ATI rage128pro fade effect in XP's

[Tomay 0]

I have set up windwos xp on a celeron 1,2 with an ati rage128pro ultra GPU. It runs ok but the fade effect in windows xp runs really slow in stages so it takes 2-3 seconds after you press the start button until you see the menu. I have tried different drivers, but no luck so far.

 

I have expirienced similar problems on my radeon9600 if I don't deinstall the old drivers before I install the new ones (e.g. switching from cat3.7 to 3.8 )

 

Anyone knows a solution for this or had similar problems.

 

 

 

SPECS:

Celeron1,2

Qdi Advance10t (via chipset)

Ati rage128pro ultra

40GB samsung HDD

[sapiens74 0]

Disable the fade effect

 

 

Or use Tweak UI to speed it up

[Tomay 0]

I did that, but what is causing this?

[Sampson 0]

Probably lack of horsepower - you are using a 1.2 Celeron. Despite the fact that you have a nice video card, the fade effect and the translucent effect are very dependent on the processor.

[Tomay 0]

No way!

 

The fade effect ran ok on my 700 celeron with an ATI rage128, and it runs flawlessly on my 1,3 celeron.

[Slim 0]

VIA chipsets and ATI cards tend to "dislike" each other. VIA's AGP implementation was never considered good to say the least (their PCI arbitration is also a problem, and a lot of patches have been written to help). I have been through the pains myself with VIA. But enough rambling.

 

I might be able to help if you give me a bit more details:

 

- ATI driver version

- VIA 4in1 version (or VIA AGP driver version)

- You mention the card ran fine with other processors, on the same mobo ??

 

That motherboard is based on the Apollo Pro 133T, and seem to remember reading about some video card issues; Ill try to track 'em down.

I found 2 of the links:

 

http://www.rageunderground.com/rage128faq.shtml

http://www.sudhian.com/

 

Regards,

 

Slim

[Tomay 0]

Latest drivers and latest via4in1

 

it ran fine but not on the same mobo

[Slim 0]

You may want to check:

 

- If you have a PCI card in slot 1 (often shared with AGP on VIA MBs)

- What IRQ's, if any, are shared with the vid card ?

- Latest BIOS ? (some older MBs have winXP ACPI issues)

- Any problem devices reported ?

- Multiple instances of video adapter ?

- Old driver entries still in registry ?

 

Regards,

 

 

Slim

[Tomay 0]

Have checked all of that. No issues.

 

It's a fresh install of winXP.

[Slim 0]

If you are willing to experiment with some BIOS settings, I can offer the following based on my findings with VIAs chipsets.

These may help, but don't expect a complete fix since there are fundamental flaws in the VIA PCI bus arbitration mechanism design.

 

Here they are:

 

CPU to PCI Write Buffer: Enabled

 

PCI#2 Access #1 Retry: Normally enabled, BUT may cause excessive PCI arbitration retries resulting in very slow performance (the VIA arbiter wastes many PCI cycles and reduces effective bandwidth). The AGP bus is called PCI bus #2 in this VIA chipset. By enabling this setting, the write buffer will retry the pending transaction until it gets the bus (I have seen this setting cause graphic slowdowns during disk access as an example). Try both settings.

 

 

 

AGP Fast Write: Set to Disable

AGP-4X Mode: Set to Disable

 

I meant to ask: how high does your CPU usage go when you enable the fade effect ?

Have you tried enabling the fade effect and disabling menu shadows ?

 

Regards,

 

Slim