Preserved Topic: Video Card Question

So my wife gets me this new video card as a gift.. 16MB to replace the 4MB one I've been dealing with. Not exactly top of the line (A Compusa slap-together with an SIS 305 chip), but certainly better than what I'd had. And it works just great, except for one thing....

It doesn't seem to like Diablo II much. Gameplay in D2 is like wading through cold molasses. All other games are fine, but in this game, it's pure crap. Except... it's not always like that... I've found that some 5 or more hours after a reboot (cold or warm doesn't seem to matter), the game will work just fine. And as long as I don't reboot, it'll continue to work fine. But once I reboot again, it's another 5 or more hours of waiting.

Now, I can deal with that most of the time, but I'd still like to understand why it's happening. Which is why I thought I'd post here and see if anyone has any ideas on it. I've got all the latest drivers, both for the video card, and monitor as well as for directx, etc.. I'm at a loss on it. I thought it might have been heat related, but it happens with a warm boot. It's not RAM related, or I'd have had the problem with my old video card. Oh, I'm using an Intel Celeron 500 Mhz machine with 256 MB ram and Win '98.

Any suggestions would be appreciated.

I don't really have a suggestion, but an opinion.
It seems your graphics card is sort of not really good, with some flaw.
Can you try to exchange it to another new one at the shop?

Yea, it is pretty crappy, but was all she could afford, and the receipt is lost, so exchange/replacement is out of the question for the moment.

have you tried getting updated drivers for your video card and your motherboard? have you checked the blizzard site for possible patches or at least some info in one of their faqs? what about possible updates to win98?

I've got the most current drivers for the video card and monitor. I've got the latest patches from Blizzard. I hadn't thought about Win'98 patches. I'll look into that, thanks.

Hmmm... SIS cards a fairly common and I'd expect DII to support them, maybe you should try Blizzard's DII forums to see if anyone with a similar setup to you has had similar problems, and what they've done to fix it.

Since this only happens after a reboot and takes 5 hours to start working properly, I'd suggest it was either a heating problem or an electrical problem.

Your card either needs to warm up or it needs to charge up its circuits. Now, whether this is a standard problem with the chipset/board or whether it is defective is hard to tell. Unfortunately, with both of these problems, there doesn't seem to be much you can do on your end. Besides not reboot

Also, although it's probably just grasping at straws, you might try turning off all 3D options in D2, if you haven't done so already.