Problem with Radeon 7500 AGP...

[NewMan]

I have a Radeon 7500 card. My computer is running WinXP, and is fully
updated with directX 9.0c, and the latest driver from ATI.

I am having a problem with the SIMS2 Nightlife. When I enter "Buy &
Sell" mode, and attempt to buy or sell something, my video card
crashes. The new ATI drivers reported that the graphics card had
stopped processing commands, and sent an e-mail to ATI.

My daughter has played the SIMS2, and SIMS2 University without ANY
problems, but the new program seems to be crahing the card.

When I click back on the game in the task bar, the cursor goes back to
the game cursor, but the screen shown in still the desktop. As I click
on the screen, I can hear things happening in the gamespace, so I can
conculde that the game itself has not actually "crashed", but the
video card is of in lala land.

Any ideas? I could not seem to find any reference to the possibility
that the 7500 might be flashable on the ATI web site.

As always, all ideas greatly appreciated.

Thanks

 

[Augustus]

I have a Radeon 7500 card. My computer is running WinXP, and is fully
updated with directX 9.0c, and the latest driver from ATI.

I am having a problem with the SIMS2 Nightlife. When I enter "Buy &
Sell" mode, and attempt to buy or sell something, my video card
crashes. The new ATI drivers reported that the graphics card had
stopped processing commands, and sent an e-mail to ATI.

Try rolling back to the previous driver. Another point would be that this is
an ancient DX7 card. Installing DX9.0c does not enable DX9, it just allows
the game to run in compatibility mode. I found the SIMS2 to be sluggish on
a 128Mb 8500 DX8 card. An upgrade to an actual inexpensive DX9 card will
yield some very impressive results. A 9800 Pro is only around $100 and is
more than a quantum leap in visuals and performance.

 

[NewMan]

Try rolling back to the previous driver. Another point would be that this is
an ancient DX7 card. Installing DX9.0c does not enable DX9, it just allows
the game to run in compatibility mode. I found the SIMS2 to be sluggish on
a 128Mb 8500 DX8 card. An upgrade to an actual inexpensive DX9 card will
yield some very impressive results. A 9800 Pro is only around $100 and is
more than a quantum leap in visuals and performance.

No luck on the driver roll-back.

I did get lucky at a local supplier though! I got an nVidea FX5500 -
256:

http://www.evga.com/products/moreinfo.asp?pn=256-A8-N313-AX

for $89 CDN$

I installed this in the daughters computer, problem has been solved. I
presume your comments about the 7500 running in compatibility mode
were quite correct.

Thanks for the help!