GeForce 4 TI 4600 Problems...

M

MagicalVacation

Geek Trainee
I recently bought a new PC with an Intel Pentium 4 2.55Ghz processor and a GeForce 4 TI 4600 video card. Naturally I was rather hyped to see the performance of this card in its fullest glory. Yet when I had finished installing the showcase demo's (Werewolf, Tidepool, Squid, Grace,...) and executed them, dissapointment struck. The framerate of these real-time animations was horribly slow and shocky, in other words, they did not run smoothy at all ! Now, I would have expected something entirely different from a showcase that's supposed to show the true potential of the GeForce 4 TI 4600.

Is this normal?

Or is something wrong with the setup of my video card?

I'm not exactly educated in the area of graphic cards and so on, but I did install the latest official GeForce driver (41.09) and DirectX 9.0. On top of that I went to the settings of the GeForce and enabled agressive instead of balanced performance.

After doing all that, I put the showcase issues aside for a moment and tried my hands on some games. I started with Soldier Of Fortune II: Double Helix. My findings were that when I didn't go over the top with the video settings, there still were frequent slowdowns in the game, especially when a lot of enemies appeared on screen or when I was standing in open areas with a lot of trees and bushes, etc...

Also in Neverwinter Nights, the game slows down in open areas such as the town center, etc... It only runs smoothy in small rooms. BTW, it doesn't matter what video settings are used, it still slows down.

Perhaps all of this is normal, but I would like to here more about this. If there is anyone who thinks he/she can help, please do.

Thanx,
-MagicalVacation.
 
thats quite a powerfull card you got there, it would be no good if your sytem specs don't match it.

I've played Soldier Of Fortune II: Double Helix, with my Geforce 4 Ti4200, My computer specs arent great but I had no problem running games...

have you tried changing settings from within the game, like detail level etc to see if it makes a difference?
 
NeverWinter Nights is supposed to be a real killer for any system, so that being a bit slow doesn't totally shock me. Direct X 9 is still in beta last I checked, so that could be part of the problem. Uninstall that and get the latest version of Direct X 8. Also, make sure your motherboard drivers are installed.
Did you build the system yourself or did you buy it pre-built from someone like HP/Compaq, Gayteway, Dell or some other company?
 
Well, you see that's the problem, it doesn't make any difference wether I use DirectX8 or 9. What I am wondering is, would it help to install Windows 98 next to WinXP that's allready on my system, and play all my games on Win98 and do the rest on WinXP??
 
What brand of card are you using? Creative has 41.80 drivers out that are supposed to fix a lot of problems users have been experiencing with their cards.

Also you might want to try the new 42.01 drivers available here.


(Big B DX9 was officially released, check the OS thread for a link. There is a problem with multiplay with them though :( )
 
Euhm, this driver is unofficial...What if it f*ucks up my system?
And besides, is this driver even capable of solving the slowdowns? If it is, I'll download in a second. But I'd still like to know if running my games under Win98 will help.

(Oh, and the brand of my Geforce 4 TI 4600 is a Creative 3D Blaster TI 4600)
 
Worst case scenario is that you'll have to go into safe mode and unistall the driver and then install a different one. I understand that it may seem a little off to use an unoffical driver, but you're basically waiting for nVidia to let the eager beavers test the new drivers since that would save them a lot of time to test more system configs (at least that's my theory). I've used several unoffical drivers, and some have worked fine, others have sucked. I'm still using some unoffical drivers--even though there are probably offical versions of what I'm using (21.81).
At this point, you don't really have much to lose. nVidia does a pretty good job with their drivers.
 
Ok, so I finished installing this 42.01 driver, but it doesn't seem to make any difference...

Where exactly can I see what graphic drivers are installed on my system? Perhaps something went wrong and the old 41.09 is still on my system...
 
Go into Device Manager, expand your grahpics adapters, right click on your GeForce and bring up it's properties. The see what the driver tab has on it.
 
Oh, ok. Seems the 42.01 is installed...

Damn, WTF am I supposed to do now?

I just tested Return To Castle Wolfenstein with the new drivers, and the same slowdowns occur when a lot of stuff is on screen.
Besides that, the tearing effect on the walls and floor is still there too...
 
Since it's XP it may be the refresh rate bug, try searching on Google for Nvidia refresh rate fix and you should have a number of fixes.

Choose whatever seems to fit you best. If that doesn't work you may need to get in touch with Creative's tech support.
 
The fix doesn't work on Geforce 4 cards...

And even if it did, would it really solve the slowdowns?

EDIT: Just tested my Return to Castle Wolfenstein settings and came to the conclusion that the exact same slowdowns occur when running the game at a resolution of 800x600 with all the graphical settings turned very low and at resolution 1152x864 with all the graphical settings turned to the max! What does that mean.

EDIT2: Just d/l ReForce which does seem to work on Geforce 4 cards. I tested RTCW but there were no apparent changes, although I did get the feeling the game ran just a little bit smoother. But then again, maybe not... You see, the tearing effect seems to have reduced, but the slowdowns are still frequent.
 
i got xp and geforce ti 4200. no problems at all with sof2 so u shud strive to seek answers for underperformance. is your system clogged? needs defragging etc?

and out of interest in bios what is the memory setting for the agp port?
regards
 
Rixx brought up a good point regarding AGP Apeture size. If the size is below 64MB, the AGP part will basically be nonexistant and be slow like a PCI card which could account for some of the problems you're having. Have it at at least 64MB, but no more than half your system memory or whatever the closest thing is below half.
 
How does one change these settings?

EDIT: Guess who's a happy camper? That's right, ME!
I found the solution to the tearing effect on the wall's and floor in Return to Castle Wolfenstein.
Apparently I just had to switch the "Use GL extensions" option OFF. Only problem left now are those Godd*mn slowdowns...

EDIT2: I just ran 3DMark2001 SE and my card scored 8187 3D marks (on default settings). Put in another way, my card scored less than a GeForce3 TI 500. I should really demand my money back. Yet I'd like to solve this hideous problem... Dilemma, dilemma...

EDIT3: Downloaded some new motherboard AGP drivers which improved my 3D marks from 8187 to 12020, quite the improvement. YET, Most of my games seem to be showing the SAME slowdowns :( . Especially NeverWinter Nights. No improvements whatsoever there. My Showcase TI 4600 Demo's on the other hand are running A LOT smoother. My AGP Aperture size is 64MB, so how do I crack that up?? Also important: What's the limit knowing that I have 512MB DDR DRAM?

EDIT4: Strangest thing happened... I put my AGP APerture size on 256MB and there were absolutely no changes in performance...Except for the tearing effect in my other games like MOHAA...That became even worse !!! I then put the size on 4MB just to fool around, and nothing changed yet again. I even got the same score on 3DMark...:( :sad:
 
The Apeture size won't yeild any noticeable improvements in your area. You might wanna make sure you have all the latest patches for your game as they might fix problems with certain hardware, etc.
The AGP driver download was a good thing, and something I'd forgotten about.
 
I had the same problem (games not running smoothly) when I had nvidia drivers 41.09, also the same problems with xp drivers 2.9.5.8 so I installed the mainboard drivers which are older but it solved the problem. 3DMark2001SE gave me the same score as when I used xp drivers but the games are running wayyyyyyyy smoother. You might wanna try that if you have not yet.
Those drivers (the mainboard ones)are also not digitally signed for xp but they actually run better.
 
hmm, well, I don't know if that'll work, 'cause I played my games when I just go this computer and they ran choppy then to. I then installed all the newest drivers and nothing changed except my 3DMark2001 SE score...
 
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