Low Framerate FFXI - Visiontek HD 3650

[Angelcaido]

I just recently purchased a Visiontek HD 3650 AGP to replace my dead ATI 9800 Pro and am now having framerate issues with the Visiontek card.

I know my system is old but here it is:

Mobile AMD Athlon 64 3400+
DSI Lanparty NF3 250gb
1gb DDR PC3500
Visiontek HD 3650 AGP 1gb

With the 9800, ff would run fine at full settings however with the new card I'm running at under 10 fps in crowded zones with half settings. I've turned turned anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering to use application settings in CCC as well as bumped up the clock speeds with Overdrive. I've tried to use the ATI drivers but it seems that I have to use the Visiontek (unable to install errors with the ati drivers).

Any help would be appreciated.

[Xanthe]

It's the Catalyst driver version you're using. Starting with 9.3 onward any driver you use will cause major slowdowns in FFXI. I had this issue for a while until I "downgraded". I'm currently running smooth using the 9.2 drivers, but the forced AA/AF doesn't work in that release. Try using 9.1 if possible as that's the most recent driver version that still supports forced AA/AF and doesn't cause the frame rate issue.

[Angelcaido]

Thanks for the info; did not know about that. I've gone and tried the earlier drivers from ATI
s site however I'm getting this error when trying to install any driver from ATI's site: "Setup did not find a driver compatible with your current hardware or operating system. Setup will now exit."

Any idea where (reliable) I can find other versions of the drivers than ATI's site?

[Crowort]

Try this link for info on this issue, has a link to some kind of fixed driver for agp cards.

Just got Visiontek HD 2600pro AGP, can't install driver - Rage3D Discussion Area

[Xanthe]

Thanks for the info; did not know about that. I've gone and tried the earlier drivers from ATI
s site however I'm getting this error when trying to install any driver from ATI's site: "Setup did not find a driver compatible with your current hardware or operating system. Setup will now exit."

Any idea where (reliable) I can find other versions of the drivers than ATI's site?

Newer cards aren't backwards compatible with all older drivers. Your best bet is installing the drivers that came with your card, and then go backwards incrementally from there. If you don't make the cutoff then you may be out of luck.

[Isiolia]

It's not a new model chip though, 3650s have been on the market for a while now.

The problem is possibly that you downloaded the general Catalyst release, but you have an AGP card, and AGP is no longer supported in it.
Catalyst AGP Hotfix - Radeon HD 3000 and Radeon HD 2000 Series AGP products is the latest version of the AGP driver, may need to hunt for an earlier version if that one doesn't resolve the performance issues.

[EvilSid]

Well, I replaced my radeon9800 too, with an HD 4650.

The oldest drivers I found are 8.66 but the Anisotropic still doesn't work.

Any suggestion?