ok i need to replace my video card now....what to get??

[jaggrey]

have a Radeon 7500 right now. It performs fine in games (not that I play them much) but oddly enough just in Windows the menus & everything pop up slow. I've tried updating the drivers & all that....I think I'm going back to Nvidia.

What card should I get? I want to spend a minimal amount of money (after getting whatever I can for this 7500). GeForce3 Ti 200? Wait for GeForce4 Ti 4200?

 

[Maggotry]

I've never heard of a video card causing the menu's to open slowly. I think you may have something else going on there........

 

[Athlon4all]

<< I've never heard of a video card causing the menu's to open slowly. I think you may have something else going on there........ >>

Agreed. What's your system specs? Make sure you've got a 7200RPM HD, makes sure you've got at least 256Megs (or prefferably 512MB) of RAM no matter what OS. Also check and see if something's working in the background that's bogging down the system.

 

[Woodchuck2000]

That's not going to be caused by a graphics card, as there's nothing in opening a menu that taxes the graphics card.
It's likely to be a fragmented hard disk, or a lack of memory, or a lot of icons on the menus, or even a delay set somewhere in windows.

Try re-installing windows before you consider changing the graphics card.

 

[RaynorWolfcastle]

I have the same video card and the same problem in WinXP Pro. I think ATI unloads a lot of the work to the CPU so the menus are a bit sluggish when all settings are on (alpha blending, etc).

-Ice

 

[jaggrey]

System Specs:

AMD Athlon XP 1600+
Epox 8K7A+ -- AMD 760 based
512 MB PC2100 DDR RAM
Maxtor 40 gig 7200 HDD
Western Digital 40 gig 7200 HDD
....

That's all the important stuff...i think. At least the stuff that matters. Everything else is in my sig. Both hard drives have been defragmented less than a week ago, and run noticibly faster but still stuff pops up slow.

I've also tried changing the delay time in the registry, but that changes the delay for the menus to pop up. It's wierd....what happens is that once i select something from the menu it'll 1st take away the text, then the icons, then the background....almost as if things disappear in layers. The total amout of time it takes to do that is a few seconds. Can you relate icecool83?

 

[kgraeme]

I agree that something is definitely wrong. I have one system here with an Athlon 900 and a Radeon 64 video card that is instantaneous on the menus. It reminds me of two problems I've seen:

1. The feature that lets the desktop be a live web page. Really, really slowed the system down.

2. Some form of memory fragmentation that would occur with certain folders, particularly when browsing through the connected Pocket PC.

Both of these happened with Win98, but I haven't seen them with WinXP.

 

[Maggotry]

My wife has a Radeon 8500 with XP and has no delay in the menu's. It isn't ATi's fault.
Boot into safe mode and see if it still happens. Go into msconfig and disable everything that starts up with your computer and see if it happens. If not, add things back one at a time to see who the culprit is.

 

[wefixitalways]

Your right it is not a video card problem.

 

[tornadobox]

i dunno guys, it might be a video card driver thing...I had an ATI All-In-Wonder Radeon 7500 and had the slow start menu and all that crap...sold it and got an Nvidia GeForce4 Ti4400 and the start menu is noticeably faster.

 

[Dark]

I have both video card in my sys. Each time I switch to the ATI, the pop up menu gets slow...Nvidia doesn't have that problem.

 

[fatbaby]

bestbuy has a visiontek gf3 ti200 for $120 after mir

 

[kgraeme]

<< i dunno guys, it might be a video card driver thing...I had an ATI All-In-Wonder Radeon 7500 and had the slow start menu and all that crap...sold it and got an Nvidia GeForce4 Ti4400 and the start menu is noticeably faster. >>



Then something was wrong with your config too. As I said, the Radeon 64 on a slower system running WinXP is instantaneous with the menus.

 

[tornadobox]

<< Then something was wrong with your config too. As I said, the Radeon 64 on a slower system running WinXP is instantaneous with the menus. >>


it could also be that the Radeon's above the 64 version (ie: 7200, 7500, 8500) have the problem...and just that your card seems to work doesn't mean that it's not the Radeon's fault.

 

[jaggrey]

I've tried different drivers like I said. It works fine in safe mode. Everything that starts up with the computer needs to be there.

I'm not trying to say it's all the Radeon's fault....just that it is a significant factor in the equation. Most of the computers I've build have had the Radeon VE or LE or whatever in them and they work fine in XP....i'm not sure what the deal is with mine (and others apparently).

I'm glad to see that I'm not the only person experiencing this problem.



But back to the matter at hand....if I were to sell this video card and get something Nvidia based, what would it be without spending a ton of money?

 

[Maggotry]

If you need a cheap nVidia card, get a GF2 MX 32MB for about $30 to $40. If you want to game, then the GF3 Ti 200.

 

[jaggrey]

I need something that's powerful enough for me to game at 1280x1024.....LCD native resolution

I'm thinking GeForce3 Ti 200 too. Are there noticeable differences between that and the regular GeForce3?

Then again I could always try to get the GeForce4 4200....hmm....

 

[Zukatah]

The Ti 200 is a slower version of the GeForce3. It has slower memory and slower GPU clockspeed. For the 4200, you'll have to wait until late may to get hold on one.

For the video card thing, it may be ATi's fault. With one batch of nVIDIA drivers, when I was playing Civilization III (it was the latest driver available when it came out) it was really, I mean really slow. nVIDIA then put a new driver out and everything was corrected. So try other drivers that you can find here.

Another option if you aren't willing to spend much would be to look in the FS/FT forum, you can find really good deals on second hand hardware.

 

[Jman13]

It is true that the GF3 ti200 is a slower clocked version of the GF3, but you should be able to easily OC the card to stock GF3 levels. I have the Visiontek GF3ti200, and I run it well above stock GF3 levels, and almost at ti500 levels...220 core, 500 Mem. (That's halfway between GF3 and ti500 levels on the core, and AT ti500 levels on the memory)