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Hello everybody. I'm Raidy and this is my first post here. First and foremost, I apologize if I'm putting this in the wrong place. It seems like the best fit, but I'm a bit unsure =).

Now, I'm a bit irritated right now considering I just spent about 400$ on my rig for an additional 5 FPS -- if even that. I recently purchased an ATI Radeon X800 Pro, which is quite a powerhouse compared to my old GEForce FX 5200. I expected to plug it in and be consistently getting 80 FPS on HL2. My expectations were not met, as the FPS stayed the same as with my old card. My buddy told me to get a new PSU, considering my old one was a mere 250 Watts, while my new card recommends at least 300. I did so, with a 480 Watt powerhouse. I installed it last night, and lo and behold, absolutely no difference whatsoever. Actually, there is one difference: my fan is a hell of a lot louder now. So, I'm just sitting here wondering why I just spent a whole paycheck (I'm a student so I'm not exactly getting paid that much) on about 5 FPS and an extremely loud fan. The MOBO, Processor, and RAM aren't exactly top-of-the-line, but they're not exactly crap either.

Thanks in advance.

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  • Latest Post Latest Post by Catweazle
Member Avatar for Catweazle

Hi Raidy,

Firstly, I'm moving this to the Video Cards part of the Hardware section. Windows tips is for people to post tutorials, not for people to ask questions.

You should be getting HEAPS better performance from that video card, but I doubt you've installed it correctly. In fact I'm not even going to advise how to 'fix' it, because the most sensible thing to do when changing from an NVidia based display card to an ATi based display card is to format and install Windows freshly again. The graphics processors on the two card are far too different for a driver change to be adequate. Little bits and pieces of previous drivers get left behind and cause problems, as you've seen.

Format, install Windows, install the motherboard drivers, then download and install the latest Catalyst drivers from www.ati.com

The driver version on the install CD for that card will definitely be outdated.

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