craphics

[brandanglendenning]

i don't play very many games, but i do have dungeon siege, neverwinter nights and counter-strike. i had been using a radeon 7000 to play the games, and recently purchased a $100 radeon 9200. there is a barely noticable increase in performance, even at the lowest quality and resolutions. :< i am running windows 2000 professional, 392mb 100mhz ram, 1.1ghz athlon.

could it be my choice in operating systems that is causing this seeming bottleneck, or could it be that a difference of 2200 (and 2 years) isn't really much?

 

[Texun]

Originally posted by: brandanglendenning
i don't play very many games, but i do have dungeon siege, neverwinter nights and counter-strike. i had been using a radeon 7000 to play the games, and recently purchased a $100 radeon 9200. there is a barely noticeable increase in performance, even at the lowest quality and resolutions. :< i am running windows 2000 professional, 392mb 100mhz ram, 1.1ghz athlon.

could it be my choice in operating systems that is causing this seeming bottleneck, or could it be that a difference of 2200 (and 2 years) isn't really much?

Welcome!

Unfortunately the graphics cards do not follow a clean linear path when it comes to performance, so a 9200 should not be thought of as being 24% better than the 7000.

If you can send it back you may want to consider something like a 9600 Pro for around $100-$110 at Newegg.com. You should also avoid anything with SE in the name. These are usually neutered versions of the original model.

9200 review

The 1.1 Athlon also won't win any speed races with most games today but you should be able to play CS with it.

Hope this helps.

 

[LtPage1]

its definitely not the OS. the 9200 isnt a very speedy card, but you should be seeing a jump, coming from a 7000. your ram is really slow, and that processor can be safely called obsolete. i think its time (if youre looking for more performance) for a processor/RAM upgrade.

 

[brandanglendenning]

i'm looking for more performance from what i have. :>

 

[Budman]

What's craphics? :laugh:

 

[dguy6789]

thats odd. The 9200 should be at least 4-5x the speed of a 7000. It could be your cpu.

 

[DaveSimmons]

Check out this old TomsHardware article that compares 31 cards using Athlon 1 GHz and 2700+ CPUs.
Toms - even a broken clock is right twice a day

Dungeon Siege would really benefit from a faster CPU, though I played it myself using a P3 933 MHz and geforce3 card.

If you really can't upgrade your CPU with something like the $69 Sempron 2400+ and motherboard bundle deal at Outpost.com this week (plus a stick of DDR RAM, $40-80 for 256/512), you might think about a geforce 3 or 4 ti card since they work well with slow CPUs.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Return the 9200 if you can. (You overpaid slightly anyways.)

Purchase an NF2-based motherboard, with onboard sound and LAN, and integrated GF4MX video, and whatever cheap model of 2400+ or faster AMD Socket A CPU that you can get, and get at least a 256MB stick of PC3200 RAM. It will probably cost you closer to $160 in total, but you should see a significant speed increase, and you can always upgrade your video card in the future then. The integrated GF4MX-alike video is around the same level of performance as the Radeon 9200. (Perhaps only if you get two sticks of memory, so that you can run in dual-channel?) But the updated chipset, faster system bus, memory bus, and a much faster CPU, will do wonders for your overall system efficiency.

The other question - based on your system's age - are you sure that you properly installed your AGP/GART drivers for that mobo/chipset? That might also be why you aren't seeing a noticable speed increase. Either way though, you are definately being held back by the slower CPU, and the very-slow 100Mhz (SDRAM, I assume) memory bus.

Btw, I'm using a 64MB AGP 8x R9200 (128-bit) right now, on a KT400 with a XP2000+ CPU, and it's barely enough to play UT2K4 at faster than 30fps at 1024x768. I also only paid about $40 for it new, months ago.

 

[davidjaii]

Originally posted by: brandanglendenning
i don't play very many games, but i do have dungeon siege, neverwinter nights and counter-strike. i had been using a radeon 7000 to play the games, and recently purchased a $100 radeon 9200. there is a barely noticable increase in performance, even at the lowest quality and resolutions. :< i am running windows 2000 professional, 392mb 100mhz ram, 1.1ghz athlon.

could it be my choice in operating systems that is causing this seeming bottleneck, or could it be that a difference of 2200 (and 2 years) isn't really much?

time to upgrade.. 2g+ and ddr ram would help u so much

 

[Gagabiji]

Originally posted by: davidjaii

Originally posted by: brandanglendenning
i don't play very many games, but i do have dungeon siege, neverwinter nights and counter-strike. i had been using a radeon 7000 to play the games, and recently purchased a $100 radeon 9200. there is a barely noticable increase in performance, even at the lowest quality and resolutions. :< i am running windows 2000 professional, 392mb 100mhz ram, 1.1ghz athlon.

could it be my choice in operating systems that is causing this seeming bottleneck, or could it be that a difference of 2200 (and 2 years) isn't really much?

time to upgrade.. 2g+ and ddr ram would help u so much

2 gigs for Dungeon Siege and CS? I don't think so. Modern games like Doom 3 and Half-Life 2 need lots of ram, not Dungeon Siege and CS.

 

[element]

haha craphics. I like this noob already. just burn counterstink and I will build a shrine to worship the existance of a noob with high levels of smartness. (for real this time!)

oh and as to your question yeah you're gonna need to build a whole new system. Your athlon 1.1 and 392mb of ram is ancient.

even an athlon xp 2500+, 1 gig of pc2700 ram and radeon 9800pro shouldn't set you back too much but would run every new game out there pretty well.

 

[xsilver]

If you can't return your card and don't want to add any hardware, the dark art of overclocking is probably your only option
You're CPU limited BTW so you need to overclock that only.....

 

[ed21x]

i vote you return that card and get a 9600 pro. If not, windows 2000 isn't a very optimized OS for gaming- perhaps windows 98SE or winXP (i really think your computer would fly under windows 98SE). If you have $2-300 to spare, there are definitely extremely low price solutions that will bring you into the modern world fairly quickly (check the FS/FT forum)

 

[cmdrmoocow]

OS isnt the bottleneck at all - return that 9200 (100$ is too much money for such a card), and at least get a GF4MX for ~40$. Or a 9600pro for 100$.

Then..... proc/mobo/ram needs a refresh.

 

[brandanglendenning]

'return that 9200 (100$ is too much money for such a card)'

i didn't buy the card, and i don't think asking for money instead from the person who gave it to me is an option.

'(i really think your computer would fly under windows 98SE)'

i thought the same, and i recall hearing some complaints about windows 2000 so far as gaming is concerned, but will there be any noticable increase in performance?

'If you can't return your card and don't want to add any hardware, the dark art of overclocking is probably your only option'

right now my cpu has a fan that is too large taped to it because the heatsink fan crumbled when i pulled it off to clean the heat sink. that is how old this computer is. what i find strange is that 3 years ago in counter-strike 1.1 i was getting 99fps with a geforce mx 400. others have told me that it's application bloat causing the new higher system requirements, but that's insane. i should be able to play a 6 year old game on a 3 year old computer without this much trouble.

the whole 'if it's slow, upgrade!' mentality just isn't for me. a lot of it has to do with me being broke, and a bit of it has to do with me being interested in how my computer performs. i guess i will just have to suck it up. :>

 

[fuzzynavel]

when did you last re-install your operating system.....if it is never then have a think about a fresh install should get rid of all the crap that gets accumulated in years of neglect!

 

[brandanglendenning]

yesterday.

 

[fuzzynavel]

fair enough....did you actually format the drive??

a few people I know think a fresh install is just installing over what you already have!!

If you don't mind me asking ...why win2k??

did you recently change operating systems...i.e go from 98 or similar to 2000

I don't see much of a problem here....you say your new card barely shows an improvement over the old card......does it play the game at a reasonable rate?

if so why bother!

 

[brandanglendenning]

'fair enough....did you actually format the drive??'

yes.

'If you don't mind me asking ...why win2k??'

it's probably the cleanest version of windows with the most control allowed over how it works.

'did you recently change operating systems...i.e go from 98 or similar to 2000'

i've used windows 2000 professional for 3 years now.

'I don't see much of a problem here....you say your new card barely shows an improvement over the old card......does it play the game at a reasonable rate?'

who said anything about a problem? it's an issue, definitely, and one which i would like to resolve without spending money. if it cannot be resolved then i'll just have to deal with it. i get 10-25fps average in dungeon siege/neverwinter nights (with lots of freezeup), and 40 in counter-strike. this is by no means reasonable. i'm sure a steady 30 would be nice for the former, but anything less than 99 in counter-strike is horrid.