Bloody graphics card!!
Discussion
I've just bought a new card - ATi Radeon 9600XT, with 256Mb DDR and up to 8x AGP acceleration, to allow me to play Far Cry with nice graphics. My old NVidia GeForce (64Mb) ran the game at a low level of graphics, but now the game is jerky and unstable. I'm running an ASUS 100MHz motherboard, with Athlon 1.7Ghz processor, 512Mb RAM, Audigy2 sound card, so there's plenty of speed and power for the game.
So why is the bloody thing jerking itself about and pissing me off?!
Is the motherboard and/or processor too slow for the grahics card output i.e. should I upgrade to a faster bus speed, or am I doing something else wrong?
So why is the bloody thing jerking itself about and pissing me off?!
Is the motherboard and/or processor too slow for the grahics card output i.e. should I upgrade to a faster bus speed, or am I doing something else wrong?
You will need to go into the BIOS for both.
The port will have a multiplier, changing cards may have reset this, if it has you will only get a potential quarter of the cards power.
There will also be a setting for AGP Aperture size. This is the amount of memory that Windows is allowed to use for pushing instructions to the graphics card.
This should be set to 50% of system memory or the same as the card memory depending on who you speak to...
The port will have a multiplier, changing cards may have reset this, if it has you will only get a potential quarter of the cards power.
There will also be a setting for AGP Aperture size. This is the amount of memory that Windows is allowed to use for pushing instructions to the graphics card.
This should be set to 50% of system memory or the same as the card memory depending on who you speak to...
Make sure the Nvidia drivers are well and truely gone too. Its not a simple as just uninstalling them, but there are various tools available to do it for you.
I've heard reports of people getting poor performance on ATI cards after upgrading from an Nvidia card and curing it this way, although I've not seen it personally.
>> Edited by d-man on Thursday 22 April 15:13
I've heard reports of people getting poor performance on ATI cards after upgrading from an Nvidia card and curing it this way, although I've not seen it personally.
>> Edited by d-man on Thursday 22 April 15:13
I have a similiar spec to your old spec and it runs fine and was also looking to upgrade the graphics card to a 9800 pro. From what I've read on the Overclockers forums a lot of people with higher spec cards ATI/Nvidia are complaining about jerky gameplay. The common thread seems to be those with 512Mb of ram have problems.
Try running at low detail if it doesn't jerk check peak memory requirement. Swap to high detail run again and then check peak memory requirements. This should prove the theory either way.
Unfortunately I can't try this for you as when I run at hi-res /high details it becomes far cry the powerpoint edition
Try running at low detail if it doesn't jerk check peak memory requirement. Swap to high detail run again and then check peak memory requirements. This should prove the theory either way.
Unfortunately I can't try this for you as when I run at hi-res /high details it becomes far cry the powerpoint edition
nubbin said:
Wow! Thanks for the replies everyone. I'm a bit of a technodunce, but I'll have look round based on what everyone's said, and see what happens.
BTW I did download the very latest drivers from ATi.
Thread hijack warning - does anyone know of any way of speaking to any ATi technical support people by phone in the UK?
They used to have UK support offices but they appear to have gone.
Ivan
The Problem is most likely you CPU/ Motherboard. If your MoBo is 100MHz fsb and thus using PC100 or PC133 then that is where the bottle neck most likely is. There are lost of reports that when Far Cry is put on the max settings the CPU loads are very high. people have said that XP2500+ with DDR400 +9800Pro systems suffer from slowdown on the highest settings, and thus enabling 2xAA and AF is free.
It could also be like someone else said the old nVidia drivers as this can also happen.
With a 256Mb card it is unlikely you would need an AGP apature of greater than 64Mb with current games. I even think some of the catalyst drivers even had a bug where if there is 512Mb or less system memory the apature was limited to 64Mb (might still be).
It could also be like someone else said the old nVidia drivers as this can also happen.
With a 256Mb card it is unlikely you would need an AGP apature of greater than 64Mb with current games. I even think some of the catalyst drivers even had a bug where if there is 512Mb or less system memory the apature was limited to 64Mb (might still be).
TimW said:
I got that graphics card. did it coem with free hl2?
No, nor was there the promised voucher. It was bundled with a copy of Black Hawk Down. Not played it yet, so I don't know if it's any good. I'm still forging my way through Far Cry which is like being down "Rovram" town centre on a Saturday night -all aggression, fighting and mutant humanoids!!
I have set the AGP aperture to 256Mb (the maximun allowable on my system), and downloaded Driver Cleaner which has detected and removed some remnants of the old NVidia drivers. It is a bit better, but I still can't use "High" or "Very high" settings in the game. I've also dowloaded the latest Catalyst drivers - v4.4 I think it was.
Where do I find the Port settings?
>> Edited by nubbin on Saturday 24th April 09:02
AGP apperture should be set to 64MB, it's only for additional addressing ram in the system, no use having any higher.
Have you tried Omegadriver.com for his drivers,? I use them alot.
Try booting into safe mode and removing any instances of old stuff in the hardware section, it's a favourite thing of windows to hang onto old drivers and hardware.
Kevin.
Have you tried Omegadriver.com for his drivers,? I use them alot.
Try booting into safe mode and removing any instances of old stuff in the hardware section, it's a favourite thing of windows to hang onto old drivers and hardware.
Kevin.
IMHO (and strictly MHO and experience), while ATI have OUTSTANDING hardware, the drivers have ALWAYS given me problems (BSOD, Lock-up, unable to configure screen settings accurately). Additionally, after an hour long session on hold with ATI non-support, I switched to NVVIDIA based product in the late 90's and have never looked back...
Just my 0.02...
ErnestM
Just my 0.02...
ErnestM
I don't think you have a huuuge problem - I have a Geforce FX 5900 (was £140, slightly faster than your Radeon), and can't play Far Cry on very high settings without it being somewhat jerky. I think that's in .. 1152x864 resolution or thereabouts.
It's a very, very graphics intensive DirectX9 game and I don't think you have much to worry about. Almost all other games will run very fast on the card, it's just far cry is hardcore.
In my opinion it's the first time a game has ever jumped so far ahead of graphics cards and cannot be played on max; it's usually the other way round and the top end graphics card are faster than the games require.
However, make sure your antialiasing is OFF. this makes a massive performance difference (up to ~30/40%)
Russ
It's a very, very graphics intensive DirectX9 game and I don't think you have much to worry about. Almost all other games will run very fast on the card, it's just far cry is hardcore.
In my opinion it's the first time a game has ever jumped so far ahead of graphics cards and cannot be played on max; it's usually the other way round and the top end graphics card are faster than the games require.
However, make sure your antialiasing is OFF. this makes a massive performance difference (up to ~30/40%)
Russ
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