Video card upgrade info

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.comp.periphs.videocards.ati (More info?)

Hi,
I recently got Star wars Knights of the old republic, and it is not running
smoothly even at 800x600 with 2x AA on my AMD athlon 2100+, GeForce 4
4600Ti, 512Mb DDR2100.

I want to upgrade to get this game working more acceptably, and be able to
use 4x or 8x AA, and have looked into the prices/my options. I can get a
Radeon 9800 pro (128Mb), or a Nvidia Geforce FX 5900XT for about £150.

In the past, when 3dfx and PowerVR cards were around, it used to be, that if
your PC wasn't powerful enough to start with, then the 3d card wouldn't make
much of a difference. Is this still the case?

Is buying one of these cards (radeon or geforceFX) going to make my game run
much smoother, over my current Geforce4, or am I going to have to upgrade
other components too? I have found I could get a P4E 3GHz, motherboard, RAM
and one of the above cards for around £450, but I don't really want to spend
all that just for this one game.

Does it matter that my motherboard only supports up to 4x AGP

Thanks,
Daniel

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.comp.periphs.videocards.ati (More info?)

Daniel Conroy wrote:
> Hi,
> I recently got Star wars Knights of the old republic, and it is not
> running smoothly even at 800x600 with 2x AA on my AMD athlon 2100+,
> GeForce 4 4600Ti, 512Mb DDR2100.
>
> I want to upgrade to get this game working more acceptably, and be
> able to use 4x or 8x AA, and have looked into the prices/my options.
> I can get a Radeon 9800 pro (128Mb), or a Nvidia Geforce FX 5900XT
> for about £150.
>
> In the past, when 3dfx and PowerVR cards were around, it used to be,
> that if your PC wasn't powerful enough to start with, then the 3d
> card wouldn't make much of a difference. Is this still the case?

It depends on the resolution you choose. The higher the res, the smaller the
role of the CPU. Check www.futuremark.com and www.aquamark3.com and compare
your system to others with different CPUs and video cards. You'll have to
run 3DMark and AquaMark 3 to get your results first.

>
> Is buying one of these cards (radeon or geforceFX) going to make my
> game run much smoother, over my current Geforce4, or am I going to
> have to upgrade other components too? I have found I could get a P4E
> 3GHz, motherboard, RAM and one of the above cards for around £450,
> but I don't really want to spend all that just for this one game.

At this stage of the game I would wait until the nVidia 6800 family and the
new ATI R420 cards are released. The R420 will be announced April 26th. The
new cards will drive down the prices of the older cards. The newer DX9
nVidia and ATI cards handle AA and AF better than the Ti series.

>
> Does it matter that my motherboard only supports up to 4x AGP

Nope. 8x is only marginally faster than 4x.


TMC


>
> Thanks,
> Daniel

 

[jlc]

Archived from groups: alt.comp.periphs.videocards.ati (More info?)

"Daniel Conroy" <zen6575@zen.co.uk> wrote in message
news:4085abff$0$31691$fa0fcedb@lovejoy.zen.co.uk...
> Hi,
> I recently got Star wars Knights of the old republic, and it is not
running
> smoothly even at 800x600 with 2x AA on my AMD athlon 2100+, GeForce 4
> 4600Ti, 512Mb DDR2100.
>
> I want to upgrade to get this game working more acceptably, and be able to
> use 4x or 8x AA, and have looked into the prices/my options. I can get a
> Radeon 9800 pro (128Mb), or a Nvidia Geforce FX 5900XT for about £150.
>
> In the past, when 3dfx and PowerVR cards were around, it used to be, that
if
> your PC wasn't powerful enough to start with, then the 3d card wouldn't
make
> much of a difference. Is this still the case?
>
> Is buying one of these cards (radeon or geforceFX) going to make my game
run
> much smoother, over my current Geforce4, or am I going to have to upgrade
> other components too? I have found I could get a P4E 3GHz, motherboard,
RAM
> and one of the above cards for around £450, but I don't really want to
spend
> all that just for this one game.
>
> Does it matter that my motherboard only supports up to 4x AGP
>
> Thanks,
> Daniel
>
You should do two things that will make a big difference in how all your
games run. First get yourself another 512megs of RAM and buy yourself a
9800Pro. If you have done any research into the way the 5900 stacks up
against the 9800Pro you'll see that the 9800Pro does AA better. Check out
this video card round up http://tinyurl.com/2kxkf After reading this I
decided to go with a 9800Pro.
I used to had a Ti-4200 clocked to 4600 speed, and I still have a 2Ghz P4
clocked to 2.2Ghz. When I tried playing KOTOR at 1024x768 that game was very
slow, especially when there was any action going on. Now with my 9800Pro I
can play the game at 1024x768 with 4xAA and 8xAF and although it's still
slows in some parts, for the most part it runs smooth.
You have to remember KOTOR is not optimized for PC very well, being the Xbox
port that it is. JLC

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.comp.periphs.videocards.ati (More info?)

"Daniel Conroy" <zen6575@zen.co.uk> wrote in message
news:4085abff$0$31691$fa0fcedb@lovejoy.zen.co.uk...
> Hi,
Hello

> I recently got Star wars Knights of the old republic, and it is not
running
> smoothly even at 800x600 with 2x AA on my AMD athlon 2100+, GeForce 4
> 4600Ti, 512Mb DDR2100.

> I want to upgrade to get this game working more acceptably, and be able to
> use 4x or 8x AA, and have looked into the prices/my options. I can get a
> Radeon 9800 pro (128Mb), or a Nvidia Geforce FX 5900XT for about £150.

Do NOT mix Ati's XT and Nvidia's XT!!
ATI XT = Even faster than Pro version, Auto overdrived..
nVidia XT = Slow as hell! Even slower than regular one.

So for this price, go for 9800pro. 5900XT is more compairable to
9600xt/9800se rather than 9800pro. So stay away from XT or LE versions of
GeForceFX series.

> In the past, when 3dfx and PowerVR cards were around, it used to be, that
if
> your PC wasn't powerful enough to start with, then the 3d card wouldn't
make
> much of a difference. Is this still the case?

Kind of, for low end pc's. Your is very much mid-end, so it should run well
with a new gfx card.

> Is buying one of these cards (radeon or geforceFX) going to make my game
run
> much smoother, over my current Geforce4, or am I going to have to upgrade
> other components too? I have found I could get a P4E 3GHz, motherboard,
RAM
> and one of the above cards for around £450, but I don't really want to
spend
> all that just for this one game.


Why not upgrade your cpu to Athlon xp 2500/2700? It is not that expensive.

BTW: That p4E is not gonna be much better price/performance wise, compaired
to say XP2700 since you can likely use your current mobo for it.

> Does it matter that my motherboard only supports up to 4x AGP
Not much at all.

> Thanks,
> Daniel