PeachParts Mercedes-Benz Forum - View Single Post - Computer (specifically, video card) question...

Ashman · #4 10-14-2002, 08:54 PM

the slowness you have is not caused by the video card.

When running windows 95/98/98se/me, with more than a certain amount of ram, the computer cannot cache the ram properly and it will cause pauses in your system at varying times.

Generally this is attributed to the OS or hardware, but in most cases it can be either or both.

I would suggest you try switching down to 128mb ram and seeing if that solves your issue first. I'm not saying you should give up on having the 512 mb of ram, but for testing purposes, try 128mb ram.

Now if the mainboard is not capable of caching the ram properly when you have a certain amount, I.E. more than 128mb, then you need to switch to a better board that is capable of caching the ram properly.

I know some chipsets cannot cache the ram properly over a certain amount, and will cause the system to pause and or seem very slow.

If you are not playing games, try running windows 2000 or Windows NT for a stable system. If you are playing games, you can try running windows XP, though not all games run under XP, I like XP quite a bit. myself and have not had many problems running games.

You can pick up an Nvidia Geforce based card (Not sure on generation) for around $60 or so. Any Geforce card, I.E. Geforce 2, 3 or 4, will run most games perfectly fine. the 3 and 4 cards are of course better than the 2 card, but I have not had any problems running games with a geforce 2 with all graphics on in my system.

BTW I run 3 Geforce 2 cards with 3 monitors, 768mb Ram, 180gb hd space, on an AMD Athlon Thunderbird 950, and my system runs just fine with no issues whatsoever.

I have a P3 500 laptop with 256 ram and windows XP, and it runs great too.

Check into the ram first, then os, then if that doesn't help, then look into swapping the board and or other components.

I have a feeling the problem you decribed is a ram caching issue, with OS choice you have made you will need to lower the amount of ram you have, or switch to windows XP, or the hardware you are using is not capable of working properly with that much ram.

Good luck, and definately try what I have suggested. before you do any upgrading on anything.

But remember what I said about the video cards, a Geforce 2 MX 32mb video card, will handle most any game perfectly fine. The only real gain on getting a better video card are some added features that most games probably don't support yet anyway, and better framerates. I have no problems with framerates myself, and I usually run my games with full graphics on at 1024x768 resolution.

I also have noticed no decrease in performance when playing a game on a geforce 2 pci card versus a geforce2 agp card, though maybe the difference is so minimal its hard to notice.

Good luck, Keep me posted.

Alon