General Chat / Help Me.

...and won't let me play the RCT3 demo for more than a couple of minutes at a time. Here's the problem if anyone has any suggestions (this has been an ongoing issue which I haven't dealt with for about 6 months now, but now that I need my video card to work, I have to get it corrected.

First of all, I'm running a GForce4 mx 440 and windows xp pro. When I first got the computer this was not a problem, but lately, I cannot run any graphics intensive software without repeated crashes. Most of the time, the application just quits returning me to the desktop, but occasionally, the computer will crash to the blue screen most of the time citing the video card driver as the problem. I've tried various upgrades of this driver to no avail. I'm to the end of my rope and will just replace the video card if need be, but before I do that I want to know if there is a simple fix that this idiot is missing. This seemed like as good a place to ask as any. Help me please.

It sounds like you might have a video card going bad. If you've updated the drivers to the most current available that's most likely the problem.

Have you been inside your computer case doing anything lately? If so, it's possible that the card could have come loose enough that it's not keeping the connection to the board to the point that some piece of information not getting to the card from the MB is causing the problem. Strictly guessing on this though.

I suspect replacement might be the solution...if that's the case, I'm also taking suggestions on reasonably priced, quality vid cards.

more partial to ATI or NVIDIA?

more partial to ATI or NVIDIA?

don't really care.

Nvidia 5700 Ultra

Both me and my friend have that it should set you up fine and you will be ready for RCT3, HL2, and Doom3 for minimal price.

might be a little pricy, but this is a very good card.
ATI Radeon 9600XT

edit: nm

anyway.
thats my pick.

NVIDIA Quadro FX 500.

Very smooth. I can run the demo at Extreme setting with no frame rate drop.

Anybody know anything about this card here??

might be a little pricy, but this is a very good card.
ATI Radeon 9600XT

edit: nm

anyway.
thats my pick.

After doing some research, this appears to be the one for me. Thanks Zach.

Do you even have AGP?

Anybody know anything about this card here??

That's a budget card. If you want to play games like Doom3, Farcry, Halflife2 or anything new, I don't recommend it. If you want to play newer games then look in the 200 euro priced cards for the best price/performance. Also consider if such an upgrade does make sense for your computer. If you want to keep up you'll need to buy one every 3 years anyway.

Do you even have AGP?

yep

toon, the fan on your current graphic card doesn't operate properly. you get an overheat and the game is automatically ended. or in the worse case, your computer crashes before more bad can happen.

Thanks Posix...

I've decided that this is a good excuse for a much needed upgrade anyways. New card is installed and working great. Thanks for your help everyone.

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