another geforce2MX 400 64MB problem please help!

[PenCapChew7]

When I play Aliens versus Predator Gold, I get a " a slight skipping" or "bump" effect in the video when I go down straight hallways. On my friends emachines, I tested the same exact conditions on My friends 733EMACHINES with a generic vid card and the same hallways and he got no "bumping effect" whatsoever. Here is my system specs:
A7V133 Socket A Motherboard(with latest 4in 1 drivers)
AMD Athalon 1 gig processor
Windows 98 SE
Visiontek Geforce2MX 400 64 MB(with latest drivers)
Direct X 8.0
I just reformatted my hard drive and did a clean install of Windows 98 SE. I have no programs running in the background, only IE. Other 3-D games like Unreal Tournament and Quake 2 run fine. I have tried contacting the game manufacture and they say it is a vid card problem. I have tried contacting visiontek and they say it is a game issue. I cannot find anything on the net seeing if my mobo is incompatible with certain games. This is just frustrating Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[mike breck]

Hi PenCapChew7,

All your driver are up to date..so..

What soundcard do you have?
Does this bumping or skipping tend to happen when background sounds happen in the game?

Make sure you End Task EVERYTHING in "Ctrl+Alt+Del" apart from "Explorer" and "Systray" (especially any soundcard programs) before starting the game. No screensavers either.

Check Device Manager and make sure there are no conflicts.

Try different sound settings within the game to see if that helps.

Try different resolutions and see if the problem persists.

As a last resort, a general cureall for problems in this game is to reduce or disable hardware acceleration
>Display roperties>Performance>Graphics. However, the penalty for doing this may be poorer graphics. But sometimes not. With Homeworld, I had to do this to just to get the game running, but it didn't affect the quality of the graphics too much.

Try the sound angle first and see how you get on. Then post back.

[PenCapChew7]

I have onboard sound on my mobo(it is VIA). I have tried different resolutions and still get the same thing. No programs are running in the background(except explorer)

[mike breck]

Well, obviously the quality of onboard sound is less than a dedicated sound card and this may lead to problems in different games as well as using up more system resources. The sound in new games is so demanding now that you really need a soundcard.

BTW how much ram do you have?

So in the long term you should get a Turtle Beach and slap it in.

In the short term, I would try reducing the quality of the sound to low or medium in the AvP sound options. Play around with every variation in the sound options and see if that helps. Sorry, I can't remember the sound options in the game.

Ensure Video Bios Shadow or Shadowing is disabled in the Bios.

Check system information and see if onboard audio is sharing an IRQ with anything else.

Try reducing or disabling hardware acceleration as I mentioned above.

Oh...and the oldest trick in the book... try reinstalling the game so that it overwrites the existing game. Or reinstalling the game completely. Sometimes it can be just a bad installation.

Try these steps one at a time and see if they make any impact on the problem.


Let us know how you got on.