Need help with ATI 8500

[Raystream]

I don't get it. I just bought a ATI Radeon 8500 128 DDR and popped it in and everything stunk. The Half-life games they game me with it look like old dos games. I ran the 3DMark2001SE and all I got was 2410 points!!! Thats it.

This was my current config.
AMD Athlon 900 mhz
384 megs of sdram
ATI Radeon 8500 128 DDR
FIC AZ11EA
Windows 2000 Professional

Then I installed Windows XP Professional and defraged my hard drive and I easily got a 5640?? What is up with that. I about to wipe my hard drive(very cluttered) hopeing to get a higher score and performance.

Please Reply,
Raystream

 

[RussSchultz]

You'd probably find more help for your Radeon specific questions at Rage3d.com. There's a much larger collection of Radeon users that frequent that board than this one.

However, my best advice when it comes to new video cards (and new mother boards) is: nuke it from orbit, its the only way to be sure. Format the hard drive and install from scratch.

 

[Tahir2]

I think you solved your own problem.

Your scores more than doubled with the reinstall of XP.
Any other advise? Try the Omega drivers... try a tweaker like Radeonator.

But you are also limited by your mem bus (is it PC100 or PC133 - Cas 3, 2?) and your processor.

I think you may be able to eek out a few more 100 3dmark points.

As to why it initially stunk - related to the old driver settings and files in your registry and system32 folder.

Best advice? Get DDR/RDRAM, a faster processor and format.

 

[RiotSquad]

Yeah,I agree...always best to get info for a specific HW from the place where all has it...
Not sure how 3D Marks work...but did you remove the XP refresh rate problem....?
There's one called refresh force which is universal and then you have ATi specific ones too.(most likely Rage3D has it among their files)

 

[Tahir2]

3DMark 2001 is not affected by the refresh rate problem I believe. It locks the refresh rate when you begin the time demo's at any rate.

I could be wrong though.

I personally have experieced the refresh rate problem once with the first ATi drivers in XP and done several installs after and never experienced it again. I wonder what combined settings forces the refresh rate to lock (it was VERY annoying when I did experieince it and.. just remembered it happened in WinME as well as XP).

 

[RiotSquad]

For me it happened when I installed the card (very recently got it,so I think it was with newest release of drivers) and I am also very sensitive to it...
In WinME I can't recall ever seing it though....but I didn't run it for very long either and never on my existing setup...

 

[Pete]

You probably didn't fully remove the drivers from your old card, thus the incorrect rendering and low scores.

If you already replaced 2K with XP, I don't think there's more you can do. If you installed XP over an existing 2K installation (upgraded), then you can probably gain some speed by completely formatting and reinstalling. I don't know how much you'd gain, tho, as your CPU and RAM is (sadly, as I own a P3-866) on the slow end of the PC scale.