From 9800 PRO to X800 XT on P3 2.6Ghz w/ 1.0gig ram?

[Chalky]

I am thinking about upgrading my 9800 PRO to an X800 XT Platinum. My system
is:

DELL 8250
Pentium 3 2.6 GHz
1.0 gig of pc1066 ram
9800 PRO

What kind of improvements am I likely to see? I play first person games like
Battlefield, UY2004, and eventually I will want to try Far Cry, hl2, and
doom3.

~Chalky

 

[Jeff B]

I am thinking about upgrading my 9800 PRO to an X800 XT Platinum. My system
is:

DELL 8250
Pentium 3 2.6 GHz
1.0 gig of pc1066 ram
9800 PRO

What kind of improvements am I likely to see? I play first person games like
Battlefield, UY2004, and eventually I will want to try Far Cry, hl2, and
doom3.

~Chalky

First, you must find a x800xt, they aren't out yet.
Assuming that HL2 comes out after the x800xt, the x800xt 3dc tech will be
huge in that game since it uses different (superior) maps vs , say,
a 6800u nvidia card which doesn't have 3dc.

Jeff B

 

[OCZ Guy]

Stick with the 9800 pro man no need for the X800 unless youhave lots
of money ???

If you have lot sof money get a Dual Opteron, and an X800 XT 3 Gigs of
PC 5500 ram.

Ahh also xp64.

 

[Jeff B]

Stick with the 9800 pro man no need for the X800

No need UNLESS you play games. Then you have a BIG need.

Jeff B

 

[Phil]

No, Jeff. Unless he's planning to upgrade the p4 2.6 he'll likely only see
marginal improvements, going from 9800pro to X800.

-phil

 

[Mike P]

Farc Cry is the first game to tax my 9800pro, and even that runs well at
1024, 2xaa, 4xaf, mostly high settings. It's premature to upgrade unless you
really don't care about the cash, or really have to have top eye candy and
good fps in far cry, imo.

Mike

 

[Sham B]

Dont upgrade.

First gen stuff is always the worst.
PC Express is useless in its current form. Faster than current technology, but too slow to allow the
use of mainboard memory as video ram (isnt that the point of a faster interface than AGP?). The new
Gen cards are good, but not great yet, in that both ATI and nVidia cards have issues for future
compatibility (ATI dont support latest shaders, nVidia dont use a proper PC Express interface... in
this I read 'both companies have cut corners to be first out', and both offereings will be
superceded quickly) I would wait until the *second* iteration of PC express before buying anything
new. Your current setip is no slouch either, so the wait will not find you suffering from low
framerates that make games unplayable.

Unless of course you need bragging rights and have the money to feed your desire

Im happy here with my 'aging' 9800 pro and XP2800, NForce 2...gives me a 3dmark03 of just under 6400
with everything overclocked but stable, which is more than enough for my preferred rez (1024x768,
2xAA or 1024x1024, 2xAA, whichever allows me to play with all eye candy on).

As an aside, the biggest gain in gaming experience I have seen in my last round of hardware upgrade
was not in moving up in video technology, but in upgrading my speakers from a pair of hi fi
hand-me-down speakers to THX 5.1 speakers (Creative). Immersive is not the word. If you want to up
your gaming, I would suggest some good THX speakers, and keep the 9800.

S

 

[Jeff B]

No, Jeff. Unless he's planning to upgrade the p4 2.6 he'll likely only see
marginal improvements, going from 9800pro to X800.

Tests show a 70% improvement, hardly marginal.

Jeff B

 

[Jeff B]

Farc Cry is the first game to tax my 9800pro, and even that runs well at
1024, 2xaa, 4xaf, mostly high settings. It's premature to upgrade unless you
really don't care about the cash, or really have to have top eye candy and
good fps in far cry, imo.

Yes, exactly my point. You are forced to run Far Cry at only 1024x768,
2xaa.

Jeff B

 

[McGrandpa]

Yes, exactly my point. You are forced to run Far Cry at only
1024x768, 2xaa.

Jeff B

So he is CPU bottlenecked?

I have a P4 3.0E/800/1meg L2, 1 gig dual channel DDR400, ATI 9800 Pro
128 meg. I run Far Cry in the highest mode my LCD monitor will go,
1280x1024-32, have Machine Spec set to Very High, and all advanced
settings to Very High, aa to 4x (max) and aniso to High (max). These
are the games highest quality settings I can find. ATI driver D3D
(Omega based on cat 4.6) is set to Highest Quality. The game is very
smooth and image quality is beautiful. Until the texture glitches
happen. Smooth until there are more than 3 or 4 NPC's in the scene.

The choppiness in a firefight detracts from playability. But, I wanted
to see how the R9800 Pro behaved when loaded up. It's not too shabby!
Now, what can I turn down or off to keep the highest quality with
highest framerates? That's the part that takes a lot of experimenting.

Oh, and in the lower right part of the Video selection screen in Far
Cry, there's a scroll down box with Render Quality, which of these is
the best quality? Paradise? Improved?

McG.

 

[Jeff B]

The choppiness in a firefight detracts from playability. But, I wanted
to see how the R9800 Pro behaved when loaded up.

Yes, exactly why the x800 is needed, thanks for the post.

Jeff B

 

[Mike P]

I'm not bottlenecked by my cpu, it's an xp3200, 1G of ram. And I leave the
settings as I described to keep my framerates above 40 when in demanding
points of the game/firefights; most of the time I see around 60fps or more.
Some people don't mind lower framerates, and the game doesn't seem too bad
even into the high 20's fps, but you really notice it when you can't seem to
hit enemies, etc. Many people boast of high settings with far cry, as my
brother did, but as soon as I saw him playing I knew his framerate was bad
and when I enebled it it showed 18-25 fps most of the time. Some people
seem to think that a lack of stutter (freezes) means that the game is
playing decent.
I can run 4xAA, 8xAF, all eye candy highest and still play but my framrate
drops into the teens by times, which ic unacceptable to me. People running
highest settings with 9800xt and lesser cards are running low fps if they
also have aa and af on, there's no tweaking or any other way around it.
There is a good far cry tweak site I've seen posted here, use that, and drop
to 2xAA/4xAF with vsync off, driver settings for mipmaps, textures, etc to
performance, and most game settings on high for a good balance, at least
that's what I've found. And set AA & AF to app preferance in the drivers,
and use the game to control it, not both. AS for vsync, I usually leave it
on because I can't stand the tearing but the framrates seem to stay close
enough to my 85hz refresh rate that I seldom see tearing except when looking
close at a wall or such, where the fraerate of course soars.

Mike