New Card

[Dragon]

Ok guys currently have a ATI 9600 video card and looking at upgrading to a
new one, AGP only. have been looking at both Nvidia and ATI cards and not
sure could someone give me a little advise please. Only have about £80 UK
pounds and need something that doesn't have problems with running the likes
of Rainbow 6 Vegas like my 9600 did. Also I live in the UK so need to be
able to buy online in the UK.

cheers Dave

 

[jdc]

Ok guys currently have a ATI 9600 video card and looking at upgrading to a
new one, AGP only. have been looking at both Nvidia and ATI cards and not
sure could someone give me a little advise please. Only have about £80 UK
pounds and need something that doesn't have problems with running the likes
of Rainbow 6 Vegas like my 9600 did. Also I live in the UK so need to be
able to buy online in the UK.

cheers Dave

ATI Radeon X700 series. I believe ATI's last and fastest AGP.

 

[Augustus]

Ok guys currently have a ATI 9600 video card and looking at upgrading to a
new one, AGP only. have been looking at both Nvidia and ATI cards and not
sure could someone give me a little advise please. Only have about £80 UK
pounds and need something that doesn't have problems with running the
likes of Rainbow 6 Vegas like my 9600 did. Also I live in the UK so need
to be able to buy online in the UK.

It's a SM 2.0 game, so you should be looking at the highest end possible AGP
cards that support this. 7800GS comes to mind as one, I'm sure there are
others. Not sure what kind of box you've got with that 9600 card in it, but
I think you'll be running into some issues other than a SM 2.0 card if you
system's the same vintage as that 9600 card.

 

[jdc]

Ok guys currently have a ATI 9600 video card and looking at upgrading to a
new one, AGP only. have been looking at both Nvidia and ATI cards and not
sure could someone give me a little advise please. Only have about £80 UK
pounds and need something that doesn't have problems with running the likes
of Rainbow 6 Vegas like my 9600 did. Also I live in the UK so need to be
able to buy online in the UK.

cheers Dave

Correction: ATI X850XT AGP. You should check Ebay UK as some are
selling new for around your budget.

 

[Augustus]

ATI Radeon X700 series. I believe ATI's last and fastest AGP.

You're just a bit behind the times for ATI stuff....

X1950 Pro 512Mb AGP 256bit, 575Mhz core, 1.38Ghz memory and SM 3.0 and is
faster than a 7800GS by quite a bit.

 

[Dragon]

Correction: ATI X850XT AGP. You should check Ebay UK as some are selling
new for around your budget.

Ok guys running a 2ghz amd machine with 1 gig of ram but upgrading that to 2
soon, running on a K7 triton gigabyte mobo with nforce 2 chipset and 250gig
hard drive. I know its not that fast these days but I rarely play games and
wouldn't mind buying a few from the last 12 months. hope this helps and
thanks guys

Dave

 

[Dragon]

Also been looking at the x1650 pro nice price on eBay would that be good for
me

 

[Augustus]

Also been looking at the x1650 pro nice price on eBay would that be good
for me

The X1650 Pro is a good performance/price point. An Athlon XP2000+ will be
an issue, if that's what you mean by a 2Ghz AMD on a K7 Triton board. Even
if it's a true 2.0Ghz Barton XP it's going to be severe bottleneck.

 

[Dragon]

The X1650 Pro is a good performance/price point. An Athlon XP2000+ will be
an issue, if that's what you mean by a 2Ghz AMD on a K7 Triton board. Even
if it's a true 2.0Ghz Barton XP it's going to be severe bottleneck.

Yes it is a amd 2000+ but what is my best buy then. I am not sure what the
bottleneck means can you elaborate for me and am I best going for a 256mb
card

cheers dave

 

[Augustus]

Yes it is a amd 2000+ but what is my best buy then. I am not sure what

the bottleneck means can you elaborate for me and am I best going for a
256mb card

The game you are looking to run is *extremely* graphics intesive and CPU
intensive. Your system is basically not upgradable to adequately run this
game. You are far below minimum requirments for CPU and hardware. You
require a shader 3.0 card, not 2.0. Even if you sprang for a 7800GS or X1650
Pro AGP, it would be a slide show on your system even with 2 gig of RAM.

 

[Paul]

Yes it is a amd 2000+ but what is my best buy then. I am not sure what the
bottleneck means can you elaborate for me and am I best going for a 256mb
card

cheers dave

A few AGP cards are reviewed here.

http://www.tomshardware.com/2007/01/10/agp-platform-analysis/page12.html

This is an example of a scaling analysis. The game is FEAR, and FEAR is
GPU limited (video card). They can use different processors, with not
much effect. Some games are limited by the performance of the GPU
(in which case the X1950pro might help), while other games could be
more dependent on the CPU used.

http://www.firingsquad.com/hardware/fear_cpu_performance/page5.asp

This article is not comparing any of the cards you are interested in.
What it does compare, is graphics solutions with different powers,
versus the resulting frame rates.

http://www.buy.com/articles/loc/64230/channeltype/2/channelid/141/subtype/1/399.html

For example, Oblivion is known to be GPU limited, so what you should see,
is a more expensive graphics solution helping. And in "min FPS", when the
game is bogging, you can see the worst graphics solution is 18 FPS,
while the best is 37FPS. 30FPS would be a reasonable target for "buttery"
game play. Forking out for a good video card would pay off here.

Oblivion - 1280x960 - 4xAA 8xAF - HDR
http://ak.buy.com/buy_assets/rsschannel/141/399/47.jpg

In Rainbow Six Vegas, the Min FPS and are all roughly neck and neck.
It suggests the CPU plays more of a part than the GPU, when the game is slowest.

Rainbox Six Vegas - 1024x768 - 0xAA 0xAF (i.e. no antialiasing)
http://ak.buy.com/buy_assets/rsschannel/141/399/33.jpg

Rainbox Six Vegas - 1280x960 - 0xAA 0xAF (i.e. no antialiasing)
http://ak.buy.com/buy_assets/rsschannel/141/399/35.jpg

It may require both a GPU improvement and a CPU improvement.
Don't be surprised if you get the new card and things aren't better
when the game is at its worst speedwise.

Paul

 

[Dragon]

ok what about the x1550 pro 512mb card, I know my processor is not brill but
I will not bother with Rainbow six but will this card help me run some of my
older games better like sims 2. I don't play a great majority of games so
its not worth upgrading my CPU yet.

Dave

 

[Paul]

ok what about the x1550 pro 512mb card, I know my processor is not brill but
I will not bother with Rainbow six but will this card help me run some of my
older games better like sims 2. I don't play a great majority of games so
its not worth upgrading my CPU yet.

Dave

Aim higher than that. You want your new video card to be X times as fast
as the old. If they get too near to one another in performance, the
upgrade will be a waste of money. I call that approach the "dribbling
upgrade" approach, as you buy one $100 video card after another.

Do the same kind of analysis I just demonstrated. Find articles where SIMS 2
are benchmarked, determine if the game is limited by the CPU or the GPU,
and that will tell you whether a new video card is going to help. A new
graphics card, can allow you to turn up the "detail level" in games
(with a slight cost in CPU to do it). Or allow slightly higher resolution,
if you've been playing at 800x600 or 640x480. On some games, those
differences can be important, for example in a first person shooter, being
able to see further or make a more accurate shot. But for the poorly written
games, where the game bogs when the action is intense, no amount of hardware
can help.

To give an example, there are flight sim enthusiasts. They've been using
Microsoft FSX, which is a detailed flight sim. Some have poured thousands
of dollars into their systems, put in 4GB of RAM, high end SLI video,
and got next to no improvement in frame rate. If they flew at low altitude
through a city, it was like a slide show. Microsoft issued a Service Pack
for the game, and that did more for performance than any amount of current
hardware. So in some cases, the users are just banging their heads against
the wall.

If a game has hard limits, sometimes it takes a lot of money to overcome
them. And that is why you need to find the articles that benchmark and
tell you what is limiting the game, to understand whether you can afford
to improve game performance or not.

Paul