Help With Video Card

Started today with an onboard "ATI RADEON XPRESS 200 Series" Video Card on my machine running XP SP2 (media center edition). My husband has been playing Roller Coaster Tycoon 3 and it had started running slow. He brought home an ATI Radeon 9250 that he bought at walmart. We installed it (PCI) and downloaded the latest drivers and it made it worse. Now even the internet seems slower.

Is the 9250 a downgrade from where we started? We have a PCI Express slot but my husband didn't want to wait and got what they had in stock.

Can anyone recommend my next step? We could either go back and reinstall the original card (hopefully) or we can get a better card. If we get a better card are there any recommendations?

Thank you in advance,
Cami

 

It is a major downgrade. The onboard video should be more than enough to handle RCT3. How much memory do you have?

 

Ah, that's what I thought, but too late. Our computer is pretty new, just bought on 6/12/06. I ran DxDiag and this is what it says about our computer, in part.
"Time of this report: 6/20/2006, 07:20:29
Machine name: YOUR-4DACD0EA75
Operating System: Windows XP Professional (5.1, Build 2600) Service Pack 2 (2600.xpsp_sp2_gdr.050301-1519)
Language: English (Regional Setting: English)
System Manufacturer: HP Pavilion 061
System Model: EP001AA-ABA a1323w
BIOS: Default System BIOS
Processor: Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 CPU 3.06GHz (2 CPUs)
Memory: 960MB RAM
Page File: 491MB used, 1822MB available
Windows Dir: C:\WINDOWS
DirectX Version: DirectX 9.0c (4.09.0000.0904)
DX Setup Parameters: Not found
DxDiag Version: 5.03.2600.2180 32bit Unicode"

Does that answer your question about memory? I'm not a computer person

 

Run dxdiag again, click on the Display 1 tab and see what it says. Does show your ATI Radeon card?

 

You meet the memory, graphics and processor requirements for the game. Either of the two cards are more than sufficient for that game. You say your internet connection speed is sluggish also. Have you recently checked your system for malware? If you have a virus, trojan or spyware resident on your computer, it could be consuming system resources which could affect other processes like your browser or game by denying them necessary resources.

 

After my last post I took out the 9250 card and reinstalled my original so I am back to where I started with that ATI Radeon Express 200 Series.

My internet connection speed wasn't bad, but the webpages were coming up so slowly because of the 9250. Once I got it out things were back to normal.

My husband bought the newest version of RCT3, the gold version, and installed it and it is running fine. The guy who was fixing the fan on our other computer recommended an eVGA 512-P2-N548-TX Geforce 7600GS 512MB GDDR2 PCI Express x16 Video Card, but I don't know if it our system meets the requirements. I'm going to look into that. In the meantime, my husband is just going to have to live with what it came with

Thanks!

 

You said you had the latest drivers for it so I will assume you have installed the ATI Catalyst 6.5?!? If so did you remove the old drivers properly? Using Drive Cleaner Pro, if not I certainly would recommend you use this to ensure the old drivers have been removed entirely and then reinstall the latest drivers from here:

http://downloads.guru3d.com/download.php?id=18

If previous drivers have not been uninstalled "properly" they can leave residue in the registry which can cause later issues.

 

I don't agree.

As basic as a 9250 is, it's still better than onboard.

The card, installation or driver may be causing the problem, or could be faulty, but a 9250 is much better for gaming etc than any onboard.

 

Well having a 9250 I have to disagree w your disagreement a little research indicates it has better Pixel Shaders v2.0, Vertex Shaders v 2.0 is PCI-e I can only assume the GPU is better the only potential downfall I consider is it will be sharing system RAM:

http://www.hothardware.com/viewarticle.aspx?articleid=597

The only reason I point this out is due to the frustartion and limitations I am suffering w my card

 

What was that link supposed to point out?

Anyway, I don't need links to tell me that onboard video isn't as powerful as a dedicated graphics card.

It doesn't get more basic than that.

 

Base line stats!

I have Vertex Shader v1.1 and Pixel Shader v1.4(thus can't play some of the latest games at my personal acceptable qual), I agree the "dedicated Vid Card" should run better but if baseline hardware is lower then you are going to suffer limitations and hit brick walls. Software, drivers, OC, cooling etc etc will only do so much but I will stand by my observation the only potential increases will be due to the standalone RAM in this particular case and could be overcome by ~=>2Gb of onboard RAM.

Just my 2c.

 

Base line stats don't tell the story.

And I didn't see an exhaustive test and comparison between onboard and a 9250 in the link.......

Even if you had 4GB of system RAM, onboard isn't as powerful.

Onboard doesn't have the bandwith that a dedicated AGP or PCI Xpress bus does.

System RAM is not usually as fast or of the same quality as video card RAM.

The GPU is also not as powerful, and places more load on the system and motherboard.


Choosing between a fairly recent video card and onboard is a no brainer.

 

Fair enough no decent comparative assessment btwn either and I believe you have a greater understanding of the important parameters (I am getting beyond my depth here and only looking at coarse level parameters at best).

With this in mind I certainly agree with your inferred comment about drivers in particular. I would recommend (after trialing and testing most of the later) that the thread initaitor you could try try this particular driver:

http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?t=179393&highlight=Extreme

Although there are later driver V x.xx these are more suitable for later Vid Cards and can actually cause impaired and or lower output qual than earlier V x.xx more specifically designed for the cards of that era! Look through the thread (towards the end) and you will find a link for the best "drivers" I've found for this card yet (have tried >10 upto this current point).

 

@Cami3368, the mistake your husband made was to buy it from Walmart.

They only carry a small range.

Your system specs are pretty good, why not consider an nVidia 6600GT?

They are a powerful card, can play any current game, and these days can be found for a good price.

 

Thanks for all the input. My experience did prove that the 9250 was inferior to my onboard xpress 200. Partly probably because the 9250 went into a normal pci slot, perhaps if we had been patient, and my husband paying attention when i told him we had a pci express slot. he'd have gotten something better. Really I know more about computers than him, but he was more motivated to get a better video card since I don't play games and he does.

I did order the video card that was recommended to me by the guy fixing my other computer. It is supposed to come in Wednesday the 28th so we'll see if I am back that night with issues I think my concern with this new card will be that my power supply is 300w and the card says it needs 400w min. my computer guy says it would be a small thing for him to upgrade the power supply so we'll see.

 

Well, if it's a PCI video card (I wasn't aware), that's a different story.

They're pretty slow at the best of times.


Not sure what card you're getting, but if you like gaming, you should seriously consider the 6600GT mentioned.