Performance Question

Most likely it''s the video card. A 9600 is not that "high preformance," Make sure you get the newist drivers for it.

My motherboard came with 800 mhz Front side bus.

So you guys think it is my video card?
On a friends computer, he has everything less than i do except he has a sata harddrive and a 1024 mb of ram running at 333 mhz. The game runs perfectly on his.

What model of video card do you guys recomend that is fast?

Thanks for the help

R9600 with only 2x AGP?

You may have to check that your GFX Card support the higher mode (4x,8x) or not (I think your MB is support up to 8x, but you have to check it also). if so, just try to set to other mode, and benchmark.

^^''

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Original post by SkinnyM
So you guys think it is my video card?

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I *severely* doubt it''s your video card. I run with a Radeon 7200 (32 Meg DDR - whee!) in an AGP slot, on a Pentium III 866 MHz - so my hardware is WAY behind yours, and although I haven''t tried Star Wars Galaxies, I play a lot of other stuff without problem. For e.g., I run Unreal Tournament in 1024x768x32 and Dungeon Siege (I can''t remember at what resolution) smooth as silk.

Make sure you have the latest video drivers. It might be worth looking at the boot settings (you know, hitting Del when you''re booting, or whatever it is for your computer) and making sure your AGP slot is running as fast as it will go.

While the video card is the bottle neck in the computer it shouldnt be running that slowly...


A few suggestions:
-update videocard drivers
-Set the AGP X level in bios
-Make sure the AGP apiture is large enough in bios.

[edited by - skow on April 9, 2004 12:45:56 PM]

What is the AGP apiture and what does it effect?

So, i updated my video drivers to the newest, that didnt do much. I set my AGP 8x down to 4x to see if there was a difference, there was nothing at all.. so what do you think, i have it turned on in windows but not in the BIOS so it is never 8x only 4x?

Any other ideas, are you guys sure my video card is the bottleneck by the way?

Thanks

Agree with BriTeg. This is not your graphics card. Certainly you are shooting yourself in the foot by running this 2x AGP on a system spec like that. Switching at the O/S level means nothing until you switch this in the bios. When the machine starts up, press whatever key the bios tells you to press (usually "Del") to get into config mode, and change the AGP setting to whatever the bios supports. You might have to search around a bit in the bios to find this. Check the motherboard manufacturer site for the latest bios version also to ensure you are getting all of the settings available. Quite often the motherboard manufacturer has windows based utils for some of this tweaking. When thats done, check the motherboard manual (also available on manufacturers site) to see if you have the correct FSB speed settings. Quite often this is actual jumpers on the motherboard and not in the bios. As mentioned above, get the latest drivers for the graphics card also if you haven''t. Also, defrag your disk, and if you are running Windows XP there are a ton of tweaks you can perform to greatly increase performance of the OS. By default Windows XP has a lot of eye-candy enabled and some unecessary services running. For these you will need to go on the web and perform some searching.

I personally think overclocking is unecessary these days. You acutally introduce timing issues within the system that lower performance. Try going back to the proper settings.

Hope this helps. Be prepared to do some research :-)

Just a simple question that hasn''t been asked yet:
do other games run well? Have you tried something different than Star Wars Galaxies?

Of course the video card shouldn''t be a problem and your specs seem ok as well.
You''d better check what''s running in the background.

I''v checked what is runing when i have star wars galaxies running. There is pretty much nothing, nothing starts up when my computer boots, i got rid of all that in the registry. As for other games, they run great. It is just star wars galaxies. I can''t understand how i have a friend with computer specs of:

2.6 ghz P4
p4p800 asus motherboard
1024 mb 266 mhz ram.
sata harddrive 80gb
geforce ti 200 (very old)

And star wars galaxies runs great, everything runs amazing on that computer. I doubt the sata harddrive would make that big of difference. I guess it has to be the amount of ram which is making such a large difference in performance. Do you guys agree with me?

Thanks for the feedback guys

Also, do you guys know how to check to see what your front side bus is running at?

I didnt see anything for that in the bios nor on any of these
''See your computer'' Program things.

Also, if you know how to see it, and it isnt what it should be (mine should be 800mhz), how would i change it?

Thanks again guys

Should''nt be the harddrive.

Should not be the RAM either.

Your graphics card already rocks, so it should not be a problem either. Wait a minute, is it a 9600 PRO/XT or is it a 9600SE?Even then, it should not be that big a difference.

You could be running the game at too high a resolution/max details/max everything which might be causing the slowdown.
Most likely you are running outdated drivers. Or, it could be a problem with the newest ATI drivers which affect SWG.

i updated my video card with the latest ATI drivers, my video card is a Radeon 9600SE. I downloaded the Radeon Family drivers from there website. Also for the settings for the game, i have most of mine way down, i even have vsync off to improve performance.

Why dont you think it could be the ram? Most mmoprg use tons of ram and if i am running out, that could slow things alot because it has to go to the harddrive or free up some more. Thanks alot for the help, i really appreciate it guys

If what you said is the case, you should see the orange LED on your computer being on indicating it is writing to a HD. Anyway, i am running at 512 too and i have no problems at all, only a slight slowdown when editing videos (or a crash if i ask to much).

EDIT: have you tried formatting your computer and reinstalling everything, i had it a few times that only that could fix it (too much garbage on my computer).
WWW.TREEPENGUIN.TK

[edited by - Tree Penguin on April 11, 2004 11:24:46 AM]

1. what color depth are you using? 16 or 32 bit?
2. what resolution do you use ingame ?
3. did you enable some kind of eax( 1/2/3) ?
4. set your agp aparture size to the maximum
5. set hardware acceleration to 100%(standard)
6. does the game use d3d or opengl?
7. check your anti aliasing and anisotropic filtering settings
8. you don t need antialiasing >4x especially not in resolutions of 1280*1024 and higher
9. disable vertical sync
10. maybe defrag your harddrive

ah yeah, check your bios settings, on some boards you can set the frontsidebus, fsb*clockmultiplier== cpu clock speed, at least on my computer *fg*

I think it''s the RAM... I haven''t played Galaxies yet, but EQ brought my high end system to its knees when the new high poly models came out. I figure it''s the same thing.

Driver updates is a definite though..

Well i''v done everything you guys have said. Thanks alot for the help. I guess no matter what i do, my computer just doesnt have what it needs. WHich i really think is 1024 mb ram. Maybe i can get my lazy butt to get a job and buy some. Anyways, thanks alot for the help.

"What we do in life, echos in eternity" -- Gladiator

Are you playing on the Network?

Perhaps your connection is too slow for the game. Just thought I''d ask...

I agree with pjcast:
the connection is really important if you''re playing an online game.
I didn''t know SW Galaxis was a MMORPG.
I''ve played other online games that seem tho freeze when the connection is not OK.
I don''t think the RAM is the problem since the one you have should be above the minimum system requirements. Otherwise no-one could be playing that game. So sit down and relax, you don''t have to get a job

I don''t know.. I had the same problems and I have 1mb internet. Apparently some of the developpers were running SWG fine with dialup ( but they would say that )