MSI KT266 Pro-2A Motherboard
AMD Athlon XP 1700+ (1.47 GHz)
Kingston HyperX 512 MB
Win XP Pro
ATI AIW 9800 Pro
Hi guys! First time poster here. Looks like a great community!
First, my sob story.
Late last year I bought the new ATI 9600XT, but took it back when it was having problems… or at least I thought it was having problems. In 3D games such as Neverwinter Nights, strange graphic anomalies would appear in the game. Such as rendered buildings and characters had random long polygons projecting out of them, sometimes making it difficult to see if there are too many that fill the screen. It does it in other 3D rendered games as well.
I’ve loaded all the latest and greatest drivers, but still nothing. I took it back to exchange it thinking there was a problem with the card, but then I found that the ATI AIW 9800 Pro was on sale and so snatched that up instead!
According to the ATI instructions, it says that if you have a non-Intel chipset, you need to load in what they referred to as a VGART driver. I’ve looked all around and don’t see such an animal. I figure this is built into one of the drivers I’ve downloaded? Anyway, before installing this card, I decided to start from scratch and format my HD to make sure that ANY trace of the old software was gone. I had an nVidia GeForce 3 card before this installation. Again I loaded in all the latest drivers for the motherboard, graphics card and chipset. But guess what? I still get the same display anomalies! >:(
Perhaps my problem is the AGP slot which is only a 4X? Maybe the VIA Apollo KT266A chipset don’t likey? Has anyone else heard or seen such problems and more importantly… is there a solution?
Well, after a lot of searching and experimenting I finally gave up and decided to upgrade my whole system. It needed it anyway. Playing these new games such as EQ II made my computer show its age.
I really don’t want to spend a lot of money, and want to upgrade to take advantage of my new video card. So whatever I get it has to have an AGP slot. I also wanted to get something that had an Intel chipset so I don’t have to monkey around with these additional drivers that ATI spoke of. Seems the i875P will fit the bill. Since I won’t be upgrading to the latest technology (such as PCI Express), it will also cut down on the expense.
This is my first attempt at building my own system. I’ve always wanted to make the attempt. I’m good with my hands so I’m not worried in that department.
So far all my researching has led me to the following:
ABIT IC7-G MaxII Advance Motherboard $137 Newegg
Intel Pentium 4 w/HT Technology – 3.2C GHz $275 Newegg
Kingston 1GB HyperX PC3200 DDR (Dual Channel) $219 Newegg
(I may go with the equivalent Crucial or Corsair)
I was also looking at the ASUS P4C800-E Deluxe, but from the comparisons, the ABIT looked like a better board.
Was thinking of going with the Northwood version of the CPU instead of the newer Prescott as it runs much cooler. Which reminds me, any suggestions for a fan and heatsink? I thought I read that what comes with the retail version of the CPU is fine. Might get a new case too… I dunno.
But adding all this up, this is actually much more than I wanted to spend, but you kinda get caught up in it. I’m sure you know what I mean.
I’m trying to save up for the extra expense and hope that my wife doesn’t kill me. O.O
What I’ve wanted to do with my system is capture video from my video camera as well as the TV part of the video card… strip commercials out and save favorite episodes to disk.
Of course playing games is high on my list as well such as Tribes Vengeance and EQ II… both 3D games that with my current setup has that graphics problem I spoke of.
I really wanted to know what the beef is with the video card and is why I posted this here, but I’ll post this in the hardware section as well as the rest of this post really deals with more than just the video.
Eh, sorry for the long post, but anyone have any suggestions? Any input would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks!
Official Playground Jester and Chief Propagator of Woooo! 
