I found that the card actually did pretty well in my system. My limitation was my processor and motherboard. I think that the card just about maxes out what an AGP slot can do. It makes things look REAL nice though.
I seem to be having a problem with the card. Here are the symptoms and my initial thought of them:
In Age of Empires 3 the water isn't rendered correctly. Black lines randomly popup in it, perrallel to each other. My thought was that my computer wasn't completly up to the task since many other players have reported the problem.
In X3 the menu, smoke trail, and even some weapons show white bars. Again I thought it was because my computer wasn't up to the task but thought it was odd that the smoke trail doesn't show up in all angles, only when you view the ships from the front.
In Sims 2, this is what got me, I see the same white bars on the loading screen, and menues. Also when I change the lighting in the room, it turns checkered board on me until the light changes are done leaving some squares as bright white. Prior to the change in the video cards none of the problems were there.
I have the newest Nvidia drivers and have reinstalled them since I put the card in. Any ideas?
I didn't notice the same things (probably because I had to turn the settings way down on my system), but in BF2142 it didn't do the shaders properly all of the time. I thought it was a heating issue with my case. I'm assuming that X3 is a shader-intensive game since AOE 3 is. That could be the issue. The other is heating of the RAM on the video card itself from other sources.
Do you have good airflow over it? My Geforce 3 would sometimes give strange lines and white spots in various games if I hadn't made sure that the cables were moved out of the way of the ram heatsinks every once in a while. And sometimes in the summer it would do the same thing, but that was because the RAM chips didn't have a nice cool airflow to dump heat to even though the cooling block on the video card did just fine.
Exactly. You need to know when about the time frame "series" of cards came out and stick to the drivers released around that time frame, within 3 or 4 releases.
Another thing too is, did you do a complete format? Sometimes parts of the drivers get left behind and fubar the installation of the newest card being installed.
I format whenever i update to a different video card. (pain in the butt i know) This way im sure there are no issues with fubared drivers. But try and use the older drivers 1st.
I have installed the 81.85 drivers but still got the problem. As for reloading the system from scratch, I am not in a position to do so any time soon because of school and that most of the things on here aren't backed up to anything. I am currently downloading 81.94 to try that. But I need to go to bed soon so I won't have a chance to try that until tomarrow night.
81.94 works better but I there is an instability in my Joint Ops game. It actually forced my computer to restart once, but after that it worked fine with very few graphical errors. I may try the next driver up later. I plan on going home for MLK weekend and will bring back my other video card just in case I need to change back.
Hmm, I haven't changed anything since the last post but here is what I am seeing currently.
AoE3 is working like it has been since day one.
Joint Ops is giving me hell. Graphical errors in menus, in game, complete in game lockup some times, but it is also showing me things I had never seen on my other video card such as exhaust heat, bullets streaking instead of flashing, and more.
Sims 2 has graphical problems as well and it seems to pause more often to refresh the graphics then before.
The card is cool and there is nothing touching it. I may try another driver or two this weekend.
TW, here's an off-the-wall suggestion: See what a different monitor does.
I'm wondering if there might be a grounding issue in your current monitor and it's giving your graphics card fits eletrically. Not enough to mess it up completely, but plenty to upset the delicate innards of a GPU. I've seen it before, developing to a point where the computer would spontaneously reboot before we found the problem.
Just gave that a try Gambit, along with reseating the card and making sure that it had a power cord to it self. The problem is worst in Joint Ops. I may try reloading the game and see if that helps. Beyond that I can't get my other video card from home till next weekend. I am confused about whats going on. I would thought the card would have a harder time with the higher end games instead of this low end game. Any more ideas cause I am out of my own and feel like giving up for the moment.
I'm running out of ideas too. In no particular order:
1. Card's gone bad?
2. system files are screwed up. Run a checkdisk /f? Do you uninstall your drivers before reinstalling, going back to VGA in-between?
3. Electrical supply from your outlet is low/high/erratic or mis-wired.
4. Incredibly high EF interference from a nearby source (a real stretch)
5. A mobo problem. Update your chipset drivers, etc.
1. Possible but Ash said he was using it with no problems.
2. I uninstall the drivers each and every time, as well as a system reg cleaning before installing the next set.
3. Possible, I was hopping to make sure that wasn't a problem when I gave it its own power line from the power supply.
4. Doubt it unless its something coming from the near by elivator shaft. It didn't cause any problems last quarter nor with the two laptops that are operated in my room.
5. Possible, its old enough. My Mobo is a MSI K7N2 which is several years old. I am still hoping to build a new PC from scratch but that may not happen for a while still.
Item 3 was referring to problems from the wall. Garbage power coming in will do funny things to your system, but your problems seem to be specific to graphics.
In no particular order: