Ever since I found that Chinese website I downloaded alot of drivers. One of which was the latest version of Rizens driver set, version 2.03. The problem with my card has been identified. I checked out SiSoft Sandra 2003, and it reported that my PCI Latency timer was set too high (only on 8.02.11+) and could risk a PCI hogging situation. With my old 8.02.11 drivers, the default was 32 clocks, but with every driver after it, it was 128 clocks. Looks like S3 just wanted to hype up its card without thinking about PCI users. SO I tried setting the clock through the BIOS, it didn't work, then through another program called PCITimer, and then everything got buggy. So I concluded that the drivers were made to Hog up the bus and even if I tried to bring it down to 32 clocks the games would crash.
It seems that according to this article, if any PCI VGA card is used with a PCI sound card, then this kind of a problem occurs (freezing of a game after a few seconds). I had an ISA sound card, so there was nothing to be worried about. But the symptoms were identical...so I decided to rip off PCI cards off my system until my Savage4 worked. Starting with the Conexant modem, the problem was still there, and I expected it to be....since modems don't use the PCI that heavily. I kept pulling until I reached my ISA sound card. With only my Savage4, stuck to the motherboard, D3D games were going smooth with no crashes. In other words the problem device was my sound card, amazingly the problem also persists with ISA cards. I think that it's the way my motherboard handles PCI to ISA transfers, that causes the problems. So as usual all games would have crashed if I had my sound card connected.
Driver
Version : 8.20.28
W'LOGOd
: Yes
DirectX
9 support : Yes
Improvements
: Improved D3D, with BIOS and some AGP issues fixed.
My
computers config :
Other
: DirectX 9
The aim for this test is to see whether the card crashes or not.
Hitman
Codename 47 - Passed
Quake
2 - Needs soundcard to run
Quake
3 - Passed
Tomb
Raider 3/4 - Passed
Unreal
Tournament D3D - Pass (little buggy)
Unreal
Tournamnet S3TC - Failed (even in Safe mode)
Big
Scale Racing D3D game - Passed
Final Conclusion : With my sound card plugged in every game tested above crashed. With out it everything was fine. But this doesn't prove that the drivers are perfect and the problem is with my computer. Unreal Tournament still crashed, and there are no PCI buses getting hogged up. Whats wrong? I don't know, but atleast I was happy to run my game with those terrible on screen glitches in Hitman, Unreal etc.....even though the sound was off. This version is 100% stable as long as you dont play Unreal. If only somebody could make drivers for PCI Savage4 users, drivers that dont hog the bus like version 8.02.11, but perform better.