Video Cards and such

[Trippy]

So what would be a nice card to upgrade to from a Radeon 9800PRO 256?

How much did want to spend? If you don't plan on switching to PCIe the two fastest AGP cards would be the 7800GS that's been mentioned above multiple times and the ATI X850XT PE.

[Strazos]

What is the PE for?

[Tale]

Has AGP technology ever hit its bus setting (2x, 4x, 6x, 8x) as a bottleneck? Reason I ask, is that AGP reviews I've read have always noted "but this makes little difference in practice". I have a mobo that only goes up to 6x so it runs my 9600XT at 4x (card is capable of 8x). I probably have the processor and RAM grunt to benefit from say a 6800GS (which are a good buy now that the 7800GS is out), but I'd have to run it at AGP 4x so I wonder whether that would hurt it a lot, or if the reviews that keep not caring about AGP 8x are right?

No intention of building a new system for a year or so, until [NDA] comes out, but I could afford a video card upgrade for the sake of current games if I would benefit from it. Processor is 2.4GHz P4 and RAM is 1Gb (not messing with either of those in current system). The 9600XT runs WoW at an easy 40fps and is adequate for BF2, which I also play. Don't own Oblivion yet, but might someday. Think I should bother with 6800GS?

[Engels]

I know there's no diff between agp and pci e in terms of performance, but I don't know about agp 4x vs 8x. I would recommend buying a new motherboard, but if you have the computer I think you have, you have a wierd cpu socket type and you won't be able to find a motherboard that can both do your cpu and upgrade you to 8x agp or pci e. You probably also have rambus ram, so basically, uhm, yer right. No partial upgrades possible for you.

[Trippy]

What is the PE for?

Platinum Edition.

[Reg]

Try playing it on your 9800 and it will probably be fine unless you absolutely MUST have the latest shiny. I'm playing on a 9600 at 800x600 with most of the good stuff turned off but it still looks pretty good to me. I'm sure it will be even better with a 9800.

[Trippy]

Has AGP technology ever hit its bus setting (2x, 4x, 6x, 8x) as a bottleneck? Reason I ask, is that AGP reviews I've read have always noted "but this makes little difference in practice". I have a mobo that only goes up to 6x so it runs my 9600XT at 4x (card is capable of 8x). I probably have the processor and RAM grunt to benefit from say a 6800GS (which are a good buy now that the 7800GS is out), but I'd have to run it at AGP 4x so I wonder whether that would hurt it a lot, or if the reviews that keep not caring about AGP 8x are right?

No intention of building a new system for a year or so, until [NDA] comes out, but I could afford a video card upgrade for the sake of current games if I would benefit from it. Processor is 2.4GHz P4 and RAM is 1Gb (not messing with either of those in current system). The 9600XT runs WoW at an easy 40fps and is adequate for BF2, which I also play. Don't own Oblivion yet, but might someday. Think I should bother with 6800GS?

Yes you can certainly measure a difference between AGP x4 and x8 in certain benchmarks especially at high resolutions where just shuffling the bits between the video card's frame buffer and your system's RAM can take quite a bit of bandwidth, so if you like running at 1600 x 1200 or higher you are probably gimping yourself somewhat by not supporting AGP x8. On the other hand given your CPU I would say that will be the bottleneck in the vast majority of situations so I wouldn't worry about not being able to run at x8. If you can afford it I would say switching to the 6800 GS is worth it just for the Shader Model 3.0 support -- i.e. you'll get to see a lot more of the shiney compared to the 9600 XT.

[Tale]

Thanks for the advice. I mostly run in 1280x1024 on a 19" Sony flatscreen CRT. The monitor supports 1600x1200 but I don't like running that on a 19". I think I'll go for the 6800GS and see what it's like at 4x AGP.

Engels, my system is not that wierd, but it is old: Skt478 motherboard and DDR333 SDRAM in 2x 512Mb sticks. It has a shiny new C drive (300Gb ATA133 16Mb cache) but only because another drive died. It would support 2Gb RAM, but that would mean replacing the existing RAM with two 1Gb sticks, which just isn't worth the money for the remaining lifespan. The only worthwhile motherboard upgrade would be a move to today's standards, meaning I'd need to replace the processor, RAM, video card, etc. That's called building a new machine :)

P.S. In case you follow the link to the mobo, the DDR400, 667MHz bus and SATA support are all buggy and best avoided. The AGP is 6x capable but I guess they listed it as 4x because that's the only practical setting. So in practice it's a 533MHz bus, DDR333, ATA133, 4x AGP board :)

[Engels]

Well, I put in the parameters the motherboard describes in terms of socket type and memory requirements, and I did come up with some viable motherboard options:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.asp?Submit=ENE&N=2010200280+1070509907+1072407534&Subcategory=280&description=&srchInDesc=&minPrice=&maxPrice=

Of course, changing motherboard is a major operation and there's a good chance that your OS would not boot to such a radical configuration change. Then again, I've had an old OS on a socket A AMD 3200 boot to a socket 939 AMD 64 chip with no glitches. You just never know.

[Strazos]

Try playing it on your 9800 and it will probably be fine unless you absolutely MUST have the latest shiny. I'm playing on a 9600 at 800x600 with most of the good stuff turned off but it still looks pretty good to me. I'm sure it will be even better with a 9800.

First of all, I'm one of those kids that has to run at higher resolutions. I don't mind turning off the crazy stuff too much, but anything below 1280x1024 kind of grates on me.

In a week or two I might pick Oblivion up and give it a shot, then buy an X850 if needed (it has 256 VRAm, correct?).

[Sky]

Oblivion is playing nicely on my 9800 pro @ 1280x720.

[Lt.Dan]

Installed my new GeForce 7800 GS last night.

I've been doing some research and have almost talked myself out of getting the 7800gs.  There seems to be a power issue where by you need 18-20A on the 12V rail on your PSU.  If you don't have the power you get blackscreen and non-booting.  My psu does 18A.  Mind you it's not totally clear since all I'm going with is the evga forums and newegg feedback where posters are with fake (newegg) or idiots (using a below spec power supply).

What's your experience with power and stability WayAbvPar?

[Nazrat]

I have a 7800GS and my screaming fast, state of the art, Dell Dimension 4450 250 watt power supply only puts out: 14 amps at +12vdc, 22 amps at +5vdc, 18 amps at +3.3vdc.

I have had zero power supply problems in the 2 weeks that I have had the card installed. 

I think someone is trying to find something to complain about. 

[Ezdaar]

ZOMG YOU LIE!!111

Everyone knows modern computers will not function without at least a 400W power supply.


Even though peak usage of everything in the system is probably below 200W

[Cheddar]

I went ahead and ordered the x1600 yesterday (120USD, bitches).  I went with the 512 meg video option; just seemed like the sane thing to do.  Also found a nice mobo for a great price; did not realize the CPU would end up costing me a bundle though.  All told I spent around 400USD and got:

ATI x1600 512M: http://www.firingsquad.com/hw/6790/Sapphire_Radeon_X1600_PRO_512MB_PCIe/
MOBO:  http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16813135196
CPU, 3.0g 800FSB yada yada yada: http://www.ewiz.com/detail.php?name=P4-630

I am hoping it will run dreamy.  Not that I am having graphic issues currently (Well I sorta am, but its due to a seperate issue).  Basically upgrading from a P4 2.8 CPU w/ Radeon 9800SE w/256M. 

Anyone have a similiar setup?  Any issues?

[MrHat]

Not a similar setup, but I'd be curious to know how your set goes once you get it all up and running.  I'm currently sitting on a P4 2.53, 1gb ram, and a 6600GT w/ 128mb running on a 4x AGP board and am starting to feel a bit left behind (mainly because I can't add more ram to my rig since the mobo is crap).

[Cheddar]

Not a similar setup, but I'd be curious to know how your set goes once you get it all up and running.  I'm currently sitting on a P4 2.53, 1gb ram, and a 6600GT w/ 128mb running on a 4x AGP board and am starting to feel a bit left behind (mainly because I can't add more ram to my rig since the mobo is crap).

Nice tihng about the mobo I ordered is it takes both DDR and DDR2; that means I can hold off on getting new RAM until later.  The main issue I came across with the Prentiss CPU is heat- I went ahead and ordered a fancy ass fan/heatsink thingamabobber.  Evidently some people have overclocked the thing to 4.1htz, but that requires serious cooling tech.  Heh.


edit.  FYI the total I spent for all of the above + nice ass heatsink/fan for the CPU was almost exactly 400USD.  Ebay + Froogle 4TW.  Ill let ya know if it was worth it next week.

[Trippy]

I went ahead and ordered the x1600 yesterday (120USD, bitches).  I went with the 512 meg video option; just seemed like the sane thing to do.  Also found a nice mobo for a great price; did not realize the CPU would end up costing me a bundle though.  All told I spent around 400USD and got:

ATI x1600 512M: http://www.firingsquad.com/hw/6790/Sapphire_Radeon_X1600_PRO_512MB_PCIe/
MOBO:  http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16813135196
CPU, 3.0g 800FSB yada yada yada: http://www.ewiz.com/detail.php?name=P4-630

I am hoping it will run dreamy.  Not that I am having graphic issues currently (Well I sorta am, but its due to a seperate issue).  Basically upgrading from a P4 2.8 CPU w/ Radeon 9800SE w/256M. 

Anyone have a similiar setup?  Any issues?

That's an odd selection of components. You are basically spending $400 for a mostly lateral move.

The X1600 Pro is a step up from the 9800SE but that's cause the 9800SE is gimped to begin with (half the pixel pipelines of the 9800 Pro) so you are trading one gimpy card for a slightly less gimpy card (X1600 Pro has half the memory bandwidth of the X1600 XT, for example).

That motherboard has a gimped AGP slot which you won't be using meaning it has less slots of other more useful cards (may not be an issue depending on your usage). It doesn't support the Pentium D (dual core Pentium 4) so you don't have access to that upgrade path, not to mention the Pentium 4 is a dead end processor line for Intel (Core Duo is where their focus is now). According to the comments DDR2 on that motherboard doesn't get you any performance improvement, and you are paying for onboard video which you aren't using (though the board is already so cheap that doesn't really matter).

Your CPU choice is basically a lateral move as well (2.8 GHz to 3.0 GHz).

I'd say you are better off going with a socket 939 Athlon 64 3200+ and an nForce4 motherboard for roughly the same price. You get a faster CPU, you get to keep your memory (assuming it can run at PC3200 or faster) and you have the option of going to a dual core A64 X2 in the future if you like (unlike Intel you don't need an entirely different chipset to use AMD dual core CPUs).

[Trippy]

AnandTech yesterday published some Oblivion GPU benchmarks including tests on some of the mid-range cards people have been discussing here:

http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=2746&p=1

[Tale]

I went ahead with my upgrade also - bought an Xpertvision 6800GS with 512Mb RAM. Figured the extra video RAM would compensate for staying with 1Gb system RAM, and the extra cost was small. Installed it yesterday and have tried WoW, Oblivion, Battlefield 2 and (NDA). Playing all at 1280x1024 and 4x AGP. See my posts above for other system specs.

The most noticeable things with the 6800GS are:
1. In WoW and Oblivion, running with everything switched on is now similar in performance to running with things switched off. So I can keep everything turned up and enjoy how it looks. Yet to try this with BF2.
2. Probably ~20fps higher on average in WoW. If I looked down at the ground or up at the sky in an isolated area, previously I could hit 50-60fps. Now I hit 80-100fps (OK highest I saw was 96). It can still slow down to 15-20fps when running from Ironforge AH to Ironforge bank through a crowd, but it cruises at 35-50fps elsewhere (and on raids) with all options maxed, which with my old card would have been 20-35fps with some options turned down.
3. Loaded BF2 with my previous standard settings and played Strike at Karkand map (intense city combat with dust/fog effects in the air). There was not even one bit of lag, it was an utter blast and a joy to play. Previous card would have had some slowdown.
4. It achieved the desired result of making (NDA) somewhat playable on my PC. Again, turning options up/down has little effect because the card is engineered to do those options as standard, unlike my previous card.
5. I start to see my other bottlenecks, mainly processor and system bus I think. If I really push the card in WoW (jump around madly in crowded Ironforge, or fly a griffin just above the ground over a crowded area) I can cause a bit of hitching that seems to be system related, rather than just disk access and texture loading. Certain parts of (NDA) slow to a crawl, but that's probably just the nature of an unoptimised product in development.

Going from an ATI to an NVidia I noticed the colours seemed a bit less vibrant. But there is a setting "digital vibrance" in the options where adding a tiny bit gave me the same colour strength as the other card. However, the 2D performance feels more solid. I wouldn't describe it as crisper, just somehow more natural looking than the ATI. I like the NVidia driver UI better too, and it's a smaller download and faster install.

Card makes me laugh, though: it's a full-length AGP board, stretching right past the RAM slots, with a fan that takes up the space of a PCI slot (it even takes two of the faceplates on the back of the PC), and requires two molex power connectors. Fortunately I already had a 420W PSU.

All up, mission accomplished. It should give me another year's gaming out of this PC.

[Sky]

AnandTech yesterday published some Oblivion GPU benchmarks including tests on some of the mid-range cards people have been discussing here:

http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=2746&p=1

Ok, so I'm playing it on a lowend card, I guess. It's very playable and looks great, I can't see spending a couple hundred bones to get a slight improvement my girlfriend wouldn't even notice.

[WayAbvPar]

1. In WoW and Oblivion, running with everything switched on is now similar in performance to running with things switched off. So I can keep everything turned up and enjoy how it looks. Yet to try this with BF2.

Oblivion is much less forgiving than BF2 in my experience; you should be able to run BF2 at the highest settings with no trouble.

[Sky]

You need a TARDIS to run Oblivion with all the bells + whistles.

[Tale]

True. At the time I posted, I had only owned Oblivion for 24 hours and thought the "high" default settings it chose must actually be high. But they ain't :) Other than that, my post stands.

[Cheddar]

Well system is operational and seems to be running smooth.  I ended up with a dead mobo, so was forced to get another.  Installation was a bitch; finally I flashed the bios and everything came up fine.  Graphics are pretty awesome.  WoW runs smoothly even with all graphics turned up.  Thus far I am satisfied with the x1600 performance.

[Engels]

Wow runs smoothly on a Commodore 64 man. Nothin surprising there.

[Tale]

heh

[Sky]

heh

That's some funny shit. I think I know that guy, heh.

[WayAbvPar]

heh

He also does a magic trick- he makes $100 bills disappear by setting them on fire.