new vid card

[FroBoZZ]

well, this is my choice. gonna order it tomorrow. comment at will, compliments or slander: encourage, rant or "fool, ur making a career choice, stop it at once"

 

the new card

 

of course i forgot about price, so if i dont have enough cash, it will be this one if i have 2 slots free

 

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?...570#DetailSpecs

[mookie]

Nice comments on that card:

Fan is green for maximum performance

[Kruten]

Nice comments on that card:

Fan is green for maximum performance

 

That must've been why my video card ran so hot. It was sort of blue.

[Cujo]

if you're into oblivion the 7800gt gets beat by the ati card. in other games, despite the older features, the x850xt is still probably faster or at worst equal to the 7800gs.

 

i'd probably go cheaper though as each of those cards will be a bit overkill for your system.

 

i'd recommend something like this from ati:

 

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?...N82E16814102609

 

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?...N82E16814161005

 

or this from nvidia:

 

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?...N82E16814130268

 

out of the 3 i'd probably go with the x800gto if you're going to try and unlock the other 4 pipes. as the review says just google it. i've done it twice with x800pros. if you're not comfortable doing that then go with the x1600pro. the core should overclock to the sky. i've seen 155mhz on the core with stock cooling. the nvidia card is no real competition here but i included it to show you what nvidia has at that price range. they've pretty well abandoned agp.

 

just get one of the above and save the rest of your money for that big upgrade.

 

btw, that x850xt you linked to is out of stock it says.

Edited May 29, 2006 by Cujo

[anonymo]

If you must upgrade I would recommend this only because it's such a good deal! I know cujo will come in here and hit me with whatever was fresh at the fish market but even the cujmeister will agree that if you have to go agp, you might as well get it cheap! (ok I must admit I feel dirty for linking to future shop)

 

Oh crud...you're not from Canada...maybe they'll still send it to you...

[Preacher]

ok, now i really want to get a good card, is the x1900xtx worth it? i am almost willing to pay for it, if you guys think it actually lives up to its hype. i have read reviews and just want your opinion. should i wait for that top of the line card until next gen or not?

 

by the way, since i will be looking for best performance, i dont think i will have any AA on or such, unless it effects the gameplay.

 

X1900xtx is the best IMO due to the fact that even the game Oblivion can't make it stutter lol. It rocks yer socks as it were.

 

best price I found for it is here: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?...82E16814131003R

 

It's an open box but who cares, you don't need more than the card and a monitor to hook it up to anyway

[FroBoZZ]

aight, those look really good. but wat about the x1600pro? wat does it mean to open pipes? what diffrence does that make, is it hard to do and are the x800's better because of this feature?

[igloo]

I'd go with the 7800GS.

 

http://www.tomshardware.com/2006/05/08/200...rt1/page42.html

 

Every benchmark in that review, the AGP 7800GS is 50% faster than the AGP X1600.

 

Don't confuse the PCI-E X1600 and AGP version.

 

 

 

I've got the X1900XTX myself. If your sporting a big LCD (24"-30") you need the extra horsepower.

[Cujo]

preacher, he's on agp.

 

igloo, he has an aging system. it won't realize the full potential of a 7800gs. plus the gs is overpriced.

 

frobozz, don't worry about the x800. unlocking the pipes makes it equal to an x800xl and then you should be able to oc it to x800xt or xt pe speeds. google searches will find you all you need to know. for someone with limited computer hardware knowledge, as you've admitted, i'd just stick with the x1600pro.

 

btw, once you're ready to do a full system i could build you a sweet one. check out my company in my sig. we're trying to stick to Canada only right now but shipping to you shouldn't be too big of an issue. at least something we could explore when the time comes.

Edited May 29, 2006 by Cujo

[FroBoZZ]

aight, gonna go wiith the x1600pro. thx for the offer cujo, i will definitely consider your offer. gonna look in a year or so and i will go to you first. thanks for all your help guys.

[FroBoZZ]

i am looking at the radeon box right now. gonna install it tomorrow with my friends help since he knows everything and I sorta know wat RAM is. At least I know that CD means compact disk.

[NOFX]

basically eyeball it it, unscrew the screw holding your current video card in, undo the latch(if there is one on the AGP slot). and pull the card out. Then put the new card in.

 

Im glad you didn't get the x850XT. I bought a x850pro with big plans on unlocking all the pipes and such. It didn't work and the card was no where near what I was expecting. And after I bought all new hardware, they finally release the 7800GS, which is what I would have bought

[nut]

tell us how it goes =)

[Cujo]

odd that you're disappointed with the x850pro. sure it's not screaming fast but you're not that much behind the 7800gs. i wasn't aware you had big plans of unlocking the pipes before buying. i thought it was after it was mentioned to you that you got excited. if you'd had plans before i would have told you to get the vivo version.

[NOFX]

I didn't plan on unlocking at first, but I got excited when I found out I did have the vivo version..... I beleive my RAM had a bottleneck that had something to do with my whole situation as well...

 

so I guess maybe if I had RAM with good timings and only two sticks rather than 4, it would have helped out somewhat.

[FroBoZZ]

4 sticks? my god u guys have a lot of ram. didnt think more than 1 gig helped. shows how computer savy i am

[Cujo]

for you a gig is probably fine. once you get into the higher resolutions you start to require a lot more memory for textures. i regularily use over a gig in cs:s now.

 

best way to check if you need more ram is in task manager, performance tab. check your peak usage. if it's higher then say 900,000 then you could do for an upgrade to 1.5 or 2 gigs.

[FroBoZZ]

u mean the physical memory right?

[Cujo]

under commit charge. it says peak. that's peak physical.

[FroBoZZ]

aight, got the card installed. sorta dissapointed. i think nofx hit it on the head: my cpu just plain suks. i think it is severely limiting my performance. here are some of the key specs:

 

Manufacturer AMD

Family AMD Athlon XP 3200+

Architecture 32-bit

Internal Clock 2.2 GHz

Internal Clock Maximum 3.0 GHz

External Clock 200.0 MHz

Socket Designation Socket A

Upgrade ZIF Socket

HyperThreadingTechnology N/A

Capabilities MMX, CMov, RDTSC, 3DNow!, Extended 3DNow!, SSE, PAE

Version AMD Athlon XP 3200+

Caches

Level 1 128 KB

Level 2 512 KB

 

any ideas? i am not getting any increase in fps. sorta hope i only need to upgrade a few small things or change a few vid card settings to get it to really work well. if not then we will see wat happens. i know of a lot of people who have wores vid cards and comps who get better fps than me, at least the worst vid card ones.

[mookie]

What framerate are you actually getting, with what settings?

[NOFX]

make sure you have reformated your disk and got a fresh copy of windows on there, or at least make sure you have uninstalled and reinstalled your video card drivers.

 

I went through the same deal last christmas... I just wanted a video card upgrade, but no matter what direction I went, I had to get a whole new machine.

 

I had a x850pro AGP, P4, 4x256 RAM and it wasn't good.

 

I wanted to go cheap, but I wanted to upgrade so I went with a PCI-E 7800GT card, so that meant a new motherboard and new CPU. come time find out my 4x256 didn't work, so I had to buy 2x1gig patriot.

 

I bet if I would have bought the patriot and kept the x850 pro , 3.2.Ghz P4. I would be close to where I am now at half the cost.

[Tek-Almighty]

Thought I would add these benchmarks from Extreme Tech on top end video cards...since this thread seems to be the place that "argument" has migrated to.

 

Just some new data on the big guns!

 

http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1697,1950883,00.asp

 

 

Here's another that pits ATI vs. NVidia with Oblivion.

 

The X1900, X1800, 7900GT, 7900GTX, and 7600 GT are all review...

 

Very interesting.

 

http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1697,1947839,00.asp

Edited May 31, 2006 by Tek-Almighty

[Cujo]

frobozz, did you not originally post about a fps drop without changing anything? to me that's a software or failing hardware issue. your cpu is probably not failing and should run source just fine. it's got to be something else. and did you not originally say that other games were fine?

 

also, i'm assuming you've already added the following two lines to your autoexec.cfg.

 

cl_ragdoll_physics_enable 0

cl_phys_props_enable 0

 

those two significantly reduce cpu load in source.

 

edit - i just checked the original thread and noticed something. your cpu runs at 200fsb x 11 for 2.2ghz. your ram is only pc2700 which runs at 166fsb so you're running an asynchronus bus speed right now. athlon xp's hate that and you're probably losing a fair amount of performance. i suggest upgrading your ram to 2gigs and at the same time by getting pc3200 you'll be running your setup at it's fullest potential. find a relatively cheap 2x1gig kit or even two individual sticks (value ram is fine) and take that video card back (if you can).

Edited May 31, 2006 by Cujo

[FroBoZZ]

well, to start with, my fps can get to an accepttable level. when i am not near fighting i have gotten about 60 or 70. usually its around 20-35, with the los and choke. i did say that i experienced an fps drop, although i meant more of a large increase in choke and loss. i cant tell u how many times i have reformated with no change. i will try reinstalling my vid card driver since i just used the one on the installation disk that came with the x1600pro. i tried a benchmark, fututermark, 3dmark03, and got about 42 for my fps and around 20 for my cpu. not too great. i really dont wanna pumpp money into another comp since i really dont have any to do that with. will try reinstallen vid driver. all suggestions welcome. i thought maybe only having l1 128 kb cache was a bad thing