P4P800-E delux +radeon 9800Pro visual artefacts and performance.

  • Thread starter Thread starter James Bald
  • Start date Start date
J

James Bald

Just noticed the scariest thing while using the latest ATI drivers on their site
under Win98se. Slight overclocking [+10%] of the CPU seemed to be stable,
but when I noticed this I stopped and reverted to the ATI drivers provided on CD.
detail / 1Gig Kingston Value ram: Cas3 / ANTEC 480Watts.

All was fine for a dozen hours in and out. Then the image quality started showing
slight horizontal artefacts, weaving like intensity. Then it got worse and worse.
I had to act, so despite ASUS probe showing normal temperatures;
I opened the case, and reverted to no cpu overclocking at all.
Even uninstalled latest ATI drivers and Catalyst, to be replaced by the originals ASAP.
Every artefacts stopped and the quality is now back to excellent.
I ran an old 3DMark2000 1.1 bench, and it gave me even better
results than under 10% overclock.. Say a jump from 16 hundred some to above
17 hundreds.. And consistantly over 17 hundreds now.
Therefore, 10% CPU overclocking using AI overclock can be quite deceiving.
Or are the older ATI drivers that much preferable ?

I closes the computer case to determine if the Radeon card temperature is
responsible or borderline. And for some reasons, I fell asleep like a baby.
Waking-up only fours hour later to observe that the natural light demo was
still spinning in perfect pace, no visual artefacts at all...

My logical conclusion would be that, since it works clean at default CPU settings,
and even slightly better 3D with this default installation than a slight AI overclock and
latest GFX rivers. Why bother ?.. Even the performance difference I measured using
these demos and benchmarks reveal virtually no difference between AGP 4x and AGP 8x.

IMHO The obvious evil side effects even to slight overlcocking GFX/CPU setup
insidiously grew worse with time. Must be temperature taking its toll on the Gfx card.

BEWARE if you seek this little extra in a similat setup.
Unless you apply extra hardware cooling strategie$$ of course; It's hard to notice from
the ASUS probe alone.

You should have seen the ATI slow visual deterioration on the monitor.
the image was slowly melting away.
Correct me if I'm wrong.

My two cents.
Cheers.
 
"James Bald" said:
Just noticed the scariest thing while using the latest ATI drivers on their site
under Win98se. Slight overclocking [+10%] of the CPU seemed to be stable,
but when I noticed this I stopped and reverted to the ATI drivers provided on CD.
detail / 1Gig Kingston Value ram: Cas3 / ANTEC 480Watts.

All was fine for a dozen hours in and out. Then the image quality started showing
slight horizontal artefacts, weaving like intensity. Then it got worse and worse.
I had to act, so despite ASUS probe showing normal temperatures;
I opened the case, and reverted to no cpu overclocking at all.
Even uninstalled latest ATI drivers and Catalyst, to be replaced by the originals ASAP.
Every artefacts stopped and the quality is now back to excellent.
I ran an old 3DMark2000 1.1 bench, and it gave me even better
results than under 10% overclock.. Say a jump from 16 hundred some to above
17 hundreds.. And consistantly over 17 hundreds now.
Therefore, 10% CPU overclocking using AI overclock can be quite deceiving.
Or are the older ATI drivers that much preferable ?

I closes the computer case to determine if the Radeon card temperature is
responsible or borderline. And for some reasons, I fell asleep like a baby.
Waking-up only fours hour later to observe that the natural light demo was
still spinning in perfect pace, no visual artefacts at all...

My logical conclusion would be that, since it works clean at default CPU settings,
and even slightly better 3D with this default installation than a slight AI overclock and
latest GFX rivers. Why bother ?.. Even the performance difference I measured using
these demos and benchmarks reveal virtually no difference between AGP 4x and AGP 8x.

IMHO The obvious evil side effects even to slight overlcocking GFX/CPU setup
insidiously grew worse with time. Must be temperature taking its toll on the Gfx card.

BEWARE if you seek this little extra in a similat setup.
Unless you apply extra hardware cooling strategie$$ of course; It's hard to notice from
the ASUS probe alone.

You should have seen the ATI slow visual deterioration on the monitor.
the image was slowly melting away.
Correct me if I'm wrong.

My two cents.
Cheers.
Click to expand...

Try a search on abxzone.com for the two terms artifact and P4P800.
You'll find threads like this, which notes overclocking at 1:1
FSB:MEM can cause artifacts on the video card:

http://abxzone.com/forums/search.php
http://abxzone.com/forums/showthread.php?t=62275&highlight=artifact+p4p800

This is thought to be related to the choice of Northbridge, and
the fact that Intel bins them for performance.

You can try 5:4 ratio, by selecting "DDR333" for the memory. Then
see if your artifacts disappear.

Also, for the ATI9800, feel the two inductors near the top center of the
card. On mine, these get quite hot while 3D code is running. I
currently have an 80mm fan blowing on the card, to try to keep them
cool. As I don't know what kind of core these have, I'm keeping them
cool for now.

HTH,
Paul
 
Paul wrote in message ...
(.......SNIPPED for clarity and space...)
Try a search on abxzone.com for the two terms artifact and P4P800.
You'll find threads like this, which notes overclocking at 1:1
FSB:MEM can cause artifacts on the video card:

http://abxzone.com/forums/search.php
http://abxzone.com/forums/showthread.php?t=62275&highlight=artifact+p4p800

This is thought to be related to the choice of Northbridge, and
the fact that Intel bins them for performance.

You can try 5:4 ratio, by selecting "DDR333" for the memory. Then
see if your artifacts disappear.

Also, for the ATI9800, feel the two inductors near the top center of the
card. On mine, these get quite hot while 3D code is running. I
currently have an 80mm fan blowing on the card, to try to keep them
cool. As I don't know what kind of core these have, I'm keeping them
cool for now.

HTH,
Paul
Click to expand...

I will do more tests.. I just went into panic mode afer seeing that.
I'm testing this new system using an older monitor (non PnP), Proview 17''
I also was tempted to run it outside the specs a little... I did not mention everything
about this recent experiment... At the time I I saw these ugly artefacts, There was
also some sort or vertical fuzzy line slowly dancing down like a snake about 2/3
of the monitor, thin as a thoothpick... This was IT.. I had to do something even if
ASUS probe reported acceptable temperatures.. Thinking of dropping the
resolution to 1024x768 for a quick fix; Display properties was AFU; Leaving me
with only two weird resolution available...

Now after better sleep, I'm starting to put 1 and 1 together..
Could it be that after a "clumzy" restart, the PnP monitor`settings went into
this ludicrous resolution, therefore being the main cause of the artefacts..
I certainly had not noticed these during the previous hours, and in my rush
to 'Save the Holy ASUS system', I used every means at once.
Power Down, Open casing, Drop the overclock and uninstall new drivers to
get older safe I thought..... One thing remains.. Quick'n dirty Performance tests
still indicate a marginal deterioration in speed for 'common' 3D apps in this
setup.

Everything is too fresh and I'm just too eager to tweak from a long freaking
history of getting the most out of the can. 8D

I do not rule any possibilities.
Including a ghost in the machine.

I will certainly read these links and try some more manual settings later.

As for the ATI card itself, even during my panic episode, I had the clarity
of mind to manually feel the HS on the 9800chipset... It was not even hot ????
Remember the inductors you mentionned being burning hot..
The two black inductor cores on my Radeon after the 4hours running of
Real Light demo were still hot, but comfortable to a skilled finger :p

In the following hours I plan on resolving the sound issues, reinstalling the OS.
I have broken some things, toying too much back and forth with drivers.

Meanwhile, for your tests.. Check this Link for a wild DirectX9 demo collection.
http://www.daionet.gr.jp/~masa/rthdribl/index.html#System
And I look forward to seeing HER vertex for sure..>8*p~
http://www.smokeypoint.com/tomb.htm

The 80mm fan should help.. But I've been there pal... At some point you end-up
with just so many propellers inside that it sounds like a Boing.

I know this detail might interest you:
Display properties, advanced, adaptor:
My card DVI/TV is listed as "Chipset: Radeon 9800 Pro (NH) rev 0.

Fastgart has 8x AGP enabled and confirmed by probe.
Fastwrite is OFF and seems to be stuck there.

I now have and will continue to disable auto detect PnP monitor with old 17"
And indeed, AGP texture acceleration is DISABLED from dxdiag report.
I'm not worried about fixing that later as you and others led the way.

Regards
Back to more late integration fun..
BTW,,, I know why ASUS has not spotted you from head hunters.
The big tech heads are all TAIWAN based.. Do ASUS support read this forum ?
Anyhow !.. Take care.....Don't get stuck in that 80mm sucker. ;0
 
I'm back ! :)
With a good explanation that should conclude this thread and reassure
those who think about a P4P800-E delux as their next upgrade solution.

Everything came down to two things.
The OLD Proview monitor was the cause of all this messy display,
Nothing to do with overclocking, nor heating of the Radeon9800Pro.
That is consistent with my post stating temperatures seemed normal.
And even the radeon felt barely warm.

What happened is the ProView monitor is not PnP compliant, yet
I was driving it out of specs at1280x960. At that resolution, it can hold
for a few minutes but eventually artefacts start to appear. I noticed this
upon swapping the monitor to my old machine and setting such high resolution.
Same happened but this time on a trusty old TnT2Ultra.
The vertical fuzzy shaking is also a ProView problem I thought fixed,
a defective contact inside, end of story.

Another thing is Radeon9800's 'smarter' monitor detection software.
When the monitor is internally failing, the Radeon card might end-up
limiting resolutions from display properties a lot.

All the Horz weavy display, is due to my running it too fast...Causing the ProView
electronics to overheat and risking its death. The Vertical snake like dancing line,
appears while the horizontal retrace is getting a sync pulse, while the monitor is
not fast enough to be already at left position.... So it shows as a dim pale line..
In a way, I just saved the monitor...The computer was A1-Okay all the time.

The fact that I was undergoing CPU overclocking tests is then irrelevent.
Except that the conclusion about performances might remain true, 2 cents well spend.
Using AI overclock of 10%; Running a 2.8C at 3Ghz did affect RAM performances,
and/or AGP video access in a way that reduced overall 3D performances.
AI overclock 'might' get better results with faster ram; Not my CAS3 PC3200.

At this time, I skipped every problem by installing Win2K on what I used to think
was Win98SE but really was a golden Win98.

I shall post soon about the single one issue left, regarding ATAPI CDROM
acces affecting the onboard sound chipset performance.

I strongly recomment my current Hardware configuration.
Make no mistake.. That VALUE Kingston KVR Cas3, 512MB*2 is giving
me slightly better performances than a P4 2.8B using CL2 PC1066 RDRAM,
on a i850E chipset.
I'm not overclocking anything right now...Been burning-in this baby like phoenix.

The image quality on my NEC monitor is bliss with a 9800 with such a fillrate.
Upon installing the ATI power demos, SANDRA also confirms that it's been
finally set at AGP8x, FastWrite ON.

Now I understand why so many switch to XP or NT based later OS, from the
ease of installation.
This motherboard is the best thing since the BX440 chipset :)
Regards

James Bald wrote in message ...
Just noticed the scariest thing while using the latest ATI drivers on their site
under Win98se. Slight overclocking [+10%] of the CPU seemed to be stable,
but when I noticed this I stopped and reverted to the ATI drivers provided on CD.
detail / 1Gig Kingston Value ram: Cas3 / ANTEC 480Watts.

All was fine for a dozen hours in and out. Then the image quality started showing
slight horizontal artefacts, weaving like intensity. Then it got worse and worse.
I had to act, so despite ASUS probe showing normal temperatures;
I opened the case, and reverted to no cpu overclocking at all.
Even uninstalled latest ATI drivers and Catalyst, to be replaced by the originals ASAP.
Every artefacts stopped and the quality is now back to excellent.
I ran an old 3DMark2000 1.1 bench, and it gave me even better
results than under 10% overclock.. Say a jump from 16 hundred some to above
17 hundreds.. And consistantly over 17 hundreds now.
Therefore, 10% CPU overclocking using AI overclock can be quite deceiving.
Or are the older ATI drivers that much preferable ?

I closes the computer case to determine if the Radeon card temperature is
responsible or borderline. And for some reasons, I fell asleep like a baby.
Waking-up only fours hour later to observe that the natural light demo was
still spinning in perfect pace, no visual artefacts at all...

My logical conclusion would be that, since it works clean at default CPU settings,
and even slightly better 3D with this default installation than a slight AI overclock and
latest GFX rivers. Why bother ?.. Even the performance difference I measured using
these demos and benchmarks reveal virtually no difference between AGP 4x and AGP 8x.

IMHO The obvious evil side effects even to slight overlcocking GFX/CPU setup
insidiously grew worse with time. Must be temperature taking its toll on the Gfx card.

BEWARE if you seek this little extra in a similat setup.
Unless you apply extra hardware cooling strategie$$ of course; It's hard to notice from
the ASUS probe alone.

You should have seen the ATI slow visual deterioration on the monitor.
the image was slowly melting away.
Correct me if I'm wrong.

My two cents.
Cheers.
Click to expand...
 
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