Sapphire Radeon 9500 non-Pro Help

[zymurgy]

System specs:

P4 1.3 ghz
256 megs PC600 RDRam
Radeon 9500 non-Pro

First I softmodded my card. There were 4 options on the site with the ati2mtag.sys files. One of the was a 9500 -> 9700, one was a 9500 -> 9800, one was a beta universal -> 9700, and the last one was a beta 9500 -> 9800. I installed the last one, the 9800 with only 4 pipelines. All the other 3 caused artifacts. So then, I downloaded Rage 3d Tweek v3.8. I played around a little bit with the options, but to no avail. I still have failed to increase my fps in the Half-Life Mod Natural Selection. Now, this wouldn't be a problem for me, except I just recently upgraded from a Geforce2 GTS/PRO where I was getting around 40 fps in-game. After I upgraded to the Radeon 9500 though, My fps DROPPED to around 20-30 in-game. My problem isn't that I'm not getting enough fps to satisfy myself, my problem is that there is something ridiculously wrong with getting LESS fps with a much better video card.

If anyone needs any more info on anything that would help you to help me, I'll be glad to provide the info. But if you know of any little settings to change to help me out, that would be really great.

Please excuse my ignorance, I'm new in the video card scene.
Thanks
Arad

[zellix]

Ya I basically have a similar situation as you. I had a GeForce 2 MX400 with a Pentium3 ~800MHz and got 65-75 fps average in Natural Selection. I recently upgraded my motherboard to a Abit NF7-S, Athlon XP 2200+, 256 DDR Mem, and a Radeon 9500 128mbs (softmodded to 9700). Unlike ure situation, my fps did go up, but to like 95fps when i wasnt looking at much detail, then it would go down to like 85 fps, which should not be for such an old engine and such a new motherboard with 8x AGP, and a Radeon 9500 128mb. Just seems odd.