X850Pro AGP

[lambda17]

Greetings, firt-time poster here, I've been having a litle trouble getting my video card up and running properly. My year old emachine runs a AMD Sempron 3000+, 512MB ram, and GeForce 4 MX integratedn on a K7MNF-64 motherboard from Hypermicro Systems (never heard of them myself); if any of this info helps.

First thing I did was throw in a GeForce FX 5500 and it was fine but I've grown very tired of this card and wanted to upgrade to something with a bit more power. So santa brings me a ATI X850Pro AGP and this is were my troubles begin, I can't play any of my games because of flickering screen and horizontal lines cutting and moving along the screen. COD2 was a completely mess of gray and white polygons and HL2 decided that it would rather crash and cause my computer to reboot than run on this card.

I've been asking around for help and someone said I may have a directX problem, I don't know how that could be because I have DirectX9.0c and it worked fine with my last card. I ran dxdiag anyway and I find that the Direct3D tests that are supposed to show a spinning cube with DirectX logos on the side is only showing my a cube with solid gray sides so maybe I do have some issue their but reinstalling DirectX didn't change anything.

So I uninstalled the ATI drivers put my FX card back in it runs as well as it ever did and the Direct3D test run normally. The X850Pro is back in the box and I'll attempt to install it again later. I've found that it wants me to have at least a 350W psu and the one in my PC is just 250W so I've ordered a new one and some other stuff (1GB ram, a sound card, and some 5.1 speakers) so I'll be waiting until I get those in a few days before I try again. In the meantime if anyone has a advice or tips or on how to install this thing correctly or knows if my PC just can't handle it I would like some help. Gamer needs his fix. Also, sorry I typed so much crap lol.

[oleblue73]

Make sure you buy a QUALITY power supply. A 350W name brand PS is better than a 500W generic. Also, make sure you are using the LATEST drivers. Go to ATI's website to download these.

[flanzig1]

I would say that you are on the right track on the PSU idea. Poorly powered video cards can give all kinds of wierd symtoms.

[lambda17]

This is the PSU I was planning on buying http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16817101508
what do you think?

[lambda17]

ah! What is wrong with this, new power supply but still same problems

[jfk]

Did you FULLY uninstall the NVIDIA drivers before installing the ATI drivers? I would make sure this was done before going further. Also, I would look at the Catalyst 5.10 drivers and before. The ATI drivers starting with the 5.11's are supposed to be maximized for the PCIE based cards. Cleaning off the old NVIDIA drivers and installing the proper ATI drivers would be the first things I attempted after installing the card.

Yet another issue could be heat buildup. Your card will generate a lot more heat than your 5500 did. Do you have adequate ventilation and intakes in your case? Just a thought.

[glc]

Your card may have defective video ram.