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BF2 Demo = buy new card


Laz.e.rus

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Well, I downloaded the new demo ( the new movie is INsane!!), and with my GF4Ti4600, I cant even run it. The minimum requirement is a fx5700 chipset. So, it has made up my mind.

 

I was still unsure whether to do a whole upgrade (intel 2.8 to amd64 w/ pci-e) or jsut buy a decent agp to hold me over. Looks like Im going the cheap route for now. 6600 gt so far. Itll do the trick and keep things 'purty' for the time being.

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might want to grab an SLI board where you can throw in another 6600 or 6800 gt later. Im have played BF2 with my 6800u SLI setup and it runs flawless and looks great. I dont like the player physics when struck with bullets ect. CSS owns imho.

 

 

M*XI

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Laz, I don't know what your willing to spend. I got the AGP ATI x850 xt

This card rocks if your unwilling to make the switch to pci-e just yet. Retails

around $500.00 I get A LOT more HS than I used to. With 1 gb of RAM I'm

getting between 137 - 141 FPS (around 127-131 with USB headset)

 

NO REGRETS!

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have a a 9600pro with everything on low except for the textures and 1024x768 and it runs fine. I might have to update this thing anyways during the summer. I really want to try it out with all HIGH.

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Wierd..

I only have 9500pro, and it runs perfectly.

infact, i would actaully go as far as saying it ran better than cs:s

 

 

Well it says in the specs that it will work with 9500pro, but the smallest nvidia it will take is the 5700. I believe the 9500pro is in the same line of gpus as the 5xxx isnt it?

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(edited)
Wierd..

I only have 9500pro, and it runs perfectly.

infact, i would actaully go as far as saying it ran better than cs:s

 

The reason, is, believe it or not, the BattleField2 engine is less of an engine than the Source engine. It has to be. Massively multiplayer games are always lower on the system tax than single-player, if for no other reason than the levels are larger, the render areas are more vast, and there are more human clients running around in plain sight.

 

My hunch is that they require no less than a 5700FX, because they didn't want to write render support for hardware that wasn't 100% DX9 compatible.

 

With the Source engine, they basically had to write four renderers, for four different types of video cards:

 

DirectX 7 (GeForce 2 cards and GeForce 4MX)

DirectX 8 (GeForce 3 / Radeon 7XXX)

DirectX 8.1 (GeForce 4 / Radeon 8XXX)

DirectX 9 (GeForce 5XXX - 6XXX / Radeon 9XXX - xXXX)

 

Technically, the GeForce FX 5000, 5200 and 5600 are DX9 cards, but they were so underpowered that they have to run DX8 mode, in Source.

 

Given the requirements, I'm assuming that BF2 will only run DX9, and with 24-bit or 32-bit precision. Something that the lower FX cards just aren't strong enough to do, or do at a framerate that even borders on playable. The Radeon 9XXX series all ran at 24-bit floating-point, so they shouldn't have that problem. ...the 5XXX series was really only good at 16-bit. Hence the dilemma. The "Way it's meant to be played" campaign actually started as bribing those companies into only using 16-bit shaders instead of 24 or 32... ...anyway - moral of the story, don't by a 5XXX series nVidia card.

 

Now, with the GeForce 6XXX and the Radeon xXXX, it's anybody's ballgame, and you're going to end up with smokin' hardware, regardless.

Edited by Norguard
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You're right Preachaman - but think about upgrade paths, and how you want to go through with them.

 

If SLI, then a new chip, a new motherboard, new RAM, and you might as well toss a SATA drive on there, to match the performance of the new components, which would mean a V2.0 compliant power supply.

 

This is why budgets are so important. Again, I can only talk about Canadian prices, but there are tiers, there.

 

In Canadian dollars, we're talking $180 - $250 for an SLI board, $250-$800 for a Socket 939 AMD chip, and it may as well be dual-core at this point in the game. $120+ for 1GB DDR3200 and then $450 - $799 per high-level PCI-e card, such as a 6800U. That's a lot of money for a single upgrade.

 

You may spend more in the long run, but the cost will be more managable if you upgrade to the top of your price tier now, and then swap parts as you can. Instead of putting up $3000CAD+ for a high-end upgrade right now, I bought a $400CAD x800XL (on sale). It was the best card for the money I was willing to spend.

 

My next step is to replace my SocketA and my AthlonXP 2500+. My motherboard arrives in two days. At the end of my upgrading (probably 12 - 18 months from now) I'll have spent, probably close $800 more than I would have, just going out and buying a new $3000 PC. But I'm going to end up with 3 PCs out of it. (The other two both going to needy families in my life... ...they don't know they're coming yet, so *SSHHHHHH*)

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This demo has major issues! I would NOT SPEND MONEY for it! I have a ati 9200 128...a very lowley piece of hardware I got on boxing day for $75 CND...it is supposedly the lowest ati card supported for this game...I managed to play one round of the BF2 demo flawlessly (lowest settings probably)...when I tried to play a second time I kept getting VPU recovery popups and BF2 tho it was still responding supposedly, no long would load past the choose profile screen...

I looked around on the net and it seems that there are still major issues with this game, as can be expected...so I really hope no one is crazy enough to go out and buy a whole new vid card only to find out their old one suited them fine...you're only gonna ditch this horrible game and come back to your one true love anyways (yea I really disliked this game...animations were uberlame and gameplay wasn't as smooth as i like it...hopefully final product will be better)

 

*ducks under flame-retardant blanket*

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Was going to comment on a lot of the negative reviews of BF2, but I know everyone has their own opinion and such. I guess I wasn't going into the game expecting to run full speed all the time 10x faster than normal. But I have played other BF games, so I knew what to expect, I guess.

 

As far as the video card discussion goes - :biglaugha::biglaugha::biglaugha: This game was built with Nvidia cards claiming "The way it's supposed to be played!" But their slightly older cards won't even handle it? My ATI 9600XT runs the thing perfectly. No slowdowns at all. It is more refined than BF:V, and runs better than CS:S for me. I don't know if I will really go back to playing CS with this coming out. I really enjoy the giant maps and free roaming. Now if only everybody could figure out that blue=teammate... :bang:

 

The demo is glitchy in places. But it is a demo... Not a finished, packaged product. The real test will be when people are buying the game. Even then it won't be "perfect" and will require patches...

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It depends on the budget like mentioned if you need bare minimum upgrade to play smoothly i cannot begrudge the ATI cards for their great performance in CSS, but if your going to buy ANY PCI-e card ( and of coarse having built or own a mb that supports such ) you might as well get the comparable 6xxx series card for at least the option of SLI later. Im loving my SLI rig havent had any of the problems ive read about others having.

 

 

M*Xi

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BF2 sucks?!?! HAHAHAHAH right.... I switched over from Counter-Strike to Desert Combat when it was beta .25 and play that until it went final. I quit playing games for a while until I downloaded this demo. All I have to say is holy crap!!! I am buying this day one. I have a 9500 Pro and Im upgrading fo-shizzle. I get decent FPS with it, but I want to run on high and it be smooth. I really wish I had a pci-e motherboard. There is no use at all for me buying a new CPU, my 2.6 P4 running on a 234 bus, I think is a fast enough rig, just sucks I can't get a 6600 GT...

 

If you wasnt a fan of the first, then dont buy a video card.... I would play Desert Combat for hours.. It was so awesome when there was about 3-4 of my friends/roomates playing. All get on Teamspeak, hop in some Tanks and just rock the other team all day long. ahh the memories..I just gotta post this one more time....:)

 

 

bf_score.JPG

Edited by NOFX
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I used to play DC alot but after playing CSS with top of the line equipment the BF2 demo does nothing to impress me and not having the realistic physics of movement and taking damage kinda kills it for me too. I guess i just got spoilt on CSS, but im sure ill play it for vehicles and such.

 

 

M*XI

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thinking Ill prolly get one right here. Quite possibly the cheapest (leadtek) at the top...any input???

 

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList....Submit=Property

 

 

does newegg offer any sort of warrenty/return type of thing?

 

For example, on the off chance thta the 8x doesnt work in my 4x board (which I have been lead to believe it will) am I totally screwed?

Edited by Laz.e.rus
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well i have came to find out that no matter the company who makes the card, as long as it has the same chipset it will be the same.....no there is a few exceptions... some companies use to lower the clock speed, which would slighty degrade the performance and as I am looking through these 6600 Gt's there are few more expensive cards that only have a 900Mhz mem speed instead of 1000Mhz. And yes, I have always bought from newegg and have returned many things to them, There RMA side is excellent and I have never had any problem with it, you can exchange your item, get your money back and not have any problem. Just tell them your mobo isnt compatible with it and they will be happy to take it back.

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dude, the 256bits Start in the 6800 series!

 

I am NOT buying a 6800 series card to put into my intel 4xagp mobo, so that in 1 yr when I get my 64 bit/pcie board, my 6800 series wont even plug in. This is a hold-me-over card.

 

1 yr= mobo,cpu, power, ram etc (my current ram is 333-1 gig), and THEN I'll get the kick-butt-take-names vid card.

 

For comparison and a little humor, jsut how "slooooo" will that 128 bit 6600gt seem to me with my current ti4600? lol....doubt it

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I've got an ATI 9600XT. And it runs CS:S & BF2 demo great. The last Nvidia card I used was the TI4200. After using this 9600XT I doubt I'll ever go back to Nvidia.

 

Maybe some day I'll even jump over to a pci-e vid card. But, I certainly won't shell out the money they want for these type of cards at this point in time.

 

My main concern is that the vid card I use let's me play the game with good fps. And it not be choppy. Which my 9600XT does quite well. :peace:

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Laz, that card sounds good.

 

The 66GT is not a bad card at all.

 

Yes, it will also undoubtedly work in your 4x AGP motherboard, short of having a fluke board. 4x and 8x are required to accept the same voltages. A 1x board wouldn't be guaranteed to run in your mobo, but an 8x will. You won't actually get the full performance out of the card (partly to do with the 4x bandwidth, but mostly because it's an older board, an older model, and a slower processor than most).

 

Get it, use it, love it.

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