Graphics Card questions

[Viggen]

So, I'm looking into buying a new computer. Looking at some desktops and some laptops. Haven't decided yet.

 

One laptop I'm looking at has an NVIDIA GeForce 8200M G. Anyone have one of these?

 

Would the Intel® GMA X4500HD Graphics do me any justice?

 

And has SF2/V/E fixed any of the ATI Radeon problems?

 

I'm not asking to something like C5, Fubar, or Sundowner have shown in their screenshots. I just want to be able to run the game with most of the graphics options on atleast high and have good frames per second.

 

Mind you, I'm also on a very fixed budget and I doubt I can break $700.

[+Fubar512]

In a laptop, I'd try to stay with either Nvidia or ATI solutions, and stay away from Intel. In a desktop, you could order a fairly entry level system...just make sure that it has a free PCI-E slot. You can then drop in an Nvidia 9600GT (or better) for like $60.

[Viggen]

So should I avoid anything that says "Integrated"?

[+sony tuckson]

Indeed, up to this day, no "integrated" solution provides enough power to run a flightsim correctly

[Viggen]

I see. Thanks for the help guys!

[jomni]

Just letting you know, TW games work with the Intel integrated graphics for laptops. Not so bad if you ask me. You just can't use max settings. But if you have a choice, get the better ones.

[malibu43]

Just letting you know, TW games work with the Intel integrated graphics for laptops. Not so bad if you ask me. You just can't use max settings. But if you have a choice, get the better ones.

 

 

I have an Intel GMAx3100 (integrated) graphics card, and I can run WOV/SF2V with Green Hell 2 and Widesky with all settings on Med and High, and get FPS of 15-25.

 

That being said, if I had the choice, I'd definitely get something not intel and not integrated. It's given me a few issues that required lots of driver roll backs, and a lot of new games seem to require a dedicated card to run at all.

Edited June 27, 2009 by malibu43

[Icarus999]

I would second what Fubar recommends and get an upgradeable bare bones rig, it does not take much to run the basic sim and the nvidea 9600 would be a good affordable starting point, you can upgrade to a better video card and cpu when you get the money, just do a little research on where you would like to go with your upgrade before you settle on the motherboard. I see factory reconditioned 8800 gtx768m cards with a 90 day return policy on Ebay all the time for around $160.00 and the core 2 duo E 6850 Conroe is still a badass gaming chip and is dirt cheap. I have those two items in one of my rigs and i highly recommend them as a lower priced solution, they will work really well for you if you don't have to have all of the eye candy going on all of the time. I for some reason am never satisfied with good enough and have to push the limits all of the time because I see these awesome clouds, or skins effect mods/ high res water available here and being the compulsive mission builder that I am i just want to put it all together with 50 different sortie's in the air simultaneously and then fun frapps on top of it all .

 

For some reason the widesky and comms mods are a absolute killer on framerates - my system has no problem running Crysis on high settings with out the anti aliasing but WOE with everything set to unlimited and widesky/comms high res skins / starys effects will kick my systems butt giving jerky frame rates at take off, then it gets playable once I am in the air.

 

good luck

[+Fubar512]

For some reason the widesky and comms mods are a absolute killer on framerates - my system has no problem running Crysis on high settings with out the anti aliasing but WOE with everything set to unlimited and widesky/comms high res skins / starys effects will kick my systems butt giving jerky frame rates at take off, then it gets playable once I am in the air.

 

good luck

 

These titles are very CPU intensive. You're better off with a powerful CPU , and a mid-range video card, than you are with a high-end vid card, and a mid-range CPU. In this series, experience has proven that a system sporting a Core2Duo at 3.6 gHz and a 9600GT, will yeild better frame rates than would a system with 2.8 mHz C2D and a GTX-295.

[+Brain32]

Well I was thinking what to write here, but then I understood one very important thing, expectations differ quite a lot with players of this game, many are quite happy with fps in low 20's or even worse than that. In situation like that I don't know what to recommend...a TNT2 and PIII 800?

 

Anyway people seem to report that atleast in DX9 mode the game runs much better on nVidia than on ATI, even in situations where nVidia card is much slower in other games than ATI, it will allegedly run SF series reasonbly well.

 

Interesting thing is that a guy with C2D running at 4.4GHz! and ATI4890 couldn't get the game run at 22fps in a really non intensive situation...so I say until TK decides to further support DX10 as with that option SF2 runs at over 50fps even on ATI cards...buy nVidia even if it's mid- low end because if what people report is true it will run better than any present or future ATI lol

[+Fubar512]

Interesting thing is that a guy with C2D running at 4.4GHz! and ATI4890 couldn't get the game run at 22fps in a really non intensive situation...so I say until TK decides to further support DX10 as with that option SF2 runs at over 50fps even on ATI cards...buy nVidia even if it's mid- low end because if what people report is true it will run better than any present or future ATI lol

 

That's true, though things have gotten much better. For example, back in the early days of the series (2002-2003), users with ATI cards could not even get the RWR and radar displays to render properly!

[+Brain32]

That's true, though things have gotten much better. For example, back in the early days of the series (2002-2003), users with ATI cards could not even get the RWR and radar displays to render properly!

 

Yeah they render perfectly now, no issues with that but the performance is beyond pathetic, hopefully TK won't wait centuries to finish DX10 code, but until then I can't recommend an ATI card regardless of how powerfull it is. I practically wasted my money on ATI HD4850 when I barely got a performance improvement over my old(even ancient) GF6800, although atleast all other games run beyond smooth :) I can finally run LockOn on max setting with no glitches, I wish SF2 would run that good though, much more fun here :)