The biggest problem in the history of Microsoft Windows is that they let you install the wrong driver for a hardware part or worse, the operating system installs an old driver by itself. When this kind of problems occurs with your graphics card, well, it may let you use it at a low potential or ruine you whole day (or week and maybe even ruine the graphic card). 

So what's there to do? You should update graphics card driver and by that, I mean install a new and better one.

When should you try to change the driver? The main reason you should try to change it is the poor performance of your video card. If you know that it should provide a better performance but it doesn't, change the driver. If you realise that the graphics card is not working properly, change the driver.

Now I am going to explain how you can change the driver for an AMD ATI Radeon video card using a Windows XP operating system.

Go to Properties by righ clicking on the desktop and selecting properties. A windows with the Display Properties will pop out. There, you have to select settings and click advanced. Click on the Adapter tab and see in the adapter type section what video card you have. You also can do this by going in the Device Manager window and see the Display adapters section. Now that you know your video card model, go to the AMD ATI drivers site and select to download the driver for your graphic card.You can find the drivers in the Support section, Drivers, on the ati.amd dot com site.

Now update graphics card by installing the new driver (which you downloaded by doing the previous steps) and make sure you have the latest compatible with your video card DirectX installed (for AMD ATI Radeon 2000, 3000 and 4000 series it is DirectX 10 and for the 5000 series you can use - and this is recommended - the new DirectX 11) for higher performance in games.

You can also try to update graphics card using the automatic method - in Device Manager, select the Display Adapters line, double click on the adapter (video card's name and model) and select upgrade driver for this hardware in the windows that appears. In Windows XP this will try to search for a new driver on the local hard drive, cd/dvd rom or on the internet. If it finds anything, it will install the new driver.