You're probably trying to install the drivers on top of the current ones, which is a terrible thing to do if you care about stability.

yup, always uninstall the old ones first before u install the new ones. I usually use driver sweeper 2 wipe the old drivers out before installing new ones!

That is a waste of time and hard drive space. A better strategy is to have DriverSweeper handy. Just fire up Windows in safe mode after a driver uninstall and make DriverSweeper scan for remaining files. It will completely wipe out every single remaining registry key and file of the uninstalled driver it finds, making the next install of the driver about as safe as it gets.

oh, I forgot about driver sweeper! yeah, I totally use that for wiping the old drivers out. I also edited my post up there about using system restore.

That wasn't such a good idea, now my post is contradicting itself. But yes, DriverSweeper is a great tool.

Of course i looked at the benchmarks..
In the Source games that i've seen, in the option menu it also says "Runs best on ATI". According to TomsHardware (at least when i last looked) ATI came out tops for Source..

Yeah, most games have an ATi or nVidia logo plastered over it (nVidia's cocky "The way it is meant to be played" logo comes to mind). It would take too much time (time is money, too) to write an engine that has both nVidia and ATi optimization profiles (essentially the engine would need to be written twice), so it has to be a case of either-or, or neither if developers want to take a more neutral approach to make the brute force count rather than the specialized features.

Why so many developers choose to optimize for nVidia over ATi I don't know, though.

I got a Geforce 3 and I have to say that thing goes like hell. It manages Doom 1 and 2 without a problem.... Heck it even runs Unreal 1 without any problems. And man that card got some overclocking potential. Combined with an Intel Pentium 3 and 256 mb ram....... just wonderful! I also got a Geforce 4 and its even better. I thought it cant get better but the 6600 gt golden sample also was good. The 7800 gt also had its potential. Now I got an 8800 Ultra and that thing doesn't run Doom 1 or 2 very good..... The cooler is too big too and heck it gets up to 80° C and if you set the core clock over 675 mhz it will freeze very soon because of Voltage problems. Modern Crap If I would have known I would have kept my Geforce 3 with the Pentium 3. Though I really like my 2 Intel Xeon 5160. Those combined with a Geforce 3 would be ultimate


Sorry this had to be

All sarcasm aside, no sane person upgrades a system just to play games that are older than the previous setup.

exactly! @bjossi.. the reason they write for NVIDIA instead of ATI is, imo, NVIDIAS just ahead of ATI right now! but, thats just my opinion!

Perhaps, but I like to see it as a form of behind-closed-doors business deals too. After all ATi are scoring very high on benchmarks despite nVidia's share of games that are (said to be) optimized for their cards.

yup, I think ATIS gonna catch up 2 NVIDIA if they havent already!

im sorry ur post is contradicting urself bjossi. i prolly shouldnt have done that. sorry!

Hows it run?

Ive never had a problem with Nvidia and Im running two 8800GS's right now, not the best setup but it does the job maxing out in pretty much everything I throw at it in 1280x1024 so im not spending 200+ Dollars on a new card just yet. But I might switch to ATI in the next chapter of my gaming book its still up in the air.

mine runs amazing right now, I have every game maxed out at 1680x1050 for resolution, especially crysis! my card costed $250!

Just goes to show how strong computers stand, while there is a decline in the world economy system, computer parts get cheaper. Today you can build a PC for less than what a console would cost, and has ancient hardware to boot.

Moores law baby! It goes hand and hand with price! As something new is invented that is two times more powerful then the last generation product, the last generation product drops in price. "The complexity for minimum component costs has increased at a rate of roughly a factor of two per year..."

So as of now which brand should I be shifting my eye towards for a cheap SLI system, no more than 200 dollars a card!

2+ GPUs is a waste of money, unless you can magically fight the laws of physics and get a 100% increase in performance. Go with a $400 single GPU, it'll give you far more lasting time. All SLi does is giving you more strength to keep beating a dying horse. For example it would make little sense to buy a companion for my 7900 GTX, it is old technology, I will see boosts here and there but it will still be DX9, SM3 and without CUDA. I'd be better off using the money I'd otherwise spend on a 7900 GTX and instead add it to the sum that will buy me a GTX 300 series or HD 5000 series of cards.