Hi guys,
I thought I'd post here just in case someone suffers similar problems to what I did in the future.
Background : I bought a Radeon 8500 on the weekend because my Matrox G400 was no longer cutting the mustard when it came to recent games. I installed the card and also upgraded 2000 to XP at the same time, however I got lots of problems. Since Sunday I have been going through the problems one by and fixing as required. Note that many of the problems I encountered had nothing to do with the new Radeon or the upgrade to XP so don't think this is a flame post!
Problems :
Serious Sam 2 - Second Encounter : When loading it, got to Precaching 100% and the machine would freeze up and go no further. Solution : Restore CPU back to stock speed (1400Mhz), it was running overclocked at 1543Mhz. Serious Sam 2 is very untolerant of overclocked CPUs, especially when it involves upping the FSB. Serious Sam 2 now runs perfectly.
Renegade C & C : Took about 10 minutes to load a level and then the game ran at about 10 frames per second, regardless of graphic options. Solution : Check sound card setup in config utility. I used the auto config feature but it didn't correctly identify my sound card (SBLive!), because I was suffering low frame rates I didn't think to check the sound card. When I set the sound type to EAX the game ran perfectly.
CounterStrike : Strange graphics corruption on ladders, grates and other textures. Solution : Change graphic mode to OpenGL (my machine was set to Direct3D, because thats what the Matrox card ran with).
Medal of Honour : Poor frame rates when all the details are set to max. Solution : Disable Full Volemetric Lighting (sp???) under the Advanced options.
McAfee AntiVirus 5 : When XP booted up WebScanX kept crashing. Solution : Either upgrade to McAfee AntiVirus 6 or download a free alternative such as AVG (what I did 🙂)
Windows XP : Strange font corruption on the Start Menu and using CoolMon. Solution : Not had time to fully test yet but it seems the latest Radeon driver has solved the issue.
I thought I'd post here just in case someone suffers similar problems to what I did in the future.
Background : I bought a Radeon 8500 on the weekend because my Matrox G400 was no longer cutting the mustard when it came to recent games. I installed the card and also upgraded 2000 to XP at the same time, however I got lots of problems. Since Sunday I have been going through the problems one by and fixing as required. Note that many of the problems I encountered had nothing to do with the new Radeon or the upgrade to XP so don't think this is a flame post!
Problems :
Serious Sam 2 - Second Encounter : When loading it, got to Precaching 100% and the machine would freeze up and go no further. Solution : Restore CPU back to stock speed (1400Mhz), it was running overclocked at 1543Mhz. Serious Sam 2 is very untolerant of overclocked CPUs, especially when it involves upping the FSB. Serious Sam 2 now runs perfectly.
Renegade C & C : Took about 10 minutes to load a level and then the game ran at about 10 frames per second, regardless of graphic options. Solution : Check sound card setup in config utility. I used the auto config feature but it didn't correctly identify my sound card (SBLive!), because I was suffering low frame rates I didn't think to check the sound card. When I set the sound type to EAX the game ran perfectly.
CounterStrike : Strange graphics corruption on ladders, grates and other textures. Solution : Change graphic mode to OpenGL (my machine was set to Direct3D, because thats what the Matrox card ran with).
Medal of Honour : Poor frame rates when all the details are set to max. Solution : Disable Full Volemetric Lighting (sp???) under the Advanced options.
McAfee AntiVirus 5 : When XP booted up WebScanX kept crashing. Solution : Either upgrade to McAfee AntiVirus 6 or download a free alternative such as AVG (what I did 🙂)
Windows XP : Strange font corruption on the Start Menu and using CoolMon. Solution : Not had time to fully test yet but it seems the latest Radeon driver has solved the issue.
