Help! Games running slow on a Ti500

[dafatha00]

My friend just upgraded his video card from a Geforce 2 MX to a Geforce 3 Ti500 and while his games run a little faster, they still lag quite a bit. For instance, Warcraft 3 begins to lag when a lot of units appear on screen and start fighting. He has Windows 2k installed with the current detonator drivers (40.72). He's currently running a P-4 1.5ghz with 128mb of ram and scored about 4500 on the 3dMark2001 video score. Would increasing the ram help?

 

[sc0tty8]

Yeah, the ram makes a HUGE differance. I can not belive that he only has 128megs....for good gaming I would go at least 512....

 

[dafatha00]

Originally posted by: sc0tty8
Yeah, the ram makes a HUGE differance. I can not belive that he only has 128megs....for good gaming I would go at least 512....

Thanks for the advice. His processor is definitely fast enough though right?

 

[MustangSVT]

Originally posted by: dafatha00

Originally posted by: sc0tty8
Yeah, the ram makes a HUGE differance. I can not belive that he only has 128megs....for good gaming I would go at least 512....

Thanks for the advice. His processor is definitely fast enough though right?

I dont know about 512 at least part, but it cant hurt.. WC3 runs smoothly even during battles for me on celly 950 with geforce2mx with medium settings.
if he has texture on highest settings, try lowering it and see if it helps, if it does, make sure the agp memory feature is on from bios.

 

[chizow]

Yah, as scotty said, try more memory first. CPU and GPU should be fine for WC3. It also depends on what resolution and detail settings he is running, but I was running 1600x1280 with max details with a ti200 OC'd (had a faster CPU though XP @ 1.7ghz).

Chiz

 

[dafatha00]

Ok I think I identified the problem which has now led to another problem. The card seems to be running in PCI mode but the bios settings doesn't give me the option to change from PCI to AGP mode (Its a Dell). Is there another way to change modes besides in the bios?

 

[Brian48]

What chipset is this motherboard using? Some motherboards require that you install the appropriate AGP driver for the chipset before the AGP is working. PCI mode is essentially a "safe mode" when this is not enabled.

 

[EglsFly]

You need at least 256mb of RAM! Especially when running a Win 2000 or XP OS. 128Mb is the minimum, and minimum means it barely works.
That's part of your problem right there...

 

[sc0tty8]

How do you figure it is running in pci mode? It is eitehr agp or pci. Agp slot, agp mode.

 

[dafatha00]

Originally posted by: Brian48
What chipset is this motherboard using? Some motherboards require that you install the appropriate AGP driver for the chipset before the AGP is working. PCI mode is essentially a "safe mode" when this is not enabled.

Thanks, that was the solution. I downloaded the newest intel chipset drivers.

scotty8, it ran in PCI mode because I didn't have most current chipset drivers. I don't think that just because its in the agp slot that it'll automatically run at agp mode.