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kamikaze_789
Guest
i have only been able to run hl2 in dx8 with my card, and i discovered a problem caused in WINDOWS, not half-life that was messing it up. here's what i have:
-Gainward NVidia GeForce FX 5200 (non-ultra) 4X AGP, w/ 128 MB DDR VRAM
-AMD Athlon XP 2000+ Processor
-512 MB PC2100 DDR RAM
-60GB Hitachi Deskstar HD (running UDMA 5)
-MSI K7T266 PRO 1.0 Mainboard
up until now, i really wasn't satisfied at all with how hl2 was running on my system. and i almost listened to all of the bashers bitchin' about how valve messed up the performance of the nvidia cards. i almost got a radeon card, but then i found an article about VIA chipsets and windows xp service pack 2. it said that the via drivers were horrible with the IDE and PCI controllers, and there was a DRAMATIC difference by just using the generic windows drivers.
it suggested going to device manager and then in system devices, clicking on "update drivers" on all devices starting with VIA. select install from specific location, and then on "don't choose. i will pick a driver to install". then here's what i changed to what: (these drivers are listed under compatible devices, too.)
via pci to isa bridge - pci standard isa bridge
via cpu to pci bridge - pci standard host cpu bridge
via cpu to agp controller - pci standard pci-to-pci bridge
its crazy...all of a sudden half-life 2 started running in dx9 all by itself, and i can run at 800x600 with everything set to max except reflections and anti-aliasing, which i never turn on. aniso is at 8x, though. its damn amazing, though. i run better fps than i did at dx8 with eveything set to medium.
when i go into the nvidia control panel, i'm still able to set the same overclocks. the only odd thing is that it says that its running in PCI mode instead of agp4x. but i know its faster now...its about 35% faster in my benchmarking program.
its insane, though. just thought i'd share...any thoughts?
-Gainward NVidia GeForce FX 5200 (non-ultra) 4X AGP, w/ 128 MB DDR VRAM
-AMD Athlon XP 2000+ Processor
-512 MB PC2100 DDR RAM
-60GB Hitachi Deskstar HD (running UDMA 5)
-MSI K7T266 PRO 1.0 Mainboard
up until now, i really wasn't satisfied at all with how hl2 was running on my system. and i almost listened to all of the bashers bitchin' about how valve messed up the performance of the nvidia cards. i almost got a radeon card, but then i found an article about VIA chipsets and windows xp service pack 2. it said that the via drivers were horrible with the IDE and PCI controllers, and there was a DRAMATIC difference by just using the generic windows drivers.
it suggested going to device manager and then in system devices, clicking on "update drivers" on all devices starting with VIA. select install from specific location, and then on "don't choose. i will pick a driver to install". then here's what i changed to what: (these drivers are listed under compatible devices, too.)
via pci to isa bridge - pci standard isa bridge
via cpu to pci bridge - pci standard host cpu bridge
via cpu to agp controller - pci standard pci-to-pci bridge
its crazy...all of a sudden half-life 2 started running in dx9 all by itself, and i can run at 800x600 with everything set to max except reflections and anti-aliasing, which i never turn on. aniso is at 8x, though. its damn amazing, though. i run better fps than i did at dx8 with eveything set to medium.
when i go into the nvidia control panel, i'm still able to set the same overclocks. the only odd thing is that it says that its running in PCI mode instead of agp4x. but i know its faster now...its about 35% faster in my benchmarking program.
its insane, though. just thought i'd share...any thoughts?
