Best graphics card

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tazzers

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:D Hello.

I am in the market for a new CPU and/or graphics card. My main hobby on PCs is flight sims (combat or general) but at the moment I am trying to optimise Flight Simulator 2004. There is nothing wrong with it unless you turn on a bl**** great storm in the weather section and then the frame rate plunges into single figures. The problem is that these weather effects are the best I have ever seen in any sim. I never thought I'd say this but this latest version is excellent straight out of the box but for this one aspect. Whats the point having this beautiful weather system if you can't use it?

So what do you reckon, a nice fast CPU, a new graphics card or both? Would it help upgrading my audio card? What I don't want to do is change the Mobo again.

To help you answer my question this is my current spec:

AMD Athlon XP2000+ (about 1.7GHz)
ASUS A7V333 MOBO
1024Mb PC2700 DDR RAM
Creative Blaster GeForce 4 Ti4400 (128Mb)
Creative Soundblaster Live! 5.1 audio
80Gig Seagate barracuda HD (7200rpm with NTFS format)
Drivers were updated within the last week including the latest VIA 4in1 mobo drivers.

What do you think?

Thanks

Tazzers.
 
I think your basic rig is plenty powerful enough, and your graphics card is reasonably good, but to get the max out of any new game that uses DirectX9, for example, I would upgrade the vid. To notice any really worthwhile improvement, you may have to go to a top end GeForceFX or ATI Radeon Pro. A GeForceFX5900 can easily be overclocked to match an Ultra and you can pick one up for under £300 if you look around. The extra for the Ultra isn't worth it. You won't find any benefit from a card with 256Mb RAM instead of 128Mb either...at least not in any existing games.

(NB. If you stick with nVidia, then you can just plug your new card in and install drivers and go. If you switch to ATI, i think you'll have to doa full reinstall of your OS, drivers etc to get it to work properly)

Might be worth trying to overclock that CPU a little...spend a little on a high grade cooler and more case ventilation and you may get a reasonable speed boost for a small outlay. You have plenty of RAM and it costs a fortune at the moment, so I'd definitely go for a new graphics card before anything else.

Hope that helps.
 
Thanks integer. :bow: Not sure about overclocking. Sometimes my system takes it sometimes not, it often depends on the motherboard. If I try to do it through the BIOS on my system as it stands, it either locks up or ignores the new parameters:crazy: Damned annoying! In any case I really don't see how upping the clock speed a few percent is going to improve frame rates that much.

If I was to ask you to benchmark a system with a 128Mb FX5900 and then compare it to the 256Mb Ultra version, do you have an educated guess as to what the difference might be? Just a ballpark figure? And what would be the difference between a 128Mb FX5900 and my doddery old 128Mb GF4 Ti4400? Again ballpark gut feelings will do and I promise I will not hold you to the figures.

Tazzers
 
You might need to slightly increase the Vcore voltage to ensure that an increased core clock speed will run stable. Overclocking is about small changes and trial and error with more than the chip itself...keep tweaking and rebooting until you get the right combination of settings....that's what it's all about!

The performance gain may be pretty marginal tho' with that chip....I'd still go fo a better vid for best improvement.

As for benchmarks....

Don't pay too much attention to them...what really matters is how your vid performs with games. You may find a 5900 gets an extra 4000 3DMark03 points over a Ti4400, but you won't notice much if any difference when playing UT2003, for example.

Benchmark scores depend on a lot more than the card... u can tweak your OS and bios to make improvements as well. I've stopped paying any attention to them to be honest. My current vid (Asus GeForceFX5900) has got me 16,000 points in 3DMark01 and over 6000 points in 3DMark03...but if i change a couple of minor settings, it can drop 1000-2000 points easily...

My conclusion: benchmarks are a load of bollix....the vid card makers have started tweaking the cards to get good benchmark scores.

Golden rules:
1. Decide what games/apps you want to be able to play/use
2. Decide if you want to play/run these at max settings graphically
3. Decide how much you are willing to pay to achieve 1 and 2
4. Get your wallet out!

Bottom line:
If you want to play any current game at reasonably high a settings, your existing rig should be able to cope fine. For soon-to-be -released games like half-life2 and (especially) Doom3 you will have to upgrade to a directx9 and 8x AGP card card to get the best out of them. You will probably need a very high spec card to really get the best images and gameplay.

Oh...rule 5...always double the recommended spec for any game.
 
My 'tipple' is flight sims. I am trying to optimise FS2002 and FS2004 as I said but what I want is cinematic frame rates. 30fps will do at 1280 x 1024 preferably in 32bit true. I also want the graphics settings turned up if not to the max then not far off. At present my rig cannot cope with this but now the wallet has well and truly come out.

I took on board what you said about the lack of difference between a 128 and a 256Mb card and quite frankly..........er.........I ignored you. I ordered the FX5900 Ultra. I figured the apps could do with all the horse power they could lay thier hands on. No disrespect meant but with the prices the way they were I decided it was just as well to plump for the 256.

I have also decided to back this up with an Athlon XP 2800 and I also want to get a new audio card because I have heard that even this can improve the performance of applications.

As for my flight sim bias they are not the only things I muck about with. I run OFP and Medal of Honour plus a couple of motorcycle racing games and if my rig can run the flightsims (including IL2 FB, Project Strike Fighter etc) happily, then they will run anything. I have to upgrade now though, we have a baby coming in the New Year and after that the brakes are well and truly on.
 
Originally posted by tazzers
... what I want is cinematic frame rates. 30fps will do at 1280 x 1024 preferably in 32bit true.

I took on board what you said about the lack of difference between a 128 and a 256Mb card and quite frankly..........er.........I ignored you. I ordered the FX5900 Ultra.

I also want to get a new audio card because I have heard that even this can improve the performance of applications.
Click to expand...

The biggest boost you can achieve is to simply drop that resolution. If that's the resoultion you play a game in it's way too high...and you will notice little difference in graphics quality by reducing it. Try a benchmarker to check the difference...but i reckon you could double your frame rate by dropping to 1024x768 and it will still look fine. Perhaps slightly higher on a 19" monitor, but certainly not 1280x1024.

My Asus FX5900 cost me £275 including VAT and delivery and I'm running it fatser than an Ultra. If your happy to pay an extra £100+ for having the word 'Ultra', fine, but you'll find there's less room to overclock it, so the extra horsepower may be a false economy.

I read a review (Tom's Hardware, I think) that rated the Audigy 2 as the best soundcard for gaming (i.e. it has least impact on game performance but gives good sound). However, the onboard 'Soundstorm' chipset on the Asus A7N8X deluxe mobo almost matched it. So a wise buy might be to simply upgrade your mobo - get the soundcard and additional benefits of things like dual-channel to speed up your ram etc.
 
Okay then. Problem time. I started to install all the new hardware last night and no signal was getting to the monitor. I thought the new parts might be duff so I re-installed all the old stuff and still no signal. I have only 2 configurations left to try before it is back to the exact setup as before but I don't think it will do any good. At first I thought Dabs had sold me some duff hardware but now I think the monitor has given up on me. It a pi**er because it was working before I started the install. Has anybody got any ideas? I am going to borrow my father-in-laws monitor tonight to see if I am getting a signal from that if I am not I don't know where to begin. If it isn't the monitors fault, where do I go next. I'd do a complete rebuild but I don't have any confidence that even this would work.
 
What monitor is it? an old one?
Is the monitor showing any signs of power getting through? (Could just be a fuse in the monitor plug??)

If powers getting through, but you can't get an image, have u accidentally reduced contrast/brightness?

can you test it on another PC?

Just a few obvious questions...get back to us m8.
 
The monitor is an Iiyama S900MT1 19" jobbie. Its about 2 years old. I don't think I accidentally changed any resolution settings except that I did remove the old drivers before installing the hardware. There is difinitley power getting to the monitor because I am getting a 'no signal detected' type message and some vertical coloured bars. I have checked the pins as well and they seem okay. All I can think of is that I have pulled the monitor cable and a connection has come loose.

As I said I will be testing my dads monitor on it hopefully tonight. If that one doesn't work I'm stumped. I asked some people on another forum and one of them said it might be the motherboard. It would take another rebuild but at least it should be marginally cheaper than a new monitor. It might be interesting to point out that the monitor I am using is a replacement for another S900MT1 that packed up a couple of years ago I could try reactivating the warranty but I'm not sure I want another Iiyama now.
 
Ok...one thing that might be worth checking tho, is your vid setup. if you have an nview card (nVidia's dual monitor thingy), make sure you have it set to correctly detect the monitor. You could have it looking for a monitor that isn't there.
 
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