Radeon 2600 HD showing up as a 3600, having trouble playing old games

[Guest]

First post

About 4 years ago I built a computer with the following specs:
Q6600
4GB of DDR2 RAM
nVidia 8800GTS 512
500GB HD
Windows Vista

A couple months ago my 8800GTS konked out on me and I was forced to purchase a ATI Radeon 2600 HD, I installed it, wiped my HD while reinstalling Vista, installed the correct drivers, and reinstalled some of my games. I was pretty disappointed with the performance with games such as CSS, I figured it should have no problem playing a game older than the card.

Now heres where things got weird. I noticed that my computer was recognizing my card as a 3600, not a 2600. For a little bit I thought that somehow I had been sent the wrong card, then I realized that the 3600 runs off of PCI x16 2.0 and I only have x16 1.0 slots. Anyone have any ideas why its showing up as a 3600?

Also, since I installed the card, my computer tends to have the BSOD ever few hours, this has been going on for a couple months. It doesn't seem to matter whether I'm doing something taxing like playing a game or working on a document in Microsoft Word, still BSOD. Weird thing though, the BSOD stopped happening the past week.

Finally, I purchased some older games after I realized that CSS is still going to lag on Medium/Low. Return to Castle Wolfenstein will have some weird graphical lag every once in a while, which seems absurd for a game that came out back in 2001 playing on a card that came out in 2006 or so. Also, my brother started playing GTA San Andreas which will run at close to 3 FPS if I have anything set above the bear minimum.

Anyways I'm just trying to figure out if there is any solution to my problems here...

 

[chicofehr]

I owned both the 1600 and the 2600 and I found the 2600 to be slower then the 1600 LOL Not sure if that helps. The 8800 would be much faster by far and also the 2000 series was plagued with problems and was in many cases slower then the previous generation. The 2000 series aren't gaming friendly in my experience and are only good for web surfing. Maybe try using it on a friends computer and see if its the card or maybe its your computer. It should handle a little better then that though.

 

[Guest]

Ouch, didn't know it was that bad. I'll give it a try in my buddy's computer. Thanks for the help.

 

[Guest]

Reviving this as none of my friends computers have PCI x 16 1.0 slots... No luck trying it anywhere else. I am considering trying to overclock it but I'm still struggling with the problem where it is recognized as a 3600...

Started playing Far Cry 1 yesterday, I have to play it at lower graphic settings then my old PC with a P4 2.8ghz, nvidia 6600, and 512MB of RAM....

Any other ideas?