Bad performance with new video card

[Willy Red]

I just installed a Geforce 4 MX 420 a few days ago and decided to try out MOH:AA and I'm getting poor framerates!!! Everything on my pc is above recomended requirements especially the video card. What the heck is wrong??? I'm getting between 20 and 30 frames per second with graphics detail on high when I should be getting 60-80 frames per second. Lowering the graphics settings wont help either. What is affecting my performance! Any ideas?

[JPMiller]

well as a starter...I would use spybot and/or adaware to remove any spyware...clean-up and then Defrag the hard drive and then go to Nvidias website and make sure you have the most current drivers.
Remember, you do have the lowest end budget g-force on the market...you cant expect miracles but I do think it should be doing better than it is...
Good Luck.

[daveleau]

What was the old video card? What are your current system specs?

Unfortunately, the GF 4 MX is not a great card. Here are some benchmarks. This link doesn't have the latest nVidia cards, but it will give you a good idea of the GF 4 MX's performance.
http://www17.tomshardware.com/graphi...charts-02.html

All I can say is, ensure that these items have been done:
1- latest driver from nVidia.com
2- all patches for game installed
3- BIOS setting is 4x or higher for agp
4- set 256MB aperture for card

If you can return the card, do it. For less money, you can get a GF 3 Ti 200 or for a little bit more money you can get a GF 4 Ti4200. Both are tremendous upgrades for the same or slightly more money.

Welcome to TechIMO.

[Willy Red]

It's not the lowest end budget Geforce on the market. The Geforce 2 chipset is the lowest budget geforce chipset on the market. I did download the latest detonator drivers(45.23 I think), but then I uninstalled them and went with some older ones(43.45) because I was told by someone else that the latest isn't always the greatest when it comes to Nvidia.

[JPMiller]

Sorry I mispoke...I meant "lowest end budget g-force 4 series on the market"...
No the latest and greatest are not always the best...but that is only after youve used them and have determined that there is a problem or they dont work for your setup...
I have always used only the newest detonator drivers for my geforce 4's and never had a problem...

[Incognitotj]

I also have the gf4 mx 420. UT2003 is horrible on this card... I have the settings at the lowest, running 1024x768 and I am only getting 30-40 fps. On complex maps, I'm getting around 18 fps. I am running the latest drivers, but unfortunately its a POS card.

.02,

Incog

[daveleau]

Occassionally, nVidia puts out drivers that are substandard. I have not heard of any issues recently. Usually, nVidia drivers make the cards run faster with each driver release.

[Willy Red]

Oh, I almost forgot. It's PCI because my cheap Intel C810E Motherboard doesn't have an AGP slot and I have an old power supply(185 watt). Also it is sharing the same IRQ channel as my audio card. Could these be the problems?

[daveleau]

If it is sharing an IRQ, you may get lockups and system instability, but not degraded performance. It's kind of an all-or-nothing thing when it comes to sharing IRQs. It either works or it doesn't and you get a bunch of crashes.

PCI is obviously lower on the performance chain. 33MHz v/s 66MHz. All of those settings I mentioned above are really for AGP only. The lower power supply is like the IRQ sharing. If it works, fine. If it doesn't, you'll get reboots and random system instability. You won't get performance degradation.

If you go to a new FX GeForce or anything above the GF 4 MX later, beware because they pull more watts. The GF FX alone drag up to 75 watts.

[Willy Red]

You guys would drop dead if you knew I paid $110 for this piece of rubbish.