radeon 9800

[nogri]

i am a beginner with pcs so when my old one needed replacing i got a dell with p4 3.2ghz and a radeon 9800, however when i got my games installed i noticed there was blotches on the screnery and floor and in my fav game daoc certain mobs and charercters have spiky triangles comming off and in the distant there are sorta squares as well as other bugs.

i have screenshots of these things but nowhere to host them to show you .

so i went to radeons page and uninstalled my drivers and installed new ones which made it unplayable so i had to uninstall those and reinstall the ones that came with the pc on a cd.

so for months i have been bareing with the problem but now i have had enough and want a new card but i was wondering does this sound like a grfx card problem? and if so should i get an nvidia now instead or go for another radeon?

thanx very much for any help

 

[Jonty]

Hi nogri

This sounds simply like a driver or software problem, certainly not something worth buying a new card for.

To fix it, you have two options. Either go to Dell's support website, enter your PC's Service Tag code (usually on a label on the base unit), and then download the latest graphics driver from their support pages (just check the release date in the list of driver, and make sure your PC model and graphics card are supported).

Alternatively, you can go to ATi and download what are called reference drivers, which work with any ATi card (this is probably the easier of the two methods). You can download the latest Catalyst drivers from ATi's Driver Page.

Try this and see what happens

Kind Regards

Jonty

P.S. You could always contact Dell's support team or use their forums for more specialised help.

 

[Deadmanwalking]

From reading the DAOC tech forums, it is more then certainly a game specific problem. Do you get similar probs with any other games?

 

[nogri]

it happens in all games but not so bad but still blotches but less bugs other then that also its started effecting internet explorer recently i dont know why

 

[Deadmanwalking]

Then Jonty is bang on. Drivers

 

[nogri]

i uninstalled my ati drivers restarted my pc then tested a webpage and it was fine then turned off all programs and my firewall installed the ati drivers from the ati site and tryed again and the problem is back . could it be my driver settings or something perhaps but i have no idea about those things

 

[Jonty]

Hi nogri

If you leave the driver settings on their default values then everything should be okay. Just one thing, what colour depth settings are you using? If you're running Windows go into the Control Panel, click on the 'Display' option, then on the 'Settings' tab. The colour depth should be at least 16-bit, and not 256-colors which sometimes happens when new drivers are installed.

If this doesn't help then get in touch with Dell. Regardless of how old your machine is, or is not, you'll be entitled to some support, and they're generally good at solving problems. You could also try Dell or ATi's support forums for a more prompt solution.

Kind Regards

 

[nogri]

card got even worse today with checks squares everywhere phoned dell and they got me to run some test on the grfx card from booting up and one of them came back failed but that means they are sending me a new card tomorrow

thanx for all the help