GeForce2 MX400 really THAT bad?

[bushy]

I recently bought a GF2 MX400 at a fairly decent price (I though). Cant exactly establish Brand - got it in an STLABS box . . .

I am NOT a big gamer - just tought I'd be able to see the special effects in Need For Speed III for once. Also thought to gain a bit of speed in some playing around in Adobe Premier 6.

1) Trying to play NFS III in 800x600 16 bit results in keyboard!!! freezing for about 1 minute. This doens't happen in 640x480. 1024x768 isn't even available . . .
2) Adobe bluescreened on me when trying to build previews. This didn't happen with the old 8MB SiS AGP card!!

I am not sure if DX 8.0 is perhaps the problem. Any ideas?

My system:
MB: AOPEN AK73 A(V) (KT133A chipset)
CPU: Athlon 1.2 (100Mhz FSB)
OS: Win 98SE
DX 8.0
Driver: nVidia Detonator 28.32
AGP 2x (presumably) - AGP 4x disabled.

Everything runs stock.

Thanks everyone.

 

[onelin]

yes, it is. my 3d Prophet DDR 32MB competes with them still (have an MSI GF4 Ti4400 now, but) ... that is GF1 core. GF2 Ti's can be had for $60 shipped/insured. GF3's for $120 ...however, this sounds like it could be a driver problem, but I'll tell ya one thing first.

NFS3 sucks. The coding is horrendous, and it will never work with recent OSes (2k and XP) and Nvidia boards at full speed. It's one of the games that was great on a voodoo2. NFS5 and stuff would work fine (and quite nicely even on a GF1 non-MX 32MB) ...

double check your bios and try getting rid of fast writes if it's an option, I'm not entirely sure on your board but it sounds like the Via chipset lineup like I use...try downloading the latest 4-in-1's and installing the AGP gart. also try reverting to VGA drivers, rebooting, and going back to the latest dets. It sounds like something is lingering and causing this instability. HTH

edit - if it remains, it's worth trying a reformat with 98SE... it just doesn't have the longevity and it can be done in under an hour w/ proper backup

 

[rimshaker]

My TI calculator has a better graphics engine

 

[bushy]

 

[bushy]

Thanks onelin0, I'll do that.

Rimshaker, what can I say . . . .

 

[nemesismk2]

Originally posted by: bushy


I recently bought a GF2 MX400 at a fairly decent price (I though). Cant exactly establish Brand - got it in an STLABS box . . .

I am NOT a big gamer - just tought I'd be able to see the special effects in Need For Speed III for once. Also thought to gain a bit of speed in some playing around in Adobe Premier 6.

1) Trying to play NFS III in 800x600 16 bit results in keyboard!!! freezing for about 1 minute. This doens't happen in 640x480. 1024x768 isn't even available . . .
2) Adobe bluescreened on me when trying to build previews. This didn't happen with the old 8MB SiS AGP card!!

I am not sure if DX 8.0 is perhaps the problem. Any ideas?

My system:
MB: AOPEN AK73 A(V) (KT133A chipset)
CPU: Athlon 1.2 (100Mhz FSB)
OS: Win 98SE
DX 8.0
Driver: nVidia Detonator 28.32
AGP 2x (presumably) - AGP 4x disabled.

Everything runs stock.

Thanks everyone.

First off upgrade to DX8.1, run dxdiag to see if there are any errors, the tests should be really smooth with no skipping or pauses. If that checks out ok then upgrade to the latest via agp drivers which are currently v4.38.