ATI Radeon 64. Need help!!

[bcj1972]

Hey guys,
I just installed my ati radeon 64 and I have to say I am somewhat disappointed. My frame rate is identical to my voodoo 3500, if I take the resolution any higher than 800x600 my monitor goes black, like its in suspend mode, and I cant atl+tab to the desktop. This alt+tab problem isnt just when I am running at a res higher than 800x600 it wont let me do it at any res. Nothing sucks worse than having to completley exit your game of quake 3 to chat with someone who im's you on icq. I noticed in the advanced area of the display settings there are a lot of options concerning the ati card. Could someone tell me if I need to tweak these to get better performace out of quake 3 and other games. I was hoping to pump out more fps out of this card than my voodoo 3500 but its the same, a maximum of 90.I plan on upgrading my mobo and processor soon. Will this increase the frame rate or am I stuck with what I have now? Here are the specs of my comp.
Abit bx6r2
500 meg pIII
256 megs sdram
ati radeon 64meg ddrram
I think thats all you need to know. Any help on this issue would greatly be appreciated.
Thanks
DiamondDust[LAW]
(Thats my q3 name and clan)

[Tiretool]

Which OS you using? Which version of DX?

[bcj1972]

Win 98 se, DX7.

[bcj1972]

I just installed DX 8 and still having the same problem.

[Floppyman]

Hi,

Did you properly uinstall your Voodoo before uinstalling your Radeon? Is your monitor configured properly? Do you have the latest drivers from ATI? HTH

[bcj1972]

I re-formatted my hd and started from scratch so I know un-installation of my old card isnt the problem. I used the drivers on the cd that came with my card. Is there anyway I can find out the version of the drivers on the cd versus the current ones on ati's the website? My monitor is configured fine. I can alt+tab out on UT but not on quake.

[Floppyman]

To figure out what driver version you have: Go to display properties/Settings/Advanced/Options tab..and it should give you what driver you have. I have the ATI Radeon too and use the speciality driver (with support for DX8) from ATI's website and it runs just fine under both win2k/DX8 and win98se/DX8. HTH

[fade2black]

To enable the alt-tab for OpenGL games you can go into the advanced display settings. Under the OpenGL make sure the option to enable page flipping is selected. Also, you are probably running into the V-Sync limitation on your framerate. There is an option in both the Direct 3D and OpenGL sections to "wait for v-sync". If these are unchecked, then your framerate can go higher than your refresh rate of your monitor.

[Darknites1]

If you are using the reference drivers then you should go to ATI's support site and get either the updated general purpose drivers, or the specialized drivers (unsupported)that are now available. If you don't like dealing with problems without tech support get the general (cetified) drivers, if you're looking for better frame rates in Q3A, and less jaggies in Oni then get the specialized drivers. Realize that the specialized drivers are not supported by ATI because they are not certified, yet. Another batch of driver updates is due next month, probably late next month. I recommend the specialized drivers, but I'm also used to dealing with problems daily (it's my job), and have an abundance of patience (thank God). Again, any doubts at all then go with the certified drivers.

[Darknites1]

Radeon Tweaker from tweakfiles.com would help a hell of alot too, if you're into overclocking that is. Huge gains can be had by going with asynchronous core/memory with a 15-20% overclock on the memory, and a 10-15% overclock on the core speed. A good read-me is included in the zip file as well, just in case you have no idea what I'm talking about.