7800 GS AGP Problems.....

[Brandon M]

I just installed a EVGA 7800 GS and tried playing Medieval II. I launched the game and the menu has horrible artifacting and i'm not seeing much of a performance increase over my 9800 pro that i just replaced with the 7800. Also i tried playing Oblivion and again there wasn't much of a performance boost over my 9800 pro and i was experiencing sever stuttering in some areas.

here are my specs:

emachines T3256

3200+ athlon XP
1G Corsair Value Ram
400 Watt Duramax power supply

Maybe i just made a stupid mistake or am expecting too much performance out of this but some help would be appreciated.

[Spart]

Have you uninstalled the old Ati video drivers and installed new nVidia drivers?

[Bella]

first off, you could very possibly have a defective video card. artifacts can, will and usually do show up when the card is overheating. another possibility is the drivers.

but you also have to note that the games you are trying to play (Medieval 2 and Oblivion) are heavily cpu dependent. that is to say, they do not draw as much from the graphics card as they do your processor. the level of detail and polygon count in both of those games will chew through even the best high-end core 2 duo systems, regardless of the gpu being used in conjunction with them. and it certainly doesn't help having only a gig of value ram. you're bottlenecking your gpu right there. my advice to you is save your money and aim for a new computer. be wise though. intel's follow up to the core 2 duo is coming out soon within the next few months and averages 20% - 75% increases in gaming and calculations performances over the core 2 duo and core 2 quad lines. and that's saying a lot, especially when using a mid/high end c2d or c2q and an after market cooling system to get extra kick out of the processors.

in short, save your money and get a new computer. unless your drivers are in question in your current situation, you most likely have a defective gpu that's overheating. it's not uncommon in the market to buy one that's bad. just rma it or return it for another and try again.

[garion333]

Other than the artifacting, which sounds bad in general, try playing Doom 3 or Quake 4. Something that utilizes the video card and see if you get the performance you were looking for from the card.

Also worth a shot is downgrading your driver from the latest version (which some people have issues with) to the 91.47 driver. You can get that here. Might help. Easier than sending the card back and having to pay a restocking fee or whatever.

Oh, and I recommend you build your next computer. It isn't all that difficult. Just requires some research and patience.

[MunichRules]

i think the point is the cpu

i have also a XP one (3000+) and i changed from 9600 Pro to 7600 GS.

So 3DMark says that there is a performance boos (2685 vs. 5856).

But this is only a synthetic benchmark.

In games like MTW2 or TDU i couldn't see anny better performance when changing graphic resloution or detail parameter. Even worth when changing parameters with the new graphic card i got less performance.

I think cpu is having an evident rule in this games .