Fix for all the newbees to GF2/GF3 performance

[RobsTV]

What's up with the rash of posts about poor performance with GF2 and GF3's?
Seems no one is bothering to do the basics, and are trying to cheat the card into working well.
First, make sure you reinstall the VIA 4in1 patch (if your motherboard supports it).
If results are still in the bottom 10% then the most basic thing you can and should do is
REFORMAT and REINSTALL ALL!!!!!

If you only spent the few hours doing this simple task, instead of fighting with previous
hidden files, you could be posting here about how great the card performs, and enjoying
it in all your games with a big smile instead of the frown you currently have.

The few hours you spend upfront will more than make up for the days of frustration you
will end up with. And in the end, you may end up reformattting and reinstalling anyway.
Get it over with, and do it NOW!!!!

This not only applies to nVidia cards, but ATI and any other cards as well.

 

[RedRooster]

Agreed, 100%.

I suppose the only situation where you could get away with not formatting is if you installed a nearly exact model of card(RMA replacement, both GTSes, etc.) with reference drivers, and even then you'd have to be very certain you got all remnants of the old drivers off before installing the new card.

I agree though, the days you'd spend trying to get your card just working would've better been spent formatting/reinstalling for a couple hours. And for those that would say, "I can't afford to lose all my _____ from such and such a game or program." or whatever, BACKUP the crap and always be ready for a format! What if you're hard drive dies, eh?

 

[Dravic]

While it may not be my first choice, I agree.

You should be backing up any important data anyway. A reinstall after an upgrade is always the sure fire way to make sure there are no conflicts. while its a bit like using a sledgehammer to drive in a nail, it still gets the job done.

Besides.. would you rather spend a couple hours reformatting and reinstalling some progs, or a few days to a week troubleshooting.

(unless like my kyroII/soyo dragon issue it brings the issue to the front!!!arrrgghhh)

 

[BFG10K]

I think formatting should be the last thing you should try, after all other possibilties have been exhausted. All to often the "clean install" is thrown around like it's free; it's not free, because it takes time.

9 times out of 10 you don't need to reinstall the OS.

 

[MSNY]

Can't agree with reinstalling all the time. If you defrag and prune the registry often, a reinstall is not needed usually. Always getting the latest patches for everything also.

I have had 3 GF2 cards in almost 3 years and 2 TNT cards before that. I started with reference driver version 2.08 up until to 14.13 now.
I also moved everthing from one hard drive to another.

Never a problem, all games from UT to Quake 3 run perfectly...

My rig

 

[oldfart]

I went from a Voodoo 3 to a Radeon 64 to a GF2 Pro back to a Radeon 64 to a GF3 without an OS install. Some games needed to be tweaked a bit (mostly from V3->Radeon), but everything always worked fine.

 

[lebe0024]

NO! ALWAYS REFORMAT. FIRST OPTION.. hehe... I've probably reformatted 20 times in the last two years, but it never bothers me. (I'm the kind of guy that keeps no more than 6 icons on my desktop Anyway, that all changed the day I discovered regcleaner from www.tweakfiles.com