Could a new AGP card cause a previously fast puter to crawl like a beat up pinto?

[gh0ul]

I've looked everywhere. Please! I really hope someone out there can solve this puzzle for me. Until today my computer was pretty fast, fast for a 1.3GHZ with 256MB RAM. There didn't seem to be much lost time when launching any of my apps. The slowest of which is Borland C++ Builder, but It'd fire up in about 8 to 10 secs. I upgraded to an AGP GeForce TI 4800 SE 8X from an old ATI Xpert 128 PCI card. The difference is unbelievable!!! I can't even open a text file in less than 10 seconds! IT's atleast 3 to 4 times as sluggish as it was! This is killing me! I keep having to stop typing so the words on screen can catch up with me! This is what I've done so far!

I've flashed the cards BIOS, and updated the Drivers. I've updated the Mobos AGP and other drivers. I've totally disabled hardware acceleration "Advanced" ,on the Settings tab in Display properties. I set the card to disable AntiALiasing, and to optimize for performance. I haven't flashed my system's BIOS because the latest revision was in 2001, so I don't think it'd matter anyway.

Does anybody have any idea what could be the problem????

 

[acidosmosis]

Did you remove the old video card's drivers before installing the new video card?

You may want to:

1. Uninstall all existing video card drivers

2. Visit Nvidia's website. If you installed the latest Nvidia drivers when you installed the new video card you might want to try older Nvidia drivers just in case you came across some new issue with the newest drivers.

Mainly, uninstall the video card drivers and re-install them. Hopefully that will fix the problem.

Let us know. ;-)

 

[gh0ul]

uuhhhhh...hmmmmmm, you know what.... I don't think I did that... duh... I just took it out and put the other one in... let me do that.....

 

[Mictlantecuhtli]

This may be a stupid question but how / why do old video drivers affect overall system performance? How can drivers not being used slow things down so that you can't open a text file in less than ten seconds?

 

[Rohas21]

When you install something except from the files that are being copied at your HD it also writes some values to the registry....These values tell windows what files to load,the memory that this programm will use etc etc

If you don't uninstall the drivers of the previous card these values will be there in the registry and maybe (if not for sure) will cause a little conflict to the new card you just plug!!!

Try to find programmes who monitors install programmes (like ashampoo) so you are 100% sure that when uninstall something ALL THE REGISTRY VALUES will dissapear
(from add/remove of windows the above isn't 100% sure)

 

[gh0ul]

that was the problem.... I use WIn2k. Normally I would have uninstalled the old card first. The instructions explicitlly said. Don't do it for Win2K, only uninstall the old card for WINNT. I swear, if you don't believe me check out the manual!. This doesn't really make much sense seeing as WINNT and WN2k practically use the same Kernel. But I Had to put the old card back in to get the old drivers to uninstall. Then it worked just as it was supposed to. Well... it's only been about 10 minutes, but so far so good.

 

[poertner_1274]

That is pretty strange that they would tell you not to uninstall the old drivers. Seems a little stupid to me, what can it hurt if you do anyway? Even if it says explicity not to? Anyway, gld to hear you got it all sorted out now, and I hope it stays that way. But always remember if something happens again you know where to find the answer to it

 

[gh0ul]

IT's working a lot better now, but it's still a little sluggish. No where near as bad as it was. I gotta figure out if there is something I can tweark. I'm a little scared to overclock it. I really don't know what I'm doing when it comes to all that. I'm afraid of over heating the card or my CPU.. I need to upgrade my MoBo, it's about 3 years old but the model is still in production. Just been a little strapped for funds lately and I'm not looking forwared to reinstalling my OS and everything else. Which I know I'll probably have to. I tried running 3DMark, My computer didn't even make it through the freaking entire test!!! It got as far as the 2nd CPU test and aborted! Damn, I thought'd it'd atleast finish it. Look at my 1st computer specs, I figured she'd pull through, guess I was wrong. I hardly EVER play games, maybe once every couple of months so I'm not real dissappointed. Just surprised.

 

[gh0ul]

Well IT's still not giving me the $200 experience I thought it would. Not even in plain Windows. I tried to play a game.. Ha!!! It coughed and choked about 3 minutes into it. All jerky and crappy. Then it just stopped. It works really well for about 15 minutes after you reboot. Then Windows starts getting really slow. Nothing refreshes like it should. I click a button, and it takes a while for things to open\close. Like when I have my browser minimized and I resotre it, It doesn't pop back up like my $39 ATI Xpert did, 1st the title bar appears and then slowly the rest of the browser shows up. And it gets worse the more I use it. One thing I do know from experience. The "Aperture Size" setting in the BIOS is best set at 16M. That's for me anyway. It's suppose to allocate SYs RAM for the Vid CARD, but seems to Rob RAM from Windows. MAybe I'm wrong. I've done everything, every combination of setting, Flashed the old MoBo BIOS. I've been screwing with this card for the past 12 hours! The back of my neck is a huge ball of fire and I probably won't be able to turm my head tomorrow. I've come to the conclusion that my Motherboard is just to old for such a beefy card. I'm gonna leave it in for tomorrow and if I can't deal with it. then I'm gonna reinstall the $39 job and wait till I can get a new Main Board. Thanks for the help you guys... I really appreciated it.

 

[Tedman]

Tell me if Im wrong but, my guess would probably be the power supply. Those new video cards out there need alot of attention when it comes to power. And if you only got a 250 watt Power Supply, chances are you just probably need more power.