ATI Radeon 9100 slowdowns

Hi,
I am currently programming graphic demos and testing them on 3 machines:
1) amd athlon xp 3000+, ram:512 Mb, ATI Radeon 9100 (128 Mb video memory), Windows XP Professional, Direct X 9b
2) amd athlon xp 2000, ram:512 Mb, GeForce 4 MX (64 Mb video memory), Windows XP Professional, Direct X 9b
3) pentium III 866 Mhz, ram:256 Mb, GeForce 4 MX (64 Mb video memory), Windows 98 second edition, Direct X 9b

I have a simple demo and I am running it to test performance.
It features 1200 small moving and animated sprites (masked with transparency), a TileBlock and a TileImage background (both moving).
This is running in 1024x768x16.

On machines 2 and 3 (which should be slower) the demo runs at a solid rock 60 fps.

On machine 1 (the most powerful!), I had this troubles:
1) first it was 60 fps and adding TileBlock and TileImage backgrounds the fps dropped to 30...
2) then I installed the latest drivers for the video card from Ati website (Catalyst 04.2, 2D Version:6.14.10.6422), and now it is always running under 30 FPS, even with no background...

I am sure it is a problem of the ATI drivers because the demo is always smooth on the old Pentium III machine...

I wrote a small code to guess video memory usage, and I noticed that Geforce 4 MX machines (2 and 3) use more video memory (the whole usage is about 1,5 Mb on machine 1 and 3 Mb on machine 2 and 3).
The code is very crap, I just read AvailVidMem() in a variable at the beginning and then I watch for myvariable-AvailVidMem() ...

What should I do?

Hiya

I assume you are using 3D functions somehow because last time I looked B+ couldn't do transparent sprites. In that case first look to see whether Vsync is enabled for your card in your display settings as this is usually the culprit in situations like these (try Flip 0 for no Vsync once it's off). Second check your FPS code as I've often found small errors in my own.

Hope that helps

Zster

First, thank for your reply.

No, I am not using 3d functions, it is just a simple demo to learn the basics (I render only with DrawImage) and test the performance. Maybe I used a wrong term, I am using the standard transparency feature of DrawImage (a single rgb value masked, like documented in MaskImage).

Flip 0 is a bit better on the ATI RADEON 9100 machine, but still very slow (around 26 fps with parallax background, 42 with no background).

My fps code is very simple and, anycase, you can see the difference even without reading fps because it is silky smooth on the Geforce 4 MX Pentium III machine.

Try some more tests with varying image sizes. Power of two is always best. Keep the image square and the same size or lower than screen resolution.

Well, my images are 32x32...
But the point is not performance: the demo is running at a solid rock 60 fps on a Pentium III with a Geforce 4 MX...
ATI Radeon 9100 (128 Mb) with the latest drivers is far slower. That's weird...

is this the driver you are using?

http://www.ati.com/support/drivers/winxp/radeonwdm-xp.html?type=xp&prodType=graphic&prod=productsXPdriver&submit.x=17&submit.y=11

I use that with great performance