When I first tried my new eVGA 5700LE card and saw lots of blinking green textures everywhere, I thought it was damaged during shipment. It was only when I ran an OpenGL game(it didn't have the green stuff) that I realized that the hardware was fine. It is now clear to me that only games with Direct3D and/or GLextensions have problems. Now I am wondering if Direct3D games have compatability problems with the 5700LE. Maybe the Limited Edition is another way of saying Limited Compatability? The eVGA support staff can't help me and neither does installing the latest drivers (which I have done). I could really use some help on this. Could it be conflicts with Chaintech's Mobo? That'd be stupid-it's an nVidia chipset. I have one last thing to say-green is now longer my favorite color.

First off, all I can say is welcome to the new and confusing world of the new 8x AGP video card. None and I mean none of the card companies will guide you or help you in this compatibility maze. This compatibility maze is so complicated I think most of them do not know themselves about compatibility problems (I know this to be true because I wrote many of them), except for maybe the designers and how many of us get to talk to those guys and gals.

I am using your letter as a sounding board because I went through a good 6 months of digging on the net to make the discovery that none of the video card companies want to educate us and leave Mr. Joe public in the dark concerning backwards capability, driver updates, and especially AGP speed/voltages on the motherboards. What they want, is for us to blindly buy their video cards, get our money and then hope we will not return it if it does not work. They are betting that the hobby computing community will do what we have done for years and that is, tweak and tweak and tweak their video cards till maybe it works on one game and then we tweak it again for the other game. We computer nuts are our own worst enemy.

Do you think getting the latest video driver will fix your problem? No sir. You might need to go backwards till you find the driver that works for that special game. Hold on, now I want to play an Open GL game, now I got to move up to the driver right before the latest one. If you do not buy my story try using the latest driver you downloaded for Doom 3 on UT2004 (2 different kinds of game engines). If your motherboard is the perfect one (another story) than the 2 games might work but most of us are not so lucky. I can not count the number of people I have read about that had older motherboards and went out and bought new 8x AGP card and put them in their 1 or 2x AGP motherboards that is not 2.0 compliant just to find out the hard way that no matter what they do they are doomed to using only an older video card. Not one video card company talks about this openly. In your case, having the nVidia chip set meant nothing huh? Why am I not surprised?

Maybe I did not really help you but after reading this you can see why you are having problems.

Sorry that I used you but I felt something had to be said.

I understand what you're saying and I'm all for righting injuctices, but it sounds kind of grim and dare I say exaggerated. You must have had a few terrible experiences yourself. What are you saying about Chaintech's nForce2 chipset? That it's at fault? I chose a nForce2 board mostly because I thought it and the GeForce FX would compliment each other. Was I wrong? Or could it be the RAM? It's the fastest it'd take: PC3200 256MB(single channel, however).

I was able to correct the green crap problem in a few games: Jedi Knight 2 and Return to Castle Wolfenstein, because the both had the option to turn off GL Extensions. Descent3 was OK becase you can choose between Direct3D or OpenGL. Guess which one worked? That's right-OpenGL ran and didn't have the green stuff (but D3D did). I'm still wondering exactly what GL Extensions are. EVGA support staff wouldn't give me a straight answer, probably thought I was stupid or something. I would like some constructive advice if you don't mind, just don't try to perswade me to turn to ATI products because I won't. I know this is fixable.

No it is not my intention to sound doom and gloom nor did I get ripped off. However, I do computer repair on the side and I really believe that us computer hobby guys, gals and our need to tweak, are taken for granted by the computer and computer hardware industry. I also believe that the computer industry knowingly takes advantage of the lack of education concerning computers/hardware and the general public. Just read here on this web site. Would you go out and buy a new garbage disposal (same price range as your video card) and tweak it like you do your computer or take it back for a refund if it failed? I know there will be those out there that say it is not the same. But it is the same and the problem is we have been made to believe that it is not the same. It is that computer hobbyist that says it is not the same thing as a failed garbage disposal that the computer industry loves. 100% tweak compliant. To enforce my stance try getting some help for your hardware or software from their prospective company. Only about 10% of the computer industry tries to really help Joe public or us. The rest of the 90% are depending on our tweak nature and the law of returns in their favor, for refunds. Grim? Yes it is but what I said here is right in front of our eyes and the industry will never get any better till we change our attitudes and make them more responsible. What’s the bottom line? Stop taking our whole computers apart to fix one new card, demand more refunds and then we will see more positive changes in the computer industry right before our eyes.

In answer to your questions. I am not sure about your chip set other than the fact that some game engines work better with that chip set and Geforce video cards. Motherboards can play a part in this also. I have actually seen some games not work because of a motherboard. Then you take the same video card and put it in another motherboard (same age) and then the same game works. Also try backing up your video drivers to ones a little older. That’s right, back them up. Not to far back of course, but try it. If you have all older games (and it looks as if you might), lets say from the late 90’s into early 2000 going back to a little older video driver might be a good ideal. Also motherboard chip set drivers can be an issue to. The newest nForce drivers might not be what you need. Read on the geforce forums to get a good idea what is working for people with your motherboard chip set. Intel is also good about lots of tech info. There is also some issues with the newest Geforce card drivers and direct X 9/Direct3D. Abit has an outstanding tech forum that even allows questions outside of Abit motherboards. Last, the master of game engines, John Cormack used a Geforce card to design Doom3, so there is no reason for me to talk you into an ATI. On the other hand an ATI was used for the new Half Life2. They all have their problems and you will hear people swear by each one. I like to stay objective. My best advice? Do some homework to help weed out problems and fix your issues. Good Luck

I think I understand what the problem is. I think. You can specify Half Life 1 to use either Direct3D or OpenGL. Both work fine, that is without the green crud. I have a hunch that GL extensions are at fault. When I turn them on, the green stuff comes back. And Half Life must not use GL extensions, or back then GL extensions didn't exist(I may be wrong). An example of this is Unreal Tournament 2003 has the green texture problem, and it doesn't have and option to turn of GL extensions. So, I went into the config file to see what renderer it was using. Both Direct3D and OpenGL were listed, and I couldn't change it. Now, I'd bet GL extensions means that Direct3D and OpenGL are working in conjunction. And I'll bet a little more that my card doesn't do this very well or doesn't really support it, however, if it didn't support it, why doesn't the game just crash altogether? I've also heard that GL extensions accually help performance and graphical quality, so I'm probably disabling some useful features and/or lowering FPS when it's off. I can't tell-the green garbage is too distracting. People tell me to do a diagnostic on Direct3D with Dxdiag.exe, I've done that and everything looks OK, it must not be using GL extensions. Is there a way to do a diagnostic on GL extensions? I'll bet it'll report a problem or have the green junk. Thanks for replying, but my problem isn't solved, however, I think I am getting closer.