Graphics problem

Hello!

I'd like to announce I'm one step closer to actually buying/playing the bone games as I just purchased a video card. The great cow race demo ran really really slow without it. anyways, I just installed the drivers for a ATI Radeon 9200 SE 128MB card and loaded up the Great Cow Race demo as a test (it crashed twice for some reason, then finally loaded up).
The menu ran smoothy and the game was very smooth too. One problem though... The menu has specs flashing in places. All different sizes, but mostly small.
In the gameplay it's alot worse. I can't really explain it but it's like there is a center point in the middle of the screen where these long triangles stretch out of reaching to the edge of the screen constantly jumping all around.
The front of thorns hair is missing and her right eye has part of it's texture missing.

I know it's probably my card, but I'm wondering if you have any advice. I have the right drivers and looked through the set-up, but couldn't find anything to fix it.
I'm going to try un-installing direct x 9 because I heard the card only supports up to direct x 8.1
I'm also going to hunt down the direct3d and openGL options when I get home. I read in the online manual where to find them so maybe the solution is there.

I can't find the system requirments for the game anywhere. Should my card run the game flawlessly with top notch graphics?

Thanks,

(sorry for the long post I just got excited.)

[Emily]

Hi Chris,

I'll make sure Kevin sees your question. If anyone would know, it'd be him!

I'm taking my computer in to the place where I bought the card so they can look at it tomorrow. I've tried all sorts of different drivers, but nothing so far. I heard I need to revert back to directx 8.1 but I have no idea how to do that.

[img]http://groups.msn.com/_Secure/0QgDhAhcTiHeGUx*qxh5glYBzRqWLYH4M7ktM!Vf8zouoOrIH! wXj4D3zty7*juvPYo9aJNpLIo0LPao3I4Lbk22y!EgAL2vnsaG YWBJVJO4/b5.JPG[/img]

picture!

[Emily]

Yuck!

I'll see what I can find out for you.

Well, they have my computer and are going to find out if the card is defective. They said if it's not they'll charge me $30 just for looking at it (I could buy both Bone games for that). I told them I'm not going to pay because it's bogus.

I went to this other computer store (which is more of a retail type store) and asked them about my problem and the dude there confirmed my suspicions. The card doesent support Directx 9 and that's what my computer has. He also said there is no way of reverting back to past versions. MDG (the place I bought the card from) told me they won't do refunds which is also insane. They never told me this when I bought the card. The man who sold me the card said it would run fine. When I go back tomorrow to get my computer I'm going to get my refund or I'm calling their head office and the better business bureau.

Sorry I had to vent.

[Emily]

That sucks. I hope you get your money back.

Were it not for the unusual nasal focus of the distortion in your screenshot, I'd say your card is overheating. Does your 9200 have a fan on it, or just a heatsink? Does your case allow easy airflow over the card? Try popping off the side of the case and pointing a desk fan at your card. If that resolves the issue, your card's overheating.

Still, I think that's a long shot. More likely is your drivers have gotten screwed up and need to be cleanly removed and reinstalled.
1) Download Driver Cleaner and install it. Don't run it yet.
2) Go to the Add/Remove Programs item in the Control Panel. Find the ATI Uninstall Utility and run it. This will remove every ATI piece of software on your system (mostly). Make sure that when it's done there is nothing left in the menu at all related to ATI. If this gives you errors (and ATI's drivers do this a lot), go to the device manager instead, find your graphics drivers (under Display Adapaters), right click, and choose uninstall.
3) Reboot into Safe Mode by rebooting your machine and pressing F5 or F8 BEFORE windows starts to load. You'll get a menu of boot choices. Choose plain ordinary "Safe Mode".
4) In Safe Mode, run Driver Cleaner. Choose every ATI related cleaning method available and run them all. You can run the CAB cleaners too if you feel like it.
5) Reboot into normal Windows and install the latest ATI graphics drivers (which I'm guessing you already have downloaded). Reboot when prompted.

If you're lucky and your computer is at least reasonably fast, this whole process should take less than 15 minutes. Since ATI's driver upgrade process from one release to the next is rather iffy, you should go through this process every time you upgrade your drivers. I used their cards for 3 years and finally got sick of the constant difficulties with their drivers. I use a Geforce 7600GT now (and MAN is it fast).

Hope this helps. By the way, your card IS compatible with DirectX 9.0c, HOWEVER, it cannot use the new featuers of 9.0c. When 9.0c is installed it will only use the 9.0a features, but will work just fine with your card. The DirectX drivers are very backwards compatible.

I picked my computer up from them and they said the card is defective. They're going to refund my money now. I'm gonna take it and run and never come back.

Now I just need to find a card for a pretty decent price that will run properly.

The card only had a heatsink on it. I'm not even sure it was a real Radeon made card. I think it was one of those knock-off brands.
I';m going to get the actual box with the next card I buy.
I've heard great things about nVidia.

[Emily]

I have an nVidia card and I've been very happy with it. Also, it seems easier to find old drivers for nVidia cards than ATI.