Video Card Troubles...

Hi there! I just recently bought a 512MB ATI Radeon 9600 and for some reason it only shows up in SL as a 256MB and the 512MB radio button is greyed out. Any thoughts? Also, theres a glitch where certain objects skew out all across the viewer until they have all fully rezzed and I can't get this video card to work at all with GLIntercept. Anyone who has this card and knows about/have resolved these issues please reply ty

I do not have the card, but I have a few suggestions.

Firstly, check up on the cards SL supports, it's possible your particular card isn't that compatible with SL. While it sucks, some computers, even the high end, the cards mess with SL graphics in some way that makes it unplayable.

Secondly, go to ATI's webpage and download any and all drivers and updates for the card.

Just curious. How much system RAM do you have?

Take it back.

Get an nVidia based card.

I'm serious. This isn't about brand loyalty: I have both. (I've got an ATI All in Wonder card in my media PC, and I have an X600 in my notebook.) ATI cards don't work right with SL because ATI doesn't properly support OpenGL 2.0. You won't be able to enable AGP support, and you won't get the kind of performance you're hoping for.

SL (and may other 3D apps) are optimized specifically for nVidia cards and support extensions on those cards that won't work on ATI boards. I'd strongly suggest exchanging your Radeon for a GeForce. Yes, the 9600 is cheap, but it's cheap for a reason. Go get the good stuff. You'll be glad you did: I was. My GeForce 7800 is easily twice as fast as the x600 in my notebook, and that thing's faster than the 9600.

Without brand loyalty, saying the ATI doesn't work is more of an opinion on what you've used. 2 gaming comps in my house use Nvidia (I personally adore Nvidia based on high end performance on games.) 3 others comps use ATI. These 3 comps have no issues running SL whatsoever, once I got the latest drivers on 1 of them.

Blanketing a manufacturer and telling someone to go spend more money isn't a fix. Not everyone can shell out the money for new components all the time, and I'm sorry to see so many people resorting to telling people to buy this or that.

There are also workarounds and hacks for non-compatible components to games out there, for free (I did it when my comp hated AoE III) and was able to rewrite the way the card reads AoE. While I don't recommend this first, it is possible. Usually it's a drivers error or problem that from when the product was shipped, the new driver was put out to combat bugs and issues in gaming.

Clarification:

I asked a few posts earlier how much system RAM the OP has. I recall similar posts made a couple of years ago which brought up the same issue. Apparently, you need at least 4 times more system RAM than video RAM to take full advantage of the video card's video RAM. In other words:

128MB video RAM requires at least 512MB system RAM
256MB video RAM requires at least 1GB system RAM
512MB video RAM requires at least 2GB system RAM

I found this info in this thread.

I'm not sure if this still applies, since the thread is nearly 3 years old.

Just to lend some support to ATI, I have two home computers... one is 4 years old, which I upgraded to an ATI 9600 about a year ago, and the other is brand new with an ATI X800XL. Both run SL just fine. I must admit I've had some difficulty with ATI's drivers, and have opted to use Omega drivers instead.

And more - I've been trying to get SL to run on some very low-end machines, just to see how much is CPU and how much is the card. "Get an NVidia" falls over once back in AGP architectures versus PCI-Express, because a lot of po' folks will think that an NVidia Vanta is a "real" Nvidia card.

Nuh-uh. Nope. Noooo.

I have a couple of ATi's I'm gonna try; in the meantime, I have also noticed that the Quadro's don't seem all that good if you try SL on a big-ass workstation PC.

Anyone tried a matrox Parhelia? the one I've been fiddling with is busted and everything's way dark (video fault, i think)...

ty guys for the input, I have recently upgraded to the new ATI drivers that were apparently just made available about a week ago and it seems to have stopped the prim skewing glitches.. btw other than that and not being able to use GLI, this card runs SL superbly, I just wanted to get it to use the full 512. The last card I used was a 128MB nVidia GeForce4MX and it had no probs but this one seems to work a little faster. I have 768MB RAM so I guess I'll invest in a little more to utilize all 512, could use 2GB anyway As for GLIntercept support that is still not working but may be some internal settings with that I'll have to send them some email about it.

anyways, tyvm! -ML-

ATi game cards don't work well with 3D apps running OpenGL. That about covers almost all 3D apps, including Poser and such. Theres always some chance of artifacting going on. Either that or the software doesn't recognize the ATi as fully OpenGL compliant.

Something worth thinking about since both companies price their cards comparatively the same. For anyone who is about to purchase a new card, you might as well go for an Nvidia based card.

the Radeon 9600 (which is what the OP bought) ISN'T fully compliant.

When I fire up programs I've written on my Radeon 9600 equipped machine, I get a ton of error messages saying that the card doesn't support this or that extension, even though the driver returns an OpenGL version number of 2.0. When I tried to enable vertex shaders on SL, none of my ATI-equipped machines worked properly.

In all, this tells me that ATI does not fully support OpenGL, and so for ANY OpenGL application, you're better of with an nVidia board.

Again, I have 3 ATI boards sitting here: a Radeon 9600 with 256MB, an AIW Radeon 9600 with 256MB, and an X600 in my notebook with 128MB. The GeForce 7600 that replaced my Radeon 9600 is much faster than the 9600 was and cost the same amount of money.

For D3D stuff, I'd probably reccoment a Radeon. They do look better with FSAA. But for Open GL applications, nVidia is the ONLY card that works 100% in consumer applications.

I have the same hardware he does: a Radeon 9600. Based on my experience in SL, the nVidia 7600 is a better card for SL, and since the two cost roughly the same
amount, the nVidia is the better purchase.

That's not a blanket statement. THat's a very specific statement about a very specific piece of hardware. The Radeon 9600 is NOT the best card for the money for Second Life.

Thanks guys, even though it seems to be running stable now, all in all I think I'll save myself alot of trouble in the future by selling this one on eBay and getting another nVidia card as I've never had any troubles with them in the past and I do alot of work in Poser and other OpenGL 3D apps.