atom1kk wrote on 2022-02-19, 22:15:

No it has 256,is shown also on start up. There were only two versions 128 and 256. With the fx5200 i have the same problems. It shall have around 6000-7000 points. I get max 4000

appiah4 is not talking about memory size, he is referring to the memory bus width (which has a direct influence on memory bandwidth, and can heavily impact performance). 😀
Now, I don’t know if there are any 64 bit GeForce FX5600 cards out there (technically they should all have an 128 bit memory bus), but it might be possible (especially for cheapo OEM cards).

@atom1kk, check with Aida32/Aida64/Everest, your card should have a 128 bit memory bus and 8 GB/s of memory bandwidth.

My FX 5600 with 128k memory and 128 bit interface scored 9045 on default 2001 SE with a 533 2.8 on an ECS M930LR (AGP 4x, DDR, SiS 645 chipset) with Windows 98.

Sharing some insights from reading around the last couple of days trying to figure the performance hit of PCIe x1 (Which is quite bad on later cards, not so terrible on older cards) It seemed that halving the bandwidth to x8 from x16 barely showed in may cases, worst was maybe a couple of percent, and there were some odd games where performance led x16 by a percent or two. Halving it again to x4 made some more noticable drops, but generally 15-30% but a fair number of "almost no difference" So you'd still get most of the performance you'd expect. x1 really dumped the more demanding stuff, then you were below 50% most of the time...

Extrapolating from that, we'd expect similar things to happen, next AGP speed down just making barely measurable percentages of difference, and maybe the odd win. It's an unusual arrangment, and maybe only possible if BIOS allows restriction, but it would probably be the case that 8x cards didn't even fair too bad on 2x. We might generally expect similar between 2x and 1x and 4x and 2x. I think enough ppl found Geforce 4 4x00 cards worthwhile on their BX boards with tualatins, even if stuck at 2x... and the 8x GF4 version the 4800, was generally considered "alright I guess, but only really a minor boost" to those who upgraded their 4x cards to 8x cards when they had a 4x/8x slot. (They'd have had later CPUs/chipsets of course)

I agree BitWrangler ! and want to add: the chipset, drivers, BIOS settings and other stuff could cause more variance than just plain testing various cards on same motherboard. As the OP said about 14th post he found an issue which helped.
The odd quest to get as much out of a system versus having a good stable one has always perplexed me ;p

OP, what's the rest of your system like right now? Which motherboard are you using, how much RAM and at what frequency, which OS are you using etc

The variables are too many to pinpoint what your issue may be. Off the top of my head:

- You may be using SDRAM instead of DDR SDRAM
- You may be running your RAM at a lower frequency than it is rated for
- You many have inadvertently disabled Dual Channel support, if your chipset supports it
- Your FX5600 and/or FX5200 (very like on this one) may be 64bit versions which perform abysmally next to the non cut-down versions.
- If you own a motherboard with a non-Intel chipset, it may require drivers to take full potential of its AGP performance

One of the above or a combination of them is certain to affect performance drastically.

There was FX5600XT with 64 bit bus. Its performance is on level similar to FX5500 or 128 bit FX5200.

If your card has just 4 memory chips on PCB, then you have either FX5600XT or some rare crippled FX5600.

In general: stay away of FX5600XT (low clocks, often just 64 bit bus) and FX5700LE (low clocks, usually 5ns memory).

Thank you for the support.

I have a msi 845 ultra board with 1 gb pc2100(266 mhz, DDR) ram. My fx 5600 is an original gainward version no xt etc so it has also 128 bit. I doubt that there was a version with 256 mb and 64 bit.
I tried everything, from updating to every possible bios version to change every single bios setting. Nothing helped,and the fact that in some cases the artifacts are showing up (found out that it happens on randomly, no special bios option, it can happen just on every when the soundcard is in, or a pci slot is used) led me to the conclusion that something must be fault with the mainboard. Without the soundcard it also hits only 7000 points. I will wait until the new parts arrive and post here the results

Yeah, I missed a lot of this info, while going through the thread. It would help if you listed everything in a single post, as it's easy to get confused since you have been swapping soundcards. I see you have moved ahead and bought different hardware, but as a last resort I'd try the following:

- Remove any extra cards you don't need. Keep it simple. Use a different ATA cable for the optical drive and HDD and try using PS/2 keyboard & mice if you got them instead of USB. Remove the soundcard and use the onboard one.
- i845 is single-channel I believe, so use a single stick of 256MB or 512MB if possible. I haven't used i845 in years so I can't recall if the memory can be clocked asynchronously, if that's possible, make sure to run it at DDR333 or DDR400, whichever is the max supported without any overclocking.
- Make sure you're using the latest BIOS for your board and load defaults. Then go through each tab and make sure you're using somewhat conservative options, keep any potential overclocking disabled, as well as stuff you don't need such as AC97 Modem, Parallel and Serial ports. If any of the options seems weird or you don't know its function, make a list and ask here before proceeding. Delayed Transaction should be enabled, but sometimes can cause issues.
- Instead of Win98, try installing Windows XP SP2 (avoid SP3 at all costs), install chipset and audio drivers from around 2004-2005 if possible and use older drivers for the GPU such as 43.45.

Then re-run your 3DMarks of choice, present the results to us and also give us links to the articles or videos you are using for comparison, so we can all double check and see if there's something missing perhaps.

AGP 4x should not really induce any performance penalties on this hardware. The FX series was the first line of cards from Nvidia supporting AGP 8x out of the gate, perhaps the higher end models saw some 1-2% penalties when using the lower link speed, but certainly not something as tame as an FX5600.

I tried all. Did a clean install of win 98. Installed only chipset and video driver. Nothing other, everything else out of pc. No change. Like I wrote, tried every bios version which is available. Did not help. Also with bios settings.
Windows XP is not an option. Built the system for dos. Tried different video drivers, the same. Soundcard is not the issue, tested it without, nothing changed.
I am already using ps2 mouse and keyboard.
I have unfortunately only 1 ram piece. So cannot try other.

I mean if you have to do such an effort, there must be something wrong with the board. I will post here the result after i tried the new hardware.

Sometimes when I get too deep into an issue and think I have tried everything, it helps me to redo it all over with a clear head and procedure. This is why I offered my line of thinking above, I find it confusing to follow everything you've already tried and I suspect others might as well.

I did not suggest Windows XP as a permanent solution or an option for your retro system, merely as a way to make sure your hardware is running as it should. Win9X can introduce shenanigans and they are often hard to figure out or even realize they are there. Making sure everything is running on a more stable platform with WDM drivers is one variable out of the equation.

As for there being something wrong with the board, I haven't encountered a case where a faulty motherboard of this vintage is sapping performance. The board will either work or it won't. If for example the caps had gone bad, then you'd have the entire system shutting down or rebooting once you ran 3DMark for a little while. If it is improperly configured, then that's another story. Anyway, you seem to have decided to leave this be and focus on the hardware you have arriving soon. Best of luck!

I said bit, not MB.

Yeah sorry i missrread this 😉

so maybe i can sum up what i have tried so far:
- tried every bios version which exists
- tried every possible bios setting
- did a clean install only with Mainboard and GPu drivers ( unnecessary parts came out)
- tried a FX5200 card ( also points are too low) and Ti 200 ( here the points were ok)
- tried 5 different GPU drivers

Issues:
-while doing a test, tracked it with riva tuner and with FX5600 the clocks were too low ( core 300, should be 350 and memeory only 400, should be 500)
- if i set AA to 4x i get an memory error.

so I do not know what i can do more.

One point why i think there is something with the board. On some 4x.xx drivers both fx cards wont go into windows. As soon windows should pop up the pc resets. Only with 56.64 i managed to boot properly. With the ti 200 every driver worked well. So i think there is some conflict with the board and fx cards. Maybe because the ti has 64mb ram and the fx over 128, so there might be a problem from the mobo to handle it

That sounds looks like you have one of those XT cards - they always had 400MHz memory although the core frequency could also be as low as 250MHz. My money is on the memory bus being 64-bit still.

But there hasnt been a fx5600 with 64bit, even the XT has 128. According to many references only 5100 and 5200 card had 64 bit. And why are both fx cards havin same symptoms? And i know that the 5200 card is a normal one since i have it for years. And i cant imagine that the 256mb version has 64 bit.

Well we will see later this week

atom1kk wrote on 2022-02-21, 06:55:

But there hasnt been a fx5600 with 64bit, even the XT has 128. According to many references only 5100 and 5200 card had 64 bit. And why are both fx cards havin same symptoms? And i know that the 5200 card is a normal one since i have it for years. And i cant imagine that the 256mb version has 64 bit.

Well we will see later this week

Nope, they are very uncommon, but 64bit 5600XTs were made:
https://www.newegg.com/chaintech-geforce-fx-5 … N82E16814145059

You could check your graphics card specs with this:
HWiNFO support of vintage hardware

atom1kk wrote on 2022-02-21, 06:55:

But there hasnt been a fx5600 with 64bit, even the XT has 128. According to many references only 5100 and 5200 card had 64 bit. And why are both fx cards havin same symptoms? And i know that the 5200 card is a normal one since i have it for years. And i cant imagine that the 256mb version has 64 bit.

Well we will see later this week

Post pictures of both sides of your card or at least write here how many memory chips are on card.
XT with 64-bit bus are more common than you might think. Google for `fx5600xt` and you'll find a lot of cards with "missing" 4 memory chips. 😁

My card is for sure a gainward fx 5600 with 256 mb ram. I see it on boot. So it has 128 bit.

I know its not the original cooler 😉

So got my new board and here is the update.
The first board i have bought was unfortunately broken, so i had to get another one. At least i got a p4 2.4, some RAM and a MSI FX5200 with the broken one.

So the first test i did was with th 2.0 GHz and FX 5600. the drivers ere 56.64
Gainward FX5600 7400 points
MSI 5200 6400
No name FX5200 4600.

The No name FX 5200 seems to be a cripled version. As i looked more onto the card, i saw that it has only two RAM chips on it. so i think this one is a 64 bit version or something like that.

i was quite suprised thatI had quite the same results like with the other board. only the no name 5200 had 1000 points more.

Switched to the 2,4 CPU.
Gainward FX5600 8600 points
MSI 5200 7400

it seems that the CPU has a big impact on the results in 3dmark01.

Now i wanted to try out another driver where the 5600 did an automatic reset on the PC. The version is 44.03. Not the pc botted without any issues.

did another run
Gainward FX5600 9000 points
MSI 5200 7700

As you can see, the drivers gave also some performance boost.

But still strange the the 5600 didnt reach my expected points of 9500-10000.
So what wondersme, that the MSI 5200 did a quite good result. So the question is, is the MSI 5200 card a good one or the Gainward 5600 a bad version. The difference between them is smaller than i have expected

At least with the new board the system runs very stable. I can use different drivers without any issues.

Gamer kiddie hyperbole in describing graphics cards is hard to shake off.... they might have said 5600 "Absolutely destroys" a 5200 and you'd think it's three or four times as fast, but nope, about 15% difference.

I never talked about that one card is destroying another. i just refer to the benchmarks online with a differnce depending on system by around 20-25% and regaerding them the FX 5200 is exactly there where it should be, even better, but the 5600 is a bit off. this wonders me