PCI Card Problems

[Taneka]

Im currently making a somewhat decent second system out of old parts. I am currently very broke right now. So buying stuff would be out of the question.

It has no AGP slot since its kinda old. Its running on a Radeon 7000 64mb. Now a 64mb card can handle most games like RTCW or Quake 3. However, when I play them, I get really bad frame rates. I know a PCI bus has low speeds. But is there anything I can do to remedy slow framerates on a PCI card? I already tried having it run on minimum graphics settings, but Im still not happy with the framerates =/

[Mr.Radar]

It sounds like a driver issue. What version are you using?

[Dragonprince]

Im currently making a somewhat decent second system out of old parts. I am currently very broke right now. So buying stuff would be out of the question.

It has no AGP slot since its kinda old. Its running on a Radeon 7000 64mb. Now a 64mb card can handle most games like RTCW or Quake 3. However, when I play them, I get really bad frame rates. I know a PCI bus has low speeds. But is there anything I can do to remedy slow framerates on a PCI card? I already tried having it run on minimum graphics settings, but Im still not happy with the framerates =/

Welcome to the Forums Taneka
:clap:

As far as the system your putting together you might be able to sqeeze a few more FPS out by slightly overclocking the FSB, on older boards the PCI bus speed would increase with the FSB. Just make sure you do not go past 36Mhz on the PCI bus or you could damage cards. Also be aware even small overclocks could cause hard drive issues too since the harddrive controller is tied to the PCI bus and might not like the extra speed.
You could also see some nice gains buy overclocking the CPU and using a radeon tweaker like RadClocker to boost the video cards core and memory speeds. Just go slow and back off at the first sign of trouble and you should do ok. Make sure your cooling is good before you start.

[Mr.Radar]

To calcuate your PCI bus from your FSB on un-PCI locked boards divide by 3 for 100 MHz FSB setting, divide by 4 for 133 FSB setting, divide by 5 for 166 FSB setting, and divide by 6 for 200 FSB setting.

[Taneka]

Haha, thanks guys! I OCed the PCI FSB a bit, Im getting somewhat satisfactory results. Not bad for an old comp. Thanks =P
Oh I was just using the standard drivers for winxp BTW.

I never done PCI OC before, thanks :)

[Mr.Radar]

The drivers included with Windows suck. You'd probably see a huge improvement with the latest Catalyst drivers from ATI's website.