Baffling video hardware issue ... or maybe a processor issue...?

[SkyPork]

Hey guys,
I'm having an elusive glitch that I can't figure out. My system is 95% fine ... but a few things hint at a problem. #1 is the new iTunes: whenever I play one of their new h.264 videos, I'm lucky to get 2-3 frames per second. If I try to play the file on my laptop, which is a much weaker machine, it plays fine. The other thing I've noticed is this game: http://games.yahoo.com/console/zulug...hFMkEB.dAK.n0u
It's just a little Java game; not a big CPU hog or anything, and it too plays fine on my laptop .... but when I try playing it on the desktop, it crashes whatever browser (IExplorer or Firefox) I'm using.

I would suspect my video card, but 3d-intensive games (IE, Wolfenstein ET and Guild Wars) play just fine, at a high resolution and a good framerate.

I'd appreciate any ideas to help me track this problem down. I'm not used to asking for help on a forum, so forgive me if I forget to give some vital system info.

I've got an ATI Radeon 9600 video card with 256 megs. I'm using the latest NGO drivers.

My processor is an Athlon XP 2600+, running at (it says) 1.92 GHz. I have a gig of memory. My motherboard is an ABit NF7. I'm running Windows XP Home, Service Pack 2, which I keep up-to-date. My DirectX files are all updated.

Thanks in advance!

[PrairieDawg]

Re: Baffling video hardware issue ... or maybe a processor issue...?

Have you tried the latest drivers from ATI? It is possible that the NGO drivers have some issues with your particular hardware/program combination. Modified drivers are not always the most stable and are certainly not tested as well as the official ones.

[SkyPork]

Re: Baffling video hardware issue ... or maybe a processor issue...?

I thought about that ... but the reason I got the NGO drivers in the first place was because the ATI ones weren't giving me as much performance as I thought I should have.

I have a new clue as to my problem though: the Yahoo game I mentioned above works fine on my desktop .... if I disable my sound card! I'm using the built-in sound card on my motherboard; it's better than the old sound card I had. I'm in the process of looking for new drivers for it now. So, I guess I have more than one problem.... but the biggest one by far is my video performance for h.264 files. And before anyone suggests it: I have tried using Quicktime to play the files instead of iTunes .... it might give a slight improvement, but nothing worth celebrating.

[Kheldar]

Re: Baffling video hardware issue ... or maybe a processor issue...?

try installing the k-lite codec pack - that might fix the video issue