Quote from Jakg :

they all look like that

Your gonna need to open up the case (of the Case) and have a look on the side of th PSU

Yes and also to look what kind of connectors goes to motherboard. I'm not sure about packard bell, but I think they might done something similar to IBM at some time at least so better be sure before getting anything.

Anyhow, I still fail to see that upgrade would be 1st option here as you should be getting around double of fps minimum what your getting now at max. Really here is something wrong in this pic and what is point of investing lot of money if you still are getting as bad or nearly as bad fps after upgrade, if it is software issue after all?

Of course, must say that with other games that gfx card sure is rather slow, but with LFS it should give good performance, imo.

If you are getting new PSU make sure it has more than one +12V line and something near 30A to +12V line is what you are looking for if you like to look into future upgrades as well.

This is PSU I have, but you need more powerful model if you like to get it future upgrade ready if you like to have some reserve in it.

Nexus 120mm fans would be nice, but you need to open case and look inside if there is any places for fans first.

Quote from JTbo :

Anyhow, I still fail to see that upgrade would be 1st option here as you should be getting around double of fps minimum what your getting now at max. Really here is something wrong in this pic and what is point of investing lot of money if you still are getting as bad or nearly as bad fps after upgrade, if it is software issue after all?

What would be the best course of action to sorting this software problem. I'd suspect it's as likely to be a hardware/driver issue

The computers kept fairly clean, could probably do with a defrag (about a month since the last one) and generally runs pretty quickly doing everything except full screen 3D where it just seems to fall to pieces.

Its an easy mistake to make but with race sims you either have 'enough' RAM or you don't. I don't think LFS uses a lot of ram so with 512 it has 'enough' and adding RAM won't help.

Some games do benifit from more RAM as they load game content while playing but LFS and afaik all racing sims load it all at once because loading game content while playing causes a stutter.

I'm not 100% sure it has SDRAM but the chipset does support SDRAM and the FSB that you mentioned (or rather cpuZ mentioned) is 133mhz which might indicate SDRAM.. The system being a Packard Bell could also be an indication. Nothing wrong with them but they tend to pick a 'fast' processor (like the 2.8 was at the time) and skimp on other things..

I am still firmly against 'upgrading' this machine because keeping ANY of the current parts will become a bottleneck when hooked up with new stuff.. LFS is processor hungry so getting a better gfx card will probably not help

Really, I would live with it, reduce some detail, and then in a 6 months or a year, spend like 4...500 quid on a solid new 'self configured' pc!

Quote from Niels Heusinkveld :

Its an easy mistake to make but with race sims you either have 'enough' RAM or you don't. I don't think LFS uses a lot of ram so with 512 it has 'enough' and adding RAM won't help.

Even if SDRAM is slower I think 1.5gb should be enough to cope with games that specify 512mb.

Quote :

I am still firmly against 'upgrading' this machine because keeping ANY of the current parts will become a bottleneck when hooked up with new stuff.. LFS is processor hungry so getting a better gfx card will probably not help

I'm well aware that it's made up from cheap parts but if I did upgrade the only Packard Bell parts would be 512mb of RAM (if I didn't go to DDR2), the hard drive and the case.

Quote from ajp71 :

What would be the best course of action to sorting this software problem. I'd suspect it's as likely to be a hardware/driver issue

The computers kept fairly clean, could probably do with a defrag (about a month since the last one) and generally runs pretty quickly doing everything except full screen 3D where it just seems to fall to pieces.

Of course first thing to do is to isolate what is problem, is it only in lfs or also in other games, for example with 3d mark 2003 (most probably others have used this at those times when that card was fresh) do benchmark and find from google what results have people with similar hardware got. That is radeon 9600 all in wonder and P4 2.8Ghz. If your results are anything in few hundreds from these then it is more likely to be issue with LFS, surely different drivers may give better performance in LFS too, but that rules out other things.

If result is very much slower (thousand or more), then there have to be either driver issue or some other software issue which may be even quite tricky one to track down and it is everytime more or less unique to what software is installed.

Something along those lines is what I would suggest.

Quote from ajp71 :

What would be the best course of action to sorting this software problem. I'd suspect it's as likely to be a hardware/driver issue

The computers kept fairly clean, could probably do with a defrag (about a month since the last one) and generally runs pretty quickly doing everything except full screen 3D where it just seems to fall to pieces.

first of all when was the last time you formatted your system driver/reinstalled a fresh clean windows ?

secondly are you sure the onboard graphics card you have is turned off either via jumper or bios settings ?

Quote from Niels Heusinkveld :

I'm not 100% sure it has SDRAM but the chipset does support SDRAM and the FSB that you mentioned (or rather cpuZ mentioned) is 133mhz which might indicate SDRAM.. The system being a Packard Bell could also be an indication. Nothing wrong with them but they tend to pick a 'fast' processor (like the 2.8 was at the time) and skimp on other things..

ddr ram IS sdram

Quote :

I am still firmly against 'upgrading' this machine because keeping ANY of the current parts will become a bottleneck when hooked up with new stuff.. LFS is processor hungry so getting a better gfx card will probably not help

agreed
although im still fully convinced that this machine has a lot more frames in it than it currently delivers
(although i belive i remeber there was some giant bottleneck on a 96 aiw im not entirely sure however)

Quote from Shotglass :

first of all when was the last time you formatted your system driver/reinstalled a fresh clean windows ?

Reformatted and installed windows using the Packard Bell restore disc about 6 months ago. There's probably a more effective way of doing this without formatting the entire hard disk?

Quote :

secondly are you sure the onboard graphics card you have is turned off either via jumper or bios settings ?

I think it is how do I check, is it an obvious setting in BIOS? Same goes for disabling onboard sound as well.

Got 2892 on 3dmark03 now I need to go and find some similar spec results, will wait until the morning to do that. I was just over 500 down on what I think should be a vastly inferior PC with my card:
http://www.nextgenelectronics.com/ati9600p.shtml

As I expected it was with the lighting that my fps fell enormously. Eg. On the mother nature one it started about 60 fps with the water and as the camera raised and the sun came into vie it droppped to about 8 fps.

Things I can currently think of that maybe a problem are the conflicts I posted earlier. I also have some kind of wired LAN adaptor in my lowest slot (taking a funny non-PCI connection) it's of no use for anything so would it be worth taking it out?

A 9550 is a shocking card, it's barely and upgrade from a 9000, it's around the same as a Geforce 3 Ti200, that's how bad it is. A 250W PSU should be fine, its the faxct that you don't have any more molex connectors that's the problem. I'd just buy a Y splitter and use that.

Get yourself a second hand 9800Pro if you can't find a 6600GT, they're pretty much the same performance and a great card of their time. You'll need an extra power molex, but like I said, just grab a splitter. If you find your system crashign then a PSU upgrade would be in order.

Get a decent one like an Antec Neo HE so it'll last through your upgrade.

btw your ram is DDR and is perfectly fine. 133x4 = 533 and that's your bus speed. lol @ sdram

Had a look in BIOS not sure if any of this is relevant but my System temp is 26 centrigrade and my cpu 51. Graphic win size is 256. Onboard audio was disabled. I could not find an onboard video setting, I don't know if my board had onboard graphics (computer was came with a card).

I found Onboard LAN set to enabled and modem device set to auto, disabled them both.

Quote from Davo :

A 9550 is a shocking card, it's barely and upgrade from a 9000

You've lost me here what's a 9550 got to do with it, I have a 9600 Pro All in Wonder.

I think you are getting too low score, after all you have at least 30% more cpu power than at that test from link and it should show on score.

I would remove omega display drivers and install most recent ati catalyst drivers to card. Make restore point before you remove anything, so that you can return to old config if needed.

Here is something that might be useful when uninstalling omega drivers, it is from http://www.omegadrivers.net/ati/ati_faq.php

Quote :

uninstalled the drivers, But after restart, Windows keeps finding the Omega Drivers...
There are some files that Windows saves for backup purposes that cannot be removed by any means, except manually, here is how to find them and remove them:

1. Open Windows Explorer and go to the "Windows\Inf" folder.
2. Do a search inside it for "A word or phrase in a file", type OMEGA and click search.
3. In the search results box delete all the files with the name "OEM##.INF", where ## can be any number...
4. Now remove the video card(s) from the Windows Device Manager and restart.

After restart Windows will now detect and use a Standard VGA, after that you can install any driver set.

Quote from ajp71 :

You've lost me here what's a 9550 got to do with it, I have a 9600 Pro All in Wonder.

Sorry for some reason I thought you said 9550. Werid thing is that a 9600Pro is worse than a 9500Pro. Ati's stupid numbering system.

Quote from Davo :

Sorry for some reason I thought you said 9550. Werid thing is that a 9600Pro is worse than a 9500Pro. Ati's stupid numbering system.

Yes, they sure managed to mess people's heads with those weird numbering. Also with those letters after numbers, XT SE(SlowEdition) PRO then some had none. My old 9700 non pro was actually pretty nice card for it's age, it got nearly 5000 on 3dmark 03, I guess 9500 Pro was around same.

But I think that ajp's LFS performance is even far worse than how much he is behind of 3dmark score, can't think anything else but gfx driver where to start with that.

for cpu / ram speed tests, and comparing them to 'other systems'

http://www.sisoftware.co.uk/

'sandra' is some free software allowing you to test.

I still find the RAM a bit weird. If it is DDR then it is DDR266 (which actually runs at 133 of course). What does it look like?

|____|____|__| (sdr)

|______|_____| (ddr)

Anyway I guess the SIS chipset and DDR266 (which is what you have, going by CPUz) is not too quick.

I didn't know that 256MB 9600Pro aiw cards existed. If tomshardware is right, the normal 9600 pro has its core at 400mhz and the ram at 600 (DDR)

Going by your 3dmark output, your ram is clocked at what the marketing department would call 400 (its actually half of course) so you have a 9600 pro with ram that is 1/3rd slower than 'normal' cards would! They often did that; put 256meg in but compensate for the extra cost by making it slow memory

Quote :

Even if SDRAM is slower I think 1.5gb should be enough to cope with games that specify 512mb.

If (race) games specify 512mb, you won't or shouldn't notice any difference with 1.5, but as you said, photoshop and stuff can certainly improve as that software can easily use more than 512..

So your 9600pro is a bit crippled and a SIS chipset P4 isn't flying.. With some bad luck your case might have a non standard powersupply (dimensions).. Thats not a nice diagnose but alas..

For graphic bottlenecked games, which rFactor is FAR more than LFS, yes, a cheap graphics upgrade (even if its just a 'real' 9800pro / xt 128MB) would help considerably at probably very little cost. Since you won't be able to put a new 3D card for your current machine in a future one, I wouldn't go for a new AGP card (like the 6800GS) as that might not be the optimal price/performance ratio, plus that will put the bottleneck straight back at the CPU..

Anyhow you should've seen enough opinions now..

Quote from Niels Heusinkveld :

Going by your 3dmark output, your ram is clocked at what the marketing department would call 400 (its actually half of course) so you have a 9600 pro with ram that is 1/3rd slower than 'normal' cards would! They often did that; put 256meg in but compensate for the extra cost by making it slow memory

Are you talking about my graphics card memory or my normal memory? My graphics card is a 128mb DDR for what it matters.

EDIT: Here are the photos of my motherboard/psu

Quote from Niels Heusinkveld :

Going by your 3dmark output, your ram is clocked at what the marketing department would call 400 (its actually half of course) so you have a 9600 pro with ram that is 1/3rd slower than 'normal' cards would! They often did that; put 256meg in but compensate for the extra cost by making it slow memory

9600Pro AIW is actually bit faster than 9600Pro because it uses faster memory, that is what I read this morning from other review where was 9600Pro AIW and 9600Pro compared.

But 1800 vs 2800 cpus in 3dmark03 will make sure difference even with same speed gfx card, even if chipset is making things bit slow it still should be same score at minimum, not 500 less that is more than 15% slower with lot faster cpu.
Still if LFS tops at 40 it is far from even that benchmark level, I really think that ajp's system has much more to give in terms of performance at LFS.

Uninstalled the Omega drivers and redownloaded the ATI catalyst but now I have this error on the install what should I do?

Quote :

INF error
Video driver not found

Quote :

Setup was unable to complete the installation.
Try to setup your display adapter with a standard VGA
driver before running setup.

Doing the search posted earlier found no files called OEMxx.inf

The 3dmark PDF you attatched earlier says its a 256MB card with 400mhz RAM.. Of course this could be wrong but that is what I've based my conclusions on!

Oh and Gigabyte DID make socket 478 SIS based SDRAM pc133 boards so I wasn't totally talking out of my bottom!

http://www.gigabyte.com.tw/Pro ... _Spec.aspx?ProductID=1404

Your powersupply is actually good, its a Fortron 250W which will easily deliver the power that 'cheap' 350 .. 400W rated powersupplies do..

Quote from Niels Heusinkveld :

The 3dmark PDF you attatched earlier says its a 256MB card with 400mhz RAM.. Of course this could be wrong but that is what I've based my conclusions on!

Oh and Gigabyte DID make socket 478 SIS based SDRAM pc133 boards so I wasn't totally talking out of my bottom!

I'm totally baffled by what kind of RAM your currently talking about from what I understand my graphics card has 128mb DDR (what it says on the box) and I've got 1.5gb of I think 184 pin SDRAM. So what has 256mb or my motherboard got to do with it?

Quote from ajp71 :

Uninstalled the Omega drivers and redownloaded the ATI catalyst but now I have this error on the install what should I do?

Doing the search posted earlier found no files called OEMxx.inf

If you go control panel -> display -> Settings -> Advanced -> Adapter, what is name of adapter? It should be standard vga adapter or something like that, if it reads omega there then you need to proceed with earlier advice (one that has red text).

ATI Radeon 9600 PRO Family (Microsoft Corporation)

Control Panel > System > Hardware > Device Manager > Display Adapter > Driver > Details

I get a list of 6 drivers:

C:\WINDOWS\system32\ati2cqag.dll
C:\WINDOWS\system32\ati2dvag.dll
C:\WINDOWS\system32\ati3d1ag.dll
C:\WINDOWS\system32\ati3duag.dll
C:\WINDOWS\system32\ativvaxx/dll
C:\WINDOWS\system32\DRIVERS\ati2mtag.sys

the (Microsfot Corporation) after the name suggests it's using the windows default driver which isn't good at 3d at all. For some reaosn your drivers aren't being installed. Try this removal method.. https://support.ati.com/ics/su ... edge&questionID=20870

You mentioned somethign about onboard graphics, have they been disabled?

Also might wanna clean some of that dust out from under the cpu fan, don;t use a vacuum cleaner because the static buildup could fry some parts. Instead unscrew thfan and blow it out with compressed air or a brush.

Quote from Davo :

the (Microsfot Corporation) after the name suggests it's using the windows default driver which isn't good at 3d at all. For some reaosn your drivers aren't being installed. Try this removal method.. https://support.ati.com/ics/su ... edge&questionID=20870

You mentioned somethign about onboard graphics, have they been disabled?

Yes, it is using now windows driver that installed itself automatically, stupid windows.

I think this is straight link to removal information, those pages are made not so linking friendly manner.

That onboard bit can be ignored, I don't think ajp has onboard card, that was earlier on this thread I think.

Quote from Davo :

the (Microsfot Corporation) after the name suggests it's using the windows default driver which isn't good at 3d at all. For some reaosn your drivers aren't being installed. Try this removal method.. https://support.ati.com/ics/su ... edge&questionID=20870

Followed all those steps still no luck. When looking for ATI folders the only thing I found was the uninstall all program, I ran it and restarted I now only have 1 driver for my display adapter in device manager

EDIT - I had missed the DAO bit do it now

Quote :

You mentioned somethign about onboard graphics, have they been disabled?

I don't know, couldn't find it in BIOS