Weirdness...

[nephalim]

OK, my ATI M9 64MB came today, so please tell me what I need to know. Greatly appreciated. I was told to uninstall my drivers, and i'll do that, but I need the catalyst tweaker, if i'm to use catalyst (why not use the Dell Drivers, do they suck?) I also need to know how to properly ground myself so I don't fry my system, and any other precautions to take. Thanks guys (especially Alphawolf for all the support.)

OK, here's the weirdness. Dell cancelled my order for the 32MB (it turned out to actually be an M9, a tech support rep misled me, read on,) However, it arrived today!!! Are they going to re-charge me? (I'll kill them.) I don't think they will, I think it was too late to cancel but they did it anyway because I was so pissed off. If they don't re-charge me, anyone want to buy a 32MB M9? Anyone want to buy a 32MB M4 for that matter? (The 32MB version is significantly faster than the 16MB- versions. It has a 350mhz RAMDAC vs. a 250mhz one and other speed enhancements I believe.) The problem with the M4 isn't speed (it's comparable to the TNT2, I believe,) it's the lack of any decent drivers for the damn thing. I don't know why ATI works so hard to make the most fancy GFX cards but can't make the features work!

The 64MB is A00 (Part # 4u284) and the 32MB (Part # 8X960, NOT 5E440 or whatever the idiot corrected it to, he said 8X960 was an item number not a part number or something like that, so it's still Dell's screw-up,) is A02, in case it matters. Bios revision A22. Unsure of current MOBO. IBM SXGA+ Screen. Thanks again all, sorry for all the posts on this subject.

QUICK EDIT: It seems that the EBay seller doesn't sell you stuff directly, all he does is call Dell and have them shipped to you, it was ordered under my name and his address. So much for the 4U284 being out of stock, it arrived 3 days after I "won" it, directly from Dell. What horseshit, he must have a friend over there or something. Oh well, it was worth the extra $25 bucks to get rid of these headaches. And I got a 32MB M9 for free in the process I might keep it for a little while to make sure the 64MB works, and if it does i'll sell it. I think $100, as it's untouched except for a quick peek while still in the bag and still under warranty for 90 days, is a fair price, yes?

 

[nephalim]

OK, the puppy is in and running. From ATI Mobility M4 to ATI Radeon M9, I beat Alphawolf by a long shot
hopefully....

Problem. The system has issues booting. It only boots about 1/5 times (needless to say, standby suffers the same issue.) The other times, the 3 "lock" lights come on for a few seconds, and nothing else happens. Should I be worried? Any possible solutions? I'm currently using the A22 Bios, but am having an issue, where the startup screens aren't scaled to the display panel, whereas they were before. (for a while now, can't pinpoint when it started, might have been when I installed DX9, that's the best thing I can come up with. Definetely NOT when I upgraded the bios.) Perhaps some flashing or maybe reseating the card? When I pulled out the M4 it went flying around in the machine, I hope it didn't break anything....

I wonder how much new MOBO's go for? I feel empowered now, even if it might not last....I think in the end i'll only have my M9 in when i'm in a gaming "phase." I also have the option of trying the 32MB version, there are more differences besides the amount of memory. Looking for your input Alphawolf, thanks.

*is off to go play some flawless Majora's Mask* :n64:

I guess I should use Jabo's now j64: ...or perhaps Rice's ...what's the best plugin for the Radeon 9000?

 

[URAMetroid]

Use Jabo's plugin, Rice's plugin has an issue with Radeon's in DX mode.

 

[Trotterwatch]

Rice's plugin has an issue with Radeon's in DX mode.

Which is solvable using 3D Analyse (mostly at least), it's a quality plugin so don't exclude it. But yeah Jabo's rocks as well.

 

[nephalim]

DX Mode?

Jabo's worked FLAWLESSLY, including increasing the FPS from 40 to 60 on Majora's Mask and allowing for full frame buffer emulation without a performance hit. The only issues I had were issues with the plugin. Also, the graphics quality increased tremendously, beautiful antialiasing and ansiotropic filtering, might I add all the driver settings were at max for quality. God I hope this boot problem isn't a big deal.

I can now try the other plugins and see how they do...

What's DX Mode, BTW? DirectX? Isn't the OpenGL Engine better for Rice's?

 

[Trotterwatch]

I find the Direct X mode (DX for short) better than OpenGL using Rice's plugin. Try it and see though

 

[nephalim]

My new 3Dmark 2001 score. Wish I did one with my M4...
M4 3Dmark 2001: 672 :happy:

EDIT: I was using the Dell A03 Drivers, with the D3D and OpenGL (don't think it uses it though,) set to the driver defaults of "balanced." Desktop resolution = 1400x1050, 32-bit color depth. 900MHZ PIII, 512MB RAM.

BTW, I hear that crucial memory is real power guzzlers, and that's what I have, 2 256MB crucial dimms. I'm going to try taking one out and see if that helps bootup. Dell did charge me for that 32MB M9 (the bastards,) so i'm debating whether to open and try it or leave it in the bag and return it...it is definetely worth a try, it surely uses less power, but it's also less powerful...

 

[AlphaWolf]

Oops, I didn't notice this thread earlier :happy: Last week was finals week, I was rushing pretty much everything.

Oh well, looks like things are running smooth anyways. Unless your reboot problem persists? I haven't seen anything like that. Might try reseating everything in your laptop.

BTW, how is the scaling working on your sxga+ screen?

Also, if you want to return the 32mb part, just call dell and yell at them saying that they sent you the wrong part. They will pay for the return shipping, as well as refund both your original shipping cost and the full price of the part.

 

[nephalim]

Everything is great. The picture quality is dramatically better, nevermind the 3D Quality & Performance (and compatibility.) The Dell A03 drivers work just fine with Jabo's, at least. Did you just not care to try Dell's Drivers? Why?

The boot problem is persisting...I might try reseating it...If I hold power on boot-up, it always starts up, but standy is still borked.
I'm going to try 3 things:
1 - Pulling out a stick of RAM
2 - Reseating the card
3 - Try the 32MB version

It doesn't seem that it's doing anything bad to my computer, but even if it does I can return it to Dell for hopes of a better one

 

[nephalim]

OK, problem last night. the power cord pulled out, and my ~2 year old battery died in a matter of minutes before I realized. I plugged her back in, but she would not reboot. Before, I would hold power, and the 3 lights would come on, stay on for a few seconds, and then it would power down. Since I was holding the power button, it would immediately go into another power-on attempt, and it would always succeed (I guess this is all a power issue, and it works the second time because the system has some left-over power running through it. This is my best guess. I also assume it's a power issue because it didn't work last night, read on.)
Now, last night after the battery died, regardless of how many attempts I tried, it wouldn't go on. The battery was charging, and the charging light was on, so I tried pulling out the battery. No luck. I tried pulling out the modular CD-RW. No luck. I finally pulled out a memory stick and it booted like is usually does (the holding power thing.) It seems with both memory sticks, it needs the extra battery power to get it to boot...interesting...
I haven't tried booting on battery and/or just on power before. At least I don't remember.

FYI, my mobo revision, as i've recently discovered thanks to CPU-Z, is A02. It's "i815E/EP."

Any suggestions would be appreciated. How does laptop power systems works? Is there a power supply? Alphawolf, do you have the relevant part numbers? I know there is a charging module. Would I need a new mobo or a new power supply? Is there any way to adjust the output of the power supply? Thanks in advance, I know these are tough questions. Any advice on how to beat the information out of Dell would be appreciated as well. Thanks again.

 

[nephalim]

Sorry to bump this just going to give it one last chance, I did have a question however...OH, yeah, something really weird. The resolution limit for AA ("Smoothvision") at 2X (quality) is 1280x1040. At 3X, it plummets to 800x600. Then, at 4X, it goes UP to 1024x768 (and then goes back down to 800x600 for 5X and 6X.) WTF is up with that? Are the drivers borked? (Dell drivers A03.)

With the performance setting, 2X-4X is 1280x1040, and 5X & 6X 1024x768, seemingly normal.

Is something wrong with the quality setting? Really strange...or am I just stupid?
Also, my display is 1400x1050, a resolution my card can't AA at ALL (can you cheat this at all?) If I run a game, say PJ64 at 800x600, but it's scaled to the display at 1400x1050 (it's a digital display, LCD, I don't want to play in a window,) will it still work, or is it the final scaled resolution it uses (I doubt it, but hope not all the same...)

Thanks. Any answers to my previous question would be appreciated. From what i've gathered with my little more surfing on Dell's Forums, they can't figure out what causes the card not to work in some systems. Mobo & Power Supply have nothing to do with it. It's either differences that are undocumented, or BIOS issues. But that was just one little post I found...I couldn't find any good solid info, unfortunately.

 

[Tagrineth]

The odd resolution settings have to do with how 3x works (it's a very odd, hacked AA method). Don't bother with it.

And if you run at less than 1400x1050, the scale up to that res for output is transparent to your video chip... it's done by the screen itself

 

[nephalim]

And if you run at less than 1400x1050, the scale up to that res for output is transparent to your video chip... it's done by the screen itself

I'm nearly 100% certain that's not true...The scale-up would REQUIRE complex processing to work (and not look like total shit,) unless it was "perfect" scaling, i.e. double, triple, etc., there is no way the screen could do that, nevermind everything else I know...making 640 digital pixels scale into 1400 pixels AND look the same is no easy feat, that's for sure, it requires color and brightness adjustments at each individual pixel, which requires processing...

 

[AlphaWolf]

OK, problem last night. the power cord pulled out, and my ~2 year old battery died in a matter of minutes before I realized. I plugged her back in, but she would not reboot. Before, I would hold power, and the 3 lights would come on, stay on for a few seconds, and then it would power down. Since I was holding the power button, it would immediately go into another power-on attempt, and it would always succeed (I guess this is all a power issue, and it works the second time because the system has some left-over power running through it. This is my best guess. I also assume it's a power issue because it didn't work last night, read on.)
Now, last night after the battery died, regardless of how many attempts I tried, it wouldn't go on. The battery was charging, and the charging light was on, so I tried pulling out the battery. No luck. I tried pulling out the modular CD-RW. No luck. I finally pulled out a memory stick and it booted like is usually does (the holding power thing.) It seems with both memory sticks, it needs the extra battery power to get it to boot...interesting...
I haven't tried booting on battery and/or just on power before. At least I don't remember.

FYI, my mobo revision, as i've recently discovered thanks to CPU-Z, is A02. It's "i815E/EP."

Any suggestions would be appreciated. How does laptop power systems works? Is there a power supply? Alphawolf, do you have the relevant part numbers? I know there is a charging module. Would I need a new mobo or a new power supply? Is there any way to adjust the output of the power supply? Thanks in advance, I know these are tough questions. Any advice on how to beat the information out of Dell would be appreciated as well. Thanks again.

Hmm...Not sure, last time I had a problem with my battery, it would only last like 5 minutes when fully charged, and dell replaced it on warranty. I don't know much about the power input other than the AC adapter sends about 14 volts directly to the laptop, which also uses that to charge the battery. I would just call dell and have them service it.

Sorry to bump this just going to give it one last chance, I did have a question however...OH, yeah, something really weird. The resolution limit for AA ("Smoothvision") at 2X (quality) is 1280x1040. At 3X, it plummets to 800x600. Then, at 4X, it goes UP to 1024x768 (and then goes back down to 800x600 for 5X and 6X.) WTF is up with that? Are the drivers borked? (Dell drivers A03.)

Never had anything like that myself, but then I don't use FSAA most of the time. Try the catalyst 3.1 drivers, see if they work.

And if you run at less than 1400x1050, the scale up to that res for output is transparent to your video chip... it's done by the screen itself

Nope, laptop video adapters usualy have an extra hardware filter that scales the image for an LCD. In this case, the ATI M9 has a very good scaling engine, and I can't realy tell the difference between an off scale resolution and my screens max resolution (1600x1200) unless I look very hard.

 

[Tagrineth]

Ah well, nephalim it isn't as 'complex' as you make out though. It's just weighted averaging.

Older screens would just do an unweighted system where some pixels would be doubled and others would be left single. VERY ugly.