Drivers for PC CHIPS motherboard, Age of Empires

[Greg Zeng]

PC CHIPS motherboard (inbuild graphics card, tRIDENT 8400 pci/agp), Age of Empires (gold edition), on Windows ME, but I cannot see all the fonts on the screen. What might be wrong? I tried upgrading the video driver, but it does not yet exist. Any clues?

[Xayd]

Found this on the driverguide.com message boards...

I "presume" (I HATE DOING THAT), the trident video card is built on the motherboard... I WENT THROUGH THIS ON AN PC-Chips M585LMR.. The only way i found to get OpenGL (gotta love that Quake 3) was to use Trident CyberBlade i7 drivers... As to where to find them, i dont know, but I used the drivers from my Compaq Laptop.... TexNAss Australia P.S. The i7 drivers DID and have improved MOST of the performance in benchmarking. The video card is still rock stable, even running overclocked at 110Mhz..

Other than that little tidbit, I dunno what else to tell ya. Trident doesn't update drivers, and PC Chips makes mobos that are just seaworthy enough to keep them out of lawsuits. No offense, but ya can't do much with dated hardware that's soldered to the mobo .

I'd search for that driver, and give it a try if you find it. From what I can see the game should work fine in WinME with pretty much any hardware, so it's probably a driver issue, as you thought.

Xayd

[Edited by Xayd on 01-04-2001 at 07:17 AM]

[Greg Zeng]

"...
Other than that little tidbit, I dunno what else to tell ya. Trident doesn't update drivers, and PC Chips makes mobos that are just seaworthy enough to keep them out of lawsuits. No offense, but ya can't do much with dated hardware that's soldered to the mobo ."

We COULD get a special-purpose video card & disconnect the mb's video. So that is what I might ned to do.

What is a good brand that updates its video drivers, if Tident does not? I hope that I will not be using ultra fancy games that need that fasyest, latest tech & most expensive video cards. Just educational simulations.

[Xayd]

For game support, grab yourself a Voodoo3 2000. They're plenty fast for what you need, and are supported by just about any game around today. You'll need to get the PCI model, since your mobo doesn't have an AGP port.

They can be found for 40-50 bucks online, around 60-70 bucks in the stores.

You might want to read up on disabling the on board video on your motherboard. Sometimes there's a setting in the bios to do so, sometimes it's a jumper, sometimes the new video card will just take over, sometimes another video card won't work. Might want to search the forum here and on Google for your mobo model and see if anyone else has done this yet.

Xayd

[Omletteboy]

Well since you mentioned you got an agp slot, you can get a geforce 2 mx, best bang for the buck. Although pending on the cpu you got, you might not get the max horse power out of the card due to memory path limitations.

btw when you say you can't see the fonts on the screen, you tried changing resolution of your screen?


oh.... post at same time... eerie

[Xayd]

Err, does the mobo have an AGP slot or not? I assumed no since the vast majority of on board video mobos don't have AGP slots. I haven't seen one that does, in fact.

If you have AGP, you have a few more options. If you don't, order a 3dfx card online. 3dfx are the only folks who kept making quality PCI video cards in the last year or two. Since 3dfx is going out of business, they should be super cheap, and they'll do all you need to do.

Xayd

[Greg Zeng]

...
"Since 3dfx is going out of business, they should be super cheap, and they'll do all you need to do."

So does this mean no further upgrade drivers to their old hardware?

PCWARE 585LMR, with Trident 8400 PCI/ AGP. It's physically with one PCI & one EISA slot free. The Trident on the motherboard is hardwired as PCI/AGP, whatever that means. Trident's website offers no help at all.

Greg

[Jenni]

If you don't mind paying a little more for it ($15-$20), Wal-mart has the Voodoo3 2000 or 3000 for $99.96 in their electronics department. You wouldn't have to wait for shipment that way.

[Xayd]

Yes, it means that after February there will not likely be future driver support for Voodoo cards, but the Voodoo3 line of drivers is already very advanced. There are no known compatibility issues with any current game at all. The card will work in virtually any OS. Mac, PC, any 2.2.x and up Linux kernel, NT, Win2000.

Plus, consider the fact that your machine already isn't enough for the next generation of real-time 3d games, so buying a bargain video card now doesn't really matter .

Xayd

[Greg Zeng]

[QUOTE] btw when you say you can't see the fonts on the screen, you tried changing resolution of your screen?

yes. on two separate machines, diff versions of A of E. no go. The other machine - diff setup, but yet to install latest drivers.