What's the in order queue depth setting of your motherboard? Did you enable bank interleaving?

I had a look in the Bios and there doesn't seem to be any options to change or even view the queue depth or bank interleaving?

EDIT: I did find a "Top Performance" option in the bios which was disabled. Enabled it and ran another benchmark which scored 3537...hmmm

I once had a Soltek motherboard with the same chipset (VIA 693A) and it suffered from unusual low memory bandwidth. Apparently lots of VIA board manufacturers disabled bank interleave and set in-order-queue-depth to 1 for some reason (compatibility?). Using wpcredit and wpcrset to manipulate the north bridge registers can unleash the secret power:

http://www.overclockers.com/wpcredit/
http://h30499.www3.hp.com/t5/Notebook-PCs-Pav … 61#.VGq8vL6aQTs

There used to be a lot of wpcredit tutorials but can't find them anymore.

that sounds very bad. how does that rig run superpi? i wonder if the problem is in sdram performance, agp bus or somewhere else.

i once tested my cousin's 693a board and its abysmal. cpu was a celeron800.
with 815e(reference): a bit less than 3 minutes.
693a with default setting: a full 5 minutes!
693a with memory interleave enabled: about 4:20.
however, i've seen some well tuned 694s getting within less than 5% behind the 815e, in superpi.

my p3s-1.4g+815e+ti4600 combination scored 9300pts with 30.82 driver, with 45.23 it slowes down to 8800pts.

Nice 4800! They are hard to find that's for sure.

300 / 650 MHz?

I have two Quadro4 980 XGL cards and considering flashing a 4800 Bios for gaming.

lazibayer wrote:

I once had a Soltek motherboard with the same chipset (VIA 693A) and it suffered from unusual low memory bandwidth. Apparently l […]
Show full quote

I once had a Soltek motherboard with the same chipset (VIA 693A) and it suffered from unusual low memory bandwidth. Apparently lots of VIA board manufacturers disabled bank interleave and set in-order-queue-depth to 1 for some reason (compatibility?). Using wpcredit and wpcrset to manipulate the north bridge registers can unleash the secret power:

http://www.overclockers.com/wpcredit/
http://h30499.www3.hp.com/t5/Notebook-PCs-Pav … 61#.VGq8vL6aQTs

There used to be a lot of wpcredit tutorials but can't find them anymore.

wpcredit sounds promising. Will download it tomorrow and see how I go. Looking through the Bios, this board is definitely quite restrictive. Overclocking is also done via jumpers on the board itself. Not that I overclock old hardware anyway.

noshutdown wrote:

that sounds very bad. whats your windows, and how does it run superpi? […]
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that sounds very bad. whats your windows, and how does it run superpi?

i once tested my cousin's 693a board and its abysmal. cpu was a celeron800.
with 815e(reference): a bit less than 3 minutes.
693a with default setting: a full 5 minutes!
693a with memory interleave enabled: about 4:20.
however, i've seen some well tuned 694s getting within less than 5% behind the 815e, in superpi.

my p3s-1.4g+815e+ti4600 combination scored 9300pts with 30.82 driver, with 45.23 it slowes down to 8800pts

Haven't run the SuperPi benchmark yet so I can't comment. I will say though that your 3D Mark score is amazing. Might try some older drivers after I give wpcredit a whirl to see if the drivers make a difference.

philscomputerlab wrote:

Nice 4800! They are hard to find that's for sure.

300 / 650 MHz?

I have two Quadro4 980 XGL cards and considering flashing a 4800 Bios for gaming.

Yeah, it's a really nice card and initially thought it was a TI4600 when I purchased it due to the eBay listing stating so and also because of the TI4600 sticker on the card. Removed the GPU cooler and got excited 😀 not that this board utilises AGP 8x anyway. Specs are the same as the TI4600. 300Mhz Core/650Mhz Memory as you pointed out just with AGP 8x support.

Do you know if any other company released TI4800's besides PNY? I read somewhere that PNY were the only ones and that they were actually sold as TI4600's but who knows how true that is.

VIA 4in1 drivers are installed? I'm not sure what happens when the AGP GART driver is missing, crashing or just slower performance.

idspispopd wrote:

VIA 4in1 drivers are installed? I'm not sure what happens when the AGP GART driver is missing, crashing or just slower performance.

Yep, 4in1 drivers are installed. First thing I did after installing windows 98se. The AGP GART driver is included in the 4in1 drivers so we can cancel that out unfortunately.

In the nVidia control panel, does it show the card actually running at an AGP speed? I've seen in the past where that doesn't enable for some reason or another, and it hampers performance. Usually re-installing chipset + graphics drivers fixes it though (worst case, re-installing Windows). What about the hard-drive that's hosting this? Is it slow? Is it improperly configured? Is it dying? Granted, I've never experienced this big of a performance hit from a hard-drive, but I do know that slow disks tend to drop 3DMark scores.

Moving away from this specific build, does the Ti 4800 score well in other builds? Is all of the memory known to work? Is everything well cooled? How does it do with Windows 2000 or XP loaded and newer drivers + DX9 and so forth?

As far as the Ti 4800 thing - they weren't universally released as Ti 4800s; some manufacturers just called them Ti 4600-8X or some similar thing from what I've read (from some web searching, it appears MSI was one such maker).

obobskivich wrote:

In the nVidia control panel, does it show the card actually running at an AGP speed? I've seen in the past where that doesn't enable for some reason or another, and it hampers performance. Usually re-installing chipset + graphics drivers fixes it though (worst case, re-installing Windows). What about the hard-drive that's hosting this? Is it slow? Is it improperly configured? Is it dying? Granted, I've never experienced this big of a performance hit from a hard-drive, but I do know that slow disks tend to drop 3DMark scores.

Moving away from this specific build, does the Ti 4800 score well in other builds? Is all of the memory known to work? Is everything well cooled? How does it do with Windows 2000 or XP loaded and newer drivers + DX9 and so forth?

As far as the Ti 4800 thing - they weren't universally released as Ti 4800s; some manufacturers just called them Ti 4600-8X or some similar thing from what I've read (from some web searching, it appears MSI was one such maker).

I've tried reinstalling DirectX and the Nvidia drivers several times but it didn't make a difference. I also just today attempted to reinstall the Via 4in1 drivers but received problem after problem resulting in me having to reinstall Windows 98SE. I then received problems with the 4in1 drivers again after the installation but this time avoided a reinstall by booting into "safe mode with command prompt" and going to the Windows\Command directory and entering "scanreg /restore".

I have had some progress though which is great. Went into device manager and updated the "VIA CPU to AGP controller" under "System Devices" with the Viagart.vxd driver from the 4in1 4.35 drivers. Ran another 3DMark 2001SE benchmark and this time got 6385 points. A massive difference!

EDIT: I have tried the card with my Intel SE440BX-2 board combined with a P3 1Ghz cpu but got very similar results as my other TI4600's. Regarding cooling, I wouldn't say the case has great cooling but it's efficient enough. With your Win 2000/XP question, my Pentium 4 Win XP rig is out of action at present unfortunately so can't test that sorry.

@lazibayer, I attempted to use wpcredit but it requires the 11060691.pcr file according to the instructions. The links from the website you provided all lead to advertising sites etc. You dont happen to have this file do you?

borgie83 wrote:

@lazibayer, I attempted to use wpcredit but it requires the 11060691.pcr file according to the instructions. The links from the website you provided all lead to advertising sites etc. You dont happen to have this file do you?

This one might work. I don't have the board to confirm it though 😀
http://www.rom.by/doki/VIA/11060691.PCR

borgie83 wrote:

I've tried reinstalling DirectX and the Nvidia drivers several times but it didn't make a difference. I also just today attempted to reinstall the Via 4in1 drivers but received problem after problem resulting in me having to reinstall Windows 98SE. I then received problems with the 4in1 drivers again after the installation but this time avoided a reinstall by booting into "safe mode with command prompt" and going to the Windows\Command directory and entering "scanreg /restore".

I have had some progress though which is great. Went into device manager and updated the "VIA CPU to AGP controller" under "System Devices" with the Viagart.vxd driver from the 4in1 4.35 drivers. Ran another 3DMark 2001SE benchmark and this time got 6385 points. A massive difference!

Looks promising. At 6300 vs 6500 that's probably on the rest of the system.

EDIT: I have tried the card with my Intel SE440BX-2 board combined with a P3 1Ghz cpu but got very similar results as my other TI4600's.

Absolutely as it should be - the Ti 4800 is identical to the 4600 aside from the gimmick of AGP 8x support (which various reviews/tests from that era, and even later, consistently demonstrated to have almost zero measurable impact on performance; by the time AGP 8x was a "needed" feature, PCIe was well on its way to global domination).

Regarding cooling, I wouldn't say the case has great cooling but it's efficient enough. With your Win 2000/XP question, my Pentium 4 Win XP rig is out of action at present unfortunately so can't test that sorry.

I meant 2000/XP on the system having problems - was basically trying to come up with ways to get Win98, the driver cocktail, etc out of the picture and another OS install would certainly be one path. It sounds like, if you've got it running at 6k+ scores, the remaining difference is probably run-to-run variances (remember that Futuremark has openly said the margin of error for 3DMark is something like 5%), the board itself, disk, etc limitations. So basically I'd say you've got it working unless you experience instability in games/applications with the configuration you have now. 😊

I think the order you install the drivers really matters. Especially if you use an older NVidia driver which have functionality if they detect certain chipsets that they disable AGP.
If such things appear it is convenient to check the current AGP settings with another program, like Powerstrip that directly reads the chipset config.
You can even force there to enable AGP on the fly, which mostly works.

Another thing is Rivatuner where you can set the behavior of the Nvidia driver regarding chipset/agp fallbacks.

And of course tools like already mentioned WPCREDIT to interpret the current chipset values.

elianda wrote:

I think the order you install the drivers really matters. Especially if you use an older NVidia driver which have functionality […]
Show full quote

I think the order you install the drivers really matters. Especially if you use an older NVidia driver which have functionality if they detect certain chipsets that they disable AGP.
If such things appear it is convenient to check the current AGP settings with another program, like Powerstrip that directly reads the chipset config.
You can even force there to enable AGP on the fly, which mostly works.

Another thing is Rivatuner where you can set the behavior of the Nvidia driver regarding chipset/agp fallbacks.

And of course tools like already mentioned WPCREDIT to interpret the current chipset values.

Had a look at Powerstrip but I didn't really find it too helpful at all. Rivatuner though looks very promising. Had a brief play with it and also found out that my AGP slot is running in 2x mode whereas this board supports AGP 4x. How do I enable 4x?

borgie83 wrote:

elianda wrote:

I think the order you install the drivers really matters. Especially if you use an older NVidia driver which have functionality […]
Show full quote

I think the order you install the drivers really matters. Especially if you use an older NVidia driver which have functionality if they detect certain chipsets that they disable AGP.
If such things appear it is convenient to check the current AGP settings with another program, like Powerstrip that directly reads the chipset config.
You can even force there to enable AGP on the fly, which mostly works.

Another thing is Rivatuner where you can set the behavior of the Nvidia driver regarding chipset/agp fallbacks.

And of course tools like already mentioned WPCREDIT to interpret the current chipset values.

Had a look at Powerstrip but I didn't really find it too helpful at all. Rivatuner though looks very promising. Had a brief play with it and also found out that my AGP slot is running in 2x mode whereas this board supports AGP 4x. How do I enable 4x?

GA-6XVE7+ does not support AGP 4x. It only supports AGP 2x.

Sighted the following website and just assumed it supported AGP 4x.

http://www.tl-c.ru/pub/ccatalog?l=0&v=34&typ=601

borgie83 wrote:

Sighted the following website and just assumed it supported AGP 4x.

http://www.tl-c.ru/pub/ccatalog?l=0&v=34&typ=601

The mobo picture on that webpage shows a 1x/2x AGP slot.
The webpage also mistakes the north bridge as 694X, which indeed supports AGP 4x.
According to gigabyte's user manual, the board has 693A north bridge and it supports AGP up to 2x.
http://download1.gigabyte.us/Files/Manual/mot … xe7p_3003_e.pdf

Got around to using RivaTuner properly. Noticed the core clock was being detected as 100mhz instead of 300mhz. Used the "Detect" option opting not to overclock the card but raising the core clock back up to where it should be and my 3DMark score jumped to 6620. Without overclocking, I can't see what else I could do to get this score up higher. Just find it strange how my P3 1Ghz Slot 1 CPUs running on 440BX motherboards with the same TI4600 graphics cards score the same as this PC using a P3 1.4Ghz Tully. Makes me wonder about the Via chipset compared with the mighty Intel 440BX...

EDIT: Does anyone know why any drivers older than 40.71 won't detect the my TI4800 card? Tried a bunch of older drivers which normally work with my TI4600's but they won't detect the nvidia gpu with the TI4800.

borgie83 wrote:

Got around to using RivaTuner properly. Noticed the core clock was being detected as 100mhz instead of 300mhz. Used the "Detect" option opting not to overclock the card but raising the core clock back up to where it should be and my 3DMark score jumped to 6620. Without overclocking, I can't see what else I could do to get this score up higher. Just find it strange how my P3 1Ghz Slot 1 CPUs running on 440BX motherboards with the same TI4600 graphics cards score the same as this PC using a P3 1.4Ghz Tully. Makes me wonder about the Via chipset compared with the mighty Intel 440BX...

EDIT: Does anyone know why any drivers older than 40.71 won't detect the my TI4800 card? Tried a bunch of older drivers which normally work with my TI4600's but they won't detect the nvidia gpu with the TI4800.

if its a 693 board, then its totally reasonable for being so slow and problematic, its not even remotely as bearable as 694.

of course, older drivers would only support older cards released before them. the 4800 is released much later than 4600, i remember that all pre-40 drivers never supported any cards newer than 4600