Can this be right?

[ajrendall]

I have a rather old PC (Athlon 1GHz) with an old nVidia card (GeForce 2 MX 400 64Mb). I can currently get 15 to 20 fps out of ACOF which for me is perfectly useable (mind you, I can't display some of the nicer bits like detailed clouds or dense autogen stuff).

I decided to upgrade (ha, ha) to a more recent display card and had a shop around for a cheap replacement. Since I have a spare monitor, I thought that a dual head card might be nice and I found a Radeon 9200SE card with 128Mb on board and proper 4X AGP, so I bought it.

I would have thought that with more memory the card would at least be smoother/faster than my old one. To my surprise, it seems to be about 20% slower. On top of that, it produces the worst jerk-o-vision and unstable frame rate I have seen since shaky-cam was invented. On top of that, the texture quality seems to be worse (lots of spots and stuff where there weren't any before) and some textures don't display at all.

Is this right? I checked all my settings (and those of the card driver - latest from the ATI site), I even remebered to check my BIOS settings for the AGP bits to try and get the best throughput.

Why on earth is my old (slower, smaller) card better?

I have since reverted back to the original card and got a refund.

I would be interested to hear why the above could happen.

TIA.

Andrew.

[javelin]

The card you bought is really considered a low end card now and soon the 9600 series will be the low end.
It really takes a lot of HP and money sunken into a system to make the sim. work to it’s full potential.
If you want the eye candy you must pay. Wish you could take a spin on my system- it is sweet- the clouds look real!

Good luck,

Cliff

[comphollic]

The 9200SE is a really SLOW card...Return the piece of garbage back to where you bought!!!! the 9200SE is not much master than a Geforce2MX...the 9200SE has a 64bit memory bandwidth, not 128bit which most cards use today, which literally cuts the bandwidth in half...

I see you have an Athlon 1ghz...seems like you need to upgrade your whole PC...if you want any suggestion for a new PC just ask :)

but if you want a reasonable card for that system try a 9000PRO or ti4200...both cards found under $100 and should serve you well with that system

NEVER buy an SE version in video cards...its tricks people in believing it's "Special Edition" but its not!! This is true to ALL Ati cards...the only "SE" version worth buying is the 5900SE, which is sometimes called the 5900XT..

[MadMaster]

Return the thing.

Next look here...

www.tomshardware.com

Look at the benchmarks of cards and see which ones perform faster. Chances are if its faster in most games like serious sam and halo or whatever it will be faster in FS2004. So take a look at reviews and select your card from there. Otherwise you might end up buying a piece of junk and spending more that won't even work good like you already have.

Good luck with your next card!!