Help updating BIOS please...

I have a Sony Viao VCG-RA710G with an ASUSTek SpringDaleG motherboard, and American Megatrends BIOS. I tried going to Sony esupport and the ASUS website looking for a new version of BIOS. The model number of the motherboard is P4SD-VL. I'm trying to do this because I've updated the video card in it twice now, and I now have an AGP Visontek Radeon HD 2400 pro, and I'm trying to change the agp aperture setting, but there's no option in the bios I currently have. Any help would be appreciated.

 

Actually, with modern graphics cards the aperture settings will have little to no effect of the performance of the card. Sony, for some reason, does not include aperture settings on their machines. Therefore, I doubt that 'flashing' the BIOS will give you what you want. Aperture settings allow your vid card to use system RAM in excess of the on-board RAM on the vid card. Since I am unfamiliar with your vid card, how much vid RAM does it have? Also, how much system RAM do you have? Let me know, but personally I really don't think you'll need those aperture settings.

 

My computer itself has 1.5 gigs of ram, and the card has 256mb. Thanks for your reply. It just seems like I'm having more issues with this card trying to play games, and it's supposed to be so much better.

 

Hi again D Lo! What kind of issues are you having? And, more importantly, what games are you trying to play where these issues occur? It could be something very minor as vid drivers. ATI is not known for dependable drivers for their cards. Let me know what issues you're having and we can take it from there.

 

Pretty much the only game I play is Battlefield 2: Modern Combat. I used to have a ATI Radeon XT850 pro before this, and could play with the settings on medium, and it was fine for the most part. So after installing this new card, with the newest drivers from the visontek website...I go to play the game, and it runs on a higher resolution, but it lags when looking around, especially if you're zoomed in on a target. So I changed all the video settings back to medium (the same as they were with the Radeon XT850pro), and it still seems to "lag" more than before. I know it's not an issue with my latency, cause I play on the same server all the time, and nothing else has changed. Plus on occasion the textures won't look right at all, for instance an APC will look like a bunch of spikes, or I'll get these green squares out of nowhere for a second at a time. I know ATI has issues with their drivers. Should I have gone with a NVIDIA card? Or should I have just bought the Sapphire Radeon HD 3850? This computer originally came with a GeForce FX5200, but that had to go.

 

Okay, you asked if you should go with a nVidia card instead. Well, that's a personal preference I think. I have ALWAYS used nVidia chip cards and have never had a problem with any of them, or their drivers. At present, I'm using an antique GeForce 7600GS (512 RAM) and so far it has been able to handle anything that comes it's way. I went to the ATI website and the only HD 2400PRO card I could find was a PCIe card. I was trying to find some updated drivers for your card. Assuming that your using XP Pro\Home, I did find these http://ati.amd.com/support/drivers/xp/radeonx-xp.html BTW, AMD owns ATI, in case your wondering why I went to the AMD site. One more question, what version of DirectX are you using?

 

http://www.visiontek.com/products/cards/retail/2400PRO_AGP.html

^Is the card I have. I'm using directX 9 by the way. I figured maybe since I hadn't flashed the BIOS ever, it was causing issues with my card, but now I'm starting to think that ATI cards just have issues in general. I've read a lot about the subject and it seems like a lot of people have had issues with their drivers. Thank you for looking , but I've already installed the latest drivers for this one...which is why I was looking at AGP apeture as the cause. From what I've read...the sapphire is the best way to go for those of us still using AGP, but I'm weary because of all the issues I've had with them.

Edit: Oh yeah, my OS is XP Media center Edition