Better card, poor quality graphics?

[irmo123]

Hi I just replaced the mobo in a computer and in doing so went from an on-board video chipset to a PCIe card. I thought the card had a better chipset on it, but the resulting graphics are poor (same monitor before and after). Am I missing some setting or something? Anyone have suggestions on improving the quality of the picture? I loaded the drivers that came with the card. Here are the hardware components involved:

BEFORE:
Asus P5RD1-V mobo with on board graphics ATI RADEON X300

After:
Gigabyte GA-8I915P Duo(REV 1.1) Socket T (LGA 775) Intel 915P ATX Intel Motherboard

POWERCOLOR X550256MBDDR2 Radeon X550 256MB 128-bit GDDR2 PCI Express x16 Video Card

Monitor Before and After: Polyview V17D Silver-Black 17" 10ms LCD Monitor

The graphics rendering is jagged when playing SIMS2 and the overall picture seems fuzzy. For example a door frame looks like a bunch of broken lines instead of one smooth line. Sort of like a printer that needs to be aligned. This is true using both D-sub and DVI connections.

Thanks in advance.

JB

[Marke522]

Perhaps there is an updated driver on the website?

The cd that was shipped with the card might be outdated.

Did you change any of the settings in the game after changing cards?

[irmo123]

I'll look for the driver update when I get home. I played with settings on the display and the ATI Catalyst dashboard. Trouble is I don't really know what I am doing in Catalyst.

The X550 chipset "should" provide better graphics than the X300 right?

JB

[blue60007]

The X550 isn't a whole lot better than the X300. So it isn't going to *perform* much better. Double check to see if your settings are the same (in game). If the settings are the same, then you would have the same *quality*, but the X550 should perform slight better (ie, higher FPS). It's only going to have better quality if you turn the settings up higher (ie, more resolution). Did you wipe the old drivers first? And install Catalyst again?

[Marke522]

If you are still having trouble with the Catalyst drivers, maybe you should give these a try.

http://www.omegadrivers.net/

[irmo123]

OK thanks both of you. Even if the X550 isn't better, it should perform at least as well. The problem was that performance was worse, horrible even. I installed the most recent drivers from ATI, that inmp[roved it a little. Then I played with the settings on the monitor itselp and found the refresh rate at 50 HZ. XP and games were set at 60 HZ, I adjusted the monitor to 60 and got a big improvement.

So I decided to try the DVI hook up to see if that looked better. Nope. Back to the same crappy display! I then discovered (graphics and dispalys are not a strength for me) that I can't set the display frequency with DVI like I can in D-Sub, which I guess makes sense since DVI is digital and not a wavelength at all.

So the interesting thing is that the DVI performance is poor, while D-Dub seems to bw working well for me.

I did not wipe the drivers before installing new. Should I do that? Also, do the younk the Omega drivers will make a difference in this case? I am sort of getting the feeling that the issue is with the peripheral not with the software and drivers.

Last question, why is the default for the display at 60 HZ. Would I see better graphics if I set paramenters in XP, games and the monitor to 70, 72 or even 90 HZ?

[pam123]

I did not wipe the drivers before installing new. Should I do that?

Yes.
Do that first before you do anything else.

[blue60007]

If that's an LCD panel, 60Hz is high enough. The refresh rate doesn't make much difference. Now, if that's a CRT, the refresh rate makes a big difference. You don't get better performance or graphics, but higher refresh rates on a CRT decrease the "flicker" and strain on your eyes. Not all monitors can go over 60Hz at their highest resoultion, so setting the default higher would cause problems.

[Marke522]

When I set my CRT higher than 60, it starts to make a high whistle when the screen is all white. Took me a few days to figure out what the exact cause wause. Here's a nice little site about FPS and why people set them so high.

I've seen competitive gamers tweak their systems to get 200+ frames per second. Can't the human eye only see 30-60 fps? Why do people do this?

It is possible that you simply sent a bad card. See if you can contact the retailer or the manufacturer about getting a replacement card if the problems do not correct themselves, or maybe even take it back for a higher performance card. It's not really worth replacing the Onboard GPU with nearly the same chipset.