Video Card issues

[icedog90]

I bought a GainWard Geforce FX 5600 256mb DDR from Fry's Electronics, and for some reason, every new game runs horribly slow. I get about 10 fps on Halo if I'm lucky, Splinter cell slows down so bad on highest graphics and 1024x768 Res, and some other games are pretty much the same . It can't be my system, with an Athlon XP 2600+ 2.1ghz, 1x 512mb DDR PC2700, 80gb Western Digital Hard drive, and an nForce 2 chipset, it can't possibly be my computer hardware. A friend of mine has an FX 5200, and Halo runs at 60 fps for him... it just doesn't make sense, it's like my card is using 20% of its power. If anyone would might know the problem, please reply. Thanks.

[stratcatprowlin]

o man i would be goin nuts!but to try and fix it this is what i would do.Make sure ur power connecter to the card is connected and indeed working,then install the latest chipset drivers for ur motherboard.After that i would dl and install the latest nvidia drivers for ur 5600.That should fix the problem.
Splinter cell can be hard to run at full detail with a 5600 working perfectly anyway.I know cause i use a 5600ultra and it taxes my card pretty heavily at high detail settings.You cant run some games at full detail and expect them to run well with the 5600 so i would try some dx8 games and see what happens.Also do u have dx9 installed?

[emericanchaos]

i would try different drivers and/or turning down the image quality some.

[harryinny3]

it looks like crap. So that wouldnt be an option. Make sure your aa and af are set to App. Atleast i think Nvidia cards drivers have that option.


harry

[icedog90]

Well Halo looks good, just runs very very slow. I have dx9, I keep AA and AP on lowest, but the image qaulity is highest. I don't have the latest drivers yet, because 8mb on 56k is a long time sadly. Only on older games like dx8 run very fast, ( between 75 fps and 100fps) except for C&C Generals, that runs easily, and I think it's dx9.

Do the forcewar drivers do any good?

[Sentential]

Sorry bro, that the nature of the beast. the FXs are bad in general. But yes forceware is much better

[Captain Newbie]

ForceWare will help immensely.

Try running Halo at 800x600 and turn all the fancy Microsoft effects off. Why Halo might be running so slowly is that the 3d models used in Halo are not properly ported to the PC...as in, they're the exact same models drawn by your xbox, which as a lot less to think about.

[icedog90]

I downloaded the forceware driver last night, and that pretty much did the job. Halo now runs atleast 30% faster, and in the first mission it doesn't massivly slow down when I shoot. Also some bad noticable bugs in a few games were fixed. I feel a lot better guys, thanks for the help :D