Unbelieveable.... Need Help With Gaming Rig

[ColdBlizzardIce]

Hello People,

Hi, I am new here and I have been searching all over and I decided maybe this could help my terrible problem. I have just built my self an wicked gaming system. The Specs are:
ASUS A8N-SLI Motherboard
AMD FX-57
Hitatchi 500 gb SATA Hardrive
2 gigs of Crosair XMS High Performance LED Lights RAM
550 Antex TruePower V2 PowerSupply
BFG Geforce 7800 GTX OC out of the Box.
X-Fi Fatal1ty Sound Blaster Sound Card
Logitech z-5500 Surround Sound Speaker System
ViewSonic 19' Flat Screen

The problem comes in where the games I am playing are doing: 1. Visuals are not rounded off at all even with all the displays at maximum. Still are blocky or when moving around have split screen lines and 2. Games lag with large scale battles or FPS are laggy while in heavy fire. Everything doesnt look like its working at its potential. I set up all the BIO's right installed Windows xp PRO with SP2 right and everything. I dont know what to do. Havent downloaded any drivers for the video card. All I know is I spent some good money building myself a good rig and I know that there should be no lag in any game with settings at high! PLEASE HELP!!!! I am very frustrated and confused. Thanks! :angel:

Fiore

 

[mailpup]

Impressive system. You should at least try the latest graphics driver. What graphics driver are you using?

 

[drink_jones]

Why the he?? did you buy a sound card?
But to fix the preoblem, i suggest installing the correct video driver.
Go to http://www.nvidia.com/object/winxp_2k_78.01.html for the hook up.
Looks like a new driver update is here, so you're just in time.

 

[ColdBlizzardIce]

I am using the graphics drivers right out of the box, which is version 4.9. I am going to have to get a friend to download the drivers to a disk and load them up on my system, the reason for this is because I was planning on having DSL by the time I built it but they dont provide it out to my house and I cant get cable modem either. If the drivers dont smooth out the lag and picture quality, what should I do? Also I would like to know if I get SLI running with the same BFG 7800 GTX OC, would that be a smokin graphics or should I just wait for the new ATI X1800 XT 512mb video card to come out. Thanks.

 

[pkroks]

impressive system... :grinthumb, i think an SLI would do just fine, and also i think its your driver.

 

[mailpup]

You should stick with what you have because you will need a different motherboard to run ATI crossfire compatible cards.

BTW, is the separate power connector hooked up to the graphics card?

 

[ColdBlizzardIce]

I dont think soo.... I am going to have to check but I am almost sure its not. About the ATI... so your saying I am not able to install any a new card from ATI on my mother board? What if I didnt want to use The Crossfire option and just use at as a single video card?
Thanks

 

[mailpup]

I wasn't very clear. If you want to run a single card, you can install the Radeon but if you want to set up SLI you'll have to stick with Nvidia.

The 7800 definitely needs to be connected to the power supply separately. It doesn't get enough power through the PCI-E slot. Look for the connector on the end of the card, opposite from where the monitor plugs in. Your card should have come with an adapter to convert the psu molex to the card connector.

 

[ColdBlizzardIce]

yes sir its connected to the power supply. I had it in there from beggining. So I am going to have to await the drivers and see what to do. If it does fix these lag problems then I may just hook up the SLI. Now would that enhance the performance 10 fold or just a little. I read a review and the person seemed he was bias on the whole SLI topic and said it wasnt even worth it because most games dont support it. Hmmmmm....
Thanks :angel:

 

[Fade_to_Blah]

The drivers that usually come with those cards in the box just dont cut it. You should see a big performance increase with the drivers right from Nvidia.

 

[drink_jones]

The basic SLI setup renders the screen in two parts. One card renders the top half, and the other renders the bottom. Don't think that having two card is going to double your video memory or anything. Each card takes some of the load off of the other by rendering half of the screen (unless you're using two monitors, in that case one card runs one monitor and the other card runs the other monitor.), and therefore enhances the performance.