Typical video card trouble?

[Senff]

Hi. I've been having trouble with my Radeon 9000 pro series card on my WinXP Hewlett Packard XP789. When I run the game Dark Age of Camelot, for example, I get mad flickering and crappy rendering. I've tried changing all of the various settings. I was wondering if anyone could tell me what they're supposed to be, please. I appreciate it. Specs on the comp:

Radeon 9000 pro series Vid. Card
1 GHz AMD Athlon processor
512 Megs RAM
80 Gig HD
Whatever the generic CD-RW drive is

I also have the latest drivers for the Radeon.

[Ammok]

are you using the 3.7 or 3.8 drivers? some have posted with probs on the 3.8 versions. But, was it ever working porperly? and has this effect only recently become apparent?

Clean out the inside of your case with a clean unused paintbrush and a vacuum cleaner making sure you remove all the dust, that will help keep things cool, check your DX version and what is need for the game, and finally lower the screen resolution to 800x600 and go 16bit colour to see if there is any improvement.

but you have poor system there and games will become harder and harder to run on it as they become more sophisticated.

[Senff]

I have 3.8 drivers. I realize my computer isn't that fantastic, but we have no money for a new one. Plus, there aren't any really good games coming out anytime soon other than maybe Half-life 2, and so I'm not too worried about that aspect. Heck, I still play Starcraft/Brood War all the time.

[Ammok]

not dissing your system, beggars can't be choosers, and we all been there at some point, what i am saying is are you trying to get too much out of it. ? or has there been a recent change, does it need a cleaning? have you removed all the adware and spyware, what programs are running in the background and using up valuable resources, when was it last defragged and a few other bits and bobs we can get to if you post what your are trying to do to resoslve the issue.

You got 3.8 drivers, can you drop back to 3.7 and see what gives?

[Senff]

I never officially had the 3.7 drivers. I'm not running anything in the background usually. I don't know if it's ever been defragged. No adware/spyware. We clean it somewhat regularly, as once we experienced burned RAM due to dust and heat. Thanks for the help.

[Ammok]

you can try www.guru3d.com for the 3.7 drivers, and did the problem only show after the 3.8's went in?

[Senff]

Well I'm not sure. We'd been having the blue-screen errors with any version of catalyst, and that has been the most annoying. I do know that the flickering has only been introduced since 3.8 though.

[Ammok]

I would definately try the 3.7's, I'm using them and i am well pleased, was using 3.2 before hand. Also check to see that anti aliasing is turned off, not "let application decide", you might be trying, without knowing, to run in a higher mode than is good for the card, installing new drivers can return settings to defualt. worth a look.:t