stumped-athlon 2600 faster then an athlon 4200 x2

[R0xy0urs0x]

hey guys just recently upgraded my system, however couldnt afford new gfx so iv had to downgrade from a 5600 to a tnt2 pci becuase of the agp-pci-e crossover...


however building the new system you know when u "get that feeling" around windows weather it sluggish or not...feel quite slow in comparsion to the old 2600 athlon..do you think this is becuase of the old crappy grpahics card? i mean iv also gone from 512 unbranded to 2gig xms twinx dual channel and still feels the same/ slowe speed in windows..

[RavenNight]

From the specs you listed it would have to be a GFX card bottleneck or somethings fairly fundamental is wrong. Check that everything shows up properly in Windows (all your RAM is recognized and CPU etc.) also flashing the BIOS to the latest can really help improve the performance.

[sgoaty]

have you got the gfx card drivers instlled?

[MSIC]

Also check in the BIOS that all speeds (eg RAM speed) are set up correctly. I once went with default settings for a while before realising the RAM dividers were set very low. That said, it still shouldnt feel that slow.

You could always download PCMark and check your results online compared to similar hardware.

[aidanjt]

the main issue is with the TNT2, its pure junk, its just about fit for a linux framebuffer.

Get a new PCI-E graphics card and you should notice a remarkable improvement. Modern graphics cards have GDI and other 2D acceleration techniques performed on board, the TNT2 doesn't. Thats why you'd older rig felt 'faster' in windows.

[Smokey21]

hey guys just recently upgraded my system, however couldnt afford new gfx so iv had to downgrade from a 5600 to a tnt2 pci becuase of the agp-pci-e crossover...


however building the new system you know when u "get that feeling" around windows weather it sluggish or not...feel quite slow in comparsion to the old 2600 athlon..do you think this is becuase of the old crappy grpahics card? i mean iv also gone from 512 unbranded to 2gig xms twinx dual channel and still feels the same/ slowe speed in windows..

LOL.

A PCI TNT2 paired with a 4200+. Now thats cool.

[Woodchuck2000]

The reason Windows feels sluggish is because you have basically no hardware acceleration of the UI. Suggest you turn off <all> the graphical effects until you can afford to get a PCI-e graphics card. That said, make sure that you have the correct drivers installed - the only thing slower than a TNT is the built in generic VGA drivers...

[MSIC]

Actually i'd even dispute that. I know it's (very) easy to take the P out of Intel 'extreme' graphics, but even they are leaps ahead of a TNT2.
And as for nVidia or ATI intergrated graphics, they would actually be on a par with discrete graphics of only a few years ago (eg GeForce 2 or even 3)

[schmunk]

Actually i'd even dispute that. I know it's (very) easy to take the P out of Intel 'extreme' graphics, but even they are leaps ahead of a TNT2.
And as for nVidia or ATI intergrated graphics, they would actually be on a par with discrete graphics of only a few years ago (eg GeForce 2 or even 3)

I don't think Woodchuck2000 meant integrated graphics chips, but the standard Windows VGA driver, which makes the graphical experience of any vid card shocking until you install the correct driver (for instance, try scrolling down a big webpage with an X1900XTX and no ATI driver...)

[[GSV]Trig]

Worlds fastest TNT2?
Get the old version of 3D/PCMark on there lol...

[MSIC]

I don't think Woodchuck2000 meant integrated graphics chips, but the standard Windows VGA driver, which makes the graphical experience of any vid card shocking until you install the correct driver (for instance, try scrolling down a big webpage with an X1900XTX and no ATI driver...)

Ah yes, quite right.
Must learn to read posts before replying....

[KowShak]

the main issue is with the TNT2, its pure junk, its just about fit for a linux framebuffer.

Get a new PCI-E graphics card and you should notice a remarkable improvement. Modern graphics cards have GDI and other 2D acceleration techniques performed on board, the TNT2 doesn't. Thats why you'd older rig felt 'faster' in windows.

Not true. Every graphics card since the Trident ISA card I had in my 486 have done some degree of 2D accelaration. 2D hasn't got any faster since the Matrox Millenium came out some years ago.

As long as the TNT2 has the right drivers installed (preferably some nVidia ones rather than the ones that come as part of Windows) it'll do 2D pretty much as fast as anything else. 3D wise, its a bit slow in comparison to anything you can buy new today though.

[Stoo]

Yup, the TNT2 still has pretty decent 2d acceleration, it's far more likely to be a driver issue than anything else.

[aidanjt]

As long as the TNT2 has the right drivers installed (preferably some nVidia ones rather than the ones that come as part of Windows) it'll do 2D pretty much as fast as anything else. 3D wise, its a bit slow in comparison to anything you can buy new today though.

I'm sorry, but that simply is not true, TNT2's don't have the GDI extentions that modern graphics cards have.

[KowShak]

Full acceleration of all DirectDraw and GDI functions including Windows 2000 GDI extensions. Optimized Direct3D and Open GL acceleration. Complete DirectX 5.0, 6.0, 7.0, and Open GL 1.2.1 support.

Thats from the spec of a Riva TNT2 Vanta.

If you look at the 2d hardware accelaration that graphics cards do they do pretty much everything that you'd want to accelarate in 2d. The GDI extensions don't bring a instant / massive performance increase because software has to be written to use them (old code won't automatically start using them) and they only represent a limited amount of functionality. There are some areas where GDI+ can be used to make things a lot faster, but its things like Shockwave/Flash and 2D Vector graphics packages. They are used by the UI in XP but in a very limited way e.g. gradient fills on the title bars.

I very much doubt that the lack of a difference between a 2600 and a 4200 could be accounted for purely by the lack of GDI+ hardware support.

[vrykyl]

sounds silly - but have you installed the amd x2 dual core driver?