I use a voodoo3 card myself, and I know when it first came out this was the
rap against it, people were seeing "stuttering" in the games they played.
Unfortunately, there seemed to be many types of this stuttering and for
different reasons.  My general sense is that the voodoo3 is finicky about
having to share any of the computer's resources with anything else that
might be running in the background.  Let me ask first whether these problems
are seen during single play against the computer or only when playing
online?  That might narrow the offending program down.  I know that letting
a program like ICQ run in the background when i'm online playing a  game is
a big problem for me.  The other question might be whether it is one
particular game that is causing this problem or whether it is all games.
Perhaps there is a patch for the game that will help.  Usually the game has
a readme file that will list any known difficulties with various video cards
and drivers.  (It almost sounds like the game is using textures too large
for the voodoo3's 16mb of memory or some such similiar problem, and the game
pauses to reaccess either slower system RAM or even the HD for some reason.)
If the game uses Direct X, make sure he has the proper version required for
the game.  Finally, if he upgraded to voodoo3 from an earlier video card,
especially a voodoo2, I think one has to be careful to uninstall the
previous video card's drivers before installing the voodoo3 and its drivers
(actually, I see this is a new MB, so this suggestion is probably off the
mark).

I know this is a "shotgun" answer, but maybe something in this will be
helpful.

John Sproule

----- Original Message -----
From: Kathleen <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Sunday, April 09, 2000 2:15 AM
Subject: Video Card Stuttering??


> My friend has a Voodoo 3D FX (2000?) I think..Graphics card, running under
> W98, Abit motherboard (new as of today, but these symptoms presented
> themselves on the old MB too.
> 128 RAM, Celeron 533 chip ( as of today, too).. The old MB also had a
> Celeron
>
> He is playing a game--any game it seems and the video all of a sudden
> stalls--stops moving for a sec or two, then continues on again.. This
> happens every 15 seconds or so...This may be a vague description, for that
I
> am sorry, but does this sound like anything anyone has experienced or
knows
> about?

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