HARDWARE Questions & Answers - Page 13

flipper · 06-13-2002, 12:17 PM

i think that was me Shinsa. i had heard that from some techies. i've since found that to not be true as well.

and thanks for the PM

Pegasus · 06-17-2002, 05:01 PM

Hey Jim - Just read the wishlist and proposed additions to future versions. I just wanna say - this is the one and the only screensaver. If the future versions include what is proposed, man I can't wait

I currently get a steady 75fps in 1024x768 with everything on - absolutely superb.

XCardinal · 06-19-2002, 07:47 AM

Hi guys. I guess im new here... just bought this aquarium and its the best screensaver i have ever seen! good work jim!

Tiny Turtle · 07-21-2002, 08:55 AM

I'm trying the aquarium out on a PCI Voodoo3 card under XP using the drivers made available on the help page (Thanks, Morgan).

The full-screen version runs beautifully, but as soon as I touch the [F] key to switch to window mode, it crashes. Could this be due to the fact that the Voodoo3 don't support 3D in 32 bit color or could something else be amiss? – Switching XP to 16 bit is no real option (except for fault-detection reasons, perhaps).

/Tiny Voodoo

Mountainmaster · 07-21-2002, 01:05 PM

A friend of mine is trying to run the aquarium on a S3 Savage 4 card under Windows 2000, but it will only run in software emulation mode even with the desktop resolution set to 16 bit. I am sure this card has Direct3D capability, but dxdiag shows that as disabled. DirectDraw however is enabled. Upgrading DirectX to 8.1 did not help. Suggestions anyone?

jelly · 07-30-2002, 06:00 PM

I see all these reports about how many fps people are getting.

Pardon my ignorance, but how do you get that information?

feldon34 · 07-30-2002, 07:01 PM

Press the "S" key while running the Aquarium.

thebard · 10-08-2002, 03:55 AM

I'm trying to learn what I can in this forum, but I'm not savvy enough. Win 98SE, PIII 800MHZ, 256 MB RAM's all I can quote, Gigabyte m/board, nVidia chipset. Upgraded my display card last yr to Diamond V770 after I got the Aquarium s/saver as I wanted the best for it,also at same time my s/card to Creative SB Live. This work was done by a "teckie-for-hire". Aquarium runs well, but am having frequent "Explorer caused stack fault in module kernel32.dll" & Ive re-inst Win over the top of itself so many times that a clean instal seems best move, I know I can manage that.
Getting out req'd disks, none there for video or s/card - teckie pleads ignorance & says he has a "real" job now.
Windows wouldn't update drivers without inst. diskette either but used this forum link, thx.
On my BIOS screen, the Diamond video is shown as 16 MB RAM, not 32. [Next is O/T but may be relevant - the upgrade of a music proggie I use won't instal on my system, & the developers say my video card's outdated & said to get a new card &/or get Win XP.]
Is this a cut-down card that I have - more importantly, as I want a video card with inst diskette & mfrs support, can you tell me from the above what to buy, I'm not a gamer but want a good one. Any advice would be most helpful.

feldon34 · 10-08-2002, 12:46 PM

Last year you upgraded to a Diamond Viper 770 (TnT Riva 2)? A year ago that card should have cost about $35.

You should be able to fully install Windows 98 SE from scratch without needing drivers for your sound and video card. It will start with 640x480 16 colors and no sound.

Once you get back up in Windows, go to https://www.feldoncentral.com/Sachs/help.html and download my recommend Windows 98 TnT Riva 2 video driver. That will take care of the Diamond card (I do not recommend getting a driver from www.nVidia.com or Diamond's website!).

Then go to http://www.creative.com/ and download a driver for your Creative SoundBlaster Live (Value?).

You should be good to go.

Now, if you want to play some of the newer games, that TnT RiVa 2 is not going to do what you want. I'm surprised your friend did not just bump you to a GeForce 2 MX 400 for $75 (now available for $45).

thebard · 10-08-2002, 03:06 PM

Not a friend, I picked up his business card in a bookshop! Sysinfo said 8 Diamond drivers were not installed, same with many others, this guy has rorted me in a number of ways due to my ignorance at the time, & Diamond's socalled Update Wizard kept asking for the missing diskette. I did d/load & instal SB Live! drivers, also the video drivers that you recommended on another thread - and SS Aquarium looks just as great, higher fps too.
But I don't want to continue with an outdated card that gets knocked like it does, and when another proggie wouldn't instal, I lost even more confidence after what was said about this video card.
I'm happy with the drivers you recommended - but as I'm a rether hardware-illiterate female, I really want to buy a good brand modern video card WITH mfr's diskette & support. Does this make sense?

feldon34 · 10-08-2002, 03:30 PM

That card will run perfectly fine for many years provided you are not running the latest games. I was running the Aquarium on my TnT Riva 1 for quite a while before I upgraded my card. I upgraded my card primarily so I could do games and TV input/output, not because I wasn't happy with the performance of the Aquarium.

Your Windows really needs to be reinstalled or cleaned up. As you say, it's a total shambles right now with pieces not installed properly, etc. You should back up your data, e-mail, favorites/bookmarks, and have a friend install Windows and your programs from scratch.

You keep mentioning diskettes. These days, when I buy a piece of hardware, the first thing I do is throw away the floppy or CD it comes with and go to the website. The driver on the floppy/CD is ALWAYS obsolete!!

thebard · 10-09-2002, 06:33 AM

Thx for yr reply & the link to my present video drivers.
We're talking at cross purposes here, had to do a clean install by myself very early in the piece & am backed up etc ready for this one.
Diskettes may mean little to you, out-of-date drivers yes - but they usually represent mfrs' support, I've 3 pices h/ware, inc those 2 cards, on my machine for which I've no proof of purchase meaning no support [my fault, lesson learned] & to someone like me with no h/ware knowledge, it's important, otherwise I wouldn't be hassling/annoying people on forums.
Like my drivers work OK & I'm grateful believe me, but I can't exactly ask nVidia for support as to why I now get this on each re-boot -
"Error in NvQTwk
Missing entry: NvCPL daemon"
Diamond [SonicBlue?], nVidia et al don't want to know me, I don't need the irritation of it nor do you, so I'm buying new & to hell whether I need it or not.

Tiny Turtle · 10-09-2002, 08:04 AM

I believe a small clarification could be of use here. nVidia doesn't manufacture any video cards of their own, just the video chips (like TNT, TNT2 or GeForce) which Diamond and others put on their cards. There's no real performance difference between two cards using the same chip (possibly memory size can matter) but there's a lot of different chips out there. In another thread (here) I posted a list of the different chips nVidia has put out on the market. However I agree with Morgan (feldon23) that a card with the GeForce MX400 chip will suit your needs just fine. Perhaps someone else on the forum (ideally OZs) could share some positive experiences with vid card customer support in order for TB to chose the card manufacturer.

The driver issue for nVidia cards is somewhat messy. Most card manufacturers just tack their logo on top of the settings screen in the reference drivers, but a few of 'em tweak them a bit extra. In theory all cards using an nVidia chip can use the same driver (for a given OS). Later versions are however rather optimized for the latest cards which means that a non-top-of-the-line card might (note: might) get better results with older (i.e. lower) driver versions.

One other thing that you might want to check is that the motherboard has a AGP slot, not just PCI slots. We went though how to determine this a few pages back so you might want to check it out

Please post here if there's anything else (or just further clarification) we can help with.

/Tiny

thebard · 10-09-2002, 09:36 AM

Thx for explanation, & from yr link, Riva 128 sure sounds familiar from when I 1st got this machine near 2 yrs ago. And I did read the thread where someone bought the wrong card cos of no AGP slot, & my heart went out to him. Hell I don't want the same experience, but get heart-thud at just the thought of opening the case, so will read that thread again.
Being petty now - I ran that fr08 proggie a few times [https://www.feldoncentral.com/forums...light=fr08.zip though only have DirectX 7, but it never ran again after his work, maybe coincidence.
You're all so cluey on this forum, but maybe my lesson learned will benefit even one person - to keep an eye on any work on your computer, & maybe be wary of sending it away.

feldon34 · 10-09-2002, 10:16 AM

In my 13 years of using computers, I've never called or tried to contact a video card manufacturer for support. I don't say that to sound arrogant. I say that because they cannot fix or diagnose most computer problems.

99% of the time if you have trouble with a video card, it's because of a driver problem.

You mention "Error in NvQTwk
Missing entry: NvCPL daemon". Sounds like your video card drivers are not installed properly.

Also I'm surprised to hear you are still on DirectX 7. You should install DirectX 8 and then download the recommended driver from my website.

thebard · 10-09-2002, 12:38 PM

i didn't know that 1st bit. Wasn't having display probs, but got dismayed when sysinfo said that so many drivers weren't installed, & me about to do a clean install of Win.
Yes it does sound like these latest drivers haven't installed right. I thought I could do this blindfolded, cos I tried 2 different sets recommended to me from 3dguru.com with no hitch, then the ones from your link which seem better.
But now when I try to uninstall these to try again, I can't make Win display all drivers for me to choose Standard VGA like I did B4 - so now I'm thinking, the hell with it, everything's working & I'll just put up with that error message till clean install & new card takes care of it.
As for DirectX 8, I'd read on these forums that it wouldn't benefit the Aquarium - so couldn't see any point, have I missed something then? Plus I could have a problem there now, seeing as I can't seem to uninstall present video drivers.

Mountainmaster · 10-09-2002, 04:24 PM

NvCPL daemon is the display properties extension. It should add extra tabs to the "display properties - settings - advanced" section. Missing these does not prevent the driver from doing its job. You just won't be able to configure it.
And there is a way to get rid of the error message: Go to "start - run", type "msconfig" and enter. In the startup section clear the checkmark before "NvCplDaemon".

Rich · 01-28-2003, 07:07 AM

I am running an AMD athlon 1gb machine with a radeon 9000 64mb card my fps is 64 at a resolution of 1280x1024 16bit
is this good? or can I get faster fps by changing something?

Yellow Tang · 01-28-2003, 08:02 AM

A bit low, i think, have you checked the 'limit frame rate to 60' option? Press space while running the aquarium to check it.

Jav400 · 01-28-2003, 10:51 AM

Rich,

That is a bit low for that res. and that card. You should be seeing faster frame rates. Check the settings that YT asked you about, check your monitors settings, and check to see if v-sync is enabled. Of course after a certain point higher frame rates don't really matter anyway cause you can't make use of them and it won't make any difference anyway.

07-30-2002, 06:00 PM	#246
jelly Registered Join Date: Jul 2002 Location: Simi Valley, CA, USA Posts: 4	I see all these reports about how many fps people are getting. Pardon my ignorance, but how do you get that information? -- Jim

07-30-2002, 07:01 PM	#247
feldon34 Forum Administrator Join Date: Dec 2000 Location: Rock Hill, SC Posts: 10,947	Press the "S" key while running the Aquarium. "Journalism is printing what someone else does not want printed. Everything else is public relations." - George Orwell "If voting changed anything, they'd make it illegal." - Emma Goldman

10-08-2002, 03:55 AM	#248
thebard Copperband Butterfly Join Date: Nov 2001 Location: Australia Posts: 32	Teckie from hell, I think I'm trying to learn what I can in this forum, but I'm not savvy enough. Win 98SE, PIII 800MHZ, 256 MB RAM's all I can quote, Gigabyte m/board, nVidia chipset. Upgraded my display card last yr to Diamond V770 after I got the Aquarium s/saver as I wanted the best for it,also at same time my s/card to Creative SB Live. This work was done by a "teckie-for-hire". Aquarium runs well, but am having frequent "Explorer caused stack fault in module kernel32.dll" & Ive re-inst Win over the top of itself so many times that a clean instal seems best move, I know I can manage that. Getting out req'd disks, none there for video or s/card - teckie pleads ignorance & says he has a "real" job now. Windows wouldn't update drivers without inst. diskette either but used this forum link, thx. On my BIOS screen, the Diamond video is shown as 16 MB RAM, not 32. [Next is O/T but may be relevant - the upgrade of a music proggie I use won't instal on my system, & the developers say my video card's outdated & said to get a new card &/or get Win XP.] Is this a cut-down card that I have - more importantly, as I want a video card with inst diskette & mfrs support, can you tell me from the above what to buy, I'm not a gamer but want a good one. Any advice would be most helpful.

10-08-2002, 12:46 PM	#249
feldon34 Forum Administrator Join Date: Dec 2000 Location: Rock Hill, SC Posts: 10,947	Last year you upgraded to a Diamond Viper 770 (TnT Riva 2)? A year ago that card should have cost about $35. You should be able to fully install Windows 98 SE from scratch without needing drivers for your sound and video card. It will start with 640x480 16 colors and no sound. Once you get back up in Windows, go to https://www.feldoncentral.com/Sachs/help.html and download my recommend Windows 98 TnT Riva 2 video driver. That will take care of the Diamond card (I do not recommend getting a driver from www.nVidia.com or Diamond's website!). Then go to http://www.creative.com/ and download a driver for your Creative SoundBlaster Live (Value?). You should be good to go. Now, if you want to play some of the newer games, that TnT RiVa 2 is not going to do what you want. I'm surprised your friend did not just bump you to a GeForce 2 MX 400 for $75 (now available for $45). "Journalism is printing what someone else does not want printed. Everything else is public relations." - George Orwell "If voting changed anything, they'd make it illegal." - Emma Goldman Last edited by feldon34; 10-08-2002 at 12:52 PM.

10-08-2002, 03:06 PM	#250
thebard Copperband Butterfly Join Date: Nov 2001 Location: Australia Posts: 32	teckie from hell I think Not a friend, I picked up his business card in a bookshop! Sysinfo said 8 Diamond drivers were not installed, same with many others, this guy has rorted me in a number of ways due to my ignorance at the time, & Diamond's socalled Update Wizard kept asking for the missing diskette. I did d/load & instal SB Live! drivers, also the video drivers that you recommended on another thread - and SS Aquarium looks just as great, higher fps too. But I don't want to continue with an outdated card that gets knocked like it does, and when another proggie wouldn't instal, I lost even more confidence after what was said about this video card. I'm happy with the drivers you recommended - but as I'm a rether hardware-illiterate female, I really want to buy a good brand modern video card WITH mfr's diskette & support. Does this make sense? Last edited by thebard; 10-08-2002 at 03:15 PM.

06-13-2002, 12:17 PM	#241
flipper Registered Join Date: Mar 2002 Location: Texas Posts: 60	i think that was me Shinsa. i had heard that from some techies. i've since found that to not be true as well. and thanks for the PM

06-17-2002, 05:01 PM	#242
Pegasus Registered Join Date: Jun 2002 Location: England (UK) Posts: 1	Hey Jim - Just read the wishlist and proposed additions to future versions. I just wanna say - this is the one and the only screensaver. If the future versions include what is proposed, man I can't wait I currently get a steady 75fps in 1024x768 with everything on - absolutely superb.

06-19-2002, 07:47 AM	#243
XCardinal Registered Join Date: Jun 2002 Posts: 1	Hi guys. I guess im new here... just bought this aquarium and its the best screensaver i have ever seen! good work jim!

07-21-2002, 08:55 AM	#244
Tiny Turtle is pleased Join Date: Mar 2001 Location: Stockholm, Sweden Posts: 7,365	I'm trying the aquarium out on a PCI Voodoo3 card under XP using the drivers made available on the help page (Thanks, Morgan). The full-screen version runs beautifully, but as soon as I touch the [F] key to switch to window mode, it crashes. Could this be due to the fact that the Voodoo3 don't support 3D in 32 bit color or could something else be amiss? – Switching XP to 16 bit is no real option (except for fault-detection reasons, perhaps). /Tiny Voodoo

07-21-2002, 01:05 PM	#245
Mountainmaster Liopleurodon Join Date: Feb 2002 Location: 3rd planet Posts: 314	A friend of mine is trying to run the aquarium on a S3 Savage 4 card under Windows 2000, but it will only run in software emulation mode even with the desktop resolution set to 16 bit. I am sure this card has Direct3D capability, but dxdiag shows that as disabled. DirectDraw however is enabled. Upgrading DirectX to 8.1 did not help. Suggestions anyone?

10-08-2002, 03:30 PM	#251
feldon34 Forum Administrator Join Date: Dec 2000 Location: Rock Hill, SC Posts: 10,947	That card will run perfectly fine for many years provided you are not running the latest games. I was running the Aquarium on my TnT Riva 1 for quite a while before I upgraded my card. I upgraded my card primarily so I could do games and TV input/output, not because I wasn't happy with the performance of the Aquarium. Your Windows really needs to be reinstalled or cleaned up. As you say, it's a total shambles right now with pieces not installed properly, etc. You should back up your data, e-mail, favorites/bookmarks, and have a friend install Windows and your programs from scratch. You keep mentioning diskettes. These days, when I buy a piece of hardware, the first thing I do is throw away the floppy or CD it comes with and go to the website. The driver on the floppy/CD is ALWAYS obsolete!! "Journalism is printing what someone else does not want printed. Everything else is public relations." - George Orwell "If voting changed anything, they'd make it illegal." - Emma Goldman Last edited by feldon34; 10-08-2002 at 03:35 PM.

10-09-2002, 06:33 AM	#252
thebard Copperband Butterfly Join Date: Nov 2001 Location: Australia Posts: 32	Thx for yr reply & the link to my present video drivers. We're talking at cross purposes here, had to do a clean install by myself very early in the piece & am backed up etc ready for this one. Diskettes may mean little to you, out-of-date drivers yes - but they usually represent mfrs' support, I've 3 pices h/ware, inc those 2 cards, on my machine for which I've no proof of purchase meaning no support [my fault, lesson learned] & to someone like me with no h/ware knowledge, it's important, otherwise I wouldn't be hassling/annoying people on forums. Like my drivers work OK & I'm grateful believe me, but I can't exactly ask nVidia for support as to why I now get this on each re-boot - "Error in NvQTwk Missing entry: NvCPL daemon" Diamond [SonicBlue?], nVidia et al don't want to know me, I don't need the irritation of it nor do you, so I'm buying new & to hell whether I need it or not.

10-09-2002, 08:04 AM	#253
Tiny Turtle is pleased Join Date: Mar 2001 Location: Stockholm, Sweden Posts: 7,365	I believe a small clarification could be of use here. nVidia doesn't manufacture any video cards of their own, just the video chips (like TNT, TNT2 or GeForce) which Diamond and others put on their cards. There's no real performance difference between two cards using the same chip (possibly memory size can matter) but there's a lot of different chips out there. In another thread (here) I posted a list of the different chips nVidia has put out on the market. However I agree with Morgan (feldon23) that a card with the GeForce MX400 chip will suit your needs just fine. Perhaps someone else on the forum (ideally OZs) could share some positive experiences with vid card customer support in order for TB to chose the card manufacturer. The driver issue for nVidia cards is somewhat messy. Most card manufacturers just tack their logo on top of the settings screen in the reference drivers, but a few of 'em tweak them a bit extra. In theory all cards using an nVidia chip can use the same driver (for a given OS). Later versions are however rather optimized for the latest cards which means that a non-top-of-the-line card might (note: might) get better results with older (i.e. lower) driver versions. One other thing that you might want to check is that the motherboard has a AGP slot, not just PCI slots. We went though how to determine this a few pages back so you might want to check it out Please post here if there's anything else (or just further clarification) we can help with. /Tiny

10-09-2002, 09:36 AM	#254
thebard Copperband Butterfly Join Date: Nov 2001 Location: Australia Posts: 32	Thx for explanation, & from yr link, Riva 128 sure sounds familiar from when I 1st got this machine near 2 yrs ago. And I did read the thread where someone bought the wrong card cos of no AGP slot, & my heart went out to him. Hell I don't want the same experience, but get heart-thud at just the thought of opening the case, so will read that thread again. Being petty now - I ran that fr08 proggie a few times [https://www.feldoncentral.com/forums...light=fr08.zip though only have DirectX 7, but it never ran again after his work, maybe coincidence. You're all so cluey on this forum, but maybe my lesson learned will benefit even one person - to keep an eye on any work on your computer, & maybe be wary of sending it away.

10-09-2002, 10:16 AM	#255
feldon34 Forum Administrator Join Date: Dec 2000 Location: Rock Hill, SC Posts: 10,947	In my 13 years of using computers, I've never called or tried to contact a video card manufacturer for support. I don't say that to sound arrogant. I say that because they cannot fix or diagnose most computer problems. 99% of the time if you have trouble with a video card, it's because of a driver problem. You mention "Error in NvQTwk Missing entry: NvCPL daemon". Sounds like your video card drivers are not installed properly. Also I'm surprised to hear you are still on DirectX 7. You should install DirectX 8 and then download the recommended driver from my website. "Journalism is printing what someone else does not want printed. Everything else is public relations." - George Orwell "If voting changed anything, they'd make it illegal." - Emma Goldman

10-09-2002, 12:38 PM	#256
thebard Copperband Butterfly Join Date: Nov 2001 Location: Australia Posts: 32	i didn't know that 1st bit. Wasn't having display probs, but got dismayed when sysinfo said that so many drivers weren't installed, & me about to do a clean install of Win. Yes it does sound like these latest drivers haven't installed right. I thought I could do this blindfolded, cos I tried 2 different sets recommended to me from 3dguru.com with no hitch, then the ones from your link which seem better. But now when I try to uninstall these to try again, I can't make Win display all drivers for me to choose Standard VGA like I did B4 - so now I'm thinking, the hell with it, everything's working & I'll just put up with that error message till clean install & new card takes care of it. As for DirectX 8, I'd read on these forums that it wouldn't benefit the Aquarium - so couldn't see any point, have I missed something then? Plus I could have a problem there now, seeing as I can't seem to uninstall present video drivers.

10-09-2002, 04:24 PM	#257
Mountainmaster Liopleurodon Join Date: Feb 2002 Location: 3rd planet Posts: 314	NvCPL daemon is the display properties extension. It should add extra tabs to the "display properties - settings - advanced" section. Missing these does not prevent the driver from doing its job. You just won't be able to configure it. And there is a way to get rid of the error message: Go to "start - run", type "msconfig" and enter. In the startup section clear the checkmark before "NvCplDaemon".

01-28-2003, 07:07 AM	#258
Rich this is me,and only me. Join Date: Jan 2003 Location: Perth, Western Australia Posts: 388	I am running an AMD athlon 1gb machine with a radeon 9000 64mb card my fps is 64 at a resolution of 1280x1024 16bit is this good? or can I get faster fps by changing something?

01-28-2003, 08:02 AM	#259
Yellow Tang YT Join Date: Jan 2002 Tournaments Won: 1 Location: Germany Posts: 729	A bit low, i think, have you checked the 'limit frame rate to 60' option? Press space while running the aquarium to check it.

01-28-2003, 10:51 AM	#260
Jav400 Administrator Join Date: Dec 2000 Location: Tennessee Posts: 9,725	Rich, That is a bit low for that res. and that card. You should be seeing faster frame rates. Check the settings that YT asked you about, check your monitors settings, and check to see if v-sync is enabled. Of course after a certain point higher frame rates don't really matter anyway cause you can't make use of them and it won't make any difference anyway. Michael Administrator of Inside:SereneScreen Aquarium Forum, Chatroom, Fan Site & *Gallery* DVD Collection