New Video Card needed?

[brugen]

I'm rather new to this and I wondered if any of you guys could help?

My son has just bought Links 2003 and after loading we get an error message - WINERR.

On looking at the spec I see we should have a 16MB/3D video card. I have a 3dfx voodoo3 card installed which has 15mb total memory and 12 mb texture memory. So questions are

1 Does my card fail to meet the spec. I think the answer is obviously yes.

2 Can I upgrade it in any way to meet the spec?

3 What is the cheapest card which will just meet the spec?

4 What is the best performing card that will just meet the spec?

Thanks for your help

brugen

 

[Doh!]

Your video card is listed as a supported video card by Microsoft. Make sure you have the latest drivers for the video card.

However, for improved playabilty, you can grab more recent video cards such as ATI Radeon series or Nvidia Geforce series. I can't recommend a specific card since you didn't mention your budget for the upgrade.

The error message, however, appears to be either OS or hardware-related.

 

[brugen]

Doh!

Thanks for your help. I loaded a new driver and now the game works but it does show the lack of oomph in my present card.

If I wanted to pay about £50-£80 in England which I suspect would be about the same in dollar purchasing power in the states is there anything you would recommend?

Regards

brugen

 

[Lonyo]

dabs.com has a geforce 3 ti200 which is a nice little card, for £66, komplett has the Creative card of the same type for £68. That would be an improvement. Whatever you do, don't got for a Geforce 4MX, the Geforce 3 would whip the pants off it.

Without knowing the rest of your system, I would advise you to go for the Ti200.

 

[brugen]

Lonyo,

Thanks for the advice.

Regards

brugen

 

[nRollo]

Voodoo3s have 16MB of RAM, but there are no "latest" drivers because 3dfx went out of business a couple years ago. The only drivers around now are hacked drivers people devoted to 3dfx (who knows why?) are making themselves.

Almost any card you could buy produced in the last two years would be a big step up.....

 

[AnAndAustin]

A lot depends on the rest of your system, what are you packing? Regardless any Radeon or GF are great options. Low cost cards are Rad7500, Rad9000, GF2TI, GF3 and GF4MX. Do you want anything else from your card such as DVD playback, dual display, TVout, VIVO, image quality (clarity and stability of final image sent to monitor). The GF3 is a great low cost option in the UK, £66 is almost giving them away all things considered. The GF4MX cards are much slower in 3D BUT they are enhanced in other areas (see above). The Radeons I listed offer GF4MX perf but with a few slight enhancements thrown in such as some GF3 3D (like DX8).

List your spec and give us an idea of budget, requirements and what you use the PC for and we can be more specific.

 

[Doh!]

Voodoo3s have 16MB of RAM, but there are no "latest" drivers because 3dfx went out of business a couple years ago. The only drivers around now are hacked drivers people devoted to 3dfx (who knows why?) are making themselves.

The above statement is true only if he already had the latest drivers from 3dfx. But you don't know that. In fact, he did find the drivers that was newer than the original one (he probably never/seldomly updated the drivers since his initial pc purchase). There are many websites that still provide a whole list of drivers previously released by 3dfx (I know there were at least 8 diff. driver releases for voodoo3 from 3dfx). The term "latest" implies whatever is more current than his old drivers, not necesserily the recently released drivers.

 

[nRollo]

"The term "latest" implies whatever is more current than his old drivers, not necesserily the recently released drivers."

Er, sure thing Doh!. So you're saying if he had a Rendition Verite' based card from 6 years ago, he'd be better off to have the 5.5 year old drivers, rather than the 5.9 year old drivers. (because they are the "latest")

I don't think many people (besides you) would disagree with me that the driver quality for 3dfx these days isn't quite where companies who have actually been in business in this decade are at.

 

[Doh!]

I don't think many people (besides you) would disagree with me that the driver quality for 3dfx these days isn't quite where companies who have actually been in business in this decade are at.

Read my response a little more carefully next time (including this one). When did I ever disagree with you in the first place? When did I ever mention the quality of 3dfx drivers? I merely was pointing out the fact that your statement was based on a baseless assumption. In fact, your last response proves once again that your conclusion is based on a groundless assumption that I disagreed with you on the quality of the drivers (which is not true).


Er, sure thing Doh!. So you're saying if he had a Rendition Verite' based card from 6 years ago, he'd be better off to have the 5.5 year old drivers, rather than the 5.9 year old drivers. (because they are the "latest")

Again, you're assuming that just because a video card is an old one, it's just plain useless regardless of whichever drivers are used. Wrong! Various versions of Voodoo3 drivers were released over a period of 18 months. The earlier released drivers lack the DX7 support while the later ones have the support for it. The earlier ones are not WHQL-Certified while the later ones are. Do you get the point? There could be a key component that might have been implemented in the "5.5 year old" drivers that the "5.9 year old" drivers lack, therefore, making the game compatible with the 5.5 year old drivers but not with the 5.9 year old drivers (again, the author of this thread was able to upgrade the drivers and run the game).

For the record, if you look at the FAQs for troubleshooting for Links 2003 (which why this thread was ever posted in the first place), it says that people with voodoo3 video cards having problems starting the game should upgrade the drivers to the "latest".