VOGONS


First post, by atomic_squirrel

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I have a Biostar M6VLB motherboard with a VIA PLE133 chipset.

For 3D gaming, it performs horribly, even when the same CPU/GPU combination works flawlessly on another board.

CPU is a Pentium III 933.
GPU is GeForce 6200.
512mb RAM.
64GB CompactFlash.

I've tried both onboard graphics (max allocation 8MB) and the discrete GPU.

With the Biostar board, any 3D title will stutter horrendously, frame rates are low and pop-ins everywhere.
Switch to my ECS board with the exact same GPU and CPU, and it will fly. Doesn't matter if it's Quake 3, SWAT or Deus Ex. They are all abysmal on my Biostar board. I tried both Windows ME and 98SE, same results.

All chipset and device drivers are installed and detected properly. Could somebody point me towards BIOS settings I might have overlooked? Everything seems in order, CPU is running at stock frequency and the GPU is the primary output. I've tried different drivers, even a different CPU and RAM.

I'm starting to wonder if it's a limitation of the board itself?!

THANK YOU!

Reply 4 of 4, by zyga64

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Via memory enabler is indeed good solution, but it may not be necessary if there is "Memory Interleave" option in the BIOS.
Usually '4 way' is the fastest setting. You can compare results with SiSoft Sandra memory test (I'm using version 99 but 2001 is also good) .

Also - do some synthetic benchmarks on both boards (fast and slow one), and you will (probably) find cause of your problems 😀

1) VLSI SCAMP /286@20 /4M /CL-GD5422 /CMI8330
2) i420EX /486DX33 /16M /TGUI9440 /GUS+ALS100+MT32PI
3) i430FX /K6-2@400 /64M /Rage Pro PCI /ES1370+YMF718
4) i440BX /P!!!750 /256M /MX440 /SBLive!
5) iB75 /3470s /4G /HD7750 /HDA