Video Card question--

This may seem like a stupid question... but sometime ago my uncle gave me the computer I am using right now. I want to upgrade my video card but I don't know how. I don't even know what my video card is. Is there any way I can find out what my video card is without having to contact my uncle. I need to know what my video card is.

 

John J,

It's quite possible that you don't even have a video card per se. Many of the modern computers being sold have what is called "Integrated Video" which means it's contained on the Motherboard rather than on an auxillary plug in card.

You'll have to give your make and model and perhaps someone will know off hand what category yours falls into. If not we can probably look it up on the manufacturer's site page and find out for you.

Post back with all the gory details.

 

Some one told me to do the following and I figured out what my video card is---I went to start--settings--control panel--display--settings--advanced--adapter
and at the top of the window my video card was displayed-- I have a
3D Blaster Banshee PCI/AGP. Does any one know how I can download new drivers for it??? I am trying to fix an opengl error that I'm getting every time I try to play a computer game that runs on a Quake 3 engine. Sorry I did not reply sooner.

 

http://www.americas.creative.com/support/

 

Hi John J./

You'll probably not get much satisfaction even with a driver update. Your Banshee card was produced by 3DFx which is no longer in business. When they were, their gpus (graphics processing unit) were designed to support the Glide API. It allowed games like Unreal to look great on your monitor. Quake is written to the OpenGL API which is the API that nVida's Geforce cards are designed around. Quake can be played on the 3DFx cards but rendering is done by software instead of hardware. The result is a very big hit on frame rates.

You can pick up a Geforce MX 400 64MB for under $50 and should be able to install with help from the members here. Your current card probably has only 16MB of memory so an upgrade would make quite a difference. Another easy and effective upgrade is to add more main memory.

Tin

 

So there is basically no way to get games that run on a Quake 3 engine to work--I think i'll take your advice to buy a new video card-but I'm getting a new computer anyway-so I think i'll wait till then.

 

Tin ...... not so fast on spending this guy's money. One of my best machines is running a 3DFX Voodoo5500 with XP. I've also got a 128mb DDR Raedon and a 64mb NVidia running on a couple of others but the 3DFX still performs with the best of them.

Go to http://www.voodoofiles.com/ and do some searching for drivers for your card. You won't be disappointed.

Rockster2U aka RocksterOnRoad

 

John J., didn't say you could not get Quake to run. Just that with the Banshee it would not "look" as good. Lower frame rates and less detail. Been there done that.

Rockster, big difference in Voodoo5500 and a Banshee. I wasn't suggesting that he buy a $400 cutting edge card. My daughters machine, with a 14" monitor, is using my old Banshee card. Works fine for her purposes.... school work, music, web surfing, and a few DirectX games. There comes a time when older equipment needs to be upgraded.

Tin

 

I have been to voodoofiles.com and downloaded a opengl fix. I thought this would be the right driver because I keep getting the error-- GLW_StartOpenGL() - could not load OpenGL subsystem.
When I downloaded the file I then extracted it to C:\Windows\System---
the error GLW_StartOpenGL() - could not load OpenGL subsystem-- still comes up.
I tried to download drivers from opengl.com but I get the error--Could not communicate to network server--error 26.
I have no idea where to go from here-any more ideas??

 

Ok... I am in really bad shape... I installed or unstalled or did something to my system and have completely ******* it up. Every time I turn on my computer it's in safe mode but I can still use the internet. I have no idea what I did. Any ideas?? I'll post back with more info or if I solve the problem.

 

I think I have to do some surgery on my computer to fix the problem. I think i'll try to reinstall my video components to fix the problem. But-I don't really know what is causing the problem in the first place--I think it's one of those files I downloaded from the web. Does anyonw know how I can find out what this problem is and fix it. I am using the internet now with my computer, so not everything is messed up. The only big problem is that my screen looks really bad. It looks identical to when the computer goes into safe mode. When I try to use my computer normally (not in safe mode) I would get a message saying "Your display adapter is not configured properly. To correct the problem click OK to start the Hardware Installation wizard." After that the computer assumed that I had Installed new hardware like a video card. And I didn't. But after about 4 hours I tried to start my computer again normally but only the things like the starup windows 98 screen would appear on my moniter but after that the screen would appear completely black even though I could hear the things that normally happen on the computer in the backround. What should I do to fix this problem?? If you have any questions about what I wrote please ask-I know this post was long and a little hard to understand.

By the way the word above that was marked out by stars wasn't a swear word--I don't know why it was censored.

 

Uninstall your video drivers and then run Regcleaner available from http://www.jv16.org/ to remove all registry entries associated with your video card. Be cautious, but this is a great program to clean up your system after an uninstall.

Then download these reference drivers and extract them to a file (set one up on your C drive like Video Drivers) http://www.voodoofiles.com/1852

Then run the setup program from your new folder after closing all running applications except explorer and systray.

Rockster2U aka RocksterOnRoad