WOOT! NEW GFX!

Yaaaaay! I finally got my new graphics card and got it installed yesterday! It's an ATI Radeon B2 3450 512 PCIE, which if you understand what that means, you're smarter than I am. All I know is that my graphics are SO much improved from what they were. I was so excited, I snapped a few shots to share!





Wow, the wallpaper has flowers on it, and not blobs! And the weaving on the dog basket EXISTS now! And wood grain! Yeehaw!




Check out that shadow! Also loving the texture of the grass.



Wowee! Those are shoes in those chat bubbles! I never knew!



Booyah, my mirrors finally, you know, mirror things!



This painting didn't improve too much with the new card, but it's still clearer. I think the painting is just lame.



Damn, Vinnie, you looked better blurry. But at least you have fingers now instead of meat mittens!




Awwwww.




Is that a six pack of beer in your refrigerator? I'm guessing that or you really love A-1 steak sauce.



And finally, the best part: I have an actual 'hood now! Instead of houses surrounded by the mysterious mists of nothing! Sooooo cooool.



So yeah, I'm nerdsquealing all over the place here. My only problem is that when I installed the graphics card, I lost my sound. I've checked all the obvious things: everything is plugged in in the right place, turned on, and turned up. The system is not on mute. The correct audio device is selected and says it's working properly. I tried the less obvious things: updating my drivers. And I even tried the things that seemed to have caused the problem for other people: going to the BIOS and making sure that the onboard audio was set to 'on.' Still no go. It's really difficult to play without sound, but I want to revel in my new graphics card! Do any of you really techie people out there have any suggestions? Dell is supposed to call me back, but the woman I talked to before seemed like she didn't have the faintest clue what she's talking about. Also, I think it's pretty bad that I've not memorized the website for the dellconnect service. Any tips would be more than welcome, as I'm in agony that I finally got the graphics card installed and now have no sound to go with it!

Just wanted to share, and sorry, but there's about a round of old pics still to go, so the new graphics in my storyline won't show up for a little while yet.

10 comments:

Update: My sound is fixed! Woot! Now I have pretty new graphics AND sound. Finally, everything seems to be working properly. Hoorah. Just in time for me to go back to work. /irony.

Wooo! I still remember the feeling of being able to see the equalizer bars move on the stereo, and the pool water mirroring the surroundings! (Bought new computer last spring, so had it now for 9 months. Just beginning to get used to having great pictures (or good, I feel now. You know, they COULD be even better.... :))

Yay! I've been lusting after a Radeon 3-4000 series graphics card for a while. I'm happy for you, your pictures look great!

J68 - Haha, I know, it's so terrible because I JUST installed the graphics card, and I'm like, "HM. IT STILL DOESN'T LOOK AS GOOD AS MAO'S." Because she has like...the world's most awesome techie computer that I could never afford to build, let alone buy! But I'm delighted nonetheless. Yay for fingers!

Francesca - I think this is going to be the beginning of a very bad habit for me... I have a feeling video graphics cards will be like tattoos... you get one, and suddenly you can't help but want another! I'm delighted, though, and hopefully it won't be painful to look at the pixellated pics now!

Very Very Nice! Holy cow Vinnie has a HUGE nose!

I know he does! I'm so glad that I didn't breed him! He's really not a very attractive sim at all, but I still love him. :)

Very pretty pictures! I know what you mean...when I got my new computer I only then understood what I'd been missing.

I just discovered after I got the RAM in like...last week, finally, the level of the SOUND in this game! Sims echo and have footsteps!? Miraculous!

So - was the RAM the solution for your sound problem? Got a friend with the exact same symptoms - new graphics, no sound

My particular issue ended up being that reinstalling the gfx card and RAM somehow selected a different (and wrong) audio device for my machine. I did a lot of research when I was trying to figure out the issue, though, and it seems like my problem was fairly simple. A lot of people suggested that installing the new hardware disabled the onboard sound in the BIOS. So s/he might try going to the BIOS and making sure the onboard sound is set to enabled. The only other suggestion I've heard for correcting the issue is reinstalling audio drivers.

Hope one of these works for your friend!

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