Graphics / FPS issues

I'm after some help with improving my (poor) Frames per second....A bit of background information...I recently had my motherboard and processor replaced (was a Duron 850Mhz) with another second hand one (couldnt afford new), it is now a Pentium III 800Mhz. All was running fine, didn't notice any problems. Was running Windows 98SE until on startup received "Windows Protection Error"....couldn't find a way to stop it doing that so reinstalled windows and it solved it. Have now found out I reinstalled windows with 98 first edition...anyway the main game I play is Nascar 2003, and the frame rates I am now getting are terrible, anywhere between 4 and 20 FPS with all details as low as possible, which is not acceptable. The motherboard does have an oboard graphics/display adapter which I believe is disabled (doesnt show up in device manager, cant find anywhere to disable it in BIOS) and I have my Geforce 2 Ti 64MB inserted. Now I have the latest Nvidia drivers, latest DirectX, updated drivers for the motherboard etc etc. Being through everything I can think of, considering upgrading to Windows XP if that could potentionally fix it..

I ran a little test and decided to try loading Grand Theft Auto Vice City...Which requires at minimum a 32MB graphics card...Now when I try to play VC it displays an error "Cannot find enough video memory". My geforce is 64MB. It has me completely stumped...aswell as those I have asked previously. I've also tried running SimCity 4 (requires 3D graphics) and get the blue screen of death every time.

Here is all the info about my computer I grabbed from a program called Belarc Advisor. Not sure if this will help.

Windows 98 (build 4.10.1998)
American Megatrends Inc. VIA694X/686A
800 megahertz Intel Pentium III
32 kilobyte primary memory cache
256 kilobyte secondary memory cache
Board: Gigabyte Technology Co., Ltd. 6VX7-4X 1.0
Bus Clock: 133 megahertz
BIOS: American Megatrends Inc. 62710 10/03/2000
30.04 Gigabytes Usable Hard Drive Capacity
11.65 Gigabytes Hard Drive Free Space
SONY CD-ROM CDU5211
Generic floppy disk drive (3.5")
QUANTUM FIREBALL CX10.2A [Hard drive] (10.26 GB) -- drive 0, s/n 133927678731, rev A3F.0B00, SMART Status: Healthy
WDC WD205BA [Hard drive] (20.53 GB) -- drive 1, s/n WD-WM9490441674, rev 16.13M16, SMART Status: Healthy 256 Megabytes Installed Memory
Slot '0' has 128 MB
Slot '1' has 128 MB
Slot '2' is Empty
c: (on drive 0) 9.53 GB 524 MB free
d: (on drive 1) 20.51 GB 11.13 GB free
Lexmark X73 on USB002
Standard Floppy Disk Controller
Primary IDE controller (dual fifo)
Secondary IDE controller (dual fifo)
VIA Bus Master PCI IDE Controller
NVIDIA GeForce2 Ti [Display adapter]
Packard Bell NEC CI LC700 [Monitor] (15.7"vis, s/n 370039033035, January 2004)
VIA VT83C572/VT82C586 PCI to USB Universal Host Controller
Microsoft SideWinder Precision Racing Wheel
Microsoft SideWinder Virtual Keyboard
Vinyl AC'97 Codec Combo Driver (WDM)

Since replacing my motherboard/processor I believe the computer was running fine, it just seems to be after reinstalling windows that the problems started....Could that be it or is just a co-incidence that the problems started when I reinstalled...? Or is there some conflict with the onboard graphics card and my Geforce.. I would greatly appreciate any help or suggestions on the matter. Thankyou.

 

Well, for a start that graphics card is pretty naff, to be honest. Video memory means nothing if the GPU is that old.

GF4's are pretty cheap these days, and will let you play all of those games with ease. GTA-VC is graphics heavy and would certainly not run on a GF 2.

Is the GF2 AGP or PCI, by the way?

 

be aware that if you let windows auto-config your virtuall memory it gets it off both C: drive and D: drive; you only have 500mb on your C: drive now which isnt a good thing ; i would clean at least 1-2gb of stuff out of there; also manuall configure your virutal memory to 1gb max/min on your D: drive for better performance.

Updated your drivers from the apropriate manufactures...including www.nvidia.com

 

It use to run Vice City and GTA3 fine. It's AGP I believe.

Ok I've done that I will see how it goes...Fingers crossed. Thanks for your help.

 

Sorry I couldn't find the edit button...But I tried your suggestion Omegamerc and it seems to have worked. Nascar is back to more normal frame rates and Vice City will now load and plays smooth...But I don't understand how that made the difference?!