New member says hello, how are you, and what's this bug doing in my Radeon?

[Goryboy]

Hi, all,

 

Just a quick hello from a new member. Recently bought a Dell D-8400, Intel IV 3.0 G, 1 G DDRAM, 160 G Western Digital, with SoundMax, Soundblaster Live 24, DVD, CD-RW, and the ubiquitous ATI Radeon 300 SE/128 mg PCI Express video card. It is the latter item that is quietly driving me insane.

 

This computer should scream from start to finish. I've stripped all background programs and services to the bare bones, via MSConfig, kept the h/d at about 120 Gigs spare room and run defrag, scandisk and diskclean weekly. One would think that a genuine Intel PIV at 3.00 Ghz, with 600 fsb, 1 full Gig of DDRAM and a 128-mg graphics card would keep things moving fairly brisk -- but no. The video is constantly bogging down, causing repeated reboots to keep the system feeling "fresh." For a dedicated gamer, this is disaster.

 

How can I be sure my D-8400 isn't having a conflict of some sort with the ATI Radeon card? I've read about just such a conflict on this and other forums in the past; that's why I joined. Any way of fixing this (if that is indeed the culprit), or does anyone have another answer for slow, sluggish video performance?

 

Thanks!

 

John