New card install, Game won't run

[leatherface1974]

Hi All-

I just picked up an e-VGA Nvidia 5500FX card. I installed it and loaded the latest drivers. I tested the card out with City of Heroes and Star Wars Galaxies and they ran great. The Nvidia 5500fx card came with Battlefield 1942 packaged in. I installed it and tried to run it, but it ran what appeared to be around 1-2 frames per second. The animated white "EA" screen came up, but the animation was barely moving at all. It took a good 5-10 minutes just for that screen to finally go away and the game menu very very slowly started to appear. I thought that maybe the disc was screwed up, so I downloaded the demo version off of fileplanet. I attempted to run it and once again, it barely moved.

Now, this is the funny part-

Before I installed this Nvidia 5500FX card, I had an Nvidia Geforce 2/MX card installed. I had downloaded the BF1942 demo once earlier with that card, and it ran perfectly. I really can't figure out why BF1942 is not working with my new Nvidia card, especially since it was a bundle package. The 5500fx card runs every other game I throw at it ranging from Star Wars Galaxies, Jedi Academy, City of Heroes, Halo, etc.

Any thoughts/suggestions?

[Whyzman]

If the card is working with every game you throw at it but Battlefield, I would suspect that a problem does exist between the game and card drivers.

Have you checked the Battlefield web site for patches or updates??

Do they have a forum directly related to Battlefield?? If so, I would think that others have encountered similar problems, and might have some answers...

(edit) Also, what driver version are you using??

[leatherface1974]

I checked out the Battlefield 1942 website, and went through the forums. It appears as if only 1 other person had the same problem, but no one has posted a response at all, and its been a week or so. Im thinking it has to be something with the actual card itself. As I said in my previous post, the geforce2 mx card ran the game with no problem whatsoever, and i was using the original drivers with that card. On the new card I tried both the drivers that came with it and then I updated to the latest version, which was xxx.5656. But still nothing.

I would like to play the game since it did come with the card, but it won't be the end of the world if I can't.

[Whyzman]

One other thought is if you have the latest BIOS for your motherboard...it could be something there that is providing the "glitch" to get things going properly...

You might want to check your motherboard's website and see if anyone has anything to say about your card or the drivers that might be a problem...

[malcore]

Don't know the specs of your computer, but sometimes when upgrading to a video card that is newer than your motherboard and using very recent video drivers updating the motherboard's chipset drivers, especially the AGP or GART drivers can help quite a bit.

[deddard]

Have you tried using older drivers for the card?
NVidia are notorious for having shaky drivers in their new releases - I used to see this sort of problem a lot on the Delta Force series of games. The solution was usually to go back to the last version of the drivers.

[leatherface1974]

I checked my mobo's website and there was not any info regarding the graphics card or known issues. I do feel that the problem lies somewhere between the mobo's bios and the gfx card drivers. I really REALLY don't feel safe at all trying to flash my mobo bios, so I don't thing I'm gonna try to update that. I will check back on evga's website and perhaps install an older driver to see if that works.

I also want to add my specs- maybe that will provide insight-

Biostar M7NCD mobo
Athlon XP 2100+ processor (runs at about 2.0ghz)
512mb ram
nvidia fx 5500 card
80gb seagate HD
16x DVD rom

(keep in mind- the game ran great with the old gfx card- Nvidia Geforce 2 MX No issues until the new card came in)

[malcore]

I don't think a BIOS update is necessary, but a motherboard chipset driver update might help. Even just re-installing the same chipset drivers for the motherboard from the CD that came with the board can help with quirks after changing video drivers, not to mention the entire card.