feipoa wrote:

After installing the ATI X550 EZ PCI-E card into the Opteron 180 system, the 2D Video playback went from 24.9 fps (HD4350 AGP) to 43.6 fps (X550 PCI-E). Recall it was 31.9 fps on the i915-Prescott 3GHz system w/X550. 2D Graphics memory went from 522 fps (HD4350 AGP) to 292 fps (X550). Recall that it was 219 fps on the i915-Prescott 3GHz system w/X550.

I'm not sure what conclusions can be drawn from this information except that the Opteron 180 system is a good deal faster than i915/i875 systems w/Prescott 3 GHz. Perhaps that 2D Video playback on the HD4350 isn't very good? Is this the benchmark which is responsible for viewing FLASH and HTML5 content in web browsers? If so, should I change the graphics card? To what? Ideally, I'd like to stick with AGP graphics to leave the PCI-E slot open for future, non-graphics, expansion cards.

I knew that Opty could do better! 😀

It's probably the AGP bridge on the HD4350 that's tanking your scores. The 4350 GPU itself should be faster than the X550 at 2D Video playback, but the AGP versions of the HD2000-4000 series are known to be quite buggy as far as graphics cards go.

Had one meself a few years ago--HD3850 AGP--and never really liked it because of the unpredictable performance. The AGP x1950, despite also having a bridge chip, was a better card because it was officially sanctioned by ATI. The HD2000-4000 on the other hand were all up to 3rd party board makers.

If you prefer AGP, then the Radeon x1000 series would be the newest cards I'd recommend from ATI. For nVidia, well that depends. You say the board is based on a ULI chipset. IIRC, some boards with ULI chipsets simply used ULI as a southbridge, and used ATI or VIA for PCIe/AGP control. How's your board set up?
Some VIA AGP controllers had issues with bridged nVidia cards like the 6600GT. If your AGP control is provided by ULI or ATI, then you should be fine with everything right up to the GeForce 7000 series.

Honestly though, I think a PCIe graphics board would be the highest performing and most trouble-free solution by far. If you want fully hardware accelerated 264 decoding, then PCIe is your only practical choice. Although, an Opteron 180 will be able to handle 1080p 264 decoding all by itself, just at much higher power levels.

x1950 or GF 7000 series for AGP - OK, but they would have to be next to free. If going PCI-E, what would you put in this?

agent_x007 wrote:

Never install latest AMD drivers for ATI card while using old Windows.
You should try Catalyst 10.2 or 9.1-9.3 versions.

Version 10.2 didn't seem to have drivers for the HD4350.

Interesting...
Did you tried manually searching for driver file in ATI instalation folder (using Device Manager) ?

feipoa wrote:

Is there a Desktop Composition setting for XP?

No.

agent_x007 wrote:

Interesting...
Did you tried manually searching for driver file in ATI instalation folder (using Device Manager) ?

No I did not. Can you confirm that this will work with the HD4350 AGP?

I don't own 4350 AGP, but 10.2 (with manual install) works with my 4670 AGP : LINK
Driver file should be in C:\ATI\"10.2"\Packages\Drivers\Display, or similar.

And did you find that 10.2 works better or was faster than 14.4?

I didn't tested them in Web browsing or Video playing, only in 3DMarks 🙁
Also, 4670 was paired with OC'ed Core 2 series CPU.

When you tried to install 10.2 catalyst drivers via the setup program, did it not find your 4670 card, after which you had to manually install the drivers from the folder you noted?

Yes.
You have to "point" device meneger to .inf file from driver's folder, and manually select your card from GPU list.

darkman,
I like your chieftec case, obviously it is from alienware.

I also have chieftec cases, but still the standard version. You can find them in different colors, but i like only the black or beige colored cases...

With replaceing the alienware badge, you mean the symbol sticker on the front door?

melbar wrote:

darkman, I like your chieftec case, obviously it is from alienware. […]
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darkman,
I like your chieftec case, obviously it is from alienware.

I also have chieftec cases, but still the standard version. You can find them in different colors, but i like only the black or beige colored cases...

With replaceing the alienware badge, you mean the symbol sticker on the front door?

yeah the badge at the front is what I would replace.

So I got myself some G.Skill DDR400 RAM (2X1GB) rated at 2-3-2-5, however there seems to be a problem.

whenever using this RAM, The computer experiences constant random crashing with every game, while memtest86 comes up with no errors. Also when running a stress test, the test stops after a minute or two due to imminent system failure.

The RAM will work in conjunction with other RAM modules (ie , mixing brands and speeds) but this means the rated speed drops to CL3

very odd behaviour

Perhaps the chipset (northbridge) cannot keep up with these fast of RAM timings. I'd try to determine, via manual settings, the fastest stable RAM timings.

feipoa wrote:

After installing the ATI X550 EZ PCI-E card into the Opteron 180 system, the 2D Video playback went from 24.9 fps (HD4350 AGP) to 43.6 fps (X550 PCI-E). Recall it was 31.9 fps on the i915-Prescott 3GHz system w/X550. 2D Graphics memory went from 522 fps (HD4350 AGP) to 292 fps (X550). Recall that it was 219 fps on the i915-Prescott 3GHz system w/X550.

I'm not sure what conclusions can be drawn from this information except that the Opteron 180 system is a good deal faster than i915/i875 systems w/Prescott 3 GHz. Perhaps that 2D Video playback on the HD4350 isn't very good? Is this the benchmark which is responsible for viewing FLASH and HTML5 content in web browsers? If so, should I change the graphics card? To what? Ideally, I'd like to stick with AGP graphics to leave the PCI-E slot open for future, non-graphics, expansion cards.

I have a Prescott 3.0GHz/800 in a Dell GX270 (i865 chipset). It performs software H.264 decoding better than my Athlon64 3500+ (2.2GHz) S939 machine. This is based on playing some test clips in VLC Player, which doesn't support hardware decoding on either system.
The Prescott also beats Northwoods handily in the same comparison. I think the Prescott is just particularly good at this.

I'm not sure how the Opteron 180 compares to the Athlon64 3500+, but it's interesting that you had such different results once that video card was swapped.

I definitely get H.264 acceleration with an HD2600XT in WinXP with the MPC-BE player. CPU usage is very low with this card playing 1080p and an icon in the player says "GPU". Any HD2400-HD2600 series AGP card should be the same in this respect. However, it is not accelerated in Flash or in VLC or anything else that I've tried, just the MPC-BE player.
HD3650 should be similar and maybe has advantages, I'm really not sure.
I think the HD4000 series cards are *supposed* to have better support for decoding in other places like Flash and VLC and whatever else, but apparently it wasn't working with your HD4350 for whatever reason. It's probably supposed to work - the 4350 was definitely marketed as a home theater card. But I've never had an AGP card in that series.

Darkman wrote:

So I got myself some G.Skill DDR400 RAM (2X1GB) rated at 2-3-2-5, however there seems to be a problem. […]
Show full quote

So I got myself some G.Skill DDR400 RAM (2X1GB) rated at 2-3-2-5, however there seems to be a problem.

whenever using this RAM, The computer experiences constant random crashing with every game, while memtest86 comes up with no errors. Also when running a stress test, the test stops after a minute or two due to imminent system failure.

The RAM will work in conjunction with other RAM modules (ie , mixing brands and speeds) but this means the rated speed drops to CL3

very odd behaviour

Sounds like something about the system (probably at the motherboard, not the RAM) isn't quite as stable when it's under a high enough level of stress. The overall amount of power being drawn in every direction is higher than when running memtest. I agree that knocking the lesser timings back a bit might solve it without needing to drop to CL3.

I really like that AV8 motherboard. I managed to burn mine out when I left it running memtest86 unattended and wasn't well cooled. I think it needs new Vcore MOSFETs - I wish ABit had put heatsinks on them. If I ever get the parts I'll try replacing them. I replaced it with a board with an Express slot but I'm left still thinking I like the AV8 better.

shamino wrote:

Darkman wrote:

So I got myself some G.Skill DDR400 RAM (2X1GB) rated at 2-3-2-5, however there seems to be a problem. […]
Show full quote

So I got myself some G.Skill DDR400 RAM (2X1GB) rated at 2-3-2-5, however there seems to be a problem.

whenever using this RAM, The computer experiences constant random crashing with every game, while memtest86 comes up with no errors. Also when running a stress test, the test stops after a minute or two due to imminent system failure.

The RAM will work in conjunction with other RAM modules (ie , mixing brands and speeds) but this means the rated speed drops to CL3

very odd behaviour

Sounds like something about the system (probably at the motherboard, not the RAM) isn't quite as stable when it's under a high enough level of stress. The overall amount of power being drawn in every direction is higher than when running memtest. I agree that knocking the lesser timings back a bit might solve it without needing to drop to CL3.

I really like that AV8 motherboard. I managed to burn mine out when I left it running memtest86 unattended and wasn't well cooled. I think it needs new Vcore MOSFETs - I wish ABit had put heatsinks on them. If I ever get the parts I'll try replacing them. I replaced it with a board with an Express slot but I'm left still thinking I like the AV8 better.

well the weird thing is , when I tried the standard CL3 RAM on its own , it also crashed (it was in the 3rd and 4th RAM slots , so maybe that did something??) , its only when the RAM is mixed up that it works correctly.

the BIOS settings were at AUTO , so maybe the board was overclocking the RAM on its own , Im not sure (in this case I manually set it to CL3)

The good thing is that it does give me 4GB (3GB visible obviously) which is nice, but I suspect games from that era will benefit more from faster 2GB as opposed to slower 3GB