Graphics Radeon 7000 slow performance!

Ok, I just got a Radeon 7000/VE 32mb PCI card for my old etower 300k, ( in blue scorpio case ) Anyways I was expecting it to blow away my onboard gpu (Rage IIc), but it doesn't?! I know it was going to be amazing, but I thought it could handle more! When I go to www.bungie.net with both, I see no improvment. When I play the Sims Unleashed, no improvement. What could be wrong? Here's my specs

AMD k6-2 500MHz CPU
256MB pc100 RAM
Powercolor ATI Radeon 7000/VE PCI video card
10GB Seagate HDD

I know it can't do much, but seriously!?! I can't even visit www.bungie.net, it's way too slow!

 

i assume that you went into the bios and disabled the onboard and set it's memory to 0 correct?? other wise you may have a conflict with both trying to use the drivers + your giving 'X'mb of memory to a video divice your not using. if that wasn't done. make sue you uninstall all ati drivers then install them again..

 

Your computer is way too slow, in fact your case is very likely worth 3x more than what the computer is worth.

Play around with the bios, maybe try booting with knoppix, then throw it out and dig around in the bin behind the computer store of your chosing for something better

 

Are you done with slashing me in the back with a whip now? I only payed $25 for the case. Doesn't matter, you have to use what you got, this is all I can afford (with no income, because no job) I do plan on getting new compute once I find a job in another town. (View apple forums) Anyways, yes I disabled onboard gpu with jumper. I'll go set the memory to zero now and report back.

 

Sorry if that came across as too harsh, I was trying to inject some humor into it, as it is likely very frusterating for you the end user of that thing.

I know how it goes, I survived on a P2 for much longer than I should have been able to before I was able to afford something decent.

Hope it works for you

 

Haha, yeah, didn't take it too seriously. Urgh, I restarted and for some reason it won't even let me into the bios with this card! The screens click off into standby. I have to enable onboard to get in. Ah screw it for tonight (1:30 AM ) I'm going to bed.

UPDATE
Ok, I went into the bios looking for memory size, but there's no option to turn it off, it only goes down to 4mb. So I know that can't be it. Now I'm having some other problems. My card freaks out whenever I try to go into the advance properties tab. The screen goes black and all I see is giant mouse and scrambled colors. What's the deal??? Also ever since I have had this card I noticed the arrow on the google search in Firefox is gone. It only shows up when I highlight it. Also on sites like newegg when someone gives a rating, theres little white lines goign through the eggs, they're corrupted. To make things worse, when I try to update the latest drivers, I get black screen and I have to restart. Could this be a damaged card? Or is it just driver issues?
UPDATE 2
Ok, updated to latest drivers so now it looks good, no more corrupt images. But I still need to figure out why it's running much like onboard was.

 

What OS? and once it's all up and running what your free memory #

 

Win98SE. Um, what's a free program to check that out?

 

i can't remember if 98 has a task manager.. ummm
http://www.download.com/RAMBooster/3000-2086_4-1400043.html?tag=lst-3-8
once it's installed you run it and just read the main window.. the # on the yellow/lime green bar should be the memory tou got free.. I wouldn't recomend usig it to free up ram though.. Just read the info off it

 

whoa, RAM must be why, I only got 20% free when running firefox, and 30% just on desktop, wtf is causing this??? Something can't be right. The only tasks I have running is Explorer, Loadqm, ATIptaxx, systray. That's it. Urgh. >_<

 

Yea thats only 25-20MB free ram.. thats less then whats on the card. so quite a bit would be on swap and seeing as it's probebly not the fastest drive to begin.. that would be your hit.

 

How can I improve this? Is that normal for win98 to be taking up all those resources?

 

Check for adware and spyware using Spybot Search and Destroy; its a god-send

 

Ok I did a scan, only found 22 problems. But I figured out what was causing it. I used this small utility called dissapear (sp?) that hides the background around text on your desktop. Well I got rid of that and now I average about 57% with Firefox. w00t! Now I'm going to try the sims and see how that goes.

 

do Ctrl Alt and Delete to see whats running in the background. The only one thats required is Explorer. The rest of them (most of them) are optional. You should be able to safely close anything in that list to free up more ram.

 

With Win98 it's not only RAM but also resources you need to check. Biggest critters are programs that load up at startup and esp those that sit in the system tray (near the clock). Resource Meter should be installed and this reports the 3 different resources, they should all be over 80% and ideally over 90%. Check your startup programs and decide what's really needed. Another thing to note is that Win98 isn't really supported by anything any more so things will get progressively worse over time.

On to the RadeonVE card (aka Radeon 7000). For reference the Radeon 7500 was MUCH faster but even that only equalled a GF2TI or slow GF4MX. The Radeon 7000 is a fair deal slower than a GF2MX (and therefore GF1). Also as mentioned your CPU may be holding your card(s) back as all three reviews use a 1ghz CPU, perhaps overkill but 500mhz may be a little too slow. Check out some reviews...

TomsHW RadVE review (inc Matrox G450 & GF2MX)
http://www17.tomshardware.com/graphic/01q1/010316/atiradeon-08.html

AnAndTech RadVE review (inc GF2MX, RadSDR, V4, Matrox G450)
http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.html?i=1421&p=7

X-Bit RadVE review (inc GF2MX & Matrox G450) - go 75% down the page
http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/video/display/radeon-ve.html

AnAndTech Voodoo5 review (inc GF1, GF2MX, GF2GTS, TNT2, V3, V4 & Rage):
http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.html?i=1276&p=6

 

BTW, you forgot to mention that to check resources, Right click on "My computer" and then one of the tabs will tell you. (been a while sence i last touched winme)

Dont confuse resources with ram usage!

 

Yeah I watched system resources already, all three of them hung around 86%. The only problem with a cpu upgrade is I just did one. All this motherboard can handle is 550mhz. Only way to upgrade basically is get new motherboard, cpu, and probably more/different ram. I just don't feel it's worth upgrading this computer. The only program that is running in the background is my ati thing. That's it. That and Explorer and systray.