Need advice on a video card...

[ThyGuy]

I need a new video card because this piece of crap radeon 9200 obvious isn't working right, as sims 2 is crashing at the spash screen still, after two weeks of trying to find out why.

I've looked around, but all I see if this cards higher version, the radeon 9250. There has to be a better card out there, for less than 150 bucks.

And don't ever buy a DELL if you want a good video card. Next computer I'm building soo I can have AGP.

[neriana]

All you've got is a PCI slot, that's what you're stuck with. I doubt it's your video card causing the crashes, though, since that card works fine with the game. Are your drivers updated? Have you looked into everything else it could be?

When you build your computer, make sure it has a PCI-Express slot and card in it, that's what the next wave of cards will be. AGP are fine for now. Normal PCI slots, and Dells of any form, aren't, but you learned that already.

[ThyGuy]

the drivers are up to date, directly from ATI. what is strange is I had another dell that payed the sims 2 with no problem. The video card I'm using came from the very same computer. this computer is no different except the damn thing completely freezes up when starting sims 2 sometimes.

What really pisses me off is that I'm having to update a computer that by all standards is better than the other computer, and is a newer version (Old was dimension 3000. this is dimension E310 or 3100). Neither, DELL, EA, or ATI want to take responsibility to why this comp is doing this crap except trying to give me a BS statement that the computer isn't made for video games, ignoring me no matter how many times I say, "YOU STUPID FUCKS! I'VE PLAYED SIMS OFB ON A WEAKER DELL THAN THIS AND IT DIDN'T LAG!".

[neriana]

What are your computer's full specs? And have you eliminated every other source of the error but the video card? Also, if your drivers are the newest from ATI, that could cause problems. You may want to try rolling back your drivers.

Have you tried uninstalling and reinstalling your game, as well as removing your entire downloads folder?

[ThyGuy]

Hell, lemme try the old drivers. That's about the only thing I haven't done yet.

[ThyGuy]

Good news. going back to the original drivers appears to have fixed the problem. I started, quit out of the came and went back to the splash screen several times. The video ccard appears to be responding much faster than it did with the updated drivers.

I'll post here if it happens again, but if anyone else has a radeon 9200 256MB PCI, use the original drivers on the CD until ATI comes out with usuable drivers, which will be NEVER!

[neriana]

You could also try omega drivers. The guy who makes them doesn't seem to be updating them any more, but the drivers he has up atm work beautifully for all the games I've got.

[jsalemi]

You could also try omega drivers. The guy who makes them doesn't seem to be updating them any more, but the drivers he has up atm work beautifully for all the games I've got.

Um, the Omega drivers are current with the latest ATI release (6.5) -- I'm using them and they're fine.

The latest Dells all have PCIe graphics slots (AGP is obsolete, for all intents and purposes).  I replaced the X300 that came with the computer with an X700 Pro, and it hums along fine playing TS2 (it's a Dimension 8400).

[Nova]

don't ever buy a DELL if you want a good video card

 

No, just make sure you customize the Dell you buy.  Dell uses the best video cards available..you just need to pay the extra money when customizing. 

[Hegelian]

I'll post here if it happens again, but if anyone else has a radeon 9200 256MB PCI, use the original drivers on the CD until ATI comes out with usuable drivers, which will be NEVER!

Let's be fair here:  This was a low-performance budget part when it was released at the beginning of 2003. Being a PCI board, it's been obsolete since it was released—you need to go back to 1999 (at least) to get to a place where PCI is the standard graphics interface. Today, AGP boards are on their way out, replaced by PCI-E. You should consider yourself fortunate that it runs TS2 at all. Can you name any other 3D game released in the last two years that will run with that graphics board?? If it requires DX9 in hardware, it will not run on a Radeon 9200.

http://www.tomshardware.com/2003/03/06/strike_force/page6.html
http://www.tomshardware.com/2003/12/29/vga_charts_iii/index.html

[neriana]

You could also try omega drivers. The guy who makes them doesn't seem to be updating them any more, but the drivers he has up atm work beautifully for all the games I've got.

Um, the Omega drivers are current with the latest ATI release (6.5) -- I'm using them and they're fine.

He's back to keeping them current then? I read a post by him on a forum saying he was retiring from making them for a while, since he had real life matters to attend to. It's good to know that he's back at it.

[jsalemi]

He's back to keeping them current then? I read a post by him on a forum saying he was retiring from making them for a while, since he had real life matters to attend to. It's good to know that he's back at it.

Yup, as of May 25th. He posted a note saying he had family issues to attend to, which is why he skipped the 6.4 release, but said he's back now.

[ThyGuy]

Well, that's it. I'm done with DELL because I've gotten mixed answers from their representatives. I thought I was getting a good computer, but apparently all I got was a piece of junk that will struggle to do the very thing I got it for. Unfortunately I've had to return a computer to dell before for a refund and ended up not getting it refunded and getting a lovely piece of 256mb ram (wooptie doo) even though it already had 2 512's and there wasn't another slot (and why would you add a 256 to two 512?!).

So building a new comp, this will be a present for my sister or something, since her comp bit the dust about the same time as my 3000.

[ThyGuy]

I got this new computer less than two weeks ago.

[Annette]

My husband bought himself a Dell laptop about two weeks ago. It was quick and easy for him, because he was too lazy to read the spec's.....but just a quick read of the ad's in the local papers suggest he could have got more for his money. He wanted a basic work machine, and that is all he got. To customise it....add another stick of ram, a larger screen etc wasn't all that expensive. He is stuck with a 64mb ram video card, and as he says he won't be playing games that might be fine. Bet on those long trips away with work he will regret it! Perhaps Dell aims at the non gaming market......apparently there are people who don't play games 

[Hegelian]

The big vendors tend to have two lines of laptops. One is for "consumers" and offers more glitz like glossy wide-screen displays, gaming graphics controllers, and a lot of rubbishy software (they often ship with Windows Media Center). The business machines are, well, for business. They usually stick with chipset graphics (like Intel Extreme) and dispense with the fancy displays, but their construction is generally more robust and they have better keyboards. Toward the higher price levels, you can usually get gaming graphics as an option, but without a desktop CPU (with its heat and loud fans), most truly portable laptops don't have the horsepower for current games. My HP business laptop will run the base game but isn't really adequate for any of the expansions, and Body Shop won't run on the Intel 915 graphics controller.

The new mobile version of Intel's Core 2 CPU line ("Merom") may improve the gaming performance of lightweight, low-power-consumption laptops.

[ThyGuy]

I do have to admit. This computer still handles sims 2 fantastic, and I can play DOOM 3 on medium quality with no lag, and guildwars on max quality minus aliasing. It's just the random crashing on sims 2 that bothered me. Definately is PCI only but my sister won't mind. All she ever goes and does is plays neopets, and that is nothing even for a weak video card.

[Skaven]

BTW, AGP is dated technology.  PCI Express has replaced it.

[Paperbladder]

Heck, when I used to play Neopets (long time ago) it was on a Pentium 166.  It would play the Flash games at a horrible speed, and the monitor or the 2MB ATI 3D Rage card sucked.  Never figured out which.  Surprisingly, it could play the original Sims game.

I've got a Intel GMA 950 in this laptop, and it'll run at least the base game but places say the CPU is too slow (1.66GHZ) to run the thing with Software Emulation.  I'm not even going to bother having the thing installed since my PC has Anti-aliasing and generally would perform better with it.  My other computer has a budget Geforce 6100 256MB AGP card.

[Metalkatt]

How about for someone who has a Dell and needs to go a step up from that one particular NVidia that everything FFP+ hates?

[jsalemi]

How about for someone who has a Dell and needs to go a step up from that one particular NVidia that everything FFP+ hates?

Switch to an ATI card.  Anything from an X700 Pro and up works great, and you can find X800 series for under $200 (maybe under $150 these days).