Mwahahah

Hi, I'm running XP-SP2 with
Athlon XP2200+(10.5x173Mhz FSB!!!)
K7VTA3 V6.0
Creative Audigy
256MB DDR Ram (Sisoft confirmed running at 173)
Ati Radeon 64mb DDR OEM version (this is apparently the 7200, not the 7200LE)
80GB Maxtor and 34GB Seagate


First off, I suffer from poor graphics performance in any newer game (obviously because I need new ram/video card/a whole new computer) however...as I am a bit poor right now it's what I've got.

Now, my issue is thus: With clean install and stock XP installation drivers (with just the 1.02A4pax audigy drivers loaded) I score 3551 3D Marks (in 2001SE). This may not be that bad, considering I haven't installed the latest via all in ones, and more importantly the newest ATI catalyst's. However, I have noticed over the course of 3 formats (all within the last month) and various driver combinations (omega 5.6, 5.7, as well as standard Catalyst CCC) that I have the best 3dMark2001SE score as well as the best gaming performance with the STOCK XP drivers (6.14.10.6462 - from 3/23/04).

Please help...I need better frame rate and I wanna play Warcraft World Of War as well as Woods 2005, Diablo 2, and San Andreas.

I don't think that with the stock drivers the card can utilize hyperz or any of the other performance enhancements I should be able to have.

I hope I provided enough information, thanks!!!

ChoGGi

well if your getting the best speed from the stock ones then you might as well use them
you could try using older but not as old drivers and see if you find a faster set (look on guru3d.com for older drier versions).

if you had the money to buy all those games then you should have the money to grab another 256 stick of ram (it's around $30 can for a 256 stick of ddr 400). that'll make a big speed difference, since other then a new card or cpu that 256 megs of ram is your biggest bottleneck. it must be paging everything to your harddrive and your running xp which does like ram.

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Common Problems and Fixes for your Radeon

The_Neon_Cowboy

You need a new card regardless drivers can't do everything, why do people think this...
you card is old and out dated and as such it perform as well as it can given it limited
hardware support. What was cutting edge 5 years ago is to outdated for any of todays
demanding titles. I guess you you try forceing super low and block resoultions

If you can afford the $150+ you spent on such games you should be able to
afford the $50-100 for a low end newer card...

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H3X4D3C1M4L

Neon Cowboy is right.....if you wanna play the games you gotta pay for the hardware.

That said the hardware is ridiculously cheap these days for someone who just wants to play, so before you go buy a new game, upgrade your PC.

Zardon

try some drivers from our driver site. (offical ATIs, OMEGAs, or dhzeropoint).

www.driverheavendownloads.net

Mwahahah

What's with all the useless replies (not u Zardon)? I said I know I'm passed due on updating my computer. I'm just trying to make sure I'm getting the best performance possible with the hardware I have.

I was mostly wondering why I would lose performance with the newest drivers. ie - there is some new feature enabled that I might need to disable (so I actually gain performance instead of lose).


Does everyone buy games to play them (I haven't bought a single game yet and I've been gaming on pc's since win 3.11 and dos 6.0)?

Helpful replies are appreciated. Thanks.

The_Neon_Cowboy

Not something you advertise.... But, then you have even less of an excuse
not to be able to upgrade.... Go mow some grass or smoething lol'

My point is simply that you virtually not going to see performance improvements
At most you see the Benifit of BUG fixes... The newer titles require HARDWARE
support for alot of stuff and face it DX7 hardware won't cut 8.1 and 9.0 wich acconts
for basically all new titles. That and those from the last year or two same thing.
In the end no drivers will help make up what your system lacks in hardware.

Your only chance to spring in some new life is to buy a new video card. Also you
need 512 minuim ram and 1GB is reccomended for gameing. Seriously another 256
and a newer video card would make a massive differeance...

Driver wise I don't know the latest officals will work fine... Might try the latest omega's
But you not going to see any noteable gains... you video card and system are bottle necked...

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Spyre

San andreas doesnt even work with 7200 cards so thats one game you have no chance of running. You need at least a card capable of full DX8 support to play that game. All the other games should work although they will play like ass and have reduced graphical effects.

You can piclup a 9600 and get tripple the performance for little cost and be able to run any DX8/9 game (for now at least)

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H3X4D3C1M4L

I don't even think an MMORPG would be worth playing on such a low card, you'd lag out and have alot of bad times.

Dyre Straits

Yes, I do. I pay for every game I play except for those I receive as a gift from someone else. AND, since I beta test commercial games, I even BUY those once they come out....even though I get the game free from the developers.

The fact that you're a Warez Junkie tends to lower the urgency to help in anyway from this neck of the woods. Just be thankful you can play any games at all.

That's my advice.

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Mwahahah

LMFAO!!!!! Someone send me to treatment...I'm a junkie!!! Apparently I'm the one in dire straights . Wow, looks like I really offended him.

Well dudes, I seem to have proven you all wrong (aside from the fact that I could certainly attain far better performance with a new video card/ more ram). The trick seemed to be staying with the older ATI drivers and manually adding reg. keys for hyperz, hierarchicalz, anisotropic filtering, + a few other optimizations. Why didn't someone tell me this was possible? Just kidding, but really...

I just successfully got San Andreas running (not bad at 800x600 I might add...hardly choppy even in intensive scenes of blowing people up!!!! Are we sure the 7200 isn't DX8.1 compatible?) as well as Need for Speed Underground 2 (runs quite well at 800x600!) and Tiger Woods 2005 (runs flawless 800x600 max detail and I could not ask for this one to run any better 1024x768 med-high detail!!!). I'm also assuming I'll be able to get World of Warcraft running decently after I'm done "buying it". I knew I could get a few more months of gaming out of this poor overly-overclocked old computer (running smokin hot I might add! I've never heard of a single other person running a post week 43 Barton [hard-locked...modded to mobile] at 173 FSB on a K7VTA3.).

It appears I have resolved my own issue. Thanks for the humorous (I really did have a good laugh), if not a bit otiose comments/replies.


P.S.Now I just need to get my rear speakers working with this Audigy 4 iso software. There are no speaker settings (4.1,5.1, etc) in the audio console (the patched spkset file has no speaker profiles...hmmmm...back to searching the forums.)

THANKS ALL!

ChoGGi

hmmm you might be able to add reg keys, but do they make any difference or does the software just ignore them?
i'm pretty sure the 7200 is a dx7 card, i have one of those sitting around somewhere.
MMORPG means massively multiplayer online role-playing game. the ones you need to pay a monthly fee for (guild wars is a mmorpg but with a onetime fee).

as for your speakers try looking in C:\program files\SBAudigy4\Speaker Settings (or wherever you installed them to) and run SpkSet.exe
btw i dont think my reply was too useless

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Common Problems and Fixes for your Radeon

H3X4D3C1M4L

Advertizing piracy is bad news

The_Neon_Cowboy

Posting it on web forum he might as well send letters to the company's along
with his name and adress so they know were to send the court summons a little
more quickly. It kida like the retarded hackers that would get away scot free but
they have to brag like a 5 year old and gets them selfs BUSTED.

Not to mention, anyone could report him they get a cort order get his user info
track him down. Show up at his frount door with some cops who take all his computer equidpent and arest him. Puting him away for a quite a few years and fineing him 10's tp 100's of thousandas of dallors... I guss he just want to set in a cell for the next 20
yearsand be banned from computers for life. Just to get out and work the rest of his
life paying off his fines....



Yes, it is a DX7 part... I gues those game have support for "software mode"
if thier running at all software emulation is realy realy slow poor and depeandant
on the power of you system wich you is "weak".

Keep i mind I have one of those cards on a shelf here. No to mention on
a stock 1800+ and 512 ram it pulls about 4300 2001se marks...

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Mwahahah

They certainly appear to be working. As I said I have noticed much better performance/fps and am able to run games in higher resolutions with less choppiness. 4258 3Dmarks now too!

That's the first thing I tried. I'm not a "noob" to the computer realm.

While yours was one of the more worthwhile replies, I don't believe it was fitting (as I believe I made clear I'm not looking for upgrade advice) for a reply to my inquisition.

Thanks for the advice, slightly edited my post (for legality purposes).

You're "noiding" me out man. A little over-the-top...no?
Have you watched Hackers (Copywright Sep 15, 1995 MGM Studios) too recently?


Where did you come up with that (I'm pretty sure, at least for San Andreas, that there is no option for software rendering...that's way oldschool)? I'm pretty sure I would know if it was running in software mode. Also, playing around with anisotropic and ati-aliasing settings and have just gotten Woods running at 1024x768 with 8x anti-aliasing, and tri-linear anisotropic filtering (it's running smoother than ever too!). How could this be software rendering?


You guys seem tightly strung, have you taken any "you" time lately?

ChoGGi

hehe whoops i just reread your post and noticed you already mentioned spkset

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Common Problems and Fixes for your Radeon

The_Neon_Cowboy

Seriously if anyone felt it was worth thier time you already admited to piracy and
named titles. This if someone from the legal departments ran across this or it were
repoated to them and they wanted to persure you you gave them all the ammo thred
ever need for a warrent. for you USER if you email and IP information that logged on
this site. Your ISP records. As well as a search warent for Warez. Wich means they take your compturer and all your CDs/DVDs and strage devices and look at them very carefully... even at deleted and traces of suff you've had on your pc.

Options? Alot of games will run in a software mode option or no option. If you don't
have the required HARDWARE support and it runing so it must be.... or it wouldn't run...
The other possabilty it would have backwords support byt then the system requirement
wouln't be DX9 or DX8.1...

There really is no excuse for not upgradeing exacpet for being a cheap wad....

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H3X4D3C1M4L

Or having a wife

Or not playing games enough to justify it, which relates to having a wife

Ferret_Style

Nah just get a wife into games like me She loves them almost as much as me.

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"You might be Eaten by a Grue" MC Frontalot!

H3X4D3C1M4L

Yeah but thats one of those ideal situations most people aren't fortunate enough to experience.

My ex wife was a big PC user but not a gamer so we had alot of fights over stuff like that (New video cards are not worth the money...bah!)

My current girlfriend likes games alot and can understand why having that extra 2 FPS is worth the money

Mwahahah

Where did I "admit" or specifically say I was pirating games? Anyway, point taken...no reason to be stupid about it and take unneeded chances. As for the email and IP tracing...it would be sad to see the poor fellow who's ip/email I'm "borrowing" get busted, but I seriously doubt they would be able to locate me (of course, I may be a little outdated on the whole covering the tracks properly scene, also, I understand that Homeland Security has been getting involved more and more in these such cases...maybe I'd better "virtual proxy" through another couple countries before my actual/"borrowed" IP address).


..."being a cheap wad...." - perhaps you are being a bit presumptuous there. Just like H3X said:


Ok, picked myself back up off the floor {brushes himself off}. Thanks for the advice/humor fellas.

BTW, I wouldn't be so "cheap" or poor if I hadn't just (legitimized) started a new business. Anyone looking to purchasing a new home or in need of a refinance or business loan? I can get killer rates!!!