Year Long Problem o.O

JakeyC · September 23rd, 2006, 09:41 PM

First off hi everyone, my first post in this forum. Well my specs are as follow:
xp pro, 512RAM, 2.6ghz proc. and up until a year aog was running on a ati radeon 9200 256mg.
Well one day i turned my pc on and i had no signal, got the problem straight to the card right away, removed it and signal again. So i needed to restore my pc anyway it was buggy. So i did a complete restore and set everything back up again, went to reinstall my card, and nothing. So i put the ati disc in, go to ATI easy install then to custom and even the options have dissapeared, i can only install direct x. Nothing on the list at all related to ati! And this is after a full restore. I have tried the card on another pc but thats windows 98 so i will have to wait till i can get hold of a suitable pc to test it. So really im asking whats the problem here, also i might get another AGP card, but would buying a 512meg PCI card be worse that a good 256 meg nvidia card. Im not going back to ati so many problems when i look around forums!. Thanks for any help guys

EXreaction · September 23rd, 2006, 10:32 PM

First of all, are you only trying the drivers that came with it?
Did those drivers work once before, and then all of a sudden you are having this problem?

You don't want any 512MB card(unless it is a new, ultra high end one with a msrp of atleast $400. Other than that the 256MB models will usually(99% of the time) be better than the 512MB models.
(what nVidia card are you talking about BTW?)

ATI and nVidia are just about as good, each has it's strong points and weak points, but maybe you just got a bad card from the start...

JakeyC · September 23rd, 2006, 10:40 PM

yea i have tried downloading the drivers from the internet, and using the disc, and they literraly wont install, and i have tried to remove all other ati drivers before hand! Using the ati driver uninstall program. Does anybody think the 6800 extreme xt is good? i might buy it

radio1_mike · September 23rd, 2006, 10:47 PM

Yah.

You want to stick to 256MB unless you are dropping (like Ex said) $400.00 or over. I am not sure how many games out there even support more than 256MB in textures (what the video ram is used for) anyways.

You also want to stick w/AGP not PCI, PCI was a good alternative up until 7 years ago or so. The only time I'd recommend it is if you could not afford an AGP-based mobo and a AGP GFX card. Even then, it'd be only if you were doing business type work. Email, wp, surfing and the like.

Click this link below from Tom's Harware, it's an interactive VGA GFX card chart-- plug in 2 cards you're interested in; plus a benchmark test and it'll post results.

Neat.
http://www23.tomshardware.com/graphics.html

JakeyC · September 23rd, 2006, 11:01 PM

cheers for that link, think i will get the 6800, but just wanna know what the problem is loli just hope to god its the card as i cant be bothered with it being the mobo too much hassel.

EXreaction · September 23rd, 2006, 11:09 PM

Do you know if an AGP, or PCI-E card will work in your motherboard?

JakeyC · September 23rd, 2006, 11:14 PM

yes agp will definately work as that card (9200) was working fine for 7 months until it randomly lost signal and i cant bring it back

either the mobo or card at fault, i need a computer with an agp port to test it, i still dont understand why the options to install the ATI drivers have vanished, maybe it has something to do with ati drivers not being uninstalled properly

EXreaction · September 23rd, 2006, 11:19 PM

Well, test it in a new pc, or maybe bring it to a local pc store and ask it they could give it a try for you...

Ryan220587 · September 24th, 2006, 01:30 AM

yeah sounds like the gfx card, i've always found the drivers for ati a nightmare. i'm about to switch to nvidia, as my old geforce mx 400 has never skipped a beat. u'd be best off just getting a cheap agp card, as agp is quickly being overrun by pci-e and u may want to consider upgrading sometime down the track, i duno. but u can pick up some cheaper 6600gt's if u look around. my mate has one and it's better than my 9600xt (only a bit). but if ur mobo is a problem, then i'd say both ur gfx and mobo need replacing, in which case u're almost better off upgrading. that's just my opinion anyway. i gotta go to work.

JakeyC · September 24th, 2006, 08:25 AM

some more information i have remembered lol if i use a program like sandra and go to hardware info, then to "buses and devices" i only get the following:
Generic
PCI BUS 0 (1/1x PCIClk)
PCI BUS 1 (1/1x PCIClk)
Shouldnt there be one there for the AGP port, if so any ideas why it isnt there