FX5500 and Vista, slow interface

F

fossill

Limp Gawd
Joined
Oct 27, 2004
Messages
257
Hey guys. I am hoping one of you can help me out.

Here's the story. I have a Core 2 Duo 4300@2.5ghz, a gig of ram, WD 250g 7200 hard drive, etc etc. I also have an NVIDIA FX5500 256mb DDR video card (AGP) that I am using.

The computer itself is fast as hell obviously, but the interface is sluggish. I have turned off animations, but let's say I grab a window and drag it across the screen, back and forth, I get a "woggle" effect, that it lags behind redrawing. It is smooth mind you, but it lags behind my mouse movement.

I have an e1405 inspiron, with an intel 945 video chipset, gig of ram, core duo proc 1.66, and it doesn't have this issue what so ever.

I am wondering, this video card should be able to run the interface fine, I don't game, I don't have anything else 3d open, it is just the aero interface.

Do you guys think there is something wrong? I installed Vista Business (free from school), and tried to default drivers, then installed the latest (but still old) forceware drivers off the web. Both exhibited this behavior.

Anyone have any suggestions? I purchased this card before because it was cheap and runs well under linux, but I have to dual boot.

Thanks again,
Mario
 
I'm pretty sure the problem is that slow video card you've got there. And I'm not sure that Nvidia is even supporting anything older than the 6 series in Vista. I can all but guarantee your problem would go away if you swap it out for a 6600... the 6 series also has perfect Linux support.
 
agreed
that FX card is slow as hell and ill bet a left nut thats the problem. PCIe cards dude.
 
Damn.. there is a BFG 6600 for $29 AR in the hot deals section, but its PCI-e =(, good luck finding a cheap AGP card =\
 
Hey I appreciate the info you guys. I am down with mem, motherboards, and CPU's, etc, but I am not a gamer, so I've stayed away from the video cards. I only cared if it had good linux support because that's what I use daily.

I'll look once I am all moved into my new place for a 6600+ nvidia card.

I figured this card was slow, but I had no idea it was that slow. Again, appreciate the help!

~m
 
Hey if your in the market to get a $100.00 AR card here is a link for a 7800GS Evga it will run everything nice huge differance! For AGP it will give good performance in Vista..Score a 4 or 5 if i remember right ..I had a 6800oc that did good but grabed a 7800 for $99 which is faster and gave a way better picture and has 256mem as well over my 6800oc 128mb....Both replaced a 5700Le 256mb which barely ran Vista!!!

http://shop4.outpost.com/product/5175386?site=sr:SEARCH:MAIN_RSLT_PG

The system the 7800 is in has a 754 3200+ @2400mhz and 1gig ddr 400 @ 480mhz I used to game with it ,,,,pretty smooth in all apps,,,now it plays DVD's and music and photshop daily..
 
If you do buy a "newer" video card, make sure it is at least a GeForce Series 6 or a Radeon X100 series card. Anything below those models are not supported by Vista (due to drivers), but you will still be able to run the OS.

Heh, I even had to run it on an ATI "Rage II+DVD" 4MB PCI card from 1996. o_O
It worked, but with a rating of 1.0. Also, the screen, icons, wallpaper, and everything else looked like garbage, but the important thing is that it did work. So the OS will run with nearly any video card, just not very well.
 
Red Falcon said:
If you do buy a "newer" video card, make sure it is at least a GeForce Series 6 or a Radeon X100 series card. Anything below those models are not supported by Vista (due to drivers), but you will still be able to run the OS.
Click to expand...

The FX series is fully supported by Vista and does in fact run aero.

I dont know what problem you could be having i would try and update chipset drivers or look into some other problems because i can tell you my brothers computer runs an FX5500 and vista and aero runs just as quick as it does on my machine with an X1950pro.

Dont listen to people telling you to buy expensive new video cards they shouldve read your post more thoroughly where you said you dont game.

The FX5500 is more than enough to run aero smoothly what drivers are you using?
 
Someone saw a strange amount of moisture on her lips.
And it was also seen upon her arms and on her hips.
No one knows exactly who she was or how she died.
But when they opened up her purse, they found a snail inside.
 
pkunkman: Even though NVIDIA says it is supported by VISTA, it is only supported on their older (and much buggier) drivers. Also, it does in fact support Aero, but the newest drivers from NVIDIA do not support the FX series. Only the Series 6 on up are supported by the latest drivers, so I would recommend staying away from the FX series and purchase a newer card, if possible.

If not, then make sure the drivers in use support the FX series, otherwise there will be a large performance decrease (I had to learn this the hard way).

Edit: Also, I'm not saying go buy a new expensive card, I just recommended getting a "newer" than the FX series card. The Series 6 cards remaining for sale are not expensive nor are they new. At tigerdirect.com, one can purchase a GeForce Series 6 6600GT for under $100, and the price will drop much further after rebates.

Yeah, Aero will run about the same for almost any "supported" video card.

Zinn: Do I even want to know?
 
Red Falcon said:
pkunkman: Even though NVIDIA says it is supported by VISTA, it is only supported on their older (and much buggier) drivers. Also, it does in fact support Aero, but the newest drivers from NVIDIA do not support the FX series. Only the Series 6 on up are supported by the latest drivers, so I would recommend staying away from the FX series and purchase a newer card, if possible.

If not, then make sure the drivers in use support the FX series, otherwise there will be a large performance decrease (I had to learn this the hard way).

Edit: Also, I'm not saying go buy a new expensive card, I just recommended getting a "newer" than the FX series card. The Series 6 cards remaining for sale are not expensive nor are they new. At tigerdirect.com, one can purchase a GeForce Series 6 6600GT for under $100, and the price will drop much further after rebates.

Yeah, Aero will run about the same for almost any "supported" video card.

Zinn: Do I even want to know?
Click to expand...

Im not suggesting that he buys one. he already has one in his rig im just pointing out that they are supported because others like yourself have said they are not and that is 100% false.

There is no need for him to buy a new video card at all if he dont play games why in the world would he need better than an fx5500. Just because the drivers are old dont mean squat if they work now they will work later.

If he wants to throw his cash down the drain just to get aero running then thats his call however he dont need to spend a dime just needs to fix whats wrong with his setup is all.

People are too quick around here to suggest upgrading this and that when people dont always need to throw away hard earned cash.
 
pfunkman: Here are the last FX Series supported drivers (old and buggy): http://www.nvidia.com/object/winvista_x86_96.85.html

And here are the most recent drivers (Series 6+): http://www.nvidia.com/object/winvista_x86_158.18.html

Here is a list of the cards supported by the most recent drivers: http://www.nvidia.com/object/winvista_x86_158.18_supported.html

Gee, I don't see the FX series in there anywhere. Don't tell me I'm wrong, I used FX cards with Vista and beyond the old 96.85 drivers they are not supported.

If I'm wrong, then please explain how, as my facts above prove my point: the FX series is no longer supported by the latest drivers from NVIDIA.


Edit: Even if he isn't playing games, it will be essential to get a newer card due to the extreme buggyness of the old drivers. The drivers constantly crashed on me and was not worth the hastle. Even if you install the newer drivers, they will not install the FX card properly and a performance decrease will be evident. Sorry, but those are the facts. I've already tried this on multiple machines with all of them leading to the same results: performance decreation or buggy drivers, you choose. Even if the upgrade is to just a GeForce 6200 (about $30 off of newegg), it will be much higher in relability and performance (not to mention better drivers that no longer crash).
 
Red Falcon said:
pfunkman: Here are the last FX Series supported drivers (old and buggy): http://www.nvidia.com/object/winvista_x86_96.85.html

And here are the most recent drivers (Series 6+): http://www.nvidia.com/object/winvista_x86_158.18.html

Here is a list of the cards supported by the most recent drivers: http://www.nvidia.com/object/winvista_x86_158.18_supported.html

Gee, I don't see the FX series in there anywhere. Don't tell me I'm wrong, I used FX cards with Vista and beyond the old 96.85 drivers they are not supported.

If I'm wrong, then please explain how, as my facts above prove my point: the FX series is no longer supported by the latest drivers from NVIDIA.


Edit: Even if he isn't playing games, it will be essential to get a newer card due to the extreme buggyness of the old drivers. The drivers constantly crashed on me and was not worth the hastle. Even if you install the newer drivers, they will not install the FX card properly and a performance decrease will be evident. Sorry, but those are the facts. I've already tried this on multiple machines with all of them leading to the same results: performance decreation or buggy drivers, you choose. Even if the upgrade is to just a GeForce 6200 (about $30 off of newegg), it will be much higher in relability and performance (not to mention better drivers that no longer crash).

Edit#2: No response means I rest my case!
Click to expand...

Dude what bugginess are you talking about my brothers rig has been using those drivers with his FX5500 and vista since it was released with 0 problems.

Like i said before the FX5500 is JUST FINE I never said you where wrong about the new drivers supporting the FX series so read my fucking post before going off on imagined bullshit.

Again what bugginess are you referring to? even a quick google search found no common problems with this set of drivers like you are claiming and being as how i have seen them first hand run flawlessly im gonna have to call bullshit on your entire claim. Claiming a set of drivers are "Buggy" while giving 0 specific examples dont help your claim much.

And by the way i have better things to do then stay up all fucking night to make a response to you so no you do not rest your case.
 
fossill said:
Hey guys. I am hoping one of you can help me out.

Here's the story. I have a Core 2 Duo 4300@2.5ghz, a gig of ram, WD 250g 7200 hard drive, etc etc. I also have an NVIDIA FX5500 256mb DDR video card (AGP) that I am using.

The computer itself is fast as hell obviously, but the interface is sluggish. I have turned off animations, but let's say I grab a window and drag it across the screen, back and forth, I get a "woggle" effect, that it lags behind redrawing. It is smooth mind you, but it lags behind my mouse movement.

I have an e1405 inspiron, with an intel 945 video chipset, gig of ram, core duo proc 1.66, and it doesn't have this issue what so ever.

I am wondering, this video card should be able to run the interface fine, I don't game, I don't have anything else 3d open, it is just the aero interface.

Do you guys think there is something wrong? I installed Vista Business (free from school), and tried to default drivers, then installed the latest (but still old) forceware drivers off the web. Both exhibited this behavior.

Anyone have any suggestions? I purchased this card before because it was cheap and runs well under linux, but I have to dual boot.

Thanks again,
Mario
Click to expand...

I think the problem is that you have an FX5500 and because the FX5500 has a very poor implementation of DX9 and Vista needs DX9, it runs badly. What I'm really surprised is that you have such a high end processor with such an old card, is that an AGP or PCIe card? I was under the impression that was an AGP card. Do you have a 915based chipset by any chance?
 
You could probably go to LaptopVideo2Go and get any driver you want. Just download their modded inf for the driver. Even though they are known for mobile cards, they always add support for nearly all of the desktop GPUs as well. It is worth a try before you go and buy another card.
 
Hey, you wanna get mouthy with me I'll report you to the mods, understand?

I reread your post below. Sorry if I seemed like a jerk, that wasn't my intent. I even edited the post.

I don't mind that you point things out to me, but if you are ever disrespectful like that to me again, I will go to the mods.

I've had first hand experience with those old drivers and they crashed nearly constantly on many systems, including others than my own. Part of the problem is when AA and aniostropic filtering is turned too high (and sometimes too low). Also, optimization options can make them crash. I don't care if it's not posted on the web, these are the experiences that I and many others that I know and work with have faced. Evidently fossill is having a similar problem. The drivers may not be crashing, but wobbling effects are one of the problems my coworker had with his FX card on the old drivers. There's your specific examples.

If they work for you, then great. However, the FX series is getting old. Is it obsolite? No, it isn't. But it is an aging card series and buying a card for around $30 will not break the bank. Why wouldn't you want to upgrade? Better performance and better drivers will be evident.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814141035

This card will run Vista with the latest drivers. If you don't have PCI-E, there are other 6200 models that will run on AGP or PCI. If NVIDIA isn't your style, ATI has lots of X100 series cards and 9000 series cards that will run Vista and Aero just fine for a small price.
 
Red Falcon said:
Hey, you wanna get mouthy with me I'll report you to the mods, understand?
Click to expand...

Off your high horse buddy i didnt break any rules. So please by all means report me to the mods so they can come laugh at your ridiculous spreading of bullshit. Might wanna read the fucking rules before threatening to call the mods...:rolleyes:

I will say again an FX5500 is more than enough for a non gamer and the 96.85 drivers are just fine. Whatever problems you hae had im sorry for you but given your posts here i wouldnt be the least bit surprised to find user error at fault with your experiences.

All your doing is telling him to upgrade his card when he has a fully functional one. Buying a newer card will give him 0 benefits being a non gamer i dont see how your head is so thick you just dont get this simple fact. You can argue drivers until your blue in the face but the 96.85 drivers are a good set of drivers that do in fact work fine in vista and i am not the only one that believes this.

Do a fucking google search and look around there are not many people having problems with this driver in fact the newer ones have proven more problematic then these. Google search 96.85 vista problem wow only 856 results now google 158.18 vista problems wouldnt ya know 93,000 results.

Im not trying to turn this into a personal battle im just trying to explain he dont need a new card what he has is more than enough for aero i dont know what you guys think it takes to run aero but considering there are tons of onboard video chips that are running aero flawlessly some people need to take a step back and actually think of the requirements for aero and vista.
 
Read fossill's posts above. He's going to get a 6600+ card soon anyways. He was having trouble with his FX5500.

You say I'm telling him to buy a new card when he has a fully functional one. Obviously if he is having problems with it, either it or the drivers are not fully functioning.

I said it before and I'll say it again, I don't care what the web says about problems with the 96.85 drivers. I and many others have had lots of problems with them.

If NVIDIA's drivers just don't work for a person, then get an ATI card as their drivers seem to be pretty solid in Vista.

I know that people can run aero with integrated video, it's because those chipsets caught up to the power of low-end discrete graphics cards. Many of the integrated video cards out there are equal to or are more powerfull than the FX5500, at least for a basic GPU but not in memory bandwidth.

Also, user error? Maybe if it was just me or one other person included. But when this is happening with 20+ people who are all comp techs/admins I don't think it's user errors. Especially not when we were all having similar problems to fossill. That's why they upgraded or swapped out cards. When we did that and installed the newer drivers, we no longer had ANY of those problems.

True, the new drivers are still buggy, but not to the extent of the older drivers.

All I am saying is that there would be no disadvantage to upgrading cards, which is exactly what fossill is going to do. But I am not TELLING him to do it, only recommending it. That's all.

pfunkman, I know you have been here a while and seem to know what you are talking about and you have valid points, but when I have had personal user experience, first hand with these problems, it's kind of hard to argue with what is happening right in front of us compared to web results stating something else.
 
Red Falcon said:
Also, user error? Maybe if it was just me or one other person included. But when this is happening with 20+ people who are all comp techs/admins I don't think it's user errors. Especially not when we were all having similar problems to fossill. That's why they upgraded or swapped out cards. When we did that and installed the newer drivers, we no longer had ANY of those problems.
Click to expand...

Who are these 20+ people? The FX5500 in my brothers computer is the one i had back when and i have had personal experience with it myself in vista betas and had no problems like these. 9 times out of 10 issues like this turn out to be chipset driver related anyway i can tell you that the same FX5500 has issues in vista on a Via chipset where with my old Nforce 3 board the fx5500 worked flawlessly.

I was simply trying to save the guy some scratch he didnt need to pay. If he is running the asrock dual vsta board (Which is likely because he has an AGP card and a core 2) i can tell you the AGP drivers are fucked with that chipset and do cause issues with just about any AGP card similar to the ones hes having. When my ASrock board died i didnt even try for a replacement i just moved on and left it in my closet.

The card itself and even the drivers are definitely good enough for vista and aero and if someone runs into problems with these drivers like you have then there are dozens of newer modified drivers that do support the fx5500 it would take some searching around but you really can get any set of drivers to work with the fx5500 with some tweaking.

Also there really is no such thing as onboard graphics that are really any faster than an fx5500 onboard graphics use system ram which is pathetically slow compared to discrete solutions.
 
We would have used the newer modified drivers like the ones you are talking about, but we all just decided to change our video card since we mostly do gaming and graphical design (hence the reason I have a Quadro).

You're right about the memory bandwidth on integrated graphics, it sux b@lls! But some of the 6200 cards only have a memory bandwidth of 3.2GB/s, which is slower than most of the integrated graphics shared memory bandwidth (if using OC'ed or dual channel memory).

Most of the low-end discrete graphics cards have been (somewhat) matched by integrated graphics. However, integrated graphics are just a vanilla solution to display basic 2D/3D video. Any graphics card in the midrange+ will beat the hell out of an integrated card.

I'm not saying the 5500 is bad by any means. I still have and use the BFGTech PCI FX5500 OC to date. It is a great card, even if it is on a PCI port. It also has a memory bandwidth of 6.4GB/s, much higher than most (if not all) integrated graphics shared memory bandwidth. I'm not dissing the card itself at all, only the Vista drivers.

pfunkman: BTW, good for you, like I give a damn if it worked for you and your brother. Man you need the meds, I'm the one who needs to get laid!
You shouldn't post such rude and disrespectful comments on these forums. I've delt with people like you before and its been a barrel of fun. LOL
Dude, I read some of your other posts... LAWL
You say the stupidest crap and everyone always contradicts you each time!
Seriously though, knock it off. I just can't understand how your head so thick you can't seem to grasp it.
 
I think pfunkman needs some meds or needs to get laid....

Anyways, even if you have the same video card, its not going to work the same in all motherboards or configurations.(even in the same hardware)
 
Whoa whoa whoa! I leave for the evening and sleep all day, and all hell has broken loose!

I further the comment made previous, but want to include us all when I say we all need to get laid.

Now onto the hardware, I was using the most recent drivers for the FX series card. It ran fine under XP, and even some mild 3d games when I first got the card just to test it out. But, I AM running a 20" 1680x1050 resolution monitor, and recently added my old 17" LCD for a secondary display. But it was lagging even when just the 20" was being used.

I even tried OCing the FX5500 a month or two ago, got it pretty high, (there is like no VISTA overclocking software that I can tell that runs reliably grrr), running 3dmark06, the cores increased mildly, and even the VISTA "score" increased by .6 points, up to like a 3.6 or something on video. The rest of my scores were 4.9's I believe.

I am running this setup, because what I needed was a cheaper setup, that I could use my older DDR ram with, and my AGP card as I didn't want to shell out a bunch of money on a rig that was more than what I needed to use.

This rig rips dvds, encodes video, and runs linux with the best of them. I rip a dvd in like 14 minutes, which compared to the sempron single core 2.5ghz machine I replaced it with (same ram, same hard drive, same video card), knocked off 13 minutes. Almost halved the time needed, just from going to this dual core CPU.

Beyond that, I really appreciate peoples interaction on this topic. I'm a student, and have my laptop and that gets my papers wrote and everything else. I just this mainly for when I am home and need more screen space and CPU power.

Don't get me wrong, vista is 100% usable, and if I turn of the animations, it is down right fast. Personally, I like vista. I use XP at school in our department all day long (I support the machines the faculty and Grad students use), and I can't say comparable machines running XP are any faster than mine running vista.

Anyway, got off topic. When this term is over, maybe I'll try those drivers someone suggested earlier, if I hose the machine, I rebuild every 3 months anyway.

Mario
 
Ok to save face here, I am just going to ask people who know a hell of a lot more about nvidia drivers than I do.

if I so wanted to try to upgrade the drivers on this with those over at laptopvideo2go.com as someone previous suggested, which would I want to choose.

Even better, a link would be awesome. But any help is appreciated.

Thanks
~m
 
And one final note, the motherboard I am using is a ECS P4M800Pro-v2.

One of those bundle deals. But as I said, I just needed it to crunch numbers, not game. Hence why I went on the cheap.
 
:cool: Ok have hope lol......I had a 5700 running Vista x32 and x64bit ....Used both to compare and Xpx64bit with Xpx32bit... on a 754 with 2.4Ghz 1gig and 2gig of ram .. Vista opened and loads apps way slower than XP as well as starting the Os. I used the best drivers for Vista!! I then put in my 6800oc AGP which increased the performance by 1.8 vista points thats 60% performance increase and could play most games on a 20"samsung Lcd!! 3.0 to 4.8 very noticable differance. Then i installed a 7800Gs went to 5.9 on the vid scale 99%increase Lol, which to me is very good for AGP and thats whats still running my VistaX64Ultimate whith No PROBLEMS what so ever!! The applications load almost three times as fast over the 5700le and the 7800gs card is physicaly double the horsepower and has 256mb like the 5700le ....With it being a 7 series card it has better shader technology as well as SUPPORT and plays all applications great for AGP...My Lowest Componet score is a 4.2 which is the CPU @2.42Ghz The Video Card Makes a huge differance in Vista no dout ,It was a matter of almost Double System performance in everything no joke! The desktop Performance Aero is @5.9 thats max Vista same with the Graphics....Full Nvidia support too.

If this is going to be a last upgrade for AGP then i would get the fastest card i could with the best Shader technology and Video playback for a lil bit of money say 7800Gs Evga at $100.00@Fry's and Know the card will perform on a 20"widescreen with out any issue...You can even get a x1900 for cheap but Picture wise i would go with a Nvidia at this time..Even if you dont play games this card has smooth Video play back and is way faster at opening apps under vista and is FULLY SUPPORTED under Vista in 32bit and X64bit...


Well this is the most recent for FX on Vista...
http://www.nvidia.com/object/winvista_x86_96.85.html Vista 32bit Fx series

If you your interested in a new budget performing card to speed up your apps ,Im not saying game with,, which you could ,here are some options

To top it off , any of these AGPx4/x8 cards will do .. price was $250 and higher (4 months ) ago on these same cards and they will all do the job!....7800gsEvga 256mb can be had for $99.00 AR @fry,s

http://shop1.outpost.com/product/5175386?site=sr:SEARCH:MAIN_RSLT_PG

Or a x1650xt HIS 512mb AGP can be had for $160,00 AR @ the Egg

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814161065

Or a x1950Gt 256mb AGP Sapphire can be had for $155.00 @ the Egg

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814102093

There are many deals out there if ya l@@k ..Personally i would grab a 7series card for price performance and future SUPPORT..It will be a last upgrade ,Was for my 754 ..Which is still going strong! Best $100 that you could spend with out a worry. By the way the Vista Score i just read off my 754 rig sitting behind me hehee
 
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