Question GPU Issues - 'Ultimate' S478/AGP Rig

daniel.maxwell

Commendable
Sep 24, 2018
14
1
1,515
Hi all,

I've put together what I consider to be a system that's built on the best of the hardware the XP era had to offer:
  • Asus P4C800-E Deluxe
  • P4 3.4GHz 'Gallatin' SL7CH Extreme Edition
  • 4x 1GB OCZ PC3200 RAM
  • Sapphire HD 3850 512Mb AGP
  • 500W Generic PSU
  • 80GB WD HDD (OK, so my storage could be better!)
  • Windows XP SP3
I recently rebuilt my rig ditching my last mobo, an Asrock P4i65G - and in doing so gained 2x extra DIMM slots.

Before I swapped motherboards/reinstalled Windows XP my graphics experience in games like FEAR went downhill without rhyme or reason - I had all settings more or less maxed out running seamlessly , and all of a sudden I had to turn the resolution/detail down to retain a reasonable level of frame rate. I hoped this would be addressed with extra memory and a fresh install of XP on my new Asus P4C800-E.

With my Asus mobo today, even on the desktop the graphics seem sluggish - struggling even when I move open windows around the desktop, or when viewing photos it takes a few seconds for pictures to fully render.

I thought this would be a driver issue, but despite downloading some legacy ATI drivers nothing has improved. Any ideas?

Cheers.
 

daniel.maxwell

Commendable
Sep 24, 2018
14
1
1,515
did u install agp driver? its in chipset drivers
asus appear to not include it in download section, and intel also removed it
https://soggi.org/files/driver/Intel_i848i852-6series_9.4.0.1027_Win2k-8.1_x86-x64.zip
The AGP drivers are pre-installed - looking in device manager --> systems confirms this. It does however highlight that PCI/ethernet/audio controller drivers are missing, so I'll need to leverage your suggested download anyway.

Back to the issue - I substituted the HD3850 AGP for a FX5900XT AGP, removed the ATI drivers and installed the appropriate Nvidia drivers, and the issue with sluggish graphics immediately went away. By process of elimination it's either the HD3850 card itself, or the drivers.

How can I be sure which it is?