The old work-horse in my system could do with a bit of a tweak, and until I can get the money together for a newer card, this one has to do! Currently its keeping up well with the games I'm running (UT2004, Doom3), but wouldn't mind a few more FPS out of them. Doom 3 graphics are set to medium, so only 640x480, but all filters except AA are turned on. Getting around 35-40FPS during heavy on-screen action, ~60-65FPS when there is hardly a thing onscreen. UT2004 runs well @ 1024x768, but not sure of frame-rate, but it is VERY smooth! I tried OC'ing it once, but didn't work too well, would just bomb out & die It's an MSi card btw, 128Mb AGP 4x or 8x, I can't remember rightly as I've had it aaaages. Still on stock-cooling
Other than o/c'ing there's little you can do to improve it. If it's an original 4200 the clocks could be as low as 250/440, the newer ones were around 250/512 and often had even better average o/c's too. You COULD sell your 4200 and then just buy another, should break even then BUT it may o/c which will help a fair bit in most games, just not Doom III. The GF4TI4200 has hung on well and in raw speed can often beat the FX5600ultra and Rad9600Pro ... until you hit AA+AF or need DX9. You should find FRAPS will report FPS in almost all games, averaging about 50FPS is widely considered ideal. Doom III is one of very few games which really brings the GF4TI to their knees, I seriously doubt there's any tweak you'll do to hit 800x600 playably. Don't worry about AGP4x vs AGP8x, there's really no difference even on 9800 cards. What's your system spec?
Play Doom3 on 800*600, med or low details (cant remeber) and the framerate is playable These are the same settings as the 9600XT uses so the old 4200's can keep up nicely. UT2004 wise, hit tab then type stat fps this gives your framerate. What drivers are you running? The newer ones kill performance, just switched back to 40.72 drivers and gained a good whack in 3dmark 01, and in games as well. Download rivatuner, and check what the cards default clock speeds are. Most likely you'll have 250/440 if its a 128mb. IF the card doesnt have ramsinks, note down the info on the ram chips, and post back. From that the defaul speed of the chips can be worked out, and possible overclocks guaged. A mates MSI 4200 reaches just over 300mhz core and ~ 520 mem these are supposdly 24/7 stable clocks. The core clocks are usually ~ the 290-300 mhz mark stable, so this should be achievable on stock cooling fairly easily. Adding better cooling will help things along if you so wished.
Oh yes, GF4TI can play Doom III at 800x600 medium quality! XP2500+ with many cards: http://www2.hardocp.com/article.html?art=NjQ0LDY= GF4TI4600 (with XP2500+): http://www2.hardocp.com/image.html?image=MTA5MDc4NzE0M1RPNjJBTU9FV1hfNl81X2wuZ2lm Generally 25-60FPS with an average of 47FPS. I thought I'd read something about Doom III really knocking the GF4TI? Perhaps it was only at High Detail or minor IQ issues coupled with the inability to handle more than 8bits per pixel. Highland3r, any reason you think 40.72 are best? Do you think nVidia got a bit embaressed at how well the GF4TI compare to the GF-FX? Although you can work out the theoretical max RAM speed from the marking on the RAM chips it is only theoretical and really no help in knowing the o/c. Best method is just to add 5mhz at a time to the RAM until it artifacts (or becomes unstable) and then back off 10mhz, then simply repeat for the core (with the RAM o/c'ed). Ensure you stress test each time you up the clock speed. Early 4200_128 used 250/444 while later 4200_128 used 250/512, RAM didn't often shift by much but happily the cores often hit about 285 on average which was faster than the TI4400.
Numbers on the RAM chips.. SAMSUNG 226 K4D28163HD-TC40 WHD130CA KOREA Spec of rest of system Athlon 2600+ XP running at 2310MHx (220x10.5) 1Gb PC3500 - 2.5,3,3,11 (wont go any better) DFI NFII Ultra-B Using latest drivers for the Nvidia card, but will give some older ones a try later on. Using latest Nforce drivers.
Through a little testing. Always knew the 41's were good drivers, as upgrading seemed to loose performance, then looked about a bit and found the 40.72's gave good results, adn they seem to. Dont notice any IQ differnece and performance boost isnt bad... K well you seem to have 4ns ram which is 250mhz (500DDR) so thats the rated speed. If its not at that then theres one area that can be improved. Its sammy as well which seems to go ok clock wise, so 525 should be a reasonable figure to aim for, if not higher. System spec wise, isnt too bad, if you can get the card clocks up a little things will perform much nicer 4200's are tough little cards, so wring its neck
well I don't wana kill it as its my only one gona put on 40.72 drivers now & have a dabble at rivatuner...
Make sure you set the frequency gap to 1 as well (go more (on hardware overclock slider page) and clockgen dropdown, choose maximum) This will allow adjustments in 1mhz intervals
hmmmm the 40.72 drivers on my system seem slower... FPS is down about 4-5 on average to last time when running the timedemo. will try the clock speeds tho see if it improves.
Be sure to check in a wide variety of benchmark (or more ideally games). It's not unusual for any given driver version to perform better in some games but worse in others. Example below showing v56.72 through to unofficial v65.62 but with 6800 ... http://www.dark-tweaker.com/geforce-6800-forceware.htm
Hmm might be worth testing some other of the older drivers. The newer (say 50.x and above) are optimised for the FX cards. You *might* find some of the newer drivers give better fps though, eaach system responds differently.
