A Must Do: Empty slot next to video card.
 

Thanks to rudedog, Korvac , midget killer, and BallBuster, m freak: y fps problem is fixed. Dell "techs" couldn't help me. IDIOTS. If you see your fps drop every second and hesitation when you move, then you need to empty the slot next to the video card. My game is a lot smoother now. Try it, you'll like it!

huh?
unless your videocard is sub-TNT2 the thing is most likely sittin in an AGP slot by itself and therefore got nothing next to it.

unless this is based on getting a bit more airflow through to AGP fan due to the highest PCI card missing id say its rubbish. cetainly not based on anything measurable.

r3mix

I hate dell techs, I hate dell, btw, if you ever find out a problems with your hardware that you bought from dell (with conflicting hardware), dont expect them to fix it, I can't even get a bloody gf3 working with this 815e mobo they sold me hake: I hate dell so much

Gateway is no better. Their techs never know anything.

r3mix - slots
 

Yes...

The vid card is in an AGP slot. The slot next to it is 1 of 5 PCI slots

The 1st PCI slot shares the same IRQ as the AGP slot
This causes problems in some XP machines when
you are playing Medal Of Honor

I had the same "Stutter" on my new Dell box as
MeatGrinder did - mine was not as bad

The problem cleared up 100% on both machines when
the slot next to the vid card (AGP) was cleared out


Once the 'puter was rebooted, XP re-assigned IRQs
and in both cases the vid card was on its own IRQ
where as before it was sharing an IRQ with the 1st PCI slot

Even though shared IRQs in XP are not a problem this was
a problem for this game - no other problems were encountered

Yup... ripleys believe it or not

=[DOA]=BallBuster

Thats why i build my own computers. Companies blow.

You forgot compaq there the worse. I have a HP comp and have no problems at all!

i build mine to but this has some logic behind it when it comes to i/o bottlenecking. somethin i have forgotten. thanks for postin about this..i need to do the same.

Re: r3mix - slots
 

[quote="=[DOA]=BallBuster":4f4b0]Yes...

The vid card is in an AGP slot. The slot next to it is 1 of 5 PCI slots

The 1st PCI slot shares the same IRQ as the AGP slot
This causes problems in some XP machines when
you are playing Medal Of Honor

I had the same "Stutter" on my new Dell box as
MeatGrinder did - mine was not as bad

The problem cleared up 100% on both machines when
the slot next to the vid card (AGP) was cleared out


Once the 'puter was rebooted, XP re-assigned IRQs
and in both cases the vid card was on its own IRQ
where as before it was sharing an IRQ with the 1st PCI slot

Even though shared IRQs in XP are not a problem this was
a problem for this game - no other problems were encountered

Yup... ripleys believe it or not

=[DOA]=BallBuster[/quote:4f4b0]

Well, it got a new DMA channel (these are hardwired to the PCI and AGP slots, there is no 'reassigning' these). The IRQ's don't matter in XP or Win2k - the HAL takes care of all the direct hardware access anyway. The OS doesn't access hardware or give hardware time using IRQ's anymore. It's a legacy thing now.

Read up on it...[url:4f4b0]http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=KB;EN-US;Q252420&[/url:4f4b0]

Like anything in the PC world, it's a trade off for supporting new technology while still being 10 years backwards compatible. oOo:

IRQs in WinXP
 

Whatever the case is with the IRQs in windows XP this is fact

Fact 1:
2 new computers both experienced a "stutter" in multiplayer
where the FPS would drop... almost like a "pulse"

Fact 2:
The vid card on both computers was sharing an IRQ
and there was either a nic card or a sound card in the
PCI slot next to the vid card

Fact 3:
The slot on both computers was emptied by moving
other cards around and the computers were rebooted.
Once rebooted the vid card no longer shared an IRQ

Fact 3:
Once the vid card was on its own IRQ, this problem
was gone and the gameplay smoothed out

So, with these 2 examples is is obvious that there
is some "Unknown" factor that is causing a problem
when the vid card shares an IRQ

=[DOA]=BallBuster

That's cool, but I was just stating that the IRQs don't matter it was the fact that you moved the cards out of your video card's DMA channel was what got rid of the stutter. It just happened to get a new IRQ.

You can take that one step futher and only occupy every other PCI slot so that no card shares a DMA channel. Because there's a limited number of them they are ussualy paired up so AGP and PCI 1 share, PCI 2 & 3 share, PCI 4 & 5 share, then it's ussualy something like IDE controller 1 & 2, Floppy and something else.

Each board is different though.

End result - it works eh! happy:

I did excatly what meat did. I moved my vid card to an empty slot and my game improved alot also. fire2:

Go miscguy! you da man! I do it too. My whole family is thinking about buying comps from me, cuz im a lot more helpful than Dell or Gateway techs, also, the best part about home built computers is that you can overclock them mad: mad: mad: mad: mad: mad:

This what I have next to Vid Card.
[img]http://www.microcenter.com/image.phtml?id=0031040&sku=328096[/img]

a cooling fan, right? :)