Archived from groups: alt.comp.periphs.videocards.ati (More info?)
It struck me this morning that with all the different review sites
out there looking at new cards/drivers etc, there is a whole class of
information that doesn't appear to be given in any of them - namely,
which card "maxes out" which CPU?
For example: I have an ATI Radeon 8500 running in an Athlon XP 2400+
based system with 768Meg of DDR 266 RAM. This plays pretty much every
game I've thrown at it acceptably - except Far Cry which is only OK
on the lowest settings.
I could go out and splash the cash on a nice X800 Pro or something,
but would that be wasted in my system? Would I be better off buying a
(comparitively) cheap 9800XT? Would that move the bottleneck from the
graphics card to the CPU?
I appreciate that the exact bottleneck will change from game to game
and according to whether you have antialiasing turned on or not etc,
but I'd love to see some guidelines like:
* ATI Radeon 9600: maxes out with a CPU of 2000 or above.
* ATI Radeon 9800: wasted on a CPU of 2400 or below. Maxes out with
a CPU of 3200 or above.
Something like that would give me (and I am sure others) something
to base their purchases on.
Any thoughts? Is this information (or something like it) available
anywhere on the web?
Robin
P.S. As a matter of interest what is the minimum spec to get Far Cry
playing with everything set to High, with no AA at 1280x1024 (say)?
Does such a machine exist yet?
--
Robin Watts, Email: <mailto:Robin.Watts@wss.co.uk>
Warm Silence Software, WWW: <http://www.wss.co.uk/>
P.O.Box 28, Woodstock, Tel: 01608 737172 (or Mobile: 07885 487642)
Oxfordshire, OX20 1XX Fax: 01608 737172
It struck me this morning that with all the different review sites
out there looking at new cards/drivers etc, there is a whole class of
information that doesn't appear to be given in any of them - namely,
which card "maxes out" which CPU?
For example: I have an ATI Radeon 8500 running in an Athlon XP 2400+
based system with 768Meg of DDR 266 RAM. This plays pretty much every
game I've thrown at it acceptably - except Far Cry which is only OK
on the lowest settings.
I could go out and splash the cash on a nice X800 Pro or something,
but would that be wasted in my system? Would I be better off buying a
(comparitively) cheap 9800XT? Would that move the bottleneck from the
graphics card to the CPU?
I appreciate that the exact bottleneck will change from game to game
and according to whether you have antialiasing turned on or not etc,
but I'd love to see some guidelines like:
* ATI Radeon 9600: maxes out with a CPU of 2000 or above.
* ATI Radeon 9800: wasted on a CPU of 2400 or below. Maxes out with
a CPU of 3200 or above.
Something like that would give me (and I am sure others) something
to base their purchases on.
Any thoughts? Is this information (or something like it) available
anywhere on the web?
Robin
P.S. As a matter of interest what is the minimum spec to get Far Cry
playing with everything set to High, with no AA at 1280x1024 (say)?
Does such a machine exist yet?
--
Robin Watts, Email: <mailto:Robin.Watts@wss.co.uk>
Warm Silence Software, WWW: <http://www.wss.co.uk/>
P.O.Box 28, Woodstock, Tel: 01608 737172 (or Mobile: 07885 487642)
Oxfordshire, OX20 1XX Fax: 01608 737172
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