What have I done?

[G B Scurlock]

I upgraded my video card from ATI 9800 pro 128 meg to an ATI HD2400 pro 512meg to better play a new simulator I bought. CMSF runs terrible now. The mouse lag is horrible and I now get the little men with the pointed helmits. I don't think I can play it like this. My frames have to be much less. I now get the pixelaized startup but once it shifts to the menu screen I'm ok. My new simulator now looks good but CMSF has digressed. Please, Is there anything I can do. All my settings are middle maybe even leaning to faster. This is terrible. All I can say is S**T.

[SlapHappy]

Hi GB

According to the Passmark G3D ratings (relative 3d performance) the hd 2400 PRO series rates around 131 points for 3d gaming. This is near the bottom end of the "medium level" performance listings. The 9800 Pro is actually scored at around 416 even though it is an older card by about 2 release series. Even though some of the newer cards have been better optimized for things like HD playback and supporting new graphics features, they often lack the real "muscle" required to push 3d graphics on higher end games.

Look on this chart for some fairly old cards that still outclass it:

http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/video_lookup.php?cpu=Radeon+HD+2400+PRO

Although, I must say some of the stuff you are experiencing might be more related to a driver issue. Try backing everything down to the bare minimum. If that seems to clear up the problem, most likely the card simply isn't up to snuff. I made the same mistake with the 8600GTS. It turned out to be a pretty wimpy card for what I paid for it when it first came out. The older 7950GT would have been a much better option for pure gaming and cheaper. Only downside is no support for DX10. But these mid-low end cards aren't going to get you anywhere in regards to performance in games that support DX10 anyway. Some of these low-end bargain cards aren't even as good as the integrated graphics on a lot of motherboards!

[SlapHappy]

As a follow-up here's your new card on a mid-level computer benchy running Microsoft FS 10:

http://www.overclockersclub.com/reviews/pc_hd2400pr/9.htm

Not horrible. But here's what happens in the moderately taxing shooter Farcry:

http://www.overclockersclub.com/reviews/pc_hd2400pr/7.htm

The FPS drops to around 12-13 at even moderate resolutions. Almost unuseable for that type of game.

[G B Scurlock]

Slaphappy, your a good man for responding. Looks like I just flushed about $200(installation included). These graphics Cards suck. Who would have thought I could go from 128 megs to 512 mega and get worse performance. Damn.

[SlapHappy]

The card only has a 64 bit memory interface. It can transfer about 8-9 GB/s of graphics info.

Compare that to an 8800 GTS with 320 bit interface which can transfer about 86 GB/s.

My 8800 GT can transfer about 58 GB/s.

Unfortunately what you have there is not really a gaming card, but more of a general purpose vid card with DX10 support and extra goodies for video playback. The video card makers haven't been really as clear as they need to be about the limitations of some of their products concerning 3d gaming.

p.s. Graphics memory AMOUNT is only really useful when texture info becomes so critical that the extra memory is needed to store it all. In real world tests, most 512 MB (or 1GB even) cards don't perform any better than the same 256 MB model.

[G B Scurlock]

Write it off and start over. Could you please give me your opinion of two or three good gaming cards? Not just the most expensive. My machine has AGP and PCI connections, not PCIe. Help is greatly appreciated.

[Flanker15]

9800GTX+ is a good not too expensive card I got, has 1,234 rating on that website linked above. $228US needs a beefy PSU though.

[Schrullenhaft]

One of the fastest AGP cards available is the ATI Radeon 3850 (Newegg listing). I'm not sure how compatible this card is under Windows XP or especially Vista. There have been issues with CMSF and DirectX10 cards under Vista. Typically Windows XP hasn't seen some of these problems, but I don't know all of the details. You might see some similar behavior as you have with the HD2400 Pro (it is a more powerful/faster videocard however).

For the Nvidia based cards a GeForce 7600GS (tigerdirect listing) is a good bet. There is also a listing for the GeForce 6800GS (tigerdirect listing), which can perform fairly well too (probably better than the HD2400 Pro).

The Radeon 3850 would probably be the fastest of these cards, but it will make more of a difference with a faster CPU (such as an Athlon64 based AGP system). On slower AGP systems (Pentium 4's, Athlon XPs) any of these cards would probably perform pretty well and the performance differences would dwindle a bit (i.e. - the Radeon 3850 may not perform with as large a margin over the other cards here).

[hoolaman]

Don't forget you can pick up a new PCI-e motherboard for under $100 which will give you access to a whole lot more possibilities.

[G B Scurlock]

I put my old card back in and the game runs fine for the most part. Boy did I learn a lesson! Best Buy gave me a full refund as store credit which I put toward a new HD TV.

[Battlefront.com]

Yesh... yeah, that's a pretty nasty experience there. Unfortunately, it's not uncommon in the 'puter biz. I still remember the days of PacBell computers sitting on shelves at Staples. The specs proudly announced processor speed, amount of RAM, and harddrive capacity, all of which were pretty decent compared to much more expensive systems. What it didn't tell people is that the motherboard had components on it left over from the Crustaceous Period and the RAM was a hair faster than paint drying, not to mention a harddrive that was slower than even the oldest librarian. To find that out you had to look at benchmark performances in the computer mags. Unsuspecting people would buy the cheap POS and then would blame everybody else for the fact that it was a pig. Well, that's if it turned on since back in those days they had a 25% DOA rate!!

Glad Best Buy was willing to take the thing back and offer at least an in-store credit.

Steve

[dima]

Yesh... yeah, that's a pretty nasty experience there. Unfortunately, it's not uncommon in the 'puter biz. I still remember the days of PacBell computers sitting on shelves at Staples. The specs proudly announced processor speed, amount of RAM, and harddrive capacity, all of which were pretty decent compared to much more expensive systems. What it didn't tell people is that the motherboard had components on it left over from the Crustaceous Period and the RAM was a hair faster than paint drying, not to mention a harddrive that was slower than even the oldest librarian. To find that out you had to look at benchmark performances in the computer mags. Unsuspecting people would buy the cheap POS and then would blame everybody else for the fact that it was a pig. Well, that's if it turned on since back in those days they had a 25% DOA rate!!

Steve

And back in those days there was none of this Interweb so people couldn't research any of this.

But on the flip-side all the software in those days worked out of the box - patch was something you put on your skin after you get a cut. And 20Mb hard drive was HUGE! ...Ah, good times....

[missinginreality]

hehe, and floppy discs used to really be floppy