Resolved new problem has arisen ->(buying new graphics card for relatively slow pc)

Hi,

I have the following configuration:
P4 1.6 Ghz
512 MB Ram(PC 3200)
120 GB HD 7200RPM (8mb chache)
and a MB with SiS 645 chipset (4x Agp port)

and I would like to buy a new graphics card. As gaiming goes I like to play occasionaly games such as Hidden and Dangerous 2 , Rainbow Six: Raven Shield and when it will be released Ghost Recon 3. I would like to buy a graphics card that will enable me to play such games with high FPS with all the details and full FSAA and AF. I was thinking of Radeon 9800 pro but a friend of mine suggested that my configuration is too slow to support such card and such a purchase would be a waste of money. He made it sound like that R 9800 pro will give yet very little FPS because of my configuration. What I want to know is why coudnt R 9800 pro be used with the mentioned configuration? Would it really be a waste of money? I asked him for the reson but he coudnt give me one. I would greately apprichiate any explanation aswell with a tip of what card should I buy.

Your 1.6 GHz is plenty to handle any game I know of with the appropriate vid card. I recommend NVidia because of good driver support. Look to 2nd or 3rd generation chipsets. I strongly believe your friend is wrong.

For that setup I'd go with a Nvidia GeForce 4 or something of that vintage. Your friend does have a point, a very fast card won't be very different from one that is a couple of generations old, because it will be limited by your CPU. Unless you plan to upgrade the mobo/CPU combination later on, I'd go a GeForce 4, like a Ti4200/4600, or maybe a Radeon 9600. Something of that age anyway.

I have a GeForce4 in a Cele 850@100. It does not play Doom3 but hardly at all. I recently dropped an Nvidia 6600 in it and plays Doom3 very nicely now. Most of these 3D games are explicitly limited by video graphics hardware, not CPU speed or ram size.

Your assumption that his "legacy" system is limited by his CPU and cannot handle a fast graphics card is completely inaccurate and false.

As long as you have a 1GHz, you can handle any graphics card out there.

Thanks for the replies. I thought about it and ordered Radeon 9550. I will get it on monday.

BTW @penagate: why do you say that it will be limited by the CPU? I don't get it. Cos my CPU does at least 5 times more operations than the GPU of the graphics card, if it were the other way around I would understand that.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by 3rd_newton_law

Thanks for the replies. I thought about it and ordered Radeon 9550. I will get it on monday.

BTW @penagate: why do you say that it will be limited by the CPU? I don't get it. Cos my CPU does at least 5 times more operations than the GPU of the graphics card, if it were the other way around I would understand that.

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Way to go, thats a decent Card, i recently purchased one of those, works extremely well, pulling 70 - 80fps on Dawn Of War on max details :)

ATI Radeon 9550 256MB AGP 8x
Intel Celeron D @ 2816Mhz
768MB DDR RAM @ PC2700
Win XP Home SP2
:thumb:

My only concern is the responsiveness of the processor, it seems somewhat slower than my AMD Athlon 1600+ XP
:'(

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Dave Sell

I have a GeForce4 in a Cele 850@100. It does not play Doom3 but hardly at all. I recently dropped an Nvidia 6600 in it and plays Doom3 very nicely now. Most of these 3D games are explicitly limited by video graphics hardware, not CPU speed or ram size.

Your assumption that his "legacy" system is limited by his CPU and cannot handle a fast graphics card is completely inaccurate and false.

As long as you have a 1GHz, you can handle any graphics card out there.

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Well it's a lot more complicated than that. It depends how the details in the game are set up, how heavily the game engine works the CPU vs. the graphics card.

I had my Ti4200 in an old Pentium III 450 Mhz machine and yes it was alright, better at least than the old TNT2. But when I upgraded the rest of the comp to my current Athlon XP 2600+, the performance skyrocketed. You're saying that if I had a 1GHz CPU then the performance I would get would not be much different. I can't agree with that.

The reason your GF4 didn't play Doom 3 is because D3 is a DirectX 9 game. It is optimised for the latest generation cards, which have DX9-based chipsets. The GF4 series only supports (at the hardware level) DX8. If you compare the speed of playing say a DirectX 7 or 8 game, between the GF4 and 6600, I don't think there would be much difference at all.

I agree that RAM capacity doesn't have much impact on 3D performance (if any). If anything the biggest bottleneck is the data transfer rate between CPU, graphics chipset and graphics memory.

1) i agree, it is more complicated than asserted by 3rd newt.

2) Actually, GF4 supports DX9 and can play Doom3, just not too well.

There are always limiting factors to gaming performance. In general, these are:

#1 = Vid Card (driver support included)
#2 = CPU speed
#3 = Ram allowance
#4 = OS
#5 = HD speed (7200rpm, for example)

My main problem is that you actually recommended a GF4 for his setup just because he has a 1.6GHz CPU. This is an absurd recommendation. My main point is that he can take advantage of any vid card on the market with his current setup. You should not recommend such an old-fashioned vid card to him.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Dave Sell

2) Actually, GF4 supports DX9 and can play Doom3, just not too well.

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Well natively it only supports DX8, it does run DX9 software but as you say not very well. Certainly not as well as the newer chipsets, which do have native support for DX9.

Quote:

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My main problem is that you actually recommended a GF4 for his setup just because he has a 1.6GHz CPU. This is an absurd recommendation. My main point is that he can take advantage of any vid card on the market with his current setup. You should not recommend such an old-fashioned vid card to him.

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I don't think it's an absurd recommendation. It's not a bad card and it is relatively well speed-matched with a 1.6GHz CPU (OK maybe it's a little slow, but I said *around* that generation). I did also say "unless you plan to upgrade" in which case he should go for a new card anyway.

It seams that the facts are the better the card and also equally important the better the CPU the better performance. I will accept the fact that CPU speed is extremely important withount any technical explanation.

BTW: I went for R 9550 cos of the fact it is DX9 gen card. It does the trick. But now I have a different problem.

I tought that the problem was that my old card was overheating(Whitch it was as the fan was malfunctioning) and soo my Pc frooze for no apparent reason..sometimes after 5 min of start sometimes after 2 hrs or operating. It would just freeze. I purchased the new card soo my pc would not freeze. But funny it does. I don't get it. At times I got VPU recovery function to pop up, at times my pc restarts in the middle of the game for no reason and most of the time it just freezes. Funny fact is it doesnt freeze as long as I dont play and 3d game. Any ideas? I am guessing my MB is a bit old it is from year 2002.

I tried first the official drivers of Radeon, then softmoded drivers, now I am using Omega drivers for Radeon. But the problem is stele there. Any ideas? I had the problem both on Win XP and Win 2k. I also noted that both my Sound Card and Radeon have the same IRQ...that couldnt be, could it?

It could be that your CPU is overheating. Do you have temperature sensors?
I don't think it would be an IRQ issue, modern chipsets have no problem sharing IRQs.

You are correct. My CPU was overheating. I bought new cooler. It works fine now.