I have several questions to ask and i think the best way to do it is by also giving you all a general picture of my situation. Since this is probably going to be a long post, my apologies to anyone that might find it tedious...
Here goes then...
I have two systems that i'm working with:
One is a system i put together 2 years ago and set up specifically as part of a bigger sound editing/design rig. I went to great pains to set it up the best way i could. It runs perfectly, i have no complaints. The only other thing it occasionaly is used for is to run some game sometimes, when i need some kind of a break...
When i was puting the system together the graphics card that i used was a GF2 mx400, solely because i had no special demands from a graphics card, i just needed something that runs well, is stable and MOST importantly is silent. And i was and still am ok with it since it runs everything that i tried maxed out at 800x600. Of course, sometimes when i try higher resolutions frames drop but i'm perfectly ok with that. Most importantly there was no game that i couldn't run (except DX9 of course). Even many newer ones will run fine with it (it was so interesting seeing all those posts in various forums about how ppl with MUCH better cards than that had serious problems running specific games while i had absolutely none! Of course, most of them ended up blaming the game itself as being buggy and not their systems. Goes to show how little some know sometimes, but anyway...)
The other system is used mainly for image editing and more general use. Putting it together (more than a year ago) i again had no demands from a graphics card so i picked a GF4 mx440 since i was not going to use it to play games a lot. System works fine, the card works fine maxed out, sometimes with some games it won't run higher than 800x600 but like i said before it's ok with me, i don't have high demands.
BUT...
Lately, 2 games that i really, REALLY waited for a long time came out but they both need a more powerful card to run at all. So, i started thinking about getting another card for my first system.
The way things are now with graphic cards i know that i am not exactly pleased with the way they perform. Sure, i could get a medium to high end card and get much better results compared to what i get now, BUT i have a problem with their noise levels plus i think it would be wiser to wait for the new ones in a few months since they should be better.
Thing is, i found a GF4 ti4200 64mb for $50 that seems like a good idea to get since afterwards i won't have to upgrade soon plus even if i do i would only have spend $50 for this... So here comes the first question:
<b>
1) How much more noisy is the GF4ti compared to the GF2mx??? What other equivalent card would be a better option compared to the GF4 TI based on NOISE levels????
2) I was not aware that nvidia's drivers are a bitch to remove. I also don't know if i will need to remove them (instead of just uninstalling them) when i replace the one i have with another of nvidia's cards. Do i need to? Is there problems when you replace with another nvidia or is it just with ATI?
</b>
A month ago i installed a recently released game on my second system. The drivers i was using were 41.09, i think.
I decided to upgrade the drivers, i thought that maybe it would be a sensible thing to do since the game was brand new so that the game would run as best as possible.
So i did it without uninstalling the game (something i would normally never do, but since it's a dual boot i can afford to experiment sometimes). I could d/load the newer ForceWare drivers but i thought that maybe those will better fit the FX series (is that true?)so i picked 45.43(or something)instead (because of it's nview3).
And THEN the game wouldn't work plus there were a lot of black-screens when opening the card's settings from the desktop. I uninstalled those drivers and got the 53.04. Everything worked fine ever since.
But the fact that the 45.xx driver did not work for my card made me think long and hard about drivers in general.
Then i started reading the threads here. I always thought that newer drivers are supposed to be better bug-wise and performance-wise especially since nvidia's share the same architecture and work for all their series.
But from what i've read there are people that think that certain drivers are better for certain cards. That older cards are better with older drivers. I can understand that it might stand true in terms of speed but does it also stand true in terms of stability?
Am i wrong to assume that the newest the driver (with some possible exception) the more stable it is? If i am wrong then:
<b>
3) Which ones would be considered as the best drivers for GF2 mx400, GF4 mx440 and GF4 Ti 4200 in terms of stability and which in terms of speed???? Do those drivers work better with a specific version of DX??
4) What happens if some older driver is faster (as some people say 44.03) but you want to use a newer DX version that the driver does not support? Won't you have to upgrade?
</b>
I know that there are plenty of ppl here that have the technical know-how to answer my questions. Thank you so much for any help you can give me and once again i'm sorry for the length of this post.
Here goes then...
I have two systems that i'm working with:
One is a system i put together 2 years ago and set up specifically as part of a bigger sound editing/design rig. I went to great pains to set it up the best way i could. It runs perfectly, i have no complaints. The only other thing it occasionaly is used for is to run some game sometimes, when i need some kind of a break...
When i was puting the system together the graphics card that i used was a GF2 mx400, solely because i had no special demands from a graphics card, i just needed something that runs well, is stable and MOST importantly is silent. And i was and still am ok with it since it runs everything that i tried maxed out at 800x600. Of course, sometimes when i try higher resolutions frames drop but i'm perfectly ok with that. Most importantly there was no game that i couldn't run (except DX9 of course). Even many newer ones will run fine with it (it was so interesting seeing all those posts in various forums about how ppl with MUCH better cards than that had serious problems running specific games while i had absolutely none! Of course, most of them ended up blaming the game itself as being buggy and not their systems. Goes to show how little some know sometimes, but anyway...)
The other system is used mainly for image editing and more general use. Putting it together (more than a year ago) i again had no demands from a graphics card so i picked a GF4 mx440 since i was not going to use it to play games a lot. System works fine, the card works fine maxed out, sometimes with some games it won't run higher than 800x600 but like i said before it's ok with me, i don't have high demands.
BUT...
Lately, 2 games that i really, REALLY waited for a long time came out but they both need a more powerful card to run at all. So, i started thinking about getting another card for my first system.
The way things are now with graphic cards i know that i am not exactly pleased with the way they perform. Sure, i could get a medium to high end card and get much better results compared to what i get now, BUT i have a problem with their noise levels plus i think it would be wiser to wait for the new ones in a few months since they should be better.
Thing is, i found a GF4 ti4200 64mb for $50 that seems like a good idea to get since afterwards i won't have to upgrade soon plus even if i do i would only have spend $50 for this... So here comes the first question:
<b>
1) How much more noisy is the GF4ti compared to the GF2mx??? What other equivalent card would be a better option compared to the GF4 TI based on NOISE levels????
2) I was not aware that nvidia's drivers are a bitch to remove. I also don't know if i will need to remove them (instead of just uninstalling them) when i replace the one i have with another of nvidia's cards. Do i need to? Is there problems when you replace with another nvidia or is it just with ATI?
</b>
A month ago i installed a recently released game on my second system. The drivers i was using were 41.09, i think.
I decided to upgrade the drivers, i thought that maybe it would be a sensible thing to do since the game was brand new so that the game would run as best as possible.
So i did it without uninstalling the game (something i would normally never do, but since it's a dual boot i can afford to experiment sometimes). I could d/load the newer ForceWare drivers but i thought that maybe those will better fit the FX series (is that true?)so i picked 45.43(or something)instead (because of it's nview3).
And THEN the game wouldn't work plus there were a lot of black-screens when opening the card's settings from the desktop. I uninstalled those drivers and got the 53.04. Everything worked fine ever since.
But the fact that the 45.xx driver did not work for my card made me think long and hard about drivers in general.
Then i started reading the threads here. I always thought that newer drivers are supposed to be better bug-wise and performance-wise especially since nvidia's share the same architecture and work for all their series.
But from what i've read there are people that think that certain drivers are better for certain cards. That older cards are better with older drivers. I can understand that it might stand true in terms of speed but does it also stand true in terms of stability?
Am i wrong to assume that the newest the driver (with some possible exception) the more stable it is? If i am wrong then:
<b>
3) Which ones would be considered as the best drivers for GF2 mx400, GF4 mx440 and GF4 Ti 4200 in terms of stability and which in terms of speed???? Do those drivers work better with a specific version of DX??
4) What happens if some older driver is faster (as some people say 44.03) but you want to use a newer DX version that the driver does not support? Won't you have to upgrade?
</b>
I know that there are plenty of ppl here that have the technical know-how to answer my questions. Thank you so much for any help you can give me and once again i'm sorry for the length of this post.
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