NVIDIA GeForce 4 MX 440 - best drivers?

[simsfreq]

My game had been running fine with this graphics card and ancient drivers (2003 version) until I started getting some weird graphical glitches (a huge object would appear in my neighbourhood screen and cause so much lag it was almost impossible to move the mouse)

So I upgraded to the latest driver, (2006 version) and everything was fine, until I went on my constantly winter neighbourhood. Now I get a moderate amount of lag every time it snows (and possibly rains, I can't remember) which means the game is playable but incredibly frustrating.

I have all EPs up to Seasons (so everything but FT and BV) and no stuff packs. I don't think CC would affect it and anyway I don't use stuff which has a high poly count. I also have 1GB of RAM, run Windows XP (SP2) and have a 1.53 GHz processor.

What is annoying me is I never used to get lagging due to snow before I installed the newer driver. Any idea what could cause this or am I better off just trying to get hold of a newer, non-NVIDIA graphics card? Money's not great at the moment so any other ideas to try first would be helpful. I have seen that there are externally made NVIDIA drivers, for example, like Omega drivers. Would installing that help? Is it worth a try? Or will I break something?

[Simsbaby]

Honestly, I would think you would be better off just saving up your money and replacing that with a new computer. For this one though, what do you have Graphics Effects set to under the settings menu? On my old computer I could run the game with that set to high, but when I installed Seasons the fog that showed up when it snowed or rained caused a massive slow down. If you have that set to high it might be worth turning it down to medium. 

[simsfreq]

Honestly, I would think you would be better off just saving up your money and replacing that with a new computer. For this one though, what do you have Graphics Effects set to under the settings menu? On my old computer I could run the game with that set to high, but when I installed Seasons the fog that showed up when it snowed or rained caused a massive slow down. If you have that set to high it might be worth turning it down to medium. 

Ah, that worked, I feel stupid now. Cheers It would work out cheaper for me to replace separate parts, my fiancé works in a computer shop and gets hold of parts more readily (and working out cheaper) than whole systems. The RAM seems fine as I don't run anything else, even AV, on my Sims PC. It never gets connected to the internet. Is the processor too old as well or is it just the graphics card?

[Simsbaby]

I'm not really sure about the processor. What kind is it? As for the video card, do you know what kind of slot it uses? I'm thinking that it would be AGP, but I'm not sure. If it is then something like this should be a nice upgrade, but you might need a new power supply to go with it.
BTW, wait until other people give you some suggestions too, I've been know to not know what the hell I'm talking about.

Edit: It might be worth pricing and building a newer computer yourself though. Now that I think about it you would pretty much have to replace everything to upgrade this one. The motherboard probably would have to be replaced to use a modern processor, so that pretty much means that the ram and video card would have to go. The only things that I can see not replacing would be the drives, sound card, and modem.

Edit 2: I put together a computer that should run TS2 nicely, and not be crazy expensive to build. If you can get your fiancé to build it for you, then this would be cheaper than getting it from a company like Dell or HP.

Processor - Intel Pentium E2220 Allendale 2.4GHz $89.99
Memory - OCZ S.O.E 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 - $26.99 after mail in rebate.
Motherboard - GIGABYTE GA-G31M-S2L LGA 775 Intel G31 Micro ATX Intel Motherboard - $59.99
Power Supply - Antec True Power Trio TP3-550 550W ATX12V - $59.99
Video Card - XFX PVT84JYAJG GeForce 8600 GT 512MB - $62.99 after mail in rebate.
DVD Drive - SAMSUNG 22X DVD±R DVD Burner with LightScribe - $30.99
Hard Drive - Western Digital Caviar SE16 WD3200AAKS 320GB 7200 RPM SATA - $64.99
Case - COOLER MASTER Centurion 541 RC-541-SKN1 Black Aluminum
Operating System - Windows XP Home SP3 - $84.99
Case Fans - MASSCOOL FD08025S1M4 80mm - $5.37 for 3
This would make a great TS2 computer, or a computer for anything else really. It has enough ram and a fat processor, plus a great video card. You would easily be able to run The Sims 2 all the way on high, and TS3 should be nice on it too. In the future if you need to replace anything it should be easy to upgrade. If you shop around for the parts you should be able to get several of them cheaper.

[Dea]

I thought the processor requirement was 2.0ghz or 2.4ghz depending on your video card. 

[Drakron]

The one listed is a dual core and so a non-issue.