Geforce4 MX 4000 problem

[Wegente]

*cough*
Yes, I currently own a Nvidia MX 4000 graphic card, an obviously dated card which is making me mad with FFXI. I have 512 mb of ram, and I use a 2800+ AMD Sempron processor (Windows XP Professional)
I have an (Impossible to gauge) lag when I am near crags or very crowded areas, and even in not-so-populated areas I can't go over the 20 fps. Not to talk of bard songs, that bring me to 3-4 fps when they are casted.
I heard that like a month ago a new forceware (169.17) was released, but it is not compatible with geforce 4 cards, so I got owned once more.
My question is, is there anything that I can do to better this situation? (no)
So, which graphic card would you suggest for me? I am willing to upgrade my RAM as well, but I am not sure if it'd be better to up it to 1 GB or 2 GB.
Thanks for help and forgive me if my english sucks x_x (but my PC sucks more, www)

[Mhurron]

a - find the correct driver, POL does list which version is supposed to work best. (Somewhere anyway)
b - get a new card
c - ram won't help this

What card should you get? One you can afford.

[Wegente]

So you are telling me that ram isn't going to help? Hmm...
About the new card, I am not an expert and I am not sure about what to buy x_x Btw, buying an expensive card isn't a problem cuz I must change the whole PC anyway, so it's better to buy a pro one to keep it for some time. Any ideas? What about Geforce 8800 GT?

[Mhurron]

Any new card will far more then FFXI needs. Look at whatever you use your system for to figure out what you need.

FFXI uses a couple hundred MB of system ram. 512MB on XP is fine if you just use it for FFXI.

In short, don't use FFXI to figure out what to buy in a new computer or for upgrades unless FFXI is the only thing you use the machine for.

[Wegente]

Yeah, I know, thanks for your help :D I guess I'll buy the 8800 GT, people talk about it very well.

[neighbortaru]

the 8800 GT doesn't have an agp version that i'm aware of, and quite frankly, is overkill in a system like yours. i would recommend an ati radeon 9550. it's cheap and more than capable of running ffxi