Turn off on-board video memory?

[Guest]

I'm blighted with a cheapie motherboard that uses 8 MB of regular ol' SDRAM as video memory. I am TRYING to play Madden 2002 on this box, so I installed an nVidia TNT2 PCI 2D/3D video card (32MB) that should be FAR more powerful than what I need to display the game well. Proper drivers are installed (and reinstalled from nVidia to make sure they're current). Monitor is plugged into the card and is definitley taking signals from it.

The problem is -- the game isn't running ANY smoother than before (VERY jumpy). My guess is that the video output is STILL passing through the old on-board 8 MB process before going to my nVidia PCI card. Sure enough, I can still see the "old" video driver in the control panel "Display Properties", though I get the option to choose the card instead (which I do). Video device drivers list both the on-board and the add-on card as active.'

Unfortunatley, I can't just Remove the device driver because the system reinstalls it upon boot-up because it is hard-wired onto the motherboard.

Question: 1) How do I KILL the on-board video? (I've done everything I can through the BIOS gui) 2) Can I recover the 8 MB of RAM siphoned off for video memory back to regular ol' system memory?

 

[starwrs3]

i would look at the motherboard and see if there is a anything you have to change like a jumper

 

[phsstpok]

Find the old video in Device Manager under Display Adapters and double click on it. Put a check mark in the box next to <b>Disable in this hardware profile</b>.

Would you like a Quarter Pounder?
No, thank you. Just give me the BIG heatsink. It's an Athlon.

 

[Guest]

Thanks for the tip -- I did that....still have a very jumpy game. Not sure what the problem is. I've even reloaded Win 98 from scratch and tried everything over again.

Any other ideas?

 

[Crashman]

You are getting the PCI SUX issue. This is caused by the fact that PCI runs at 1/4 the transfer rate of AGP 1x, and most newer games are made for AGP 2x or AGP 4x cards. The best solution fo the PCI SUX issue is to remove the motherboard, lay it on a flat surface, and drop a 16lb bowling ball from a distance of exactly 3.4 meters on the northbridge chip. Remember to do this from EXACTLY 3.4M! Then carefully place it in an anti static bag and leave it by the curb on trash day.
Buy a new motherboard and a decent AGP card and your all set!

Back to you Tom...

 

[phsstpok]

We need more information. What motherboard or system do you have? Which CPU and what speed? How much system memory. You say "jumpy". I this as in poor framerates? or jumpy as in frequent pausing?

Would you like a Quarter Pounder?
No, thank you. Just give me the BIG heatsink. It's an Athlon.

 

[Guest]

I'm giving serious thought to the bowling ball solution...thanks for the exact hight to drop it from

Information on my system

Mainboard: is an "SiS 530"...Micro-ATX (zero AGP slots, 3 PCI slots, one of which can be EITHER PCI or ISA if I ever find a reason to use ISA) 100 MHz FSB.
Processor: K6-2 450 MHz (512K L2 cache)
Memory (192 MB....thats the original 64 MB + an addittional 128 DIMM)
Video Memory: 8MB of the system memory is used for video (originally)
Add on Video card (PCI, unfortunately)...32MB TNT2 Riva
No Sound card (just what's on the mainboard ("ESS Solo-1")
Windows 98SE

"Jumpy" means that I hand off to the running back, he takes a step, the screen freezes, and the next thing I know he's 8 yards downfield and being tackled. I'm looking at screen refreshes of about 1 per second, even at poorest resolution. apparently, the game IS playing, but the monitor can't keep up.

Specs for the game require:

333 MHz PII or K6-2 (okay)
64 MB RAM (okay)
8X CD-ROM (mine is 40X)
40 MB HD space (I freed up a Gig for the game)
Direct X 8.0a (okay)
16 MB Direct 3D card (okay)


Suggested are:

600 MHz PII or K7 (nope)
128 MB RAM (okay)
450 MB HD space (okay)
32 MB Direct 3D card (okay)


zinj (aka SweetDaddyZim)

 

[phsstpok]

Even with the handicap of PCI you should be doing better than 1 fps, a lot better.

I'm guessing your system is doing too much swapping to disk. Is the disk activity light constantly on during game play?

<i>You can reduce swapping to a minimum by running SYSEDIT and modifying SYSTEM.INI. Under the [386Enh] heading add the following line.</i>

<b>ConservativeSwapfileUsage=1</b>

<i>Better still get a copy of Cacheman 5 which will optimize your system's use of memory. It's freeware (shareware if you want support). One of the options in Cacheman will do the above tip for you. (You have to put a check mark in the option in the Cacheman's settings section ).</i>

Download Cacheman at the following link.
<A HREF="http://www.outertech.com" target="_new">http://www.outertech.com</A>

<b>Here are some other things to try</b>.

<i>Make sure DMA is enabled for your hard drive (assuming your motherboard supports IDE DMA modes). You'll find the option in Device Mananger under Disk Drives/Generic IDE Disk Type 47. (The number depends on the drive type selected in your BIOS. Type 47 is for user definable).

Likewise, enable DMA for your CD-ROM. Some CD-ROMs have a problem with this and cause instability. If this happen boot to Safe Mode and undo the change.

Assuming you are using one of the nVidia Detonator drivers, go into display properties under the advanced properties section find the OpenGL and Direct3D tabs. Under each of these set the PCI texture memory to 0. It doesn't appear that you can set this value but you can if you type it instead of using mouse clicks. Setting these will mean only memory on your video card (no system memory) can be used to store textures but it minimizes PCI transfers which are very slow.

You can also try setting any PCI options in your BIOS to maximum performance. Some settings may cause instability. You have to experiment. </i>

Would you like a Quarter Pounder?
No, thank you. Just give me the BIG heatsink. It's an Athlon.<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by phsstpok on 09/16/01 03:56 AM.</EM></FONT></P>

 

[Guest]

Cacheman 5 now installed, and I checked conservative swapfile usage
DMA was already enabled across the board (my drive was type 02)
PCI texture memory now set to zero for both OpenGL and Direct3D tabs


No effect -- the game is just as hosed as it alwasy was.

 

[Rop]

I am guessing that the main board you are trying to use has a setting in the bios to select the type of video card you have. Most of the cheaper Pcchips MB (sounds like the one you have) have a setting that lets you choose from PCI and AGP, Some actually have Internal AGP, AGP and PCI selection. Check in you BIOS as I think that the game is trying to access the AGP for textures thus slowing you to a crawl.


Well hope it helps

Rop


Why do I use LINUX ? Cause its the BEST OS
Why do I use Windows? Cause its the BEST Nintendo..

 

[phsstpok]

Rop has a good idea there.

The only other thing that I can think of is that your TNT2 PCI might be sharing an IRQ with something else. You can check this in Device Manager. Double-click on <b>Computer</b>. If it is sharing with anything except PCI Steering try moving it to different PCI slots until it is not sharing. If your BIOS has an option to enable or force ESCD do it each time you move the card, just to be sure Windows picks up the hardware change.


Would you like a Quarter Pounder?
No, thank you. Just give me the BIG heatsink. It's an Athlon.

 

[arsend]

Also in your BIOS will be an option that says reserve IRQ for Display device. Make sure that it is enabled, this will help in solving your problem if it is an IRQ issue. If I were you, I would start saving money to buy your own motherboard AGP video card set up. You might be able to take the processor and memory out of your old one and save a few bucks as well. It is also likely that the game you are trying to play is just over loading your system resources anyway, even after getting the best preformance possible. This is waht happens when you buy cheap computers, you get cheap parts.

If it works for you then don't fix it.