I just replaced a GF2 MX 440 card with a 9000 Pro. Would have rathered a 9700 but don't have the money! But when looking for cards I was under the impression that the 9000 Pro should be able to out perform the GF2 - easily in fact! Was I wrong in assuming that? I've got he latest drivers from ATI (3.1?) Went thru the unistall old drivers at contol panel, started up in safe mode, ran a driver cleaner, restarted in reg mode and then installed latest drivers. Framerates are not what I expected. That is to say, they aren't much different than the GF2's were. What would be the best drivers to use in this case. My machine is a Dell p4 1.6 gz., 640 ram and I'm benchmarking using F1 2002 with the GTR 2002 mod. Please let me know what I need to do with this card to make it fly. Thanks all.

It was probably a bad decision to get a 9000 at this stage. At least if you expect high performance in current games. You always need the latest (and then some) to really get them to shine.

That said, and I could be wrong about this (no!! I'm never wrong!! ), but the game you mentioned is very CPU dependend. In fact, most driving and flight simulators get their grunt from the CPU. Therefore, it could very well be that your performance bottleneck has not moved, but should you get a faster processor (or try overclocking the one you have) you will have a higher ceiling of performance with the Radeon 9000.

If it is really underperforming you may want to try the Nvidia driver remocal utility featured on the main page (coincidence? do you believe in synchronicity? heh) to make sure that all references to the old display adapter are removed. If you are very frustrated and feel brave, try reinstalling your OS from scratch. This is, unfortunately, a good practice with Microsoft operating systems. They get cluttered over time. The upside is that you get a nice surprise when you do reinstall. Suddenly your aging computer feels fast again.

I recently went from a GF2 Ti DDR to a 9000Pro and noticed a huge jump in game speed. There's definately something else wrong there.

The 9000Pro isn't all that bad of a card, it's only slightly behind the 8500, and only in multitexturing games.

I'd try a NVidia driver removal and the Catalyst 3.1's (http://www.ati.com) as well as DX9.0.

...Hopefully you have DX9 installed... cause Catalyst 3.x sers are DX9 drivers!... If this is not the reason, I would suggest that you try Omega drivers ..

edit: I moved from GeForce 2 MX to my current 9000 Pro and have not regretted my decision... ofcourse theres allways better cards, but is the performance increase worth 400€?!?!

I agree on the money issue for sure. If I had 325 us I would have bought a 9700 Pro but not everyones got that kind of extra money. My next system I'll try to get a powerhouse card but for now this one should work if I can get it working right. Thanks for everyone's input.