God bless my 9800 Pro

[mhicaoidh]

Taking a moment's reflection, jakesnake66 mused:
|
| This is actually a great point. I "upgraded" from a Ti4600 to a 9800Pro,
| which turned out to be essentially a waste of money, because I was still
| playing my old games like BF1942, BHD, MOHAA, and Slinter Cell. With a
| good cpu, the 4600 still kicks butt on all but the latest generation of
| games, so is an excellent value if you want to play all the great games
| from the last couple of years. To this day I'm not sure if I've realized
| any real value from the 9800Pro, with the exception of Far Cry.

I upgraded from a GF4 Ti4400 to a 9800 Pro because my GF4 went tits up.
I wanted to get something a little better, without breaking the bank. But,
I played all the way through Doom 3 on the GF4, and it played D3 just fine.
1024x768, High details, and everything but shadows (mainly because I think
they look bad) enabled.

Though, when I played again with the 9800 Pro, I noticed visual effects
that the GF4 wasn't able to display ... namely the visual distortion from
explosions, and the visual effects of the heat vents in Hell.

 

[Ben Cottrell]

Well, I'm not sure why you would need to apply any performance tweeks for
this game. In fact I'm disapointed. Doom3 and HL2 were supposed to be the
games that forced users to upgrade their hardware... Hardly. Anyone with a
1.5 P4 or an XP-1700 with 384 megs and a GeForce 3 TI-200 or an ATI Radeon
8500 can get accpetable framerates at 800X600. Move up to a P4 2.4 or an
XP-2400 with a GeForce 4 class card and you're playing at decent framerates
at 1024X768.

I installed on a fast machine with a GeForce 4 TI-4600 and it was smooth as
silk at 1024X768... So, I wondered how it would go on a lesser machine.
Even though Steam pitched a momentary hissy fit when I fed the same CD key
for a different installation, it came out OK. I installed on a PIII 1.0 Ghz
with a GeForce 3 TI-200 and 512 PC-2100. fraps is reporting 28.4 frames per
second at 800X600 and the shadows etc turned off. There is some stuttering
audio but I'm experiencing that on the fast machine, too.

the stuttering audio seems to be a symptom of using highest-quality
sound (setting to medium or low seems to fix this).. 28.4 isn't too bad
- but remember that Valve *did* say their minimum specs were 1.2Ghz on a
DX7 card.. Which was a significant increase from last year's minimum
specs of 700Mhz unlike most minimum reported specs, Valve seem to
have actually put some constructive thought into theirs

 

[Gary]

Anyone with a

Thats just bollocks. I used my Geforce 5900 ULTRA card on a 3400+ FX53 AMD
64 CPU, two REGISTERED 512MB and raid hard drives (bought the system from
mesh). The games were O.K, but did suffer in some grahical intense scenes,
and stuttured a lot (not the audio stutter problem).

I bought a 6800 GT yesterday, and it has resulted in a PHENOMONAL increase
in performance, I can now run ALL the DX 9 features, and at a full speed
resolution of 1280 x 1024. I also have all the settings set to the highest
quality and I am using 8X AA and 16X AF (Or is it 16X AA and 8X AF?).

It looks amazing...

Gary.

 

[Gary]

Sorry, it was a GEFORCE 5950 Ultra I had...

 

[Ben Cottrell]

Thats just bollocks. I used my Geforce 5900 ULTRA card on a 3400+ FX53 AMD
64 CPU, two REGISTERED 512MB and raid hard drives (bought the system from
mesh). The games were O.K, but did suffer in some grahical intense scenes,
and stuttured a lot (not the audio stutter problem).

It depends what "acceptable framerates" are to you.. some people are
quite happy playing at 25fps, wheras others get narky the moment their
framerate drops below 50

 

[noman]

I upgraded from a GF4 Ti4400 to a 9800 Pro because my GF4 went tits up.
I wanted to get something a little better, without breaking the bank. But,
I played all the way through Doom 3 on the GF4, and it played D3 just fine.
1024x768, High details, and everything but shadows (mainly because I think
they look bad) enabled.

Though, when I played again with the 9800 Pro, I noticed visual effects
that the GF4 wasn't able to display ... namely the visual distortion from
explosions, and the visual effects of the heat vents in Hell.

You'll see more noticeable differences in FarCry or in recent games
like MoH: Pacific Assault and Half-Life2.

For older games the biggest advantage is that you can run the game
with decent AA/AF settings at the same resolutions that you were using
for the 4600. Play a game like GTA3 with 4xAA and 8xAF and it looks
completely different compared to when it runs with no AA/AF.

 

[Zulu]

Thats just bollocks. I used my Geforce 5900 ULTRA card on a 3400+
FX53 AMD 64 CPU, two REGISTERED 512MB and raid hard drives (bought
the system from mesh). The games were O.K, but did suffer in some
grahical intense scenes, and stuttured a lot (not the audio stutter
problem).
I bought a 6800 GT yesterday, and it has resulted in a PHENOMONAL
increase in performance, I can now run ALL the DX 9 features, and at
a full speed resolution of 1280 x 1024. I also have all the settings
set to the highest quality and I am using 8X AA and 16X AF (Or is it
16X AA and 8X AF?).

Read here: http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=2281

NV3x s**** in HL2.

Zulu

 

[Thomas T. Veldhouse]

the stuttering audio seems to be a symptom of using highest-quality
sound (setting to medium or low seems to fix this).. 28.4 isn't too bad
- but remember that Valve *did* say their minimum specs were 1.2Ghz on a
DX7 card.. Which was a significant increase from last year's minimum
specs of 700Mhz unlike most minimum reported specs, Valve seem to
have actually put some constructive thought into theirs

When I first started playing this on Saturday, I had nothing but
stutters and skips. It was horribly annoying. As it turned out, the
problem was Video and not Audio. I had arrogantly thought my system
more than capable and turned up all the graphic related settings to max.
I figured my equipment would handle anything. I suspect AGP started
sucking on system memory and toasted my swap space. Anyway, setting
back to recommended video settings works like a charm.

Dell Dimension 8250
ATI Radeon 9700 Pro 128MB
512MB RDRAM
3.06GHz CPU (hyperthreading enabled)
120GB Western Digital 7200 RPM drive with 8MB cache
Sound Blaster Live! Platinum 5.1 (Not the Dell crap card)

 

[McGrandpa]

Read here: http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=2281

NV3x s**** in HL2.

Zulu

He is using DX9 with a 6800GT, not an FX.

 

[Andrew]

He is using DX9 with a 6800GT, not an FX.

Look at page 3.

 

[mhicaoidh]

Taking a moment's reflection, Ben Cottrell mused:
|
| the stuttering audio seems to be a symptom of using highest-quality
| sound (setting to medium or low seems to fix this)..

Many people are reporting this as a "worked for me" solution, but many
people in the Steam forums report back that it didn't work for them. Valve
has stated they are working on a fix for the issue:
www.half-life2.com/news.php

" We're also investigating a solution for the sound skipping problems a
small number of users are running into. We'll have a solution for this as
soon as possible. "

Interesting choice of words considering one of the most, if not *the*
most, active threads in the forums is regarding the audio stuttering issue.

 

[McGrandpa]

http://www.nvidia.com/page/geforce_6800.html

Look at page 3.

Look at page 3 again. They used a 6200 for the tests. They dare not
use a 6800
The 6200 is the bottom of the barrel and not just for PCIx.
McG.

 

[William P.N. Smith]

two REGISTERED 512MB [...]
The games were O.K, but did suffer in some grahical intense scenes,
and stuttured a lot (not the audio stutter problem).

Isn't registered memory a lot slower, due to the registers adding
delay?

 

[Marshall]

two REGISTERED 512MB
[...]

The games were O.K, but did suffer in some grahical intense scenes,
and stuttured a lot (not the audio stutter problem).

Isn't registered memory a lot slower, due to the registers adding
delay?

It's a mite slower, but not enough to go from good game performance to
hopeless stuttering just because of registered RAM. It's one of those 'itty-
bitty' speed differences, microseconds or whatever the measurement is.
Something that gets overclocker types all hot 'n itchy, but nobody else ever
really notices much of a difference.
-Marshall

 

[em_dau_roi]

If you sick of 9800 pro look at this link
http://www.rojakpot.com/default.aspx?location=3&var1=92&var2=0

 

[Andrew]

Look at page 3 again.

I did, they tested a whole range of cards including a FX5900XT, and it
was shit in DX9.

They used a 6200 for the tests.

One of many cards.

They dare not
use a 6800
The 6200 is the bottom of the barrel and not just for PCIx.

They didn't use the high end ATI cards either. There isn't a DX9
problem with the latest NVidia cards, it was just the FX series that
were crap at it.

 

[Wblane]

You must be on SERIOUS drugs. I've got a Barton running at 2340Mhz (206 Mhz
FSB) and 1GIG of DDR 3200 and an overclocked 9800 Pro. Doom3 at 800x600 w/2xAA,
high quality and 8xAF exhibits stuttering on either of the boss levels. Maybe
if you do w/o AA and AF it might run but it would look but ugly. 1024x768 my
ass.

Well, I'm not sure why you would need to apply any performance tweeks for
this game. In fact I'm disapointed. Doom3 and HL2 were supposed to be the
games that forced users to upgrade their hardware... Hardly. Anyone with a
1.5 P4 or an XP-1700 with 384 megs and a GeForce 3 TI-200 or an ATI Radeon
8500 can get accpetable framerates at 800X600. Move up to a P4 2.4 or an
XP-2400 with a GeForce 4 class card and you're playing at decent framerates
at 1024X768.

I installed on a fast machine with a GeForce 4 TI-4600 and it was smooth as
silk at 1024X768... So, I wondered how it would go on a lesser machine.
Even though Steam pitched a momentary hissy fit when I fed the same CD key
for a different installation, it came out OK. I installed on a PIII 1.0 Ghz
with a GeForce 3 TI-200 and 512 PC-2100. fraps is reporting 28.4 frames per
second at 800X600 and the shadows etc turned off. There is some stuttering
audio but I'm experiencing that on the fast machine, too.

-Bill (remove "botizer" to reply via email)

 

[Wblane]

No it doesn't. In Far Cry it'll run like a dog, ditto for Doom3. Try playing
Doom3 at 800x600 high quality, 2xAA and 8xAF then tell me how great the Ti4600
is. The TI4600 is TWO generations (at least) behind current tech. The 9800 Pro
is at least one gen behind current tech.

With a good
cpu, the 4600 still kicks butt on all but the latest generation of games, so
is an excellent value if you want to play all the great games from the last
couple of years. To this day I'm not sure if I've realized any real value
from the 9800Pro, with the exception of Far Cry.

jakesnake

-Bill (remove "botizer" to reply via email)

 

[jakesnake]

Can you read? Your response "No it doesn't" makes no sense. Exactly
what are you responding to? I just said that I'd realized no value
from the 9800Pro, *WITH THE EXCEPTION OF FAR CRY* That means the
9800Pro had not outperformed my Ti4600 on the games I played with it,
EXCEPT Far Cry. And I didn't even mention Doom3. I said, the 4600
kicks butt on all BUT the latest generation of games. In other words,
if you're not playing the latest games, the Ti4600 will do just fine
when paired with a good CPU. Far Cry and Doom 3 ARE part of the
latest generation of games, so they are examples of games you WILL NOT
be able to play well with the Ti4600. But there are literally
hundreds of good games from 2001-2003 that are just fine with the
4600. Are you arguing that point?

jakesnake

 

[Nicolas The Great]

Using FRAPS, I get between 50 and 75 depending on screen with a 2.5 p4,
9800 pro 128 Meg 256bit and 1gig ram. All details on high, 4*AA and 8*AS
filtering.

Game continues to impress.

I got a 9800 SE 128mb 256-bit at 1024x768 running HL2 at 57
FPS and the game looks and runs great. That's with a P4
2.26, 768MB RAM.

Nick