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Swapped Radeon X1050 for HD6670 / Performance & Stability Gone

Last response: in Graphics & Displays
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First, I have been out of the loop for while and yes, this current system I am working with blows.

I have a very modest system that I use for some low end gaming and a few other things...there are many improvements I could make but few I can afford.

At any rate, I picked up a Radeon HD6670 2GB DDR3 for dirt cheap and figured it couldn't be any worse then what I had. Well, the whole system just drags and drags with that card and it's drivers installed. Games try to launch but just hang and eventually crash, everything is slow from the O/S and it's various interfaces to individual programs such as Firefox etc. Something is making the system very unstable.

The video card installs with no errors, Catalyst Control Center correctly I.D.'s it, I don't even get any errors at all....none....the system just performs horribly and games (Steam) won't play.

I have tried several version of Catalyst Control Center going back to the 10's and that does not change anything. Tried just running the driver only with no CCC. Removing all the ATI software and swapping back to the original Radeon X1050 puts the system back right where it was before with no problems.

One last thing, the system slowdown with the new card does not occur until after the drivers and CCC is installed. Prior to that the system responds quickly and is snappy. I am running on no drivers right now as it is the only way the system works smoothly......games in general (Steam) refuse to play though


Details
Mobo: ECS 761GX-M754 (w/ latest BIOS 070227)
CPU: Athlon XP 3000+
RAM: 2GB DDR3
PS: Thermaltake TR2 430W
I have only one hard rive which is a SATA Barracuda 7200rpm 160GB
Running WinXP SP3
OLD CARD: RADEON X1050 256MB DDR2 (PCI-E v1?)
NEW CARD: RADEON HD6670 2GB DDR3 (PCI-E v2.1)


Something has to be causing this but I don't know what.....I suspect some sort of system incompatibility with PCI-E v2.1 but the install process went very smoothly....

any suggestions? (besides spending more money)

Also, should I bother trying a PCI-E v 2.0 card? PCI-E v 2.0 is 100% backward compatible (supposedly) with PCI-E v 1 so I was thinking that might be worth a shot. Should I bother trying say, a GeForce GT630 PCI-E V 2.0 card? If I can just eke out some slight performance gains I would be satisfied...as long as it doesn't make my system slower lmao

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I searched around a bit for "DriverSweeper" and the one people here seem to be referring to (from phyxion.net) is no longer available. It says it is now "Driver Fusion" from Treexy? CNET link for info http://download.cnet.com/Driver-Fusion/3000-2086_4-7574...

I was a bit leery of it so I just used my old stand by CCCleaner and it found some old ATI stuff lying about and cleaned it up.

The driver uninstall/reinstall process seemed to go pretty smoothly so I don't know. Maybe I will try out this Driver Fusion unless this "Driver Sweeper" is still out there somewhere or Driver Fusion is worth trying.

reformat and reinstall is a last resort alternative but I am not sure if I am quite at that point yet.
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Well I tried everything and after a fresh install of WinXP it seemed to run ok in normal conditions but any full screen 3-D was all screwed up, seemed colors like red and green were coming in but others like blue, yellow etc were not so everything had a strange washed out look. The Direct X "spinning logo" on the dxdiag test looked like a ball of yarn or spaghetti or something.

I swapped out for a Geforce GT630 and results were immediate and satisfying.


I can only suspect it was either

1. a bad card

2. an issue with PCI-E v 2.1 and my PCI-E v 1 mobo

3. some other unknown "system incompatibility.


I don't want to point fingers at AMD/ATI as I could have tried another Radeon non PCI-E v 2.1 card (or even just another of the same as the first to rule out a bad card), but frankly I was just frustrated and wanted to go another direction. I am just glad my cruddy games got a shiny new coat of paint and a turbo boost. :) 

That is what I was thinking too (left over legacy drivers) but man, I mean I did a full (not quick) format of the drive, reinstalled WinXP and then did a fresh install from the disk that came with the card. Pretty sure that eliminates left over driver bits as a possible cause...but hey, who knows. All I know is Left4Dead looks freaking awesome. I am gonna have to check out some Far Cry
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