Win7 64-bit, video settings - Please help

[MPTech]

I built myself a new PC last summer primarily for MAME gaming and Visual Pinball, but really haven't had time to set it up and configure it.
It doesn't need to be too powerful or have the highest-end video, but I want to take advantage of what I do have.
It's an AMD Phenom 9950 quad-core with 4gb Ram.
I installed a Radeon x800 GTO, with an S-Video output to a 25" monitor (in a Gaming cabinet).
When I initially installed the video card, Win7 Ultimate loaded the drivers, so I didn't bother any further.
I recently tried to install Future Pinball and I'm getting a message:

Future Pinball has detected that your openGL exceleration is running in software mode.
This will cause Future Pinball to run poorly. nVidia and ATI only support hardware acceleration (which this application requires) in 32 Bit mode. Please change your desktop colour to 32 bit and try running this application again.

I tried installing the latest ATI drivers for this card and they appear to have installed successfully, but I can't find an ATI program to open and review the settings.

1. What is this message telling me? (I need to run in 32 bit mode, not 64(?)
2. How can I correct it? (shouldn't there be an ATI application after I install ATI Catalyst9.11?) Or is it a Win7 setting?

Thanks!

[SpywareDr]

How to Change the Color Bit Depth in Windows 7
http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials...-settings.html

[MPTech]

Thanks SpywarDr, I'll give that a try tonight.

[MPTech]

OK, followed those directions, no improvement, still getting this message.

Went back out to ATI site and loaded the latest Win7 64bit drivers, still didn't work.
Also loaded an older version of Catalyst just to try it, no help either.

When I go into the Win7 Screen Resolution windows, all of my settings are already set to 32 bit color.

I don't know what this message is trying to tell me.
set it to hardware mode? (how???)

any other suggestions?

[Train]

Can you use any other than the s-video?

[SpywareDr]

http://www.futurepinball.com/download.html

Under Vista/Windows 7 be sure to run Future Pinball as administrator.

?

[MPTech]

Train,
I need an S-Video card to connect to my Arcade Monitor, but while I'm building it I have it connected to a flat-panel via vga. 9pretty standard right now).

SpywareDr, yep, I have the correct FP download version and running it as Administrator.

[photolady]

running it as Administrator.

Can you clarify how you did this? Running under admin mode isn't the same as right clicking a program and choosing "run as administrator"

[MPTech]

Maybe it's semantics, I don't understand the difference.

SpywareDr suggested "run Future Pinball as administrator".

I right clicked, select Properties, opened Compatibility tab, and checked "Run this program as an administrator".

can you describe Admin Mode, what this would do, and how to do it?


Also, I'm still not clear what this error message is telling me:

...nVidia and ATI only support hardware acceleration (which this application requires) in 32 Bit mode. Please change your desktop colour to 32 bit and try running this application again.

hardware acceleration? 32 Bit mode? (I'm running Win7 64-bit, I'm assuming they are not related)
I checked the video / Advanced settings, Monitor tab and colors was already set to "True Color (32 bit)".

Thanks!

[photolady]

What I meant by admin mode was that you are the admin on the computer but to run things as admin, you have to do the extra step. "right click the program, in the drop down contextual menu you'll see "Run as Administrator" and there should be no extra step in running this as you did using compatibility mode. Just do as I said above, by passing the compatibility tab.

Some times, hardware acceleration is turned off by default and you need to turn it on. Did you try this?

[MPTech]

I believe I'm running as Admin, but I'll check.

I looked but couldn't find an application for the Radeon video card.
How can I turn hardware acceleration on/off?

[ua549]

The download packages from ATI includes Catalyst Control Center that is used to manage the video card and driver settings. http://tinyurl.com/332aveq

[photolady]

I would suggest also that you uninstall any drivers you've previously installed before installing the new one ua549 gave a link to.

[MPTech]

I gave up with that video card and bought an ASUS / NVidia GeForce GT 430. Not top of the line, but definitely an improvement.
Took my Win7 Performance score from a 4.9 to 6.7! (and solved my problem)

nothing that money can't fix!

[photolady]

Good news!! I was going to tell you after researching your Radeon card, that it was first introduced in 2005, that's pretty old technology. And I've seen and heard and had problems myself, with Radeon cards, that I stay specifically with Nvidia chipset cards.