[Vanillachicken]

I just bought this card about a week ago. Mostly it's been alright. I upgraded from a radeon 9600 256MB, the improvement wasn't immense but what can I expect from an AGP card? Although, in certain games, specifically Left 4 Dead, I'll get more or less the same awful framerate whether I have my setting all the way down or all the way up, around 13-18 FPS in normal gameplay. In other games, however, I can play very comfortably. For example, Call of Duty 4, I get around 30 with everything turned all the way up. What's weirder is that in ATI tray tools in the overclocking section, it'll default both core and memory clock speeds to 13.50mhz with absolutely no way of changing them. I've tried a couple other programs to overclock, no luck. I get a bench score of around 4400 in tray tools with a 3GHZ P4 and 1.76GB of ram. My question is, is there something wrong with my new graphics card? Should I return it, or is this just all I can ever expect with an AGP card?

I'm on XP SP3, I've tried the drivers from the disk and from the Gigabyte site. There's effectively no difference other than I can't view HD videos with GPU acceleration with the ones from the site.

Thanks in advance.

[peck1234]

uhh.... unfortunately yes... AGP IS OLD OLD OLD....

[Compiler]

Go to the ATI site, there should be a tool to completely remove the ATi drivers... you may have some mess from the 9600 and the drivers on the CD.

While AGP is "dead" (okay dying, its in a coma), you should see much better performance across the board. There is no faster AGP card on the market other than the 3850/4650/4670 cards. You are limited by the P4... but your card should be at about $600mhz.

Is your PSU powerful enough? Have you contacted the maker of the video card? Being that it is AGP... it could be more "problematic" over a PCIe version.

Your PSU brand and model #.... watts

[Vanillachicken]

I reformatted a few days ago, so it can't be conflicting drivers.

Here's a exactly what tray tools is telling me:

I can't change those values no matter what I try.

I have a Raidmax RX-380K 380 watt power supply. Now before you say anything, I know it's a whole 20 watts less than Gigabyte says it should be, but could all this really come down to 20 watts? I've had power issues before(not with this hardware), these symptoms don't seem like they're related.

[dustyjay]

With a Raidmax you have a real bottom feeder in the PSU world. While it says it is giving you 380 watts it may infact be giving you much less than that. Going with a quality PSU from say OCZ, Antec, PC P&C, Enermax, Thermaltake will give you better power.

[Compiler]

Execpt that Raidmax (and other junk PSUs) are not rated for what they say. It may only be a roughly a 180~200watt PSU in the REAL world. It'll have very little amps to work with.

You can spend $20 on a 650watt junk PSU... and a $40 quality 300watt PSU from Seasonic will blow it away.

When the Video card makers say "400watt" they're trying to cover their "rear ends" for those with low-end PSUs.

While we can't say for certain that a new PSU will resolve your problems, your card being underpowered on a stressed out PSU could be running at a slower mode to prevent failure. If it was running full speed, your PSU (like other Raidmax) will blowup.

Go to www.newegg.com: Look at Seasonic and Corsair as well as the brands Dustyjay says. Look at a 450~550watt model so that when you upgrade to a newer PSU, you'll have more to work with when you get modern computer with a more powerful video card.

Budget out about $50~75. And you won't be throwing good money after bad since the PSU will be reusable.