My Precious!!! (video card, that is)

[jaroddog]

Ok, first off, I was wrong in some of my previous post. Since sending back my 9600XT, I now have an Nvidia GeForce2 MX400 with 32MB(not 200 as I thought before). I was really wanting to play a round of Star Wars Battlefront. Only one problem, on the box it says minimum requirements (64 MB Video Card) and list the chipsets supported. In that list it definately says "NVIDIA GeForce2 family, excluding the Geforce2 MX". Bummer. Well I got the itch and decided, hey I'll give it a try... The result: I played the game, on the lowest of low settings of course, but I played it! I definately took at hit in quality (I turned to lowest res, and everything off or low). What do you make of this? Why was I able to play with all the odds against me (low video RAM and unsupported chipset)? Either way I'm happy. I would like to have a new vid card (6600GT), but money is a little tight right now. At least now I can play my favorite (and only newer generation) game. Right now I'm using Microsoft's automatic Nvidia MX drivers. Do you think I would see a performance increase by using Nvidia's Forceware drivers?

 

[cyrax]

God, i hate to be the bearer of bad news. Newer nvidia drivers hardly give performance boosts to the mx series. The card simply too weak to push the graphics.

 

[textus]

i got exactly the same card but it can't even run a simple low end online game such as MapleStory. The images are all garbled up and distorted. T_T I am running on the latest nvidia driver from the site. Maybe I should have run an older version driver. But what version driver should I run to solve this problem?

The thread entitled Direct3D Interfaces problem is the thread that was suppose to address this issue for me, but it seems no one is answering it T_T

 

[jaroddog]

I'm just using the one that Microsoft XP automatically installs upon first boot. I was really surprised that I was even able to run battlefront at acceptable frame rates (except for explosions). Yeah, with low settings it looks less than stellar. But, heh, it's working.

 

[textus]

Before plugging in the geforce2 mx 400 card that i have now, I was using a 10 year old 4MB Cirrus Logic Laguna GD5465 on my P3. That card dosen't even support direct3d. After plugging in the geforce2 mx 400, windows automatically installed the driver but it seems the test direct3d button on "dxdiag" isn't available to me yet and MapleStory dosen't run just like the old 4mb graphic card. I decided to install the latest driver from nvidia official website. The direct3d is available to me but the test for 8 and 9 interfaces didn't go well. The faces of the cube were garbled up and distorted just like what I see when I run Maplestory. Maybe i should revert back to an old driver. But I dunnoe which driver is old and where to get it and would like to know if the driver is the real problem. Since I saw many post regarding latest driver incompatibility with geforce2 mx400.

 

[wolfram]

Actually, I´m amazed that the game ran in that video card, specially in that drivers. When i had a Radeon 7200 32mb PCI card, Xp installed the drivers for it, but i had terrible performance. But when I installed Catalyst, everything was VERY VERY smooth. It ran Soldier Of Fortune 2 very well in high settings and 800*600 res.
I think you should try installing the Nvidia drivers and see if it helps. If not, just remove the Nvidia drivers and XP will be using again its default drivers. It´s nice to have the manufacturer drivers, because you can control more options.
Good luck :grinthumb