Video Card Problem (1 Viewer)

[Andy Hardin]

I'm at work so I don't have all of the specs, but a quick question to help me troubleshoot.

Got a new video card this weekend. Its a Geforce 2 with 64mb video ram that I plugged into my box running windows 98. Install went fine, config'ed it with the supplied driver disk, everything went fine. Went to run some software, and anything with 3d graphics would not run.

Looked at the DirectX 8.1 diagnosis program and it listed the available video ram as 0 mb. So the video ram is not recognized/not working properly.

With this limited info I have given, does this sound like a software problem (OS, drivers, etc), or a faulty card with bad memory.

I bought this online so I want to rule out as many possibilities before I got thru the hassle of returning it.

 

[Matt DeVillier]

Andy,

I'd recommend updating your drivers to the latest available on Nvidia's site (29.42 I think). They will be much better than whatever came on your card's driver cd. Just be sure to uninstall the old ones first.

As for the dxdiag issue, all that means is that something is not reporting the correct amount of video memory. Obviously the video mem is working, else you wouldn't get anything on your screen at all. I highly doubt your card is defective. My first guess would be it is something AGP-related. If you have a motherboard with non-intel chipset (VIA, SiS), be sure you have the latest chipset and AGP drivers installed.

give us a bit more info on your system too =)

 

[Andy Hardin]

Thanks Matt,

It is the PCI card. The computer is a HP that originally shipped with the onboard video chip. I disabled that about a year ago when I got a generic (Comp USA) 16 mb card.

I uninstalled that one and then installed my new card and installed the drivers.

Something tells me that if I don't have a defective card, something from one of those old video cards is causing the problem.

Since it has been a year since I last did it, I'm getting the sneaking suspicion that I should format the hard drive and do a new windows install...

 

[Ken Garrison]

Go with the 28.32 drivers. The 29.42 drivers has some issues I experienced when playing a DVD. It was just a bunch of color pixals. So, go with the 28.32s if you can.

 

[Chris Bedard]

or, you can go to Link Removed and download some of their more recent drivers. I'm currently running their 29.60 Detonator with excellent results.

 

[Andy Hardin]

Just as an update I wiped the hard drive and reinstalled windows and it works fine, I'm getting 63.5 mb of video ram though the diagnostic. I'm sure it was an old driver or .dll somewhere that didn't uninstall that was causing the problem.

Thanks for everyone's responses and I'll be sure to install the newest Nvidia drivers now.

All of this to play Grand Theft Auto 3, hope its as good as I've heard!