PCI vs AGP on an old p3 computer

[kylep]

More of an observation than a question,

My kid has been playing some simple games and had a frame rate of 59/60 or so, sometimes worse, but no big deal. We are running on a p3 1ghz win2k junk box with a very old agp rage128 (xpert 2000pro 32M) (pre-radeon).

So i came across a generation or two newer GPU, an ati radeon 9100 64M but it is PCI based. I changed it out, and the frame rate drops 20 fps, to about 40/60 with the better GPU card!

From what i read here, as most video processing is done by the cpu and not entirely on the gpu end, it seems that the bus speed here between apg and pci is doing the FPS throttling.

I hesitate to put back in the older AGP card, because it contradicts what i've learned (faster GPU = better), The rule seems to be the faster bus speed on the lower end system wins (AGP > PCI).

The oddity is that some of her web games the apparent increase in quality is apparent on the newer pci card, although zsnes is slower.

cheers!

[sweener2001]

just get a better agp card. some kind of old radeon would be best. something in the 9xxx series. the slower interface kind of holds the other card back. shouldn't set you back so far. or spend about 500$ and get all new guts for your computer. a cheap core 2, 1 GB of RAM, motherboard, and a low end video card would only set back a couple hundred, and it would run a lot better.

[whicker]

sometimes it's a driver issue.

but in this case, it's because the 9100 is just that terrible of a card:
random quote (fine, it's from X-bit labs circa 2003):

So, ATI faced two problems: how to increase RADEON 9000 sales and (more important!) how to clear up their warehouses from RADEON 8500 based cards. You understand that it would be not right to sell the latter at a higher price than the former: this would be an evident inconsistency in the markings. But if they lower the price, RADEON 9000 won’t sell at all: the whole world knows it’s slower than 8500. So, marketing failures bring ATI to money losses.

But they are not green in the business…Their marketing men sat together and found a simple solution. It reads: re-mark RADEON 8500 into 9100 and sell it under this new name. The number corresponds to the speed characteristics of the chip, so there is a chance to pass out the old stock. Moreover, the chip yield of RADEON 8500 is very high (they have polished the tech process at last!), so it makes sense to continue producing these chips (although under a new name).

And so, we have got RADEON 9100, which is nothing else but RADEON 8500LE (moreover, it’s not even the fully-fledged GPU clocked at 275MHz, but a lower-frequency variant).

even more hillarious, there's probably some PCI<->AGP translator tacked on, intended for onboard video for motherboards. The designer of the board was probably like, wtf? why are you making me do this? It's going to send it into Nvidia Riva TNT2 M64 territory!

[snkcube]

Crap, I'm sadly using a Radeon 9100 right now. Maybe I should do a quick (and very cheap) upgrade soon.

[Silver Fox 9mm]

it seems odd I had A 500mhz dell with an old ati rage pro apg 2x it how ever was intergrated in the motherboard I ran zsnes fine in 640 by 480

then I upgraded to A Nvidia Geforce fx 5500 pci 256mb and I was able to use the HQ filter

it may be your settings im saying this because we had a similar gpu upgrade

[Fox the Sly]

it seems odd I had A 500mhz dell with an old ati rage pro apg 2x it how ever was intergrated in the motherboard I ran zsnes fine in 640 by 480

then I upgraded to A Nvidia Geforce fx 5500 pci 256mb and I was able to use the HQ filter

it may be your settings im saying this because we had a similar gpu upgrade

That's similar to my laptop (450Mhz, 4MB ATI Rage Pro). Unfortunately mine would overheat like crazy before I could do much of anything lol

[meowface]

sometimes it's a driver issue.

but in this case, it's because the 9100 is just that terrible of a card:
random quote (fine, it's from X-bit labs circa 2003):

So, ATI faced two problems: how to increase RADEON 9000 sales and (more important!) how to clear up their warehouses from RADEON 8500 based cards. You understand that it would be not right to sell the latter at a higher price than the former: this would be an evident inconsistency in the markings. But if they lower the price, RADEON 9000 won’t sell at all: the whole world knows it’s slower than 8500. So, marketing failures bring ATI to money losses.

But they are not green in the business…Their marketing men sat together and found a simple solution. It reads: re-mark RADEON 8500 into 9100 and sell it under this new name. The number corresponds to the speed characteristics of the chip, so there is a chance to pass out the old stock. Moreover, the chip yield of RADEON 8500 is very high (they have polished the tech process at last!), so it makes sense to continue producing these chips (although under a new name).

And so, we have got RADEON 9100, which is nothing else but RADEON 8500LE (moreover, it’s not even the fully-fledged GPU clocked at 275MHz, but a lower-frequency variant).

even more hillarious, there's probably some PCI<->AGP translator tacked on, intended for onboard video for motherboards. The designer of the board was probably like, wtf? why are you making me do this? It's going to send it into Nvidia Riva TNT2 M64 territory!

Sorry, but this post irks me.. had to register just to reply to this.
The 9100 is exactly the same as the GeForce3 asskicker, the 8500, except that core and RAM are clocked 25mhz slower (nothing a quick overclock with rivatuner couldn't fix). That is all. Nothing else was changed, although I wish they upgraded the core so that you could apply trilinear filtering :<

The 9100 was a great midrange/budget card for its time, dominating the GeForce4 MX and the variants. It was a nice holdover card until I got my 9700 pro and then my friend inherited the 9100 to play WoW on when it came out

[whicker]

fine, meowface, but was your 9100 PCI-based?

[I.S.T.]

sometimes it's a driver issue.

but in this case, it's because the 9100 is just that terrible of a card:
random quote (fine, it's from X-bit labs circa 2003):

So, ATI faced two problems: how to increase RADEON 9000 sales and (more important!) how to clear up their warehouses from RADEON 8500 based cards. You understand that it would be not right to sell the latter at a higher price than the former: this would be an evident inconsistency in the markings. But if they lower the price, RADEON 9000 won’t sell at all: the whole world knows it’s slower than 8500. So, marketing failures bring ATI to money losses.

But they are not green in the business…Their marketing men sat together and found a simple solution. It reads: re-mark RADEON 8500 into 9100 and sell it under this new name. The number corresponds to the speed characteristics of the chip, so there is a chance to pass out the old stock. Moreover, the chip yield of RADEON 8500 is very high (they have polished the tech process at last!), so it makes sense to continue producing these chips (although under a new name).

And so, we have got RADEON 9100, which is nothing else but RADEON 8500LE (moreover, it’s not even the fully-fledged GPU clocked at 275MHz, but a lower-frequency variant).

even more hillarious, there's probably some PCI<->AGP translator tacked on, intended for onboard video for motherboards. The designer of the board was probably like, wtf? why are you making me do this? It's going to send it into Nvidia Riva TNT2 M64 territory!

Sorry, but this post irks me.. had to register just to reply to this.
The 9100 is exactly the same as the GeForce3 asskicker, the 8500, except that core and RAM are clocked 25mhz slower (nothing a quick overclock with rivatuner couldn't fix). That is all. Nothing else was changed, although I wish they upgraded the core so that you could apply trilinear filtering :<

The 9100 was a great midrange/budget card for its time, dominating the GeForce4 MX and the variants. It was a nice holdover card until I got my 9700 pro and then my friend inherited the 9100 to play WoW on when it came out

The 8500 can apply trilinear filtering(Can't while using AF.). o_O they changed that for the 9100?

[meowface]

sometimes it's a driver issue.

but in this case, it's because the 9100 is just that terrible of a card:
random quote (fine, it's from X-bit labs circa 2003):

So, ATI faced two problems: how to increase RADEON 9000 sales and (more important!) how to clear up their warehouses from RADEON 8500 based cards. You understand that it would be not right to sell the latter at a higher price than the former: this would be an evident inconsistency in the markings. But if they lower the price, RADEON 9000 won’t sell at all: the whole world knows it’s slower than 8500. So, marketing failures bring ATI to money losses.

But they are not green in the business…Their marketing men sat together and found a simple solution. It reads: re-mark RADEON 8500 into 9100 and sell it under this new name. The number corresponds to the speed characteristics of the chip, so there is a chance to pass out the old stock. Moreover, the chip yield of RADEON 8500 is very high (they have polished the tech process at last!), so it makes sense to continue producing these chips (although under a new name).

And so, we have got RADEON 9100, which is nothing else but RADEON 8500LE (moreover, it’s not even the fully-fledged GPU clocked at 275MHz, but a lower-frequency variant).

even more hillarious, there's probably some PCI<->AGP translator tacked on, intended for onboard video for motherboards. The designer of the board was probably like, wtf? why are you making me do this? It's going to send it into Nvidia Riva TNT2 M64 territory!

Sorry, but this post irks me.. had to register just to reply to this.
The 9100 is exactly the same as the GeForce3 asskicker, the 8500, except that core and RAM are clocked 25mhz slower (nothing a quick overclock with rivatuner couldn't fix). That is all. Nothing else was changed, although I wish they upgraded the core so that you could apply trilinear filtering :<

The 9100 was a great midrange/budget card for its time, dominating the GeForce4 MX and the variants. It was a nice holdover card until I got my 9700 pro and then my friend inherited the 9100 to play WoW on when it came out

The 8500 can apply trilinear filtering(Can't while using AF.). o_O they changed that for the 9100?

That's what I meant, whoops

[kick]

The 9100 (standard AGP4x card with a 128-bit bus) was one of the the cards with the best price-performance ratio at the time.It was unbelievably powerful for such a low price (the only better deal being a 9500pro modded to 9700pro)

Most people bought the 128MB version not knowing the 64MB version was faster,but much cheaper,LOL. For less than 70$ you got a card with with VIVO capabilities with the power to kill GeForce3 Ti200,Radeon 9250,9200,9000 Pro,GeForce 4 MX and other similar budget/midrange cards.

What's even more interesting is it even beat a 9600Pro by a solid margin (a DX9 card) in DX8.1 games

Together with the 8500 and 8500LE these are the cards with the best support under Linux,I still use an 8500LE just for Linux.It just works,the opensource drivers are rock-solid,unlike any other ATI card released recently

And fully trilinear aniso filtering does work with this card You just have to use ATI Tray Tools and then "force trilinear" option.

P.S. I think this post should get moved to the 'Tech Talk' forum

[kick]

The crappy AGP-to-PCI converter (not the PCI bus),your slow Pentium 3 CPU and the bad choice of drivers kills the performance of your R9100.

What version of the Catalyst drivers do you use for this card? The newest version of the driver performs very badly for this card.I recommend sticking to an older version for best performance. Catalyst 4.12 seems stable and pretty fast.I don't know if this is really the fastest driver for this card,but it's a lot faster than the 5.x or 6.x series.

For getting the most out of this card,you need a more powerful P4 CPU of at least 1.6GHz or an 1-3~1.4GHz Athlon Thunderbird.

[Gil_Hamilton]

Dude, the thread's from FEBRUARY. He's a 1-post wonder. He's gone.

I have doubts he ever saw most of the replies on this thread.

[kick]

I know it's old,but since the forum has a search function,someone may still find this thread useful