ATI Radeon 9250 - help for a bumpkin

ijed · January 17th, 2006, 07:58 PM

Ok, just bought this after not finding any reviews, though after reading a couple of threads on this forum I´m getting a sinking feeling. Though yes, there´s still time for me to take it back.

The thing is I don´t particularly want to use it for gaming, instead for 3D and 2D graphics, which tends to be a lot less processor intensive than gaming if you know what you´re doing. I´m using photoshop and 3dsMax though for lo-rez and lo-poly rendering, though granted I know that for these types of applications I should have bought something with more muscle - on a budget.

My processor is an AMD Sempron 3100+ 512 RAM and the whole thing came as a prepackaged bundle from packard bell . . . (yeah, I should have bought all the pieces seperately online and put it together myself to avoid **** like this).

Basicly I´d like to hear from anyone who has the same card and knows how to use it properly - or else anyone with a strong suggestion that I return to the shop and swap it.

The catalyst centre - what is this for? Yes, I see the options etc. but this just seems a massive processing overhead (I get a screen blink after windows loads up and graphics have already stabalised and whenever video settings (eg. openGL) change - where there the card is adapting the original default settings to the new default settings and a waste of, well, everything. Before I mess with it - can I safely remove this without removing the drivers?

Is my best option an exchange? I´ve seen very little significant improvement graphically and in some areas (eg. the "blink") a drop in performance over the onboard graphics (had no video card previously) or is this all just down to my lack of know-how with drivers / settings?

Thanks for your help.

ijed · January 17th, 2006, 08:08 PM

its a Radeon 9250 256 Mb DDR AGP 2x/4x/8x running in a 4x port . . . it also has an (unused) TV out.

sechs · January 19th, 2006, 12:41 AM

I have a 9250 as my backup card. It's not exactly the fastest horse in the stable, but pretty reasonable. If you're not going to be using the additional horsepower that it has over your integrated, then it, obviously, isn't doing anything for you.

I know that Photoshop doesn't use any hardware graphic acceration, but do you know if 3D StudioMax will take advantage of the card?

ijed · January 19th, 2006, 08:01 AM

3dsMax uses standard ("necessary evil") OpenGL and hardware acceleration for video and some plugins & other features - the main reason I wanted a card was to smooth over the processing bumps that were causing slowdown, crashes etc. The reason I said ´not for games´ is that the games I play are old and / or not too graphically challenging, though I have seen improvement there anyhow.

I reckon I just need more RAM for the CPU because the 2D / 3D switch (photoshop (or internet) <-> max) seems to be what´s causing the problem . . .

Kyuzo · January 19th, 2006, 08:09 AM

I recently heard something about the newest ATI Control Center having some bugs that cause stability problems, and that it could be solved by fully removing the drivers and such and then reinstalling just the device drivers.

But this is just second-hand info, haven't searched for any confirmation on it since I don't have an ATI card on my primary system.

edit: Heh just noticed a piece of news posted yesterday, that there were new Catalyst drivers released. So the text above might have no relevance in any way as far as the "newest" goes =P

ijed · January 19th, 2006, 10:34 AM

I suspected removing the unnecessary would be at least a partial (if not complete) fix so I´ve done it anyway - it´s just common sense to remove what you don´t need and I´ll post any significant improvements I notice here.

The next step is to do the same with windows - does anyone actually use windows media player?! (Winamp 5.12 now supports video and does so very well - though I don´t know about DVD playback yet)

Back to the problem, I´ll be experimenting today and I´ll be trying some other stuff out - anything helpful I learn I´ll post.

Thanks for your feedback (s)

stez18 · September 11th, 2006, 02:58 PM

Just wondering, does the 9250 work with a AMD Sempron 2600+ processor?

stez18

DanU · September 11th, 2006, 06:22 PM

You've got a Packard Hell??? You have my sympathies

Be sure to uninstall all the useless garbage startup and helper programs that tends to be pre-installed with these types of systems. With only 512MB of RAM, the last thing you need is for useless applications to be sucking up resources.

Is your hard drive thrashing a lot? That's a sure sign of a lack of memory, especially since you're running photoshop AND 3dsmax at the same time.