This is my current system:
- Antec 350 watt power supply
- 2 HD's, one 30 gig and one 3 gig
- 12x CD-RW drive
- >1 gig DDR RAM
- AMD XP 1.6 ghz @ 1.4 clock speed
- SB Audigy
- PNY Verto G4 Ti4600
- Presario 150 (Very old monitor - 75 hz refresh rate)
- Mobo Manufacturer - ASUSTeK Computer INC.
- Mobo Model - A7A266

I've got it to the point that my computer will not have any serious problems with my graphics card (granted, I could use a couple of cooling fans, since overheating causes a system restart on my cpu). However, I'm disappointed with the card's performance. Benchmark results from "Tom's Hardware" (http://www.tomshardware.com) has 3DMark 2001 SE giving the PNY over 9000 points. I, however, only receive 6805 points, with vertical sync off. Plus, the nvidia demos *lag* (wolf, squid, etc.). What could be wrong with my configuration? Thanks.

How fast are your hard drives and which drive is 3DMark on ? I only ask because my buddy got his new GF4 and tried it on both his new HDD and old HDD and saw a significant difference in scores.

How do you determine the HD speed? I know that the term is in RPM, but where can I find that spec?

The A7a266 (ALi Chipset) is a bit slow at agp though you can give it a few tweaks to speed it up. I have the later -E version and gained 1000 3dmarks with the following...

1) Install the latest Ali AGP driver and reboot:
ftp://www.ali.com.tw/driver/agp_1.90_eng.zip

2) Install the beta dets 29.42 they seem to speed stuff up a bit.
(On warp2's download section.)

2) Get the Ali AGP utilitiy:
ftp://www.ali.com.tw/driver/agp_utility140.zip

run it, click Manual, choose AGP4x and Fast Write function Enable.
Make sure Fast writes is on in the bios too...


Try that out, if you want even more speed you can edit the registry with rivatuner....

3) Get Rivatuner:
http://guru3d.com/rivatuner/

Goto the Power User tab
Select Open Data base, choose Databases > Nvidia > W2k > Det 28.32
(there's no 29.42 for rivatuner yet but it dosnt matter)

Expand the 'Detonator w2k System' section.
Change:
DisableAGPFWDisconnect to 1
EnableAGPFW to 1
EnableAGPFWStrap to 1
EnableAGPSBA to 1
EnableAliAGP to 1

press OK, reboot and try out 3dmark again.

I prefer the Ali boards to Via, especially for stability, but the older versions need a bit of tweaking to get going. Good luck!

Oh and make sure you have the latest a7a266 BIOS (http://www.asus.com.tw) they fixed a few problems with Geforce cards a couple of revisions ago.

I'll try all this out next time I have an opportunity.

Thanks again! I got roughly a 1500 3DMark increase. The Nvidia demos also do not lag anymore.

I omitted a couple of steps though. I haven't updated my bios (it's revision 1006) and I did not turn on fast writes with the AGP utility, since I wasn't sure whether or not it was on in the bios. Will undertaking these steps make a big difference? I already made the fast-write changes in the registry with Rivatuner, as you suggested. Thanks for the help.

Here's a question ....

Why is it that when I enable fast-writes, my 3DMark score drops ? And it doesn't just drop by a few, it drops by a few dozen. Aren't fast-writes supposed to make it faster (but less stable) because the RAM is bypassed ? Or does a large AGP Aperature size make up for fast-writes ? When I tested the AGP fast-writes, I had a 128 MB AGP Aperture size.