My V5 5500 Died.

Bummer. I really liked that card, but Need For Speed froze last night. I had to do a power off reboot. Everything except Delta force behaves exactly the same way, as soon as the sim tosses up any graphic requiring the 3D processor. I rebuilt Win98 SE from tape, hoping that a new copy of the drivers would make a difference. No Joy. I'm launching this post now so I might get some response, it's Saturday afternoon PDT in the US, I'm hoping to get suggestions for a shopping trip this afternoon. After I launch this post I'm going to see if I can get my Matrox card working. I don't suppose drivers updates have elevated Matrox to the preferred platform for 3D sims. I just want to test that some card can do 3D sims. First, how do I remove the 3DFX drivers? I don't see anything in the program add/remove menus that looks like Voodoo drivers. Isn't it time to turn to Geforce? I'm loyal to products that give me good service, but 3DFX is gone. I'm thinking Geforce 2, I prefer high end, but Geforce 3 seems a little too far ahead of the curve. My PC is a dual P3/600, so it's hot be a good candidate for a cutting edge video card like the Geforce 3 anyway. Or should I be looking at the ATI Radion? I know absolutely nothing about them. Assuming Geforce 2, what alphabet soup do I want stuck on the end? "MX", "GTS", "Ultra" and don't mean much to me. I'll be going to Fry's or CompUSA. Any preferred brands and model names? I like lots of memory, but I don't want to toss money for no reason. And what kind of memory do I want What do I want? Or am I sitting on more graphic horse poser than anyone could ever use with my Matrox G400 Max. Yea, I have no doubt that these have all been covered in previous posts, but I did a Deja search for "geforce" in both rec.autos.simulators and c.s.i.p.g.flight-sim, back to this spring, and didn't find what I need. Oh, one more thing. My V5 5500 was AGM as is my Matrox. It might be nice to have my Geforce on the PCI bus, so I can have both that and my Matrox, which is AGM, installed. But I don't want to do this if its going to result in any perceptible hit on my game performance. So, Geforce or Radion, which one, and what price points I should expect to pay at Fry's or CompUSA would be appreciated. Anyway, I'm going to swap in the Matrox now. Any shopping tips to get me back in the sims tonight are appreciated. Thanks Larry

You uninstalled-reinstalled the 3DFX card physically? Checked that both fans are turning and the connection is tight? Do you mean AGP not AGM? Having added a RADEON to an office box and testing out a few sims with it going from V5's FSAA to no useable or not-very-good FSAA is probably not going to make you very happy. If you are dead set against a GF3, the prices on the GF2 Ultra and Pro models have come way down in price and are capable of FSAA in many sims, the P3 600 shouldn't make much difference because if you are trying to run 4XFSAA at 1024x768 on a GF2 you will be hitting fill rate limitations, not CPU limitations. The RADEON is a great card but it's FSAA is not usable. Not sure what chipset you are running but someone I know went through hell getting his RADEON AIW model running properly with his dual P3 VIA chipset board, he could not solve his problems until drivers for a later build of XP, not in Win98 or 2K but I am unsure whether his problems were with the AIW's specialized Video features or using it in games. If you are running a 19" or larger monitor and run at 1280x1024 or greater be ready to be disappointed in the sharpness of the text if you go for a GF2, my GF3 which is supposed to be much better in the 2D department than other Nvidia cards is still not as sharp as my V5, it isn't bad, just not as crisp. Larry Lindstrom wrote:

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> > Bummer. > > I really liked that card, but Need For Speed froze last night. > I had to do a power off reboot. Everything except Delta force > behaves exactly the same way, as soon as the sim tosses up any > graphic requiring the 3D processor. > > I rebuilt Win98 SE from tape, hoping that a new copy of the > drivers would make a difference. No Joy. > > I'm launching this post now so I might get some response, > it's Saturday afternoon PDT in the US, I'm hoping to get > suggestions for a shopping trip this afternoon. > > After I launch this post I'm going to see if I can get my > Matrox card working. I don't suppose drivers updates have > elevated Matrox to the preferred platform for 3D sims. I just > want to test that some card can do 3D sims. > > First, how do I remove the 3DFX drivers? I don't see > anything in the program add/remove menus that looks like Voodoo > drivers. > > Isn't it time to turn to Geforce? I'm loyal to products > that give me good service, but 3DFX is gone. I'm thinking > Geforce 2, I prefer high end, but Geforce 3 seems a little too > far ahead of the curve. My PC is a dual P3/600, so it's hot > be a good candidate for a cutting edge video card like the > Geforce 3 anyway. > > Or should I be looking at the ATI Radion? I know absolutely > nothing about them. > > Assuming Geforce 2, what alphabet soup do I want stuck on > the end? "MX", "GTS", "Ultra" and don't mean much to me. > > I'll be going to Fry's or CompUSA. Any preferred brands > and model names? I like lots of memory, but I don't want to > toss money for no reason. And what kind of memory do I want > What do I want? > > Or am I sitting on more graphic horse poser than anyone > could ever use with my Matrox G400 Max. > > Yea, I have no doubt that these have all been covered in > previous posts, but I did a Deja search for "geforce" in > both rec.autos.simulators and c.s.i.p.g.flight-sim, back to > this spring, and didn't find what I need. > > Oh, one more thing. My V5 5500 was AGM as is my Matrox. > > It might be nice to have my Geforce on the PCI bus, so I > can have both that and my Matrox, which is AGM, installed. > But I don't want to do this if its going to result in any > perceptible hit on my game performance. > > So, Geforce or Radion, which one, and what price points > I should expect to pay at Fry's or CompUSA would be > appreciated. > > Anyway, I'm going to swap in the Matrox now. Any > shopping tips to get me back in the sims tonight are > appreciated. > > Thanks > Larry

Larry Lindstrom <[email hidden]> wrote in message news:[email hidden]... > Bummer. > > I really liked that card, but Need For Speed froze last night. > I had to do a power off reboot. Everything except Delta force > behaves exactly the same way, as soon as the sim tosses up any > graphic requiring the 3D processor. I also have a V5, though it is a PCI version. I don't know if it is connected, but the demo for Need For Speed: Porsche Unleashed did something pretty drastic to my system the first time I ran it. It froze, requiring a reboot, whereupon I was informed that I would need to reinstall Windows (Win98SE) :( Thirty minutes later, I had completed this task, only to be presented with the same message! I could only get into safe mode, and nothing I did in there seemed to help. Being a non-techie, the only way I knew how to deal with it was to reformat the C: drive and start from scratch. Not quite as drastic as it sounds in my case, as I had only just put the system together the week before. Nevertheless I was well along with software reinstallations and this was irritating in the extreme. > First, how do I remove the 3DFX drivers? I don't see > anything in the program add/remove menus that looks like Voodoo > drivers. 3dfx Tools should be in there, and I believe you need to remove those. AFAIK, you can then remove the drivers from Device Manager. The 3dfx card should revert to standard VGA drivers, and you can then reinstall the Voodoo drivers and 3dfx Tools. I think that's how it goes. (That's probably what I should have done instead of reinstalling Windows, but I did what I was told). I hope you get it sorted out. NFS is never going anywhere near my system again. -- Paul

Chris Townsend wrote: > > You uninstalled-reinstalled the 3DFX card physically? Checked that both > fans are turning and the connection is tight? Do you mean AGP not AGM? Thanks Chris: Yes and yes. > Having added a RADEON to an office box and testing out a few sims with > it going from V5's FSAA to no useable or not-very-good FSAA is probably > not going to make you very happy. If you are dead set against a GF3, the > prices on the GF2 Ultra and Pro models have come way down in price and > are capable of FSAA in many sims, I'm very interested in the Geforce 3, but I think I'll wait for the Ultra, and for brave folks to shake the dust out. > the P3 600 shouldn't make much > difference because if you are trying to run 4XFSAA at 1024x768 on a GF2 > you will be hitting fill rate limitations, not CPU limitations. The > RADEON is a great card but it's FSAA is not usable. My P3/600 has a 21" monitor. Run in as high a resolution as the sims, and the frame rate, will allow. > Not sure what chipset you are running but someone I know went through > hell getting his RADEON AIW model running properly with his dual P3 VIA > chipset board, he could not solve his problems until drivers for a later > build of XP, not in Win98 or 2K but I am unsure whether his problems > were with the AIW's specialized Video features or using it in games. I think this Supermicro motherboard has Intel chipsets. > If > you are running a 19" or larger monitor and run at 1280x1024 or greater > be ready to be disappointed in the sharpness of the text if you go for a > GF2, my GF3 which is supposed to be much better in the 2D department > than other Nvidia cards is still not as sharp as my V5, it isn't bad, > just not as crisp. Bummer. I write C++ on this PC, sharp text is important. Thanks Larry

> Assuming Geforce 2, what alphabet soup do I want stuck on > the end? "MX", "GTS", "Ultra" and don't mean much to me. 1) Stay away from the MX cards. 2) The only difference between the GTS, PRO and Ultra cards is the core and memory speed. GTS are the slowest and Ultra the fastest. --- "I ned no splellsheker!"

"Larry Lindstrom" <[email hidden]> wrote in message news:[email hidden]... [ . . . ] > Or should I be looking at the ATI Radion? I know absolutely > nothing about them. Never used a Radeon or any other ATI card myself, but they reportedly have had continuing problems developing good drivers for their products, at least from the gamer's point of view. It's mostly for this reason that I've avoided them, though the Radeon hardware is said to be great stuff. > > Assuming Geforce 2, what alphabet soup do I want stuck on > the end? "MX", "GTS", "Ultra" and don't mean much to me. GTS is the "full house" GeForce2 so to speak, with the Pro and Ultra models being speeded-up versions of the original GTS (faster memory, higher core clock speeds). MX cards are the "value" models for price-conscious buyers, and are very good for most purposes including games but don't have the bandwidth of the GTS cards, so performance especially at very high resolution is likely to suffer. There are two new versions of MX, the MX400 which is essentially the original MX with a faster core clock (which reportedly does little or no good, since the MX bottleneck is memory bandwidth), and the MX200 which is for REALLY price-conscious buyers and has even lower bandwidth. I have a GTS in my Pentium III 866 machine and an MX in my Celeron 633 machine, and like them both very much. Of course the GTS in the faster box benchmarks a lot higher, but I find the MX in the slower computer still perfectly satisfactory even for pretty demanding flight sims. However, I have 17-inch monitors on both computers and rarely run anything at higher than 1024x768x16. If you need much higher resolution or bit depth than that, some flavor of GTS (standard, Pro or Ultra) would be the way to go. > > I'll be going to Fry's or CompUSA. Any preferred brands > and model names? With nVidia chipsets I don't know that brand makes a great deal of difference, though I would avoid the no-names. My GTS is Creative Labs, my MX is Elsa. Both are fine. > I like lots of memory, but I don't want to > toss money for no reason. Currently there are a lot of 64MB cards, though Anandtech (www.anandtech.com) says there's no benefit now to that much memory on a graphics card since there's nothing today that uses that much texture; apparently it's just manufacturers putting on more memory because buyers think 64MB must be better than 32MB and will pay more for it. It's possible of course that games and perhaps other apps in the future will use the extra memory (but will today's card still be what you want by that time, is a question). Seneca

Snip >1) Stay away from the MX cards. My V3 3000 died last weekend. The video memory went on it (nothing buy weird vertical lines on the startup and Win98Se was unreadable) If I let the card cool down it would work fine for about 5 minutes and then the card would crap out. I just bought a Herc Prophet 3d Geforce 2 MX at Staples for $99.00 Canadian (about $60. US) The card works great. Since I am running a Celery 466 - 66 MHZ bus (AGP 1.0 Slot), and 192 mb ram, the bottleneck will be the CPU, not the Geforce. If you look on the net for reviews on the Geforce 2 MX the numbers aren't bad compared to the GTS or Ultra. I have read good things about the MX 400 (basically a MX with a fan) but haven't read anything about the MX 200. On my system is was hard to justify the cost of the addition $160. The only thing I miss is the ability to use Glide. I have tried some Glide wrappers but haven't been able to get any game to recognize them yet. The only problem I have had with a game is NFS: HS has fuzzy text in the menu, but the actual race looks good. My advice is to look at the reviews on the net for the new cards, I don't know what the buzz is about the Kyro chipset. I guess it all depends on if you play in 32 bit or 16 - from what I have heard the Kyro's work better in 32 but suck in 16 bit. Good Luck! PS- if someone you sent me a link on the Creative Unified Wrapper, I would appreciate it. Thank You, Chris On Sun, 9 Sep 2001 07:21:15 +0200, "Figaro" <[email hidden]> wrote:

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>> Assuming Geforce 2, what alphabet soup do I want stuck on >> the end? "MX", "GTS", "Ultra" and don't mean much to me. > >1) Stay away from the MX cards. >2) The only difference between the GTS, PRO and Ultra cards is the core and >memory speed. GTS are the slowest and Ultra the fastest. > >--- >"I ned no splellsheker!" >

Larry Lindstrom wrote: < Snip > Thanks for the responses. I had to hit CompUSA before most of you had a chance to respond. My buddies who had been denied their NFS fix Friday night were restless. With the incredible IL-2 Sturmovik screen shots being posted by Geforce 3 users, and Papadocs aren't bad either, and my feeling that a P3/600 might not be a good match for a Geforce 3, I decided to low ball it with a $130 Visiontek Geforce2 Mx 400 as a place holder until I get my next PC. Do you think a Geforce 3 would be a good fit for my 2 year old PC? When I started NFS, the screen went blank shortly after starting, before any 3D graphics come up, and that was all that NFS does with the MX. I've tried a variety of drivers from Visiontek's site. I've tried 16 bit color and the only items in IRQ 11 are the Geforce and that interrupt steering thing. I also turned off "Get IRQ table using ACPI BIOS", as the book suggested. I've had to reload Win 98, and most of my sims are now absent. But F1 CS 2000 looks fine. My friends are upset about not being able to run NFS, after struggling through the game's "Evolution" and finally having the hot car, I can understand their disappointment if they can't drive it. If a Geforce 2 MX won't run NFS with a variety of drivers is there any expectation, I know anything is possible, that a higher end Geforce 2 or 3 will? Thanks Larry

Larry Lindstrom wrote:

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> > When I started NFS, the screen went blank shortly > after starting, before any 3D graphics come up, and > that was all that NFS does with the MX. I've tried a > variety of drivers from Visiontek's site. I've tried > 16 bit color and the only items in IRQ 11 are the > Geforce and that interrupt steering thing. I also > turned off "Get IRQ table using ACPI BIOS", as the > book suggested. > > I've had to reload Win 98, and most of my sims are > now absent. But F1 CS 2000 looks fine. > > My friends are upset about not being able to run > NFS, after struggling through the game's "Evolution" > and finally having the hot car, I can understand > their disappointment if they can't drive it. If a > Geforce 2 MX won't run NFS with a variety of drivers > is there any expectation, I know anything is possible, > that a higher end Geforce 2 or 3 will? > > Thanks > Larry

Enable fog table emulation in the Direct3D Settings of your Display Properties.

Smedley wrote: > > Larry Lindstrom wrote: < Snip > > Enable fog table emulation in the Direct3D Settings of your Display > Properties. Thaks Smedley: Can you point me to this? A right click in the middle of the screen, then "properties" doesn't show a "Direct3D Settings" tab. From there, "Settings" - "Advanced...", doesn't have it either. I've gone into the "GeForce2..." tab but that's also dry. I recovered Win98 SE from a tape I made in June, I think this is DX8a. I'm a Unix guy and much of the common knowlage about Win 98 evades me. Thanks Larry

Larry Lindstrom wrote:

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> Thaks Smedley: > > Can you point me to this? > > A right click in the middle of the screen, then "properties" doesn't > show a "Direct3D Settings" tab. > > From there, "Settings" - "Advanced...", doesn't have it either. > > I've gone into the "GeForce2..." tab but that's also dry. > > I recovered Win98 SE from a tape I made in June, I think this is > DX8a. > > I'm a Unix guy and much of the common knowlage about Win 98 > evades me. > > Thanks > Larry

I'm running a Hercules card (nonMX) with their drivers. For your situation I would recommend the nvMax tweaking utility: http://www.nvmax.com/cgi-bin/news/viewnews.pl?newsid999807762,77799, There are other tweaking utilities also. Hopefully that will work for you, if not c'mon back.

> > > www.nvmax.com/cgi-bin/news/viewnews.pl?newsid999807762,77799, > here's the direct link (1.2M D/L): http://www.charnleys.co.uk/NVmaxSP.EXE

I would advise against downloading the new nvMax utility 3.00.47 available Sept. 6. I just downloaded the new file myself and on install, Norton's antivirus went hot with a trojan alert. check your mail. Smedley wrote:

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> > Larry Lindstrom wrote: > > > Thaks Smedley: > > > > Can you point me to this? > > > > A right click in the middle of the screen, then "properties" doesn't > > show a "Direct3D Settings" tab. > > > > From there, "Settings" - "Advanced...", doesn't have it either. > > > > I've gone into the "GeForce2..." tab but that's also dry. > > > > I recovered Win98 SE from a tape I made in June, I think this is > > DX8a. > > > > I'm a Unix guy and much of the common knowlage about Win 98 > > evades me. > > > > Thanks > > Larry > > I'm running a Hercules card (nonMX) with their drivers. For your > situation I would recommend the nvMax tweaking utility: > > http://www.nvmax.com/cgi-bin/news/viewnews.pl?newsid999807762,77799, > > There are other tweaking utilities also. Hopefully that will work for > you, if not c'mon back.

Smedley wrote: > > Larry Lindstrom wrote: < Snip > > Enable fog table emulation in the Direct3D Settings of your Display > Properties. Thanks Smedley: I don't know, I hit additional properties in the GeForce2 window and the anti-alias screen popped up. I missed that I also had a new set if tabs, which includes "Direct3D Settings". But I have a good excuse, I'm an idiot. Anyway, "Enable fog table emulation" is, and has been, checked. As is "Adjust Z-buffer depth to rendering depth if unequal" NFS fails like this. A small, quarter screen on my 1600 x 1200, NFS startup window pops up, if auto- starting from the CD this window has a menu, where you click "play". After this screen the game blanks briefly and then NFS goes full screen with some animation, blue letters come flying onto the screen and a movie of Porsches terrorizing the neighborhood in low resolution if I remember correctly. I think it's just playing a pre-recorded cut sceens and I doubt any 3D graphics processing is involved. It's this blanking between the small startup window and the full screen where the display stays blank. <CTL-ALT-DEL> and ending the task will get things back to the desktop. Anyway, I appreciate your suggestion, got any more? Thanks Larry

My V5 5500 Died --- R.I.P.

My NFS:PU always gives me an error when I exit. I have a V5500 AGP "Paul Catley" <[email hidden]> wrote in message news:9negdp$6o7gi$[email hidden]...

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> Larry Lindstrom <[email hidden]> wrote in message > news:[email hidden]... > > Bummer. > > > > I really liked that card, but Need For Speed froze last night. > > I had to do a power off reboot. Everything except Delta force > > behaves exactly the same way, as soon as the sim tosses up any > > graphic requiring the 3D processor. > > > I also have a V5, though it is a PCI version. I don't know if it is > connected, but the demo for Need For Speed: Porsche Unleashed did

something > pretty drastic to my system the first time I ran it. It froze, requiringa

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> reboot, whereupon I was informed that I would need to reinstall Windows > (Win98SE) :( Thirty minutes later, I had completed this task, only to be > presented with the same message! I could only get into safe mode, and > nothing I did in there seemed to help. Being a non-techie, the only way I > knew how to deal with it was to reformat the C: drive and start from > scratch. Not quite as drastic as it sounds in my case, as I had only just > put the system together the week before. Nevertheless I was well along

with

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> software reinstallations and this was irritating in the extreme. > > > First, how do I remove the 3DFX drivers? I don't see > > anything in the program add/remove menus that looks like Voodoo > > drivers. > > 3dfx Tools should be in there, and I believe you need to remove those. > AFAIK, you can then remove the drivers from Device Manager. The 3dfx card > should revert to standard VGA drivers, and you can then reinstall the

Voodoo > drivers and 3dfx Tools. I think that's how it goes. (That's probablywhat

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> I should have done instead of reinstalling Windows, but I did what I was > told). > > I hope you get it sorted out. NFS is never going anywhere near my system > again. > > -- > Paul > > >

HockeyTownUSA wrote: > > My V5 5500 Died Sorry HockyTown. What did you do about it? Just finished watching Band of Brothers. I definetly recommend it to everyone. Larry

Larry Lindstrom wrote:

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> > NFS fails like this. A small, quarter screen on > my 1600 x 1200, NFS startup window pops up, if auto- > starting from the CD this window has a menu, where > you click "play". After this screen the game > blanks briefly and then NFS goes full screen with > some animation, blue letters come flying onto the > screen and a movie of Porsches terrorizing the > neighborhood in low resolution if I remember > correctly. I think it's just playing a pre-recorded > cut sceens and I doubt any 3D graphics processing is > involved. It's this blanking between the small > startup window and the full screen where the display > stays blank. <CTL-ALT-DEL> and ending the task will > get things back to the desktop. > > Anyway, I appreciate your suggestion, got any more? > > Thanks > Larry

Try alt.games.need-for-speed newsgroup.

"Larry Lindstrom" <[email hidden]> wrote in message news:[email hidden]... [ . . . > When I started NFS, the screen went blank shortly > after starting, before any 3D graphics come up, and > that was all that NFS does with the MX. I've tried a > variety of drivers from Visiontek's site. I've tried > 16 bit color and the only items in IRQ [ . . . ] One of the NFS games (Not sure which one, but I think the one just before Hot Pursuit) ran on my GeForce2 GTS but with a few ugly graphics anomalies, especially in the wheels. I think the NFS games for the most part were best suited to Voodoo cards. I have Hot Pursuit (got it bundled with something or other) but haven't tried it yet on any machine. Which version of NFS are you having the trouble with? You might want to try the latest reference drivers from nVidia's site rather than whatever it is Visiontek is supplying. But my guess is your NFS just prefers Glide. I have one machine with a Voodoo3 just for games like that. Seneca

Seneca wrote:

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> > "Larry Lindstrom" <[email hidden]> wrote in message > news:[email hidden]... > [ . . . > > When I started NFS, the screen went blank shortly > > after starting, before any 3D graphics come up, and > > that was all that NFS does with the MX. I've tried a > > variety of drivers from Visiontek's site. I've tried > > 16 bit color and the only items in IRQ [ . . . ] > > One of the NFS games (Not sure which one, but I think the one just before > Hot Pursuit) ran on my GeForce2 GTS but with a few ugly graphics anomalies, > especially in the wheels. I think the NFS games for the most part were best > suited to Voodoo cards. > > I have Hot Pursuit (got it bundled with something or other) but haven't > tried it yet on any machine. Which version of NFS are you having the trouble > with? > > You might want to try the latest reference drivers from nVidia's site rather > than whatever it is Visiontek is supplying. But my guess is your NFS just > prefers Glide. > > I have one machine with a Voodoo3 just for games like that. > > Seneca

Thanks Seneca: Does it run on your GTS? I think my buddies can live with some minor weirdness. Here is the plan for today. Take the GF 2 MX 400 back to CompUSA, swap in a GF 3. I wonder what a P3/600 will do with it. If that doesn't work, there are still a few V5/5500s to be found on the net. I just didn't have time to get one Saturday. I'll put my old V5 back in the PC. It seems to be OK if I don't try to go 3D with it. I've been hired to move a program I developed on Solaris over to Windows, so I'll be able to work with the old card and expect the new V5 to arrive before next Friday. And I'll return the GF 3 to CompUSA, because the GF3 Ultra MIGHT be coming out before I get whatever AMD is selling early next year. Or we may all be driving and flying with ATI Radions. I appreciate everybody's help. Thanks Larry

Don't know about a 600 but I had my GF3 in an 800 for a week and it was still seriously fast, I think you will do fine. Larry Lindstrom wrote:

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> > Seneca wrote: > > > > "Larry Lindstrom" <[email hidden]> wrote in message > > news:[email hidden]... > > [ . . . > > > When I started NFS, the screen went blank shortly > > > after starting, before any 3D graphics come up, and > > > that was all that NFS does with the MX. I've tried a > > > variety of drivers from Visiontek's site. I've tried > > > 16 bit color and the only items in IRQ [ . . . ] > > > > One of the NFS games (Not sure which one, but I think the one just before > > Hot Pursuit) ran on my GeForce2 GTS but with a few ugly graphics anomalies, > > especially in the wheels. I think the NFS games for the most part were best > > suited to Voodoo cards. > > > > I have Hot Pursuit (got it bundled with something or other) but haven't > > tried it yet on any machine. Which version of NFS are you having the trouble > > with? > > > > You might want to try the latest reference drivers from nVidia's site rather > > than whatever it is Visiontek is supplying. But my guess is your NFS just > > prefers Glide. > > > > I have one machine with a Voodoo3 just for games like that. > > > > Seneca > > Thanks Seneca: > > Does it run on your GTS? I think my buddies can live with > some minor weirdness. > > Here is the plan for today. Take the GF 2 MX 400 back to > CompUSA, swap in a GF 3. I wonder what a P3/600 will do with > it. > > If that doesn't work, there are still a few V5/5500s to be > found on the net. I just didn't have time to get one Saturday. > I'll put my old V5 back in the PC. It seems to be OK if I > don't try to go 3D with it. I've been hired to move a program > I developed on Solaris over to Windows, so I'll be able to > work with the old card and expect the new V5 to arrive before > next Friday. And I'll return the GF 3 to CompUSA, because the > GF3 Ultra MIGHT be coming out before I get whatever AMD is > selling early next year. Or we may all be driving and flying > with ATI Radions. > > I appreciate everybody's help. > > Thanks > Larry

"Larry Lindstrom" <[email hidden]> wrote in message news:[email hidden]... [ . . . ] > Thanks Seneca: > > Does it run on your GTS? I think my buddies can live with > some minor weirdness. I'm not sure what you mean by "it," Larry. As mentioned, the NFS version I used, which I think was the one before Hot Pursuit, ran on my GTS but with some graphics problems. The problems didn't interfere with play but did make it ugly in some respects, e.g. black polygons appearing in the wheels. I haven't yet used any later version of NFS, and I don't know what version you're using. My guess is that anything that runs on the GeForce2 GTS will also run on the MX, and vice versa, since they are based on the same chip architecture. I don't really know that, just presuming. But I can tell you that Midtown Madness is simply unplayable on EITHER my GTS or MX, and it behaves exactly the same way on both: it starts out fine, but within a couple of minutes big polygons of various colors start popping up all over the screen, and this rapidly gets worse until you just can't see what you're doing. But the same game runs just fine on my Voodoo3, no problems of any kind. This is somewhat surprising because it doesn't use Glide at all. There seem to be some games that just do not like the GeForce2 chipsets. Jane's WWII Fighters ran fine on my TNT, but produces unsightly blue triangles on the horizon when run on a GeForce2 (either one). Also, Crimson Skies (which is known to be a horrendously buggy game anyway) will not run on my GTS. It goes through all the intro stuff and cut scenes, but crashes almost immediately after the first mission starts. It does this every time, both before and after the 1.02 patch. (It runs fine on my Voodoo3 for about ten missions. Then there's a mission on which it crashes every time. So that's going back to the store. Microsoft's 30-day guarantee is the best thiing about Crimson Skies.) What version of NFS are you having the problem with? Seneca

Thanks Seneca: The NFS we're playing is Porsche Unleashed, or Porsche 2000 as it's called in europe. I walked into CompUSA and they graciously refunded the $130.00 USD for the Geforece 2 MX400. If I was going to walk out of there with a $400 Geforce 3, with the similar architecture and perhaps event the same drivers it didn't seem reasonable for me to risk returning it after hurtling it against the same sim. They wouldn't mind if I wanted to bring my PC in. They would try to install the Geforce 3 and if it failed in the store, no problem. But as I mentioned, this PC is a tool of my trade, I couldn't leave it at CompUSA for a day or two, which was how long they wanted to keep it. Anyway... I just ordered an OEM Voodoo 5/5500 for $153. This is a card in a box, no CD, no paperwork. This is the best chance of running the game, and I'll save my pennies for a new PC with whatever the hot card is. Thanks to everybody. Larry