video card help

[jlem]

I bought my wife a basic COMPAQ computer with 512 megs of ram and a celeron 2.4 proccessor for internet last year. My Battlefield 1942 ran okay but not fluid on even the lowest settings so I bought a PCI 256meg GEFORCEFX 5200 video card thinking that I could play games extremely smooth on the highest settings. Well it plays better, but not as much as I had expected. Could it be because I have a Celeron proccesor and I will never get the super smooth fluid like graphics. I thought that the video card had it's own proccessor so the computers proccessor wouldn't really matter. Can any computer gurus help me out

 

[fshhub]

a pci i card is nothing like an agp card at all, the processor doesnt matter that much, not at those speeds
what does it do, get choppy? stutter? slow?
and if there is a pattern, to what or when it happens.

 

[aarone]

some lower end non brand name video cards use processor power along with their own processor.
you could just be draining your processor already.
What brand is it?

 

[sammystingray]

I would have went AGP instead of PCI personally, but I would think that would run most any game pretty well. Either something isn't set right, or, as stated, something is draining your resources. Anyway, I think the fault may be something other than the card.......resources are just tapped. slow CD ROM? crappy RAM? to many processes running?
It's NOT the processor. I could run that on a much slower one without choking.
I'm no expert though.
take a look at
www.pcpitstop.com
and run the full tests to see what's up. Close all windows except pcpitstop during the test, and don't touch the mouse or keyboard once the test starts. It's safe, and I have used this site for years....it tests your monitor, video card, memory, download, upload, hard drive, programs running, security problems, etc etc etc, and gives you a report to tell you any problems and compare to others. You can join and keep a log, or you can test unknown....both are free, and it's a great site. trust me it is safe to install anything from them. VERY informative.....try it out, and see where you have troubles on your system.

 

[orion7]

I probably should check two things. Make sure the directx installed on your computer is the latest version. I think it is 9.0b now. Also check and make sure the old video card drivers have been uninstalled. Sometimes older driver dll's mess with the newer driver without it saying there is something wrong. I need to help a friend of mines do the same thing with a laptop.

 

[fshhub]

another thing to look at is definitely the drivers, make sure they are updated
as well as direct x
also, what operating system and how much ram do you have?
again, what are the symptoms?
as for the pci debate, i agree with sammy agp is better by far and that card should be able to handle it ok. but, odds are that you have no agp slot, being a compaq. is that right?

 

[jlem]

I bought the basic Compaq for e-mail and kids games which it works great. The game runs smooth but not really fluid like. I don't know how to really explain it well.
No AGP slot
512 of the Kingston DDR RAM
XP
uninstalled the integrated video but everytime I uninstall it loads back up on resart but is disabled.
DirectX is all up to dat also. Couls it be that norton corperaqte is running all the time and how do I disable it?
Thanks for the help

 

[aarone]

norton is a huge memory muncher..just right click on the system tray icon and exit out.

 

[orion7]

Intergrated you say. You have to go into the bios and disable the video card or it will try to overide the geforce card. There is the problem I am certain.

 

[jlem]

Originally posted by orion7
Intergrated you say. You have to go into the bios and disable the video card or it will try to overide the geforce card. There is the problem I am certain.
Did that from the start. After doing some reseach I think it is the combination of a Celeron proccessor and a PCI video card. Also I only have 128 KB of cache. Most times I play games when I am deployed and my Laptob works really good for that. The video card definately did improve game play so no real complaints, I just thought that the video card would have done more than it really can with the setup I have. It was worth the $90 bucks.
Thanks for all of the help

 

[fshhub]

1st, norton (IMO) is junk
and does hog memory
2d, 512 even with xp should be no prob unless you have lots of garbage running that you dont know about
3d, at least you did it properly and disable the video in the bios first. did you check your other bios setings? one thing, i have found that you want to check is your printer settings. believe it or not, that can have an effedt on game play. my old one used to get choppy under stress and onc ei changed taht it worked great.
more than likely it is a setting. not necessarly a best performance or best quality type setting but an off the wall ... not so sure even what it means type setting that processor witha a 128 meg vid card should be banging like you wont believe. 256 mb with 512 ram and that proccessor should be ripping through things like crazy.