VOGONS


First post, by Pickle

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I have a xp system with athlon 64 3400+ that ive been running a geforce 6200 256 mb card in. Ive been wanting to try to upgrade it a little bit and i thought i found a card that could.
I came across a 7300 GT card and all the searching i did seem to suggest it was an upgrade. Its also in a shuttle case so im limited to single slot cards. When I put in my system and its been abysmal.
Im running quake 3 at 1024x768x32 and im clocking 150+ fps on the 6200 and 20-30 fps on the 7300. Running other quake engine and it was no better.
Both use the same driver (im using last release by nvidia)

The only differences im coming across is mainly the memory:
6200: 256 mb with 64 bit bus at about 500 Mhz ddr2 (so about 1000 mhz effective)
7300: 512 mb with 128 bit bus at 333 Mhz ddr2 (so about 666 mhz effective)

I tried overclocking the BFG and it still sucked. I got to about 390 mhz gpu and 390 mhz memory. Still couldnt get past 30 fps.
At one point i uninstalled the driver and reinstalled, but it really didnt help. It also does have the bridge chip from pcie to agp.
I also cleaned the card and applied new thermal paste.

I totally dont get it that 6200 was just a old purchase i made for a HTPC. Its full part number is NX6200AX-TD256HD2. I cant even tell who made it, looks a stock nvidia design.
Its clocked at 350 mhz with about 500 mhz memory.

Would 277 Mhz make that much of a difference? I thought 128 bit bus would even help the 7300 even at the lower clock speed.
Anyone remember more details about this card?

Reply 1 of 14, by bakemono

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7300GT should be much faster. I don't think any 6200s came with 500MHz DDR2 either, usually they had 266MHz, which is less than the 7300GT. The 'actual speed' vs. 'effective speed' gets mixed up all the time.

Maybe try an older driver like 91.31 ? I think that is what I used with a 7600GT which is the same chip (fully enabled).

again another retro game on itch: https://90soft90.itch.io/shmup-salad

Reply 3 of 14, by Pickle

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Tried 91.31 and the installer quit saying it couldnt find a device. I did notice i had 93.71 on the pc and ive installed that still only getting 35 fps on the q3 demo.
Ive tried to find something that actually would confirm its in a PCI mode but i dont see it. I only see it reporting the AGP speed. I used powerstrip to change between 4x and 8x, but no real effect.
I also saw some reports the via 4 in 1 driver could have an effect. I reinstalled the via driver i have from shuttle with no effect. I forced installed the system driver mentioning agp with no effect.

I could try the latest vai 4 in 1 driver next

Edit: I put the 6200 back and it was in PCI mode. Got about 100 fps. Let windows pick the driver for the system agp device and problem fixed and it was back on agp 8x. The demo was back to 165 fps. I think something more severe is occurring with the 7300

Edit: Updated via drivers and no change. Confirmed the agp driver was updated.

Reply 4 of 14, by VDNKh

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What VIA motherboard do you have? If you have 3DMark01 you can see if your GART driver is working.

In system information, click on your GPU and see what "AGP aperture" lists. If it's 0 bytes then GART driver isn't working. Your video and texture memory may also appear incorrect.

Reply 5 of 14, by Pickle

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checked in multiple locations and the aperture agp memory is 256 mb. Ive messed around with the bios settings and nothing helps there either.

its a shuttle sk21g, so the page below says VIA K8M800CE + VT8237R+
https://global.shuttle.com/products/productsS … ec?productId=85

Reply 6 of 14, by agent_x007

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You can check if AGP is running AGP mode in GPU-z (use older version like v0.7.6 or older, since newest will probably won't work with such old driver).
Can you put a GPU-z's or AIDA64's GPU info screnshot here ?

157143230295.png

Reply 7 of 14, by Pickle

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6200:
JUiOzfl.gif

7300 GT:
jV5ihOf.gif

Didnt spot anything strange, but it does confirm the 6200 memory at 266 like was suspected earlier.

Edit: tried a driver cleaner and reinstalled 93.71 still stuck at 36 fps.
I might try the card in my older athlon 1.2 ghz, but id need to install XP on it.

Reply 9 of 14, by Pickle

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Originally i was using 307.83 which was released on 2013.2.26 for the 6200. I initially just did a swap for the 7300 which should also be supported by 307.83. But it showed the bad performance.
Then is was suggested to use an older driver which i tried 93.71, with same results.
So im guessing part of the 307.83 remained even though switching to 93.71. I did run the cleaner last night but i didnt try to put the 6200 back in to see if it switched the older driver, not sure if it would help if it did.

Edit: Double checked and the quake 3 profile has AA/AF set to off.

Edit 2: Performed a fresh install of XP on another drive. Only installed the via 4 in 1 driver and the 93.71 nvidia driver. No improvement. Ill try the other PC next. Pretty disappointing this didnt work.

Reply 10 of 14, by Pickle

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So i saw the gpuz tool can dump the bios and i found one of the web for the 7300 GT. I then ran a diff in beyond compare and came up with these diffs. I think the 0x0D should be ascii carriage returns. But is odd is these arnt in the card's bios and you can see theres 4 bytes missing from the total size.
Its strange they have the same version number, but i would think having missing bytes would misalign anything but on the other hand id think such an issue would keep the card from doing anything.
Curious on any opinions on this part. Especially if its worth trying to reflash the web bios.

KpHUuzz.png

Edit: After some time i finally got something (3dmark 2001) to run on the card with the athlon and the performance was bad like before. OpenGL with quake engines all segfaulted.
So i think im giving up on this card.

Reply 11 of 14, by Pickle

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well i think i solved my problem 😉
I was able to get a ATI X800 Pro and i think its better performing than the 7300 GT would have been.
Im getting 260 fps in quake 3, rough numbers for sdmark: 18k in 2000 19k 2001 8k in 2003.
I dont think ive seen nature in 2001 run so well.
I appreciate all the suggestions for the 7300, still no idea why it sucked so bad.
But this card should smoke all the old XP games i wanted it for. Only downside is no shader model 3, but i think i wont need it anyway.
So I think my shuttle machine is has received its last upgrade (maybe i would think about the power supply. I think its 200 - 250 watt which i think is the limit for this card)

Reply 12 of 14, by pentiumspeed

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This does depends on motherboard's chipset. Sometimes this happens.

And 7300 GT could not be really GT?

Cheers,

Great Northern aka Canada.

Reply 13 of 14, by Pickle

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Right now I only have 2 systems with agp that are via chipsets. It was pretty unstable in the older system but as i said earlier it showed the same bad performance. But your right it could be something with the VIA chipset.
even if it was some lower end 7XXX part i dont think the performance would be that bad.
also it looks the same as images on the internet for the bfg card. It has the molex connector (low end part wouldnt need the power). It doesnt work without it connected too.
the only thing that might be off is the bios as i showed above. But it seems to be just string type differences (but i find it strange bytes are missing and the length is different for the same version id string)

Reply 14 of 14, by BitWrangler

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Something weird about that, for one thing it's showing 12 TMUs when 7300 GT should have 8 and the other is the extra molex, when they only need 25 W and even the 7600s only need 27W.

Unicorn herding operations are proceeding, but all the totes of hens teeth and barrels of rocking horse poop give them plenty of hiding spots.