Hello,
I just got a new computer for xmas, and love it. I also bought an ATI Radeon x700 Pro 256MB GDDR3 PCI-e video card to make it the ultimate gaming machine. After I took out the original card (nVidia GeForce PCX 5300 128MB) and put in the new one, I noticed a couple of little probs with my games. For one, I'm getting a steady 60fps most of my games, which is fine, but I thought I would see fps' of 100 or more. Like in kotor, I enabled frame buffer effects, and it's supposed to make all the lights more realistic, and it doesn't even look like the effect is on. Someone said you have to change the aperture size to 256, since the other video card was 128MB. I went into the BIOS to try and change it, but the aperture setting is not there. Any info or help would be greatly appreciated. :D

Welcome to the PC Guide Forums!! :D

PCIe actually does not have an aperture size because it's not a bus for video cards only. PCIe is also used for other types of expansion cards, so if there were an aperture, every single card would need one! Not exactly good. ;) Besides, who needs apertures these days? We all have more than enough texture memory, right? :p

In terms of your frame rates and effects, did you by chance remove the old NVidia drivers before installing the new ATI drivers?

Actually, now that you mention it, I have a utility called Driver Cleaner that removes all drivers from a system for a video card. I did remove the nVidia drivers, but as the utility says, remains from older drivers are still left on your computer, even if you think you've removed it, so I'll try that utility to see if that clears up my problems. As for the aperture size, I had a feeling you might say that :p since it also going to be replacing regular pci slots as well. Thanks for the help, and I'll see if this problem resolves.

Ok, I used Driver Cleaner to erase the files still left from the nVidia card, reinstalled the latest Catalyst drivers, and I don't see any difference. Another game I tried to run, FarCry, wouldn't even start, it just goes to a black screen, which is really weird since the other card could run FarCry, but at slower framerates. Any clue as to what's going on would be helpful, thanks.