Visual artifacts and glitches in old games

[Loud_Silence]

I'm having visual artifacts in some old games, like triangles stretching from textures, poligon storms, etc.

The games are Carmageddon TDR2000, Enemy Engaged: Comanche vs Hokum and Aliens vs Predator 2.

You may say "why are you playing those old crappy games and not Modern Warfare 2 or the new Aliens vs Predator?". Well, although I like those two games, the answer is that I also like those old games as well.

I've been having problems with those games since I had my GeForce 8600GT. They were completelly unplayable with my older ATI HD2600XT, they just wouldn't run. Since I got my Geforce GTS250 there are somewhat less artifacts, but they're still there.

What can I do? I've already tried the oldest drivers I can use with this card, and the problem stays.:cry:

I really hate this. Ten years ago, I couldn't play those games because my computer was too slow. Today, I can't play those games bacause my computer is too fast. What the hell???
EDIT: a common cause for visual artifacts is the graphics card being overheated and/or overstressed. I've checked it and its cool. And... those games ran on a GeForce 4 or earlier. What kind of stress can they put on a 200?? I've already tried a lot of texture configurations in Carmageddon, but the artifacts don't go away.

[Arclight]

What Windows are you using? You can enable a bunch of compatibility options and see if it helps any.

[Loud_Silence]

I'm using Windows XP SP3. I've tried compatibility mode with all those games, but it doesn't make any difference.

I solved the problem in Carmageddon. It was caused by the Mip Filter. Disabling it in the advanced video options menu made the artifacts go away.

I'm still trying with the other games.

[PhantomLord]

This might be the problem... modern graphic cards with a bunch of filters, anti aliasing etc etc...

Try to turn off this stuff and try it out. If you have a Nvidia card you can create profiles for every game or programm on your disk.

[Arclight]

I solved the problem in Carmageddon. It was caused by the Mip Filter.
I'm left wondering what you mean by this; not familiar with such an option. If you mean you turned off "force mip maps", I suggest you reset any driver options you changed. It's never a good idea to force settings through driver by default, use the profiles instead.

For general compatibility:
Anti-aliasing off (application controlled)
Anisotropic filtering off (application controlled)
Transparency AA off
Texture filtering to "high quality" > turns off the "optimizations" (speed optimizations, can cause trouble)

You can toggle "extension limit" to see if it makes any difference. Can fix some instabilities.