Hey guys, I'll make this brief because this is my second time actually writing this after firefox just randomly closed on me I'm trying to fix my friend's PC - the graphics performance is horrible here is an example from AOE3 with the settings turned up pretty high, and it isn't the only game to have problems: The animation is slow and jittery, and the smoke and water are all blocky and weird. I don't play many games on my PC therefore I know little about graphics and whatnot. here is her system (of which I believe I've installed all of the correct drivers): Biostar GeForce 6100-M9 1.1 (mobo) AMD Smpron 3000+ 1.81 GHz 960 mb RAM GeForce 6500 PCI-E (made by Diablotek) - video card was the only questionable driver because the driver file (rar) on the Diablotek website was "damaged", but I believe standard Nvidia 6500 drivers are appropriate (or so I've read). *Also running Windows XP Pro SP 3 (32-bit) - Should I be running 64-bit? I am stumped and have no idea where to start (or resume), any help would be greatly appreciated, thanks.
Do you have an nvidia graphics control panel available to you? If you do, check the setting 'mipmap level' or 'mipmap quality' - you want the best quality setting, not the best performance.
do i access the control panel by right clicking on my desktop and selecting "Nvidia Display"? I'm not sure how to access it and if that is the control panel I don't see a setting to change my mipmap level... I also have a system tray icon but i don't see mipmap..
If it's right you should also be looking for options like Anti-Aliasing Anisotropic Filtering Vertical Sync
under performance and quality settings i see Image setting - set to "quality" Anti-Aliasing settings - set to "application controlled" (off i suppose) Anisotropic Filtering - set to "application controlled" (off i suppose)
Right, assuming 'image setting' is at its highest, that's all fine then. Are you running up to date drivers, and does AoE3 officially support your card?
I didn't even think about that, I checked out M$'s requirements for AOE3 here is the unsupported list for nVidia • GeForce 256 • GeForce 256 DDR • GeForce 256 Quadro • GeForce 256 Ultra • NV 1 • NV 2 • Riva 128 • Riva 128 ZX • TNT • TNT Vanta • TNT2 • TNT2 Aladdin • TNT2 M64 • TNT2 Ultra So I figure my card is supported. As far as I know the drivers are current.
I also noticed that when I turn the PC on the monitor says "no signal" and stays blank until the windows sign in screen. I've also noticed while playing video files they are jittery and lag a little. I've installing the latest drivers for the video card and played around with the game's video settings (mainly lowering them) and I'm still getting the blocky water and smoke...
1. Are you using the 128MB version or the 256MB version of the 6500? 2. Does this happen to all games or just AOEIII 3. Have you searched for any game patches\fixes that improve graphical glitches 4. Have you tried lowering the settings? 5. Is the graphics card overclocked 6. Are your driver installed properly? If your not sure try the following: While connected to the onboard graphics remove all 6500 drivers. Boot into safe mode and remove any leftover drivers using a third party driver remover (driver cleaner pro for eg). Once you've done this, download and install the latest 6500 drivers from the nvida site website. Once you've done this you can safetly assume your problems not driver related
pvt213, edit your sig to conform to forum specs. yours is 6 lines of text. 1. Text-only signatures should have at most 5 lines of text.
1. 256 MB 2. Supreme Commander is slow and I have to turn the gfx settings down way low. The sims 2 looks decent (I don't really know how good it's supposed to look) but is slow at times. Spore creature Creator seems fine but I hardly use it. 3. No, do you mean for the game itself or the card? I've plugged the VGA output into the onboard adapter and the blocky smoke & water go away but the performance is still poor. 4. Yes 5. No 6. Pretty sure the drivers are correct and properly installed. Sorry for the late reply, I've been out of town...
