Hard Light Productions Forums
Off-Topic Discussion => General Discussion => Topic started by: Fineus on April 02, 2006, 09:49:18 am
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It's that time again.
I'm looking to upgrade my computer and have hit the snag that is PCI-Express. Is it worth shelling out on a completely new mobo/processor just so I can make the leap upwards onto that platform, or can I stick safely with my existing AGP slot for the time being?
If I do stick with my AGP.. I'm looking for something that can play the likes of Oblivion or upcoming games on full graphics without flinching. My Radeon 9800 Pro has served me well but I've started having to dial down settings in some games to allow for smooth performance.
Unfortunately money is a problem as always so I'm not looking to spend more than £150 / £200 on this. I also don't know whether nVidia or Radeon would be better at this stage but have no particular affiliation to either (that said, having an nVidia card would allow me to make use of all of the FS SCPs graphic options as Radeons drivers still haven't been sorted out).
Someone care to clue me in?
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as I can see from here: http://www.tomshardware.com/2005/07/05/vga_charts_vii/page4.html
It looks like a substantial upgrade in your price range would be an X800XL for an AGP slot, such as this Gecube: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814241010
Now that costs about 200 american dollars (and its not in stock right now), but if you dont have the time or the money to upgrade your ENTIRE pc at this time of your life, then I would just get a better graphics card... this also depends on what other hardware you have..
I mean if you have a low end athlon XP, then you might just want to upgrade, but it you have a pentium 4 at about 2 ghz or an athlon 2600, you should be okay...
hope this helps you out...
PS: some more links..
AGP VGA Charts
http://www.tomshardware.com/2005/07/05/vga_charts_vii/index.html
PCI EXPRESS VGA Charts
http://www.tomshardware.com/2005/12/02/vga_charts_viii/index.html
Also, PCI express is not much faster than AGP, it depends on the rest of your hardware, like I said before....
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I'm in the same situation here.
Wanted to upgrade my graphics card, and then discovered I'd need a new motherboard since everything is PCI-E these days. Then discovered I'd also need a new CPU as Socket A has gone by the wayside. And then discovered I'd need a new PSU because PCI-E cards have fancy power connectors.
It soon mounts up.
So I've shelled out for all the lot, and gone for a Gainward Geforce 6800GS "Goes Like Hell" 512MB card. nVidia are apparently better at the moment, but ATi are catching up again, I think.
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Same here, I currently have a Radeon (standard PCI) and I wish I could just upgrade to AGP without changing around my motherboard, I looked into getting PCI-express (X16) and found I'd need to replace virtually everything on my computer, so now I'm just saving up to get a new one from New Egg.
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An Nvidia 6800 or better would probably be able to cope with the likes of Oblivion with fairly minor compromises. The best available card at the moment for AGP is the 7800GS, which is not far below a PCIE 7800GT and so should be able to run anything that's out today. Both of those (probably the top ATI models too, but I can't confirm that) support shader model 3 which is key for the beauty of games like Oblivion, and while other, older AGP cards may on the surface seem faster in benchmarks this is simply because they don't support all the features and thus have less work to do.
Such high end AGP cards need extra power though (not sure, but I think they draw it from a standard IDE power connector) so make sure your power supply has a free connector of the right type and enough spare juice for the job.
Sad truth is though, that while the top of the line AGP cards can certainly handle today's games, they'll be struggling within a year or two, and there's no more room for upgrades on AGP... it simply doesn't have the bandwidth needed to support even faster cards. Probably the PCIE 7800s will struggle too around the same time, it's just that those can still be upgraded as the slot has bandwidth to spare as well as the option for SLI.
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Cheers for the info there, and for what it's worth I'm currently running:
Pentium 4 2.8GHz
2.0GB of DDR PC2100 RAM
Radeon 9800 Pro
etc. etc.
Should be able to deal with most games at this stage - and if I was so inclined I could replace the Pentium chip with something in the low/mid 3.0GHz range without changing the rest of the computer. As it is I don't want to arse about with new power supplies, motherboards and so on - I'd end up blowing all my money on that and not even having enough for a new graphics card. The Radeon already uses a spare power connector from my PSU to run so I guess that's not too much of a problem.
I'm currently looking at the cards on this page: http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Products.ASP?CatID=15&FilterCategories=296&Thumbnails=yes
..and it seems like they'd all do the job. But I'd like to get a bit more technical and make certain. I've not really kept up to date on what the latest Shader versions and what have you are... but I'd like to be sure that the card is fairly future proofed to be able to run all current and upcoming games at full details without saying "oh, your card doesn't support pixel shader version 5.2 or whatever, so you can't use it". See where I'm going with this?
I'm happy to have a card that'll tide me over for a couple of years without any problems. Graphics and computer specs aren't priority number one for me at the moment though so I'm alright with making a few compromises.
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You're probably better off upgrading everything, given that AGP card prices and availability are simply terrible these days. A Sempron 2800 (can easily overclock to at least 2.3ghz), an Epox 8NPA7I board and a used 7800 GT CO off ebay would come out to about $340 around here, although I'm not sure what the UK prices are like.
Oblivion seems to like ATI cards at the high end, but I don't really know how the midrange cards compare.
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CPU should be plenty fast enough for the time being, no reason to bother upgrading that. Give it a new video card and look at it go :) What you're looking for them to support is directx 9c/shader model 3.0, which is what the latest games want you to have to let you play at full detail.
From what I can see, those cards all seem to support it. You may want to avoid that 128mb card on the list there though, as some games demand 256mb to even let you try running at higher settings.
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The ATI X800 cards don't support shader model 3.0, although that isn't really important for the last gen cards. I guess the problem is that most of those cards cost less than half of their price on PCIE, so you're paying a huge markup just for AGP support.
That Gigabyte passive X800XL in that list actually has a pretty decent price, but it's not in stock and they're not going be getting any more. The other X800XL is your best bet out of the stuff in that list.
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It's that time again.
(...)
I'm looking for something that can play the likes of Oblivion or upcoming games on full graphics without flinching.
(...)
Unfortunately money is a problem as always so I'm not looking to spend more than £150 / £200 on this.
:lol:
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The ATI X800 cards don't support shader model 3.0, although that isn't really important for the last gen cards. I guess the problem is that most of those cards cost less than half of their price on PCIE, so you're paying a huge markup just for AGP support.
That Gigabyte passive X800XL in that list actually has a pretty decent price, but it's not in stock and they're not going be getting any more. The other X800XL is your best bet out of the stuff in that list.
Would I be right in saying that nVidias 6800 and 7800 range have AGP capacity as well as being Shader 3.0 compliant?
It's quite important that the upgrade is worth it you see :)
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That site you linked to carries a couple of 7800 GSs that are actually decent deals by AGP standards. The two more expensive ones are close to the top of the pack for AGP in terms of speed and support SM3 and EXR HDR. You could also get one of the other two, which are significantly slower at stock speeds but can generally be overclocked to the same level. The AGP 6800 GSs aren't worth considering.
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Having done a bit of research into the 7800GS, I'm inclined to agree. It has all the shader support etc. that I was looking for as well as having enough "umph" for the time being. It's a bit on the pricey side but then I guess you get what you pay for. Shame ATI doesn't have a comperable card at this stage.
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Cheers for the info there, and for what it's worth I'm currently running:
Pentium 4 2.8GHz
2.0GB of DDR PC2100 RAM
Radeon 9800 Pro
etc. etc.
I had a very similar PC (Presscot 2.8 HT + D865PERL + 1.5 GB DDR 400 + 9800 Pro 128) and I've just bought a XFX 7800 GS Extreme Ed. I can assure this card really makes a difference (and I know it is quite limited by the slow CPU). If you have a 3dMark05, you can compare your present 9800 with my score about 5250-5300 with 7800.
The only thing I must say is that these cards can be quite overclocked but there's a lot of issues about their stability (basically crashes to a blank screen, look in forums for more info). So maybe they aren't are overclockable as they firstly seem (it depends on exact card, PC and running software). Becaus of this I would buy just the standard version (GPU 375 Mhz - RAM 1200 Mhz), which will be a bit cheaper, and I would make the OC myself. (I haven't had any problems myself but in Far Cry with enabled HDR if I OC the card from its standard OC 440/1300 to 500/1400).
OTOH this cards have a temperature bug. If your PC is very very cool, the card gets fool and slow itself as if it were really hot. (Although I haven't suffered this issue). This issue can be solved with a flash of their same bios but with Temp protection disabled.
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In all honesty, I'd rather have a slightly slower but garunteed stable/not likely to catch fire card. I've had some bad experiences in the past with heat problems (lost a computer to it, basically) and don't much care to push the limits. It'd be an expensive loss if everything went belly up.
Is the card stable enough in its initially overclocked (440/1300) state, or are you saying that it can have issues even here, and that if I want the stability I should go for the slightly slower version?
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I haven't heard of any issues with the 7800 GSs. The stability problems were/are only on certain models of the 7800 GTs (both EVGA and XFX) and 7900 GTs (EVGA). At least with EVGA, the tech support and replacement system is probably the best of any video card manufacturer, so you should be okay even if you do happen to get a dud card. XFX's tech support reportedly sucks though.
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In all honesty, I'd rather have a slightly slower but garunteed stable/not likely to catch fire card. I've had some bad experiences in the past with heat problems (lost a computer to it, basically) and don't much care to push the limits. It'd be an expensive loss if everything went belly up.
Is the card stable enough in its initially overclocked (440/1300) state, or are you saying that it can have issues even here, and that if I want the stability I should go for the slightly slower version?
Well, MY card is an Extreme Ed. which means it has a factory overclock to 440/1300 from 375/1200. With these speeds I haven't had any trouble at all and I've decided not to OC it as performance gain is very little. I've played FEAR, Half life 2 Lost Coast, Call of Duty 2, Far Cry (with HDR) and of course and over all of them, FS2. But some people DID HAVE troubles even with these speeds (you can check XFX forums or EVGA or whatever). OCed to 500/1400, I've played FEAR without problems but Far Cry crashes.
I've told two little lies about not having troubles:
1. XFX 7800GS Extreme Ed v1.0 had a stupid plastic layer INSIDE the fan cover which you have to remove unscrewing the cover. This has been solved in later versions. (Check www.guru3d.com article about this card where you can see this layer although they took it without unscrewing the cover :confused:).
2. This card can be quite energy demanding. The first time I plugged it in a free molex after HD, Floppy, my shaver and the microwave oven, when it changed to 3D mode and timings it started crying as hell through its internal speaker 'cause I suppose it hadn't enough power. So be sure you've got a good PSU (20 A in +12V rail is recommended by nvidia, and plug it the very first one to the PSU).
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In all honesty, I'd rather have a slightly slower but garunteed stable/not likely to catch fire card. I've had some bad experiences in the past with heat problems (lost a computer to it, basically) and don't much care to push the limits. It'd be an expensive loss if everything went belly up.
Is the card stable enough in its initially overclocked (440/1300) state, or are you saying that it can have issues even here, and that if I want the stability I should go for the slightly slower version?
Thats the trick with factory overclocked cards...you do have to watch out. I'm a fan of the work done by BFG in this regards. When I did some research for my brothers recently built machine I stumbled onto the voltage and heat graphs for a variety of GeForce 6600GT's. All similar configurations with some stock and some overclocked. The BFG card, despite having about a 10% increase in clock speed over the basic level was actually offering only slightly more voltage requirement at load and far less voltage required at idle. Temperatures was a similar story except with the BFG OC card being cooler than the stock.
That said...there was another overclocked card on the list from another company with very poor results....so I think mileage will varry. Do the research before you buy.
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i think the best you can shoot for is either a radeon X850xt agp, or onna the agp geforce 7800 series, i'd advise the latter, since it has shader model 3, and can properly display HDR, wheras the 850xt cannot (trust me, i know, altho the bloom looks good regardless), both are comparable in performance, and my x850xt can run oblivion with 6x AA without even noticing. (and it's not even overclocked)
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I'm about to replace my 9700Pro with a X1600. Its out of sheer necessity and pricing as my 9700Pro is dying and my price limit is under $200 Cdn and the X1600 is a good deal for a midline AGP card.
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In all honesty, I'd rather have a slightly slower but garunteed stable/not likely to catch fire card. I've had some bad experiences in the past with heat problems (lost a computer to it, basically) and don't much care to push the limits. It'd be an expensive loss if everything went belly up.
Is the card stable enough in its initially overclocked (440/1300) state, or are you saying that it can have issues even here, and that if I want the stability I should go for the slightly slower version?
Thats the trick with factory overclocked cards...you do have to watch out. I'm a fan of the work done by BFG in this regards. When I did some research for my brothers recently built machine I stumbled onto the voltage and heat graphs for a variety of GeForce 6600GT's. All similar configurations with some stock and some overclocked. The BFG card, despite having about a 10% increase in clock speed over the basic level was actually offering only slightly more voltage requirement at load and far less voltage required at idle. Temperatures was a similar story except with the BFG OC card being cooler than the stock.
That said...there was another overclocked card on the list from another company with very poor results....so I think mileage will varry. Do the research before you buy.
BFG is somewhat overrated in my opinion. They generally use high quality components and have great tech support, but their cards are priced above the competition (just because of the BFG name), the factory overclocks are too modest to pay anything extra for and there are no game bundles either. I used to have one of their AGP 6800 GTs. It had a custom heatsink that looked nice, but didn't cool as well as the reference Nvidia cooler while still being considerably louder. The first card I got was actually defective and I sent it back after a few days, but the replacement took over two weeks to arrive, which is a rather long time. At least the tech support people were generally friendly and knowledgable, although the 24/7 thing is just marketing (if you call at night, you have to wait hours to get anyone on the line).
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Perhaps also worth considering is that Nvidia cards currently cannot do both HDR and AA at the same time. It's either or. Whereas I don't believe ATI cards have the same limitation.
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That's only on the current generation X1x00 cards. I think it's largely a useless feature though except for Crossfire setups. There are only two current games that support it and only one of those (Far Cry, where the HDR is somewhat buggy anyway) provides acceptable performance with it on a single X1900 card.
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Im in a pretty identical situation. Lookin for an AGP card. Thought my rig should really be overhauled completely, but I lack the money to do it. So I have to spend what money I have on a new craphics card before it goes to paying bills :D
Anyway I was looking at the Geforce 7800, but noticed that it needs a 350W power source. And I only have 300W. So what, should I go with the 6800? Or look for ATI cards? I currently have a Radeon 9250, so anything would be an improvement.
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That limitation is not what it seems. No matter which card you have, it cannot render SSAA or MSAA while HDR is enabled. However, the old style FSAA works just fine with HDR on all cards using OpenGL (but then again, who wants to use that...). It is not a limitation of the current gen power, architecture, or programming. It is a limitation of the Direct3D 9.0c API. nV and ATi cards share the same issue, and it will not be resolved until a newer revision of DX is released.
OpenGL users unite :D.
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Just a few hints por every people:
1. I DO preffer ATI cards rather than nVidia. But I think that nowadays the best AGP option in 7800GS.
2. It's stupid thinking in [8x AA + 16 x AF + HDR + Anisotropic in textures + extra features on] because NO SINGLE card is going to handle it properly (with enough FPS). And please think that if you've got an AGP system probably your CPU isn't good enough too. So I don't give a damn if this card or that card can have all these supercool features on at the same time.
3. I think SM 3.0 is a must. I can only speak in my experience, but in FEAR, it's great the 3D look brick walls have now (I've changed from 9800pro to 7800GS).
4. X800 or X850 is just a faster 9800 WITHOUT SM 3.0, and I think X1x00 doesn't have AGP cards so your only real option is 7800 GS
5. 7800GS is faster and less energy demmanding than 6800s (and I think even X1800). And it is just a bit more expensive than 6800. So to anyone who has enough money, pick 7800GS and try it. Your only problem could be your PSU could need an update too (+30-60 €).
6. We all know nVidia cards are better for OpenGL than ATI ones. AND FS2 IS AND WILL BE MAINLY AN OGL GAME.
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6. We all know nVidia cards are better for OpenGL than ATI ones. AND FS2 IS AND WILL BE MAINLY AN OGL GAME.
I think a bigger problem as far as FSO is concerned is that movie crash issue on ATI drivers that came up last week. I was about to place an order for a particularly nice X1900 XTX deal I found until I saw that. :( The whole reason I want to "upgrade" is to get away from crap like that in older games.
That limitation is not what it seems. No matter which card you have, it cannot render SSAA or MSAA while HDR is enabled. However, the old style FSAA works just fine with HDR on all cards using OpenGL (but then again, who wants to use that...). It is not a limitation of the current gen power, architecture, or programming. It is a limitation of the Direct3D 9.0c API. nV and ATi cards share the same issue, and it will not be resolved until a newer revision of DX is released.
OpenGL users unite :D.
:wtf: I don't think you know what you're talking about. HDR as it's done in most games (everything except HL2 based stuff) is not part of the DX9.0c specification at all, but is something separate based on the OpenEXR FP16 format.
The Nvidia 6 and 7 series cards can do SSAA and HDR, although SSAA causes an incredible performance hit by itself, so this is pretty much useless. AOE3 does it this way though. The ATI X1x00 cards can do both MSAA and SSAA with HDR; when they advertise HDR+AA, they're talking about MSAA. Currently, only Far Cry and Serious Sam 2 support MSAA+HDR.
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Fair enough then, it still seems like the 7800 is out on top at the moment. It's a shame you can't run HDR and FSAA at the same time (although generally I make do with only 2xAA as I can't tell the difference much past that anyway).
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Fair enough then, it still seems like the 7800 is out on top at the moment. It's a shame you can't run HDR and FSAA at the same time (although generally I make do with only 2xAA as I can't tell the difference much past that anyway).
yeah, it's generally a shame, but, at higher resolutions, aliasing becomes less of an issue.
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Heh, looks like ATI pays attention to its problems after all... Ladies and Gents...
http://support.ati.com/ics/support/default.asp?deptID=894&task=knowledge&questionID=21960
The Chuck Patch.
This special driver is provided to enable additional functionality for Oblivion. Specifically this driver will:
1. Permit High Dynamic Range Lighting (HDR) concurrently with Anti-Aliasing (AA) on RADEON X1000 series graphic boards
2. AFR mode for CrossFire (2 GPU’s)
Well that's that sorted then.
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Heh, looks like ATI pays attention to its problems after all... Ladies and Gents...
http://support.ati.com/ics/support/default.asp?deptID=894&task=knowledge&questionID=21960
The Chuck Patch.
This special driver is provided to enable additional functionality for Oblivion. Specifically this driver will:
1. Permit High Dynamic Range Lighting (HDR) concurrently with Anti-Aliasing (AA) on RADEON X1000 series graphic boards
2. AFR mode for CrossFire (2 GPU’s)
Well that's that sorted then.
a pity that HDR is a dodgy thing with the x850 series (as in, no shader 3 model), otherwise i'd be jumping with glee.
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Somehow I seem to remember this thread being a lot older than just a week... :p
Well, I am probably going to buy that XTX. I'll just take out the FS2 movie files for now, as I can always watch them outside the game. I want to get some proper vsync in old games. :p Anyone here want to buy a (PCIE) 7800 GT CO or two?
By the way, Kalfireth, if you haven't already bought a card, you may want to take a look at this Gainward one that just came out:
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/acatalog/7800AGP_Series.html#agx_2d030_2dgw
It's the only 7800 GT on AGP, with even 512MB of memory and a custom AC-style cooler. It's expensive for what it is but isn't too much more than the others you were looking at (it's a very limited release product that is only available in Europe). This should be the fastest AGP card by some distance.
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Is it just me, or is it weird that I can play Half Life 2 at decent framerates and a relatively high detail setting? I only have an Athlon XP 2400 and a Sapphire Radeon 9600 Atlantis w/ 128mb. Most games I have run slower than HL2.
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Half Life 2 is very nicely optimised though. Whatever else anyone thinks of the game, it's well coded to run with a lot of machine specs.
CP5670, thanks for the heads up :) I'll be leaving my choice a little while longer as I don't have my student loan through yet and rent is more important than graphics (!) But it's certainly worth remembering.
I have to admit though, as time goes by I'm more and more thinking about saving up a bit more cash and moving up to a PCI-Express based platform. At least it'd be future proof for several years to come.
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Half Life 2 is very nicely optimised though. Whatever else anyone thinks of the game, it's well coded to run with a lot of machine specs.
When I tried out HL2 I had a 1 gig Sempron with Radeon 9250. I was pretty surprised when the game suggested that I set everything on medium in the graphics settings. I thought that what the hell. And I was once again surprised when I go pretty decent framerates out of it :cool: