Hi, hopefully someone who knows more about computers than I can help me here.
I have a Radeon 9200 Video card, which i'm led to believe is fairly reasonable. However, when I try to run certain basic games such as 'Fifa 2005', the graphics seem blocky, and the frames don't run smoothly.
Why is this, and what can I do about it?

For one thing, make sure you're running the latest drivers from ATI.

Also, you may need to go through the driver's settings(if you can) and try tweaking settings such as antialiasing, anistropic filtering, and especially try disabling(or enabling) Vertical Sync.

Ok. How do I go about this?

Catalyst 4.9 is the latest...although I wouldnt be surprised if they release the 4.10s here soon. You can check and see what version of the drivers you are running by going through: Right click your desktop and hit "Properties" go over to the "Settings" tab. You should have a little box that looks like it has monitors on it and it has "Screen Resolution" slider bar and what not. Click the advanced button. Now hit "Options" and under "Version Information" you'll see "CATALYST Version:" and the number to the right is what you want.

The 4.9s can be found here if you arent running them (These are for Windows XP and 2k...):

http://www2.ati.com/drivers/wxp-w2k-ccc-8-051-040825a-017633c.exe

You should be fine with just downloading and running that. The newer Catalyst versions have an uninstaller with them so you might want to check and see if you can uninstall "ATI Display Driver" and "ATI -- Software Uninstall Utility" in your Add/Remove Hardware. If not, you should be ok just installing over top...but once again I stress should. Ive done it before and been fine, just as Ive grown in my little computer knowledge Ive uninstalled before hand and ran an app called "DriverCleaner"

As for going through and changing a few things Zmaster said...Go back through the: Right click your desktop and hit "Properties" go over to the "Settings" tab. You should have a little box that looks like it has monitors on it and it has "Screen Resolution" slider bar and what not. Click the advanced button.

Now in here you should be able to follow along if you have a later version of the catalyst drivers...specifically these 4.9s. If you hit the "3D" tab you can change some basic settings for Direct3D and OpenGL. I dont know what Fifa runs in, but I'll suspect it's D3D. If you check the "Use custom settings" button" then hit the "Custom..." button you should get yet another box.

Inside here you can change a few things. For the 9200...which isnt terrible...but it's not bad, especially if it's not the 9200SE. I'd drop the Anti-Aliasing to 2x and turn on Temporal. Anti-Aliasing is a filtering method that kind of makes things less jaggy I suppose is the best way to put it. Anisotropic Filtering you could probably live with at 4x with that card. AF is a flitering method that kind of makes things less blurry the farther away they go out is a simple way of putting it...since to tell the truth I cant really explain it much better :X

Down the box you should see "Wait for vertical sync" and a slider. I usually set that to "Always off" as it can just be a pain. With it off you might see some "tearing" where it'll look like the image gets torn between this frame and the next....with it on though your computer will try and set your frames per second to be in sync with your monitor refresh rate, which can be a pain, too. Some people like it, some people dont, maybe you should try both with it on and with it off and see how you like it best. Hell maybe youll be like me about a year ago and not even notice a difference or care.

Anyway, you can change the "OpenGL" setup to kind of share the same properties if you wish. You might also just look in the game's video setup for some settings like how high the details are and the resolution. The higher the resolution the more sluggish your performance will be. Same goes with details.

I hope any of this helps..even if it's just grabbing the new drivers.

Wow that was a lot of info...sorry if it overwhelms ya. I hope I got everything right :X If anyone sees anything wrong, please correct me.

Thankyou. That was really useful. :)

nerds :slap:




just kidding

mind explaining Trufor and hydravision? just gimmicks to get you to buy ATI? i just crossed over from nvidia powere graphics accelerators.

Truform really is a decent idea...if implimented by the people who code the engines for games. Well kind of a decent idea...it's the idea of breaking down polygons into many many more polygons through something called "tesselation"

Basically the end result is smoother surfaces, more volume to objects, just a more natural feel to 3d things...if done correctly. A game that shows of Truform the best that Ive seen for the most part is Morrowind on the PC. If you use a certain app you can apply Truform and it really does a great job, not only on characters, but on things like barrels and trees. I shouldve kept the shots I had comparing them, you can really tell a difference.

If not done correctly Truform can make things look really stupid. Look at Counter-Strike with it off...then with it on. With it on it looks extremely dumb, mainly because anything in the game that has a curve like area it bulges out way too much. The barrel of your M4 almost looks like a grenade. :/

Truform isnt bad as long as the game you are playing supports it well. It doesnt really eat up too much power either if you have a 9700 Pro or higher, the power behind the vertex shaders really got a huge pump in these newer cards that handle it well. I can turn it on in Morrowind and not take a hit to performance at all really...as long as the tesselation is within normal boundaries.

The major problem with it is just that it's not supported. It was being hailed as "Revolutionary!" when first introduced..then within like 2 months it wasnt heard of at all because no one thought it was worth trying to impliment it into their games. Really in the end it was just a failure for the most part. Not even sure why they might still be pushing products with it.

As for Hydravision...you got me. Ive never used it mainly because I think it has to do with multi-monitor support and I only have one monitor. I think it comes in handy if youre also using the card as a TV Tuner thing, too. Since I dont do that either I dont use Hydravision. I just dont bother with it since it doesnt have anything I use.

So I guess really to answer your question: Yeh, theyre just kind of gimmicks, but if you really can use both they are great little features, just not enough things support them or not enough people bother with them for it to really matter.

Right then Zodiac, seeing as you know all about these things, I want to pick your knowledge on something.

I am now running a game called pro evo soccer, with updates and all. Generally it works fine, but every now and then the game frames seem to go into slo-motion for a couple of seconds.
It doesnt do it in a jerky way, but it is quite irritating.

What can be done?

Did you try going and changing things like Anti-Aliasing and Ansiotropic settings that Zmaster suggested and I explained how to do? It might just be the game and your computer.

As I stated, the 9200 isnt an amazing card, it'll get the job done, but it isnt amazing. It might just sometimes being too bogged down. Say if there are too many people on the screen at one time, that'll bring a game down a good bit. Or if there is too much animation.

It might even end up not being the video card. I dont know how the physics and the hit detection works in that specific game, but if it's pretty intensive stuff maybe it's RAM or the processor. It's really hard to diagnose a problem without having run into it myself. =/ Sorry.

i'd say a drop in frame rates would be more RAM and processor related.

How about getting a video card that isn't a piece of shit?

what's your current system specs aaron?

3.0 GHz Intel Pentium 4 w/ 800 FSB
Gigabyte Mobo, don't remember the model number off hand...
1 GB PC-2700 DDR Kingston RAM
160 GB 7200rpm 8mb cache Seagate HDD
GeForce3 Ti 500 64mb DDR

My graphics card isn't the best on the market, but I don't game anymore. Back when I gamed it was top of the line. :)

Better to have an old, reliable video card than a new one that isn't :D