Bought an ATI 9250 as HTPC card - 2d performance is absolutely applling!

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Bought an ATI 9250 as HTPC card - 2d performance is absolutely appalling in Windows XP! I can't believe it's this slow - dragging a window arouynd, the update lags by about a second and explorer.exe cpu usage goes through the roof!

The card can't be this bad for 2d, surely? Any ideas on a fix? Catalyst 6.5 drivers installed, card used as monitor 2 of 3 on an extended desktop.

 

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maybe its the cpu holding you back then? whats your spec?

Ah, sorry, should have included the specs:

Opteron 146 @ 2.8ghz
Primary gfx card: 6800Ultra running 19" lcd and 32" hdtv
Secondary gfx card: Ati 9250 running Catalyst 6.5s and 18" lcd through the vga output.
1gb ram

The display appears fine - good colours, decent res etc, it's just everything ion it runs as if it's covered in treacle! Honestly, dragging windows around is painful!

I made sure I ran driver cleaner before installing the card

 

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I'm beginning to agree with you Lanz - I can't seem to get it to work correctly at all. I was trying to do it on a shoestring, hence the reason for the £30 ATI card and a few reports suggested it would work without a hitch with the nVidia card. Ho hum, back to the drawing board....

 

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Thanks for the replys all. I've still had no luck with the card and I'm probably going to ditch it. Changing drivers to an earlier version (I've tried 5.6 and 5.9) after Driver Cleaning the 6.5s made no difference. Neither did changing the IRQ so the Radeon had it's own, or swopping pci slots.

I think I'm either just going to have to plug in the hdtv when I want it to use pc content or see about getting a cheap nvidia pci card. I may be able to fish out an old 4200 when I visit mum and dad in a few weeks....

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Looking on the Ultramon forum, it appears that the card is failing to start DirectDraw and Direct3d Hardware acceleration when the Radeon card is installed second. I assume this accounts for the cripplingly slow 2d performance. The peeps on there got round this issue by uninstalling all drivers, rebooting, installing the ATI drivers first, rebooting, installing the Nvidia one's second. I'd have a go at doing this but for some reason the ATI card now appears to be dead! Ho hum....