8500le/driver question

Win 98se
Radeon (Crucial) 8500le
DirectX 9

Drivers seem to be 4.14.01.9138. I'm getting some coloured pixels appearing
, mainly in games but some apps. Is there a more recent, and stable, driver
available?


Regards and thanks in advance

Pat Macguire

 

Look at http://www.ati.com/support/driver.html for more recent drivers.

I have the 8500 LE 128MB by Hercules and use the 6.14.10.6444 of
21.04.2004 from ATI's support site under WinXP_SP2 - no probs.

(I installed WinXP_x64_b.1218 without additional drivers for this card.)

Roy

 

What games, what drivers, do you overclock?

When I started getting coloured pixels on my old 8500 it was a sign that the
card memory was starting to fail... I'd had it a couple of years and did
overclock it a little. Eventually I started getting red dots on my desktop
that only a right click / refresh would clear... then after hooking the PC
up to the TV I got a ghosting image. After swapping the vid card for a 9200
I had lying around as a spare, ghosting on TV and desktop pixels have never
been seen since.


H

 

Games; Forgotten Battles, IL-2, FS2002, so far. I have never overclocked
and now, after about 5-10 seconds into the game, I'm getting what look like
small rectangular blocks of square black dots in the prop disc, instead of
just a blur. Doesn't seem to happen in CFS 2, but maybe that's just a
matter of time. I also get regular spaced blocks of light green over the
landscape.

The problem is, the system is getting on a bit, but won't be replaced for
some time. I realise the CPU (Athlon 900) is now probably the limiting
factor (Mothereboard cannot take upgrade to CPU) but wondered if a slightly
better graphics card would cure the current problems as a stop-gap.

Regards


Pat Macguire

 

Do you have a friend you can borrow a video card from to test? Or could you
try your card in their system? Either would eliminate or confirm if it's
the vid card that's the issue, but from your comments it does seem the most
likely.

If you do chose to go for a replacement, then with your current specs it
would be silly to go for anything grand. The motherboard probably doesn't
support AGP 8X, if it's an AGP 2/4X then compatibility might be an issue
with newer cards because of voltage requirements. AGP 2X was 3v and 4x is
1.5v, whilst 8x 0.8v (I think), you motherboard won't support that.

If anything, it might be worth checking ebay for a bargain, or looking at
the low end of the vid card market. A Radeon 9200 is under the 50 price
range and now comes fanless, it's nothing fancy but is as good as if not
slightly better than the 8500... Check if it's compatible with the
motherboard though. Nothing short of a Vid/CPU/Ram upgrade is going to cure
the bottlenecks in newer games... there just comes a time, where you have to
upgrade or just play old games.

Failing that, I do have a Voodoo 3 and a Voodoo 5 in my drawer here, both
would be compatible (although finding drivers for new OS might be hard)... I
miss those days when 3DFX ruled, nothing played Unreal Tournament better
than my Voodoo 5 at 1600x1200 with FSAA cranked all the way up.

Good luck with the upgrade.
H

 

Thanks for that. Very informative and helpful.

Pat Macguire