I'd be curious to know how benchmarks such as 3D 2001, Aquamark etc. run (if at all).

had the wrong driver version got mixed up with another computer i put omega 7.4 on, this uses omega 5.12 my bad, but let me transfer 3dmark01, 3dmark03 and Aquamark3 to it from my nas and tell you

3dmark01 10942
3dmark03 3968
AquaMark 3 GFX 4224, CPU 5306, Overall 30207

so benchmarks are fine so why are these games running so poorly

Those scores all seem to be what you would expect. Can you try an Nvidia video card? My only remaining idea is maybe some weird incompatibility with the chipset and the Radeon card.

Only AGP Nvidia i have atm are Riva 128ZX, TNT Vanta, TNT2 M64, TNT2 Pro, MX200, MX400, GTS, Ti 200, MX440 SE, MX440, and FX5200 nothing even close to a 9600 XT

If it were me, I would try the Ti200 just to see how it does relative to the 9600 for diagnostic purposes.

What resolution and settings you're using ? I remember when I had semptron 2400 or 2600 with nforce 2 and radeon 9600 pro I had really bad performance in nfs hp2 @1024x768 max settings. Also windows xp sp1 or 2 might improve performance.

1280x1024 the native of my LCD, no room for my CRT sadly, HP2 is high, Underground is medium auto detect set it that way, i did upgrade to a later radeon driver and going to test again.

I did try Halo and that ran fine oddly that's getting 30FPS at high settings at 1280x1024

Did you install all the SiS chipset drivers?

yes i installed the SIS chipset drivers, card has fast writes on at AGP 8x

1280x1024 is too high for the Radeon 9600 XT to handle these games. Bump it down to 1024x768 and it should be a lot better. Yes, I know, it's a non-native resolution for your LCD... but unfortunately, that's all you can really do with 4 ROPs 4 TMUs card from that era.

With my vanilla Radeon 9600 (non-pro) and stock clocks on my Pentium 3 933 MHz, I get mostly around 30 FPS in NFS Underground... and sometimes syncing up to 60 FPS, but rarely (mostly only in the menu, which runs at 640x480). FYI, NFS U has v-sync always on by default, so the game typically runs at either 25 FPS, 30 FPS, 45 FPS (but rarely this), and 60 FPS.
NFS Hot Pursuit II, I don't recall what I got on the P3 PC.

I also tried the same card on a s939 Athlon 64 3200+ (O.C.ed to 2.5 GHz - i.e. higher than a 4000+), and NFS Underground didn't really improve that much. If anything, there's a really annoying scenario on some maps, where my FPS bounces around between 30 FPS and 60 FPS due to the silly forced v-sync... and that causes all kinds of rubber-banding.
Meanwhile, NFS HP2 ran at around 30-ish FPS when there was a full grid of cars in front of me... but after I passed them and there was no one in front of me, I was maxing out at 140 FPS. lool! 😁 I don't remember if I tried this at 1024x768 or 1152x864.
Another game I have tried on my Rad. 9600 quite extensively is Colin McRae Rally 04. With that one, I can get "decent" framerates (for the time) only at resolutions up to 1024x768 (typically around 30-45 FPS). Beyond that, there's a big penalty in FPS for going to a higher resolution (usually dropping to the mid-20's or lower.)

So my conclusion with the 9600 is that it's a 1024x768 card for early XP games. The XT is maybe, what, 10-15% faster? Make it 20%, regardless if that's true or not. That means if I was getting only 30 FPS in a certain game with my 9600, you'd be getting 36 FPS with the XT. If I was getting 20 FPS, you'd be getting 24 FPS. At 40, a 20% increase is equal to 48 FPS.

I'm not familiar with most of the games the OP listed (by which I mean I've never played them). My similar performing Socket A system can run the original Max Payne quite well, but the sequel was a bit too much for it IMO so I played it on a newer computer. I love playing with vintage hardware, but I also love good framerates.

I feel like the 3dmark 2001se score is a bit low?

I remember pulling somewhere in the realm of 13,500 on my Athlon XP Thoroughbred overclocked to 2Ghz on an Nforce 2 Ultra 400 board alongside a Ti 4400 and then later a 9600 Pro (the Ti died). That was 22+ years ago, but the numbers are pretty clear in my mind. Pretty sure I was using 2x256MB DDR-333 in dual channel.

Even if the system scores 15-20% slower due to the chipset or something else, it seems odd that those games would run so poorly. Honestly, your CPU should be better since it has twice the cache vs mine.

... actually, you know what? I still have my old system running and I still have my 9600 Pro stashed away. I also have a my brother's Ti 4400 from back then I can test for comparison. It now has 2GB of DDR-400, but that shouldn't matter much. If I get a chance, I will run the 9600 Pro on it to provide another datapoint.

I feel like it is either an AGP issue or a software\driver problem. Just a shot in the dark... have you tried messing with AGP fastwrites or AGP aperture in the BIOS or any performance\quality settings in the ATi drivers? How about installing DirectX 8\9 manually?

EDIT: Now that I think about it, I clung to Windows 98SE for a very long time, so I may have still been using that at the time.

candle_86 wrote on 2025-02-06, 23:52:

had the wrong driver version got mixed up with another computer i put omega 7.4 on, this uses omega 5.12

Since you're running WinXP, try using the official Catalyst 7.11 drivers. You will need to install .NET Framework 2.0 before that, so that the Catalyst Control Center can work properly.

From my experience, these drivers improve both Direct3D and OpenGL performance on R300 and R400 cards compared to past versions. They also introduce perfect table fog emulation for older games, and are more compatible with problematic OpenGL titles like Star Wars KOTOR.