Video card comparison

[+ST0RM 145]

I'm looking to replace my Radeon 9600 256Mb AGP vid card with a GeForce 7600GS 521Mb AGP card. Is this a good move? I'm getting F/R's in the teens with WoI and a bit of stuttering if alot of stuff is going on on Med/High settings.

 

The machine itself is 1-2 years old with a 2Ghz CPU and 1.5Ghz RAM.

 

What do you guys think?

 

Storm

[sparkomatic 7]

- funny you should mention that...I just replaced a GeForce 7600GS AGP 256 with a GeForce 7600GT AGP 512 MB...it is a noticeable difference between the GT and the GS, plus the 256 --> 512 jump also helped in 3wire games (dont know why, but I do know how to read fps)

 

- and due to a very unfortunate incident with buy.com I now have 2 cards (one installed, one sitting in the original shipping container that is redundant to me and buy.com wont take back but I paid for both...buy.com didnt fill my order for like two months, I wrote to them told them to cancel it and ordered from tigerdirect.com...the same card arrived from Tigerdirect in like 4 days and the day after, which would be 62 days if you are following along, the buy.com one arrived...and the buy.com return policy is dated from when you ordered it, so they refused to accept it back even though it was completely their fault)

 

for me, I have another AGP machine, but it is a 250watt Compaq and the GT requires a 325W or higher...since it is a Compaq one cannot upgrade the PSU (I tried, repeatedly) so the part is redundant.

 

if you are interested, send the PM

 

but back to your question, I personally like the card so far, and it is probably the last (for a while at least) AGP that nVidia is going to make which is why I went with it

 

sure, people will jump on here and tell you that there are two generations of SLI cards way better, but I take it you, like myself, dont want to switch out the mo'bo' just yet and want an AGP option...after considerable research, it is the one that I chose

 

hope this helps

[MigBuster 2,884]

Depends what your set up is in WOI - guys are reporting slow FR with the geforce 8800 in even more powerful PCs with graphics on higher settings.

 

I run a GeForce 7600GT (PCI-Express) 256MB which does me okay - but I do scale some of the graphics settings down even in WOE.

[hillybilly 0]

I went from ATI to Nvidia and if I'd paid a lot for the Nvidia card I'd be unhappy. The image quality of the Radeons is just so much better. I know this is a controversial topic-- but a word to the wise...

[+Gunrunner 314]

Quite frankly, it's a small leap, the GT would be a better choice (even though it's more noisy), for usually around $3 or 5 more (maybe more, I tend to think in euros).

If you can spend more, are really concerned about performances but don't want to change everything, ATI/AMD has the HD 3850 in AGP for around $140.

 

On quality, it depends on your visual criteria, your display, settings and drivers, also it varies from generation to generation, nVidia having the advantage of offering less lemon (nVidia's failings are usually cards that are too noisy, too hot or too power hungry, while ATI's cards are often too underperforming for their segment or way too unstable) than ATI (nVidia lemons being mostly their very high end, while ATI can be over the whole range) and somewhat more convinving drivers (even though ATI's performances in the domain have definitely improved and nVidia's not what it once was).

[+Piecemeal 450]

I went from ATI to Nvidia and if I'd paid a lot for the Nvidia card I'd be unhappy. The image quality of the Radeons is just so much better. I know this is a controversial topic-- but a word to the wise...

 

Hi bud. Do you know where I can view the specs of my own card? Id like to share that info with anybody who can tell me whether I'm lugging a stallion or a donkey? My suspicions are on the latter since every time I upgrade the game my game performance isn't up to scratch and get's slower and slower

[+Gunrunner 314]

Do you know the model of your card ?

 

The quickest (if not entirely reliable) way would be to right click on your desktop, chose Properties, then parameters and read what you have in the pull down menu, it should tell you the name of your card (even though it won't tell you the amount of memory and frequencies, it gives a useful baseline, since I can't navigate you through menus, I only know the french names and shortcuts -_-).

[sparkomatic 7]

- game my game performance isn't up to scratch and get's slower and slower

 

 

is it affecting any other program? maybe just noticing it on this game, but it could be a PC-wide problem...anti-virus software does not catch everything...could be something more sinister lurking in the background, or could be nothing...computers are fun that way!

 

cheers

[eraser_tr 29]

Stick with Nvidia. I swore never to buy an ATI card again after the way their customer service treated me. Updates to their drivers removed a rendering pass to gain performance, which killed specular shine in another sim. They ignored the issue entirely and wouldn't even acknowledge it in their "known issues" but managed the time to fix much more minor issues with even more obscure games.

 

Meanwhile on multiple occaisions I've learned an Nvidia card has had trouble with a particular game, they release a driver update fixing the problem before the game is on store shelves.

[+Piecemeal 450]

- game my game performance isn't up to scratch and get's slower and slower

 

 

is it affecting any other program? maybe just noticing it on this game, but it could be a PC-wide problem...anti-virus software does not catch everything...could be something more sinister lurking in the background, or could be nothing...computers are fun that way!

 

cheers

 

No; it's just affecting SFG and WOV. I know the game can take up a lot of juice but I already got a 1gb RAM upgrade beefing me up to 1.5gb so it can't be that. As for viruses, I run a scan twice a week. I'm also asking these questions cos I can't afford a new PC at the moment, and as you may know, it's SOOOOO f**king annoying when the game crashes during an engagement. Another annoying problem is the occasional framerate of 8 p.s. when flying some aircraft.....Siiiiigh......

[sparkomatic 7]

- that can be caused by the size of the textures for a given airplane...especially if you are using the legendary Sundowner's textures, they are not the default size...you can change that, and there is a post with how to do that somewhere

 

- also, if you are using a highly modified WOx game with tons of add-ons, please remember TK didnt intend for that to be the case...so the game does what the game does based on the way it was designed...start cramming it full of a lot of different stuff and you can see where it is not happy...you might try a new install and then move over only the really great changes and a few planes...some of us have several installs...like for multi-player, for testing new stuff, for certain mods (some mods require a separate install all together like Tainted Cigar, so if you stuck that in with all your other mods, it may not be happy)

 

- not saying this is the case and EVERY SINGLE PC IS DIFFERENT (so, for the rest of you, please dont start posting that you have 72 Tb of downloads and it works great...this is for him, not you)...just a thought and good luck!

 

cheers

[MigBuster 2,884]

No; it's just affecting SFG and WOV. I know the game can take up a lot of juice but I already got a 1gb RAM upgrade beefing me up to 1.5gb so it can't be that. As for viruses, I run a scan twice a week. I'm also asking these questions cos I can't afford a new PC at the moment, and as you may know, it's SOOOOO f**king annoying when the game crashes during an engagement. Another annoying problem is the occasional framerate of 8 p.s. when flying some aircraft.....Siiiiigh......

 

 

The shadow on the F-106 used to kill my rates - also as said above check out the sizes of some of the skins you are using. Default stock jets use 512x512 - but most add ons tend to use 1024x1024 (about 3MB )or 2048x2048 (about 12MB) files.

 

Try the basic stuff also - like defragging your hard drive - and clearing any files you dont need to keep- or even archiving these off to DVD so they dont take up space.

 

If the fan on the graphics card gets really dusty thats also been know to cause slow down.

[+Piecemeal 450]

The shadow on the F-106 used to kill my rates - also as said above check out the sizes of some of the skins you are using. Default stock jets use 512x512 - but most add ons tend to use 1024x1024 (about 3MB )or 2048x2048 (about 12MB) files.

 

Try the basic stuff also - like defragging your hard drive - and clearing any files you dont need to keep- or even archiving these off to DVD so they dont take up space.

 

If the fan on the graphics card gets really dusty thats also been know to cause slow down.

 

I defrag once a week. Trust me my friend, I've done everything you've suggested, even wiping some of my precious music library files to clear some hard drive space and cleaning the fan vent regularly. If I knew the filepath to my Graphics Card directory, I'd be able to access the info I need in order to ascertain what I need in that department.

[+starfighter2 117]

I have 7600GS 256 AGP on my "base" older machine and I had Ati 9600Pro before.... Nvidia in this case is 3 times faster.

[sparkomatic 7]

I have 7600GS 256 AGP on my "base" older machine and I had Ati 9600Pro before.... Nvidia in this case is 3 times faster.

 

 

- there you go, nothing better than a first hand report!

[Viper6 3]

I defrag once a week. Trust me my friend, I've done everything you've suggested, even wiping some of my precious music library files to clear some hard drive space and cleaning the fan vent regularly. If I knew the filepath to my Graphics Card directory, I'd be able to access the info I need in order to ascertain what I need in that department.

MajorGeeks.com has some great free tools and utilities to give you feedback,benchmarks and a lot other info on just about every part of your rig.

[+NeverEnough 78]

For a good comparison of your video card options, you might try taking a look at

http://www.gpureview.com/show_cards.php?ca...1&card2=361

 

You can do a side by side comparison between two different video cards to how they might suit your applications and budget.

[hillybilly 0]

Hi bud. Do you know where I can view the specs of my own card? Id like to share that info with anybody who can tell me whether I'm lugging a stallion or a donkey? My suspicions are on the latter since every time I upgrade the game my game performance isn't up to scratch and get's slower and slower

 

 

Go here:

 

http://us.blizzard.com/support/article.xml...&rhtml=true

 

and scroll down to the part that says "Steps to identify your video card and driver version" and follow the instructions.

 

I hope this helps!

[DaSpungie 1]

my x800 xt pl runs it all pretty good

and well my 2 8800 gts sli kill it

and i have seen it run great with a 8800gt

 

have not tried it on the wifes new ati 2600 xt

[+streakeagle 871]

while the video card is normally the key factor to frame rates...

WOI also pushes the limits on cpu bottlenecks with more objects.

The entire SFP1 series can lose fps to sound issues... just fly over Hanoi in WOV, once the flak starts popping all around you, the extra sound loud combined with the visual effects really drops the system down in fps.

WOI also has much larger textures, so the video card needs a lot of fast memory that has a big 256-bit bus... it also helps if you have a gig or 2 of very fast system RAM.

 

Those with 8800 GTs and having issues are either facing a driver problem or have one of the above bottlenecks.

My x1800xt is getting bogged down by the new shadows.

Mirrors tend to get bottlenecked by the cpu, and my cpu is loaded down very hard by WOI, so I am leaving mirrors off for the first time in years.

 

Balance your system... don't waste money on high end video cards if you don't have a cpu and ram to match... and a sound card that does not offload anything to the cpu can help quite a bit too.

Unfortunately, quite a few sound cards are little better than an onboard chipset when it comes to processing 3d sound for games.

The ones that do process game sounds without bogging down the cpu tend to be the more expensive cards.

[JediMaster 451]

Funny, with the latest patches both FE and WOI run much faster now than at release. They're not faster than WOV/WOE, merely as fast at the best of times. So for installs with all stock planes I now have shadows turned on. It also might be that since I now have an nvidia card instead of ATI it does the shadows faster? I don't know.

[rovert97 1]

with me, and my ati 9800pro that is overclocked and has a huge arctic cooling system on it, WoI runs great. but even a stock copy of WoV just drops down in frame rate to sometimes less then 5. WoE and WoI will have a constant 30-45fps. there is no way i can assume that these games are more graphically intensive then say COD4 and FEAR. those i run perfectly. there are always other causes of poor performance in certain games, it just takes a while to find out what it is exactly.

[hillybilly 0]

I have often suspected that the CPU is the bottleneck for WOV, WOE and WOI because of the simluation of radar. These games have a lot of radar systems, in the planes and SAM sites. Are they all "tracking" each other? In other words, does the AI activity depend upon what is "on" the AI radar? That would be a huge drain on the CPU. First Eagles has no radar--and no slowdowns. But I'm not sure about this, it's just a theory.

[+ST0RM 145]

Thanks for the assist. I went ahead and bought the card yesterday and will get it installed today.

 

Storm