ledzeppel

i440BX@133...go read tom's or anand's sites about this. It is the best. Better, faster than i840 RDRAM setups. I know cuz I use it everyday. And if you people want to justify those VIA systems vs the BIG DOG BX, you'll get murdered in benchmarks.

Partially agree...but Intel STILL makes the best chipset. i440BX. PERIOD. This should be the end of the thread. I'm blown-out on this issue.

yeah, I have a solution for ya! GO GET AN INTEL CHIPSET! And you know what, I CAN'T BELIEVE IT WORKS EVERY TIME! HA! hehehe...sorry

Frog, I agree with you whole-heartedly, but if you or anyone else is trying to play UT with OpenGL, you are just wasting your time.

Ummm....c'mon guys. I know that OpenGL is faster than D3D but who wants to use your GeForce in UT using OpenGL. It has several graphics glitches like lobbing grenades with the rocket launcher and not seeing textures. I don't even know why this is an issue. Epic doesn't care about OpenGL nor will they even be implementing it in future titles. They are going straight D3D.

Quake.

Nope, I get 5-6 frames/sec more in Win2k. 733 Coppermine Geforce 256 DDR (5.17 win2k/5.22 win98) SBLive!

Oh man!! Thanks for the info. I might get one of those to replace my old 300A@450 in my second PC.

hmmm...that CAS 2 ram of yours might work at 133 CAS 3...most I know do, as long as it is CAS 2 PC100.

Well I'm not sure what that BE6 is capable of. So here goes: If it can do 133/33 (FSB/PCI bus), get yourself a 550E or 600E and run at 733 or 800EB. If it can't do that, get yourself a Asus CUBX with same processor. This is assuming PC133 ram of course. If money is tight, get the celeron II 566 @ 850 with pc100 memory present.

Dos, When you get that GeForce 2, you'll be able to do any thing you want in games.

No I haven't yet. And I bet it would work great that way too. BUT, the PnP OS is important enough to make me not do it. I don't know what else to do but just wait until creative or sigma desings has a better driver that doesn't require this. Thanks.

Seldzar, From the research I had to do to get the thing to work (and movies do work, just that D3D stuff suffers), Everybody said you have to install the NT driver on top of the Hollywood Plus Beta Driver so that the Creative software will recognize it as a Dxr3. Otherwise I don't think it will work. I believe it is the Creative NT driver that is screwing up the D3D. I've heard this from numerous sources. Also, I HAVE to disable PnP OS in the bios (ASUS P3B-F motherboard). If I don't, it'll do a BSOD when I install the Hollywood Plus driver everytime. I can't afford to lose PnP in the BIOS cuz that gives me the standby mode I just love. Thanks for the info.

Guys, Go do an Unreal benchmark or any other D3D benchmark and then tell me that EVERYTHING is okay. I bet it won't be. Either that or there are other methods to installing the card for a Dxr3 that work better. My method: Hollywood Plus beta driver Creative Labs NT driver (reboot) Creative software (reboot)

Dude, The thing is not going to work right until they get official drivers. It isn't EVEN worth it. Just use your Hollywood Plus in 98 for now and wait like the rest of us.

I've heard a lot of issues good or bad about the Hollywood Plus Windows 2000 Beta 1 driver. So, let's get this straightened out for the record. If you like playing D3D games, I highly recommend you stay clear of the Beta drivers for the Hollywood Plus. I own a DXR3 decoder and I did a little experiment this weekend to see how reliable they are. Here's what I did: First off I made a ghost image of my Win2K drive before installing any drivers for the Hollywood Plus/DXR3. Next I did some Unreal Tournament benchmarks and recorded my frame rates. After UT, I attempted to install the Hollywood Plus Beta 1 drivers. BSOD!! Went and did some more research. I have a Asus P3B-F motherboard and found out that I needed to disable PnP OS in the BIOS. This time no BSOD. Next, installed the updated NT4 driver from Creative Labs, this is needed to install the Creative DVD software and have it play RIGHT (if you skip this step you will run into several anomalies). I then proceeded to install the Creative Labs DVD software. The DVD movies played AWESOME, no different then 98 in my opinion. Next is the big test, D3D games. UT benchmarks suffered horribly!! About half the frame rate!! Quake III benchmarks were exactly the same as before I installed the drivers. So OpenGL games are no effected by the drivers. Well, I like playing D3D games too!! So that is completely UNACCEPTABLE. DXR3 is supported under NT4, so I DO expect Creative to release an official driver for 2000 and I will wait. If you REALLY want to play movies under 2000 and don't want to wait for drivers or do a dual boot for movies (in 98) just use PowerDVD or WinDVD. I tested those and they work great! OR if you don't give a damn about D3D games and just like movies and OpenGL stuff. It should work fine (of course, there could be other things that don't function well either). Also, if you have an ACPI compliant motherboard, turning off PnP OS in the BIOS will render the loss of some Power features like Standby (which I really like). Here's my system config for everybody to reference to: Coppermine 733 Asus P3B-F GeForce 256 DDR (all driver sets were tried: 3.x, 5.x) Etherfast 10/100 256 PC133 RAM Creative LABS Encore 8x w/DXR3 SBLIVE! 3Com Internet Gaming Modem In conclusion, just wait and use a software DVD decoder for now. Cheers!

Well, I hate to be a grouch, but if you would've read my thread on this issue over in Games, you would've known to disable PnP OS in your BIOS on that ASUS motherboard.

Yes and no, you are getting 3-D positional sound if you set it up in the game properly along with your hardware/software. However, yours is doing it in a software buffer (dx7 win2000), while the new dx8 beta does it in a hardware buffer. Better this way and clearer sound.

Nope, works killer. On my second PC I have a BH6 rev 1.0 and celeron 300A@464 and a TNT2 Ultra. I have mine setup as ACPI. You have to do it manually though, because Win2000 will set it up as a Standard PC if you don't hit F6 during the installation. But you may not want ACPI, for me it is a must cuz I like to use Standby, and I leave this PC on 24/7. It never reboots. I have no idea about that Matrox card, you'll research that one yourself. Cheers.

Good point, and remember think future when buying hardware. If it doesn't support 2000 and they say it never will, don't buy it. This may or may not apply to 3dfx, just depends on THEM.

I have a TNT2 Ultra on my other PC and I've never had lockup problems with it either. And I've used about every driver set on it. Every time a new one comes out, I update it. Both my platforms are Intel i440BX chipsets. I think everybody's lock-up problems come from VIA or AMD chipsets. However, I believe these conditions have been "fixed." If you go to www.tomshardware.com, you'll find the fix.

It may be a tad faster...but the big difference is sound.. MUCH BETTER! You'll now get hardware acceleration with all those SBLIVE's. It's looking good.

DOS Freak knows how to do it (I can't remember how or I would say.). Maybe he'll post here soon.

That's one hell of a rig you have their Ronin. How's Quake 3 on that bad boy with smp. I get 65 frames/sec with every setting MAXED@1024x768 with the new 5.16 drivers.

great work Fozz! It's the non-Intel chipset people that have these strange hang-ups and blank screens. Sounds like if you just get the newer viaagp.sys it should solve you VIA people's problems.