Video Performance Problem

Well, I agree with you that your fps is far too low.  Frame rates depend on many things like motherboard chipset, chipset drivers, bios settings, screen resolution, colour depth, etc.  You can check this link http://www17.tomshardware.com/search/search.html?category=all&words=ti4200 for plenty of benchmark for your graphics card.  

What chipset is your motherboard based on?  Do you have the latest chipset driver installed?  Like for VIA, you need the 4-in-1 driver.  Color depth?  32bit?  Some graphics card actually performs better at 32bit than lower depth.  Do you have any special video settings in BIOS that might work against the performance?

Also DirectX version?  You need at least a version 8 to play UT2003.  The latest NVidia drivers might have been optimised for DX9.  So you might want to get that too.

Do you have full-screen anti-aliasing turned on? That always kills performance stone dead, regardless of the card used.

No, the format of the harddisk makes no difference (well, certainly not 50fps!) in gaming; most of the game is played out of RAM anyway (I would hope on a 512MB system!)  I agree however that you likely need the VIA 4in1/Hyperion drivers from www.viaarena.com/?pageid=2

What resolution are you running at?  How do you have the drivers set (for DirectX in Advanced display properties, is it set for Performance or Quality, or a mid-range setting)? Also have you installed the latest patches?

-dog*

One other thing to check is do you have SBA (sideband addressing) or  agp fast write enabled in the bios?

SBA and FastWrites don't typically make much (if any) difference, 2-4% at most, but its a good thought, about BIOS...check that your BIOS is set for 'Assign IRQ to VGA' as some don't by default, and/or go to BIOS (DEL or F1 at power on) and 'Load setup defaults' then make any necessary adjustments.  Be sure to re-set the "Assign IRQ for VGA", maybe under "Advanced Configuration" or something similar...

-dog*

Well, there you go.  PC_Idiot demonstrated the role of different chipset may have on the performance.  FSAA is definitely a no no unless you have the fastest video card that has plenty of FPS to spare.  This can usually be disabled in the Advanced tab of Display Properties.  I think UT2003 uses Direct3D rather than OpenGL.  I might be wrong though.

Hey guys thanks for the replies. Have been busy which is why I have yet to reply.

I do have DirectX 9.0, the latest DirectX drivers, and an NTFS system.

I'm guessing win2k is the problem...although I would like to investigate more on this mb issue.  Embarassingly enough I don't know what chipset it is....
How can I check for compatibility issues with my mb?

I highly doubt that Win2K is the problem.  If you click Start/RUn and type in msinfo32.exe <enter> does it show any information in the System Manufacturer/Model fields?  This will help us identify the board if you don't know what it is.

Also, as mentioned UT2K3 is a much much much more advanced game graphically than Quake3.  Have you tried Q3 on the system (or if you don't own it, download the demo and try that)?  What resolution are you running at?  Have you tried turning down some of the various video options in the game's configuration?

-dog*

ALso if you haven't already, update your nVidia video drivers from www.nvidia.com (not sure if you did this; you said you had the "latest DirectX drivers").  Check the driver settings in Display control panel, Settings tab, Advanced button and look at DirectX, set the top slider to "Performance" and see what you get.

-dog*

Diabolik,

It's kind of difficult to track compatibility issues in this case cos most often, computers sold by manufacturers like compaq, hp, dell and most computer shops will not guarantee to u about compatibility issues of motherboard and graphic card.

It's something like a "Buy at your own risk thing"

What I know of for performance wise is Asus Motherboard and Asus Grahpic card gives best performance for sure. Another product to go for is MSI Motherboard and MSI Graphic cards. I've not dare tried the rest.

The Gigabyte and Leadtek mentioned above was a risk taken by my friend to try it out. I guess he would be mad as u if he were to get sucky fps after buying the 2 products.

Just my 2 cents worth of info. :)

By the way, do take dogztar advice first before doing anything else as I agree with his posts above.

Hey guys,

Sorry for the typo above. I meant the latest NVidia drivers.

I have an ASUS board and my GeForce is using an Asus board as well.

But the thing is my friend has a machine with "lower specs" than mine, same video card (might be MSI tho) and WinXP and he gets on average 20 more fps than me. =(

I'm running at 1024x768, every detail on high. But again, I should expect it to run just as well as my friend's machine (his settings exactly the same)....

Thanks again,
Ben

Well, you can try going to BIOS configuration and choosing "Load OPtimized/Performance Defaults" that might help...but I wouldn't worry about it overall.  Are you sure your friend has his system configured exactly the same as yours?  All driver settings the same???

-dog*

This could well be a VIA chipset issue, assuming that's the chipset on your motherboard. Win2K mis-identifies the VIA chipset and installs the wrong drivers for it, causing major performance and stability issues when running 3D; XP doesn't have this problem, hence your friend gets better performance than you.

Thanks Diabolik q:-)

I guess I don't quite understand how that answers the question...the 3 systems compared are using vastly differnet hardware (a GF4Ti 4200 is no comparison with a GF4MX or a GF2!).

I guess if you're just giving up on the problem, well then that's your choice.  Did we ever determine what motherboard you're using even?  The whole problem might be fixed by installing the proper AGP drivers (either VIA or SiS, etc depending on the mobo chipset...)

-dog*

And if not mentioned already...OS and harddisk format make such a minimal difference its not even worth discussing.  When Win2K first came out, and the nvidia drivers for 2K were very immature, yes Win98 was much faster for most games, but that's just not the case anymore.

-dog*

Pardon me for my english is not good, I do not understand the phrase "a GF4Ti 4200 is no comparison with a GF4MX or a GF2!"

Do u mean a GF4Ti 4200 is uncomparable to GF4MX or GF2?

Yes, comparing Q3 FPS between a GeForce4ti 4200, a GeForce4 MX, and a GF2MX is unrealistic.  The GF4Ti outclasses the other two in power by quite a bit (probably 2-4X in the case of GF4Ti vs GF2MX)

Doesn't matter now....