1204). I picked up about a third in 3DMark2k1 with that and an overclock on my GF3.
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This is all dependet on what mobo he has, which he hasn't stated. My 2100+ didn't overclock worth dick, even with an ASUS board.
 
Originally posted by Icewindius
This is all dependet on what mobo he has, which he hasn't stated. My 2100+ didn't overclock worth dick, even with an ASUS board.
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i have an epox 8rda+ mobo, will faster ram make any difference or is it just the processor that i should be mainly concerned with.
 
faster ram wont really help unless you raise the fsb also. your best bet for increased speed would be picking up 512 cheap ddr 400 memory and a 1700+ or 1800+, make sure they are b revisions, and overclock to 400 fsb without changing multiplyer, both chips should easily hit that. you will see a huge increase from that
 
Originally posted by paintballpro98
i have an epox 8rda+ mobo, will faster ram make any difference or is it just the processor that i should be mainly concerned with.
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I'd say that your motherboard, based on the nForce2 chipset, is a solid foundation. It's your processor and memory that's holding your performance back. And since your Pally 2100+ cannot overclock for crap anyway, your best bet is to upgrade to a Barton 2500+ and some relatively cheap PC3200/DDR400 "value" RAM from a name brand.
 
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