Radeon 9250 and Windows 7

deanj20

deanj20

New Member
Hey guys -

So I bought this computer on the cheap about a month ago off of Craigslist - $65 for a new Asus P4S800MX mobo w/ a 2.8GHz Pentium 4, 1GB RAM, cheap PSU, 60GB HDD and a case, with a legit Windows 7 Professional installation.

It runs really great, but the on-board graphics suck. So, trying to stay on the cheap side, I bought an ATI Radeon 9250 256MB AGP video card on eBay for $30. Got it in today, but it seems that this card is a little out-dated - I let Windows install it's basic driver, then I tried installing the drivers from the CD, but they fail to install, even if I run it in compatibility mode for XP - I tried the latest drivers from ATI too, but they don't have Vista/7 drivers for this card, and the XP drivers have the same result as the ones on the CD... so I've decided to just leave it installed with the Windows drivers...

But I'm unable to get the cool Aero effects (ie Transparency), and the Windows Experience rating is a 1.0 - because it's not recognizing my card or needs updated drivers.

So, I guess what I'm asking is - is there any way to get this card to run right under Windows 7? Is it that bad of a card? I don't know much about GPUs, but given the specs, I thought it sounded like a pretty good deal at $30... Or should I just throw this thing in my step-dad's XP computer so that he can play Microsoft Flight Simulator X w/ all the bells and whistles?
 
That video card is so outdated, I highly doubt you'll find drivers good enough for windows 7. I would recommend putting it into an XP system to play low to mid range games.
 
$30 seems high, i would try to find a buyer and get a better/newer card. It seems you are on a tight budget which is fine just try to do your best, look for the best deal you can find i suppose.
 
That card is pretty old you might never get it to work. I would see if you can find a cheap motherboard replacement that has PCIe if you really wont to be able to buy any kind of a decent card with out paying a lot for an outdated AGP card. Also I doubt that will do anything for FSX.
 
Yeah - that's what I was thinking - just trying to max this board out and sell it on Craigslist eventually - still, AGP or not, seems like this card should be capable of running the Aero environment full throttle - it can't be that graphic intensive - I used to have a nice laptop with Vista when it first came out, and it ran Aero w/ all the bells and whistles no problem... I don't remember what the onboard graphics specs were, but I'm sure that a 256MB card could handle it...

Do you guys think that it's that the hard can't handle Aero, or that ATI isn't making drivers to support older cards so that we'll have to buy new ones? I guess I ought to learn how to code video drivers! What are those written in anyway? C/C++ or Assembly or what? I'll bet it would be more trouble than it's worth, or someone would have likely done it already... I don't know the first thing about drivers really - just that I need one that'll let me get all of the "purty effects" under Win 7...

I was looking at this card - the question is, will it even be worth the $70 on this old board???
 
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I had the EXACT same card in my old box that was running XP, i upgraded to 7 Ultimate and there were no drivers for this card and the Microsoft Compatibility website said the card would not work, and the Mobo only as AGP so i just got a cheap Radeon 9800 PRO, works fine and was only $13. The card got 2.9 in Areo performance but 4.3 in 3D Gaming.
 
deanj20 said:
Yeah - that's what I was thinking - just trying to max this board out and sell it on Craigslist eventually - still, AGP or not, seems like this card should be capable of running the Aero environment full throttle - it can't be that graphic intensive - I used to have a nice laptop with Vista when it first came out, and it ran Aero w/ all the bells and whistles no problem... I don't remember what the onboard graphics specs were, but I'm sure that a 256MB card could handle it...

Do you guys think that it's that the hard can't handle Aero, or that ATI isn't making drivers to support older cards so that we'll have to buy new ones? I guess I ought to learn how to code video drivers! What are those written in anyway? C/C++ or Assembly or what? I'll bet it would be more trouble than it's worth, or someone would have likely done it already... I don't know the first thing about drivers really - just that I need one that'll let me get all of the "purty effects" under Win 7...

I was looking at this card - the question is, will it even be worth the $70 on this old board???
Click to expand...

Looking at what the rating the 9800 PRO got in Areo performance I think that the 9250, well cant handle Areo,
 
I wouldn't bother with that card. It's just way too slow. Get at least either a Radeon 9600 or Geforce FX 5700, if not a Radeon 9800 or a Geforce FX 5900. Just make sure your PSU can handle them. I'm running a Geforce FX 5900 Ultra on a 250w PSU on a friend's computer, but I think it's pushing it. Definitely don't put it on a 250w PSU if it's something like Athena Power or Coolmax.
 
Well, evidently there is no "work-around" to get this card to run the Aero desktop environment. I've tried every registry hack and program I could find, and I've decided it boils down to this: Aero requires Direct X 9. My graphics card does not support Direct X 9, and therefore, cannot run Aero. So poor me. Guess I'll have to get another card, and that's that...
 
deanj20 said:
Well, evidently there is no "work-around" to get this card to run the Aero desktop environment. I've tried every registry hack and program I could find, and I've decided it boils down to this: Aero requires Direct X 9. My graphics card does not support Direct X 9, and therefore, cannot run Aero. So poor me. Guess I'll have to get another card, and that's that...
Click to expand...
That's weird, I thought that the Radeon 9000 series did support DirectX 9. Maybe only the high-end ones do? You should check that out. I think if you want a good AGP card, though, you're gonna need a decent PSU (at least around 350w.) You see, if you had PCI-e, you could get a really new low-end low-power-consumption card, but with AGP, to make it good, you need a beefy old card.
 
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