[Herra Tohtori]

Yes, another computer thread.

Current computer is stock condition HP Pavilion t3149.fi...

MOBO: MSI MS-7184
>Chipsets Northbridge: ATI RS482, Southbridge: ATI SB400

CPU: AMD Athlon 64 3200+
>Socket 939

GPU: GeForce 6600 @ 256 MB
>PCI-E

Memory: 1024 MB DDR-SDRAM
>MOBO supports up to 4 GB of RAM, though I won't be needing that anytime soon...


Anyway, I've got a feeling that the best thing for this one might be graphics card upgrade. Every time a game uses shaders, the FPS drops to almost unplayable levels.

On the other hand, I've heard that it's no good buying a top-notch graphics card if the CPU is not up to it, so I *won't* be buying a GeForce 7950 GX2... I could'nt even afford it.

So... how much better than a GeForce 6600, say, a GeForce 7600 GT with 256 MB memory would be? It would cost ~176 €... and I probably won't be able to sell the olg 6600 for any great price. I also can only upgrade either the CPU or GPU (or perhaps neither). What you say, how useful would it be to get an AMD Athlon 64 3500+ Venice with 88 €?

One other chance would, of course, be to abstain from any upgrades for some time and then get a completely new computer. I'm not gonna get another ready-build machine, I'm gonna build my own. It'll most likely be cheaper and worth the time used on it.

Thanks in advance.

[Prophet]

I'd say you need a new case for your rig. One that has tranparent bits and cool blue leds. Im thinking black and silver. All shiny and scifi looking.
And so sound proof that the fan noise sound like a sleeping baby. At most.

[CP5670]

The 7600 GT will be a pretty good upgrade, a little over twice as fast as your 6600. Don't bother with the 3500.

[Dark RevenantX]

Get another gig of ram for Supreme Commander if you're into good RTS games.  Otherwise, get a 7600gt.  If you are strapped for cash, get a 7600gs, which is a knocked-down version of the gt, but it can be overclocked to a speed closer to the gt.

[IceFire]

Its not a bad system actually. I've seen people with far worse ask far more rediculous questions.

Now the first question is which games using shaders and what FPS drop you actually experience is.  I have an older system (AMD AthlonXP 2700+).  I can play Battlefield 2, C&C Generals, Pacific Fighters, and other games with varrying degrees of shader use (Pacific Fighters being the biggest with pixel shaded water varrying from shader 2.0 to shader 3.0 support) at decent enough frame rates.  I find my CPU is a bit of a limiter in that game...in other games the CPU is more than fast enough still.

So you may either have unrealistic expectations for the current configuration or as I worry about...a driver or configuration issue causing you to have less than a good time.  Lets face it...thats what the video game experience is about.

My suggestion to you...given the price and specs is to seriously consider the GeForce 7900GT.  The prices on these cards has dropped so much so as to mean at the price difference between a 7600GT and a 7900GT is relatively small.  The 7600GT is a decent enough upgrade but I worry that it may not give you that much more for the dollar value.  Might want to read some reviews and see how the card stacks up.

The other consideration either way is power.  What is the minimum recommended power supply requirement and do you have it?

[Herra Tohtori]

Well, at the moment Pacific Fighters is the one game that doesn't run really well with that pretty water. Oh, it does run, but the fps drops enough that flying and aiming become a pain, and it doesn't really work unless I'm just taking screenies... so when I'm actually playing, I revert to non-shaded water (which is not pug ugly in itself, but I would of course like to play with all graphical goodness).

I don't know really what kind of a PSU this machine has... None of the specs I find in HP pages or elsewhere in the net describes the PSU, which is most likely because these machines are meant for people who just by a computer, work with it until it's done with, then get a new one. It doesn't read anything but "230 V" behind it and I can't be bothered to open the case just now, because it would involve not just turning the PC off but stripping every single cable off from the back of it until I could drag it away from the hole where it is now... :

Where could I find power demands for GeForce 6600 and 7600GT/GS/7900 so I could compare them?

And if you just happen to know what kind of PSU runs this baby, please point me to it... I'll try to find it myself, though.

If I have to renew the PSU to get better graphics, I might just leave it for the time being and just build a new PC when the time is ripe... After all, this one runs FS_Open quite smooth with adveffects, and even Pacific Fighters runs very well - just without the "Perfect" option which gives the nice water (and ground, to lesser extent).


EDIT: Some people seem to get *much* better results with quite a similar rig, as I notice from Futuremark's comparision pages...

It's like this:

Code: [Select]

System Configurations

System and CPU Information
Operating System Microsoft Windows XP Microsoft Windows XP

DirectX Version 9.0c 9.0c

Mobo Manufacturer MSI ASUSTeK Computer INC.

Mobo Model AMETHYST-M A8N-SLI

AGP Rates (Current/Available) 16x / N/A 8x / N/A

CPU AMD Athlon(tm) 64 1992 MHz AMD Athlon(tm) 64 1811 MHz

Physical / Logical CPUs 1 / 1 1 / 1

MultiCore 1 Processor Core 1 Processor Core

HyperThreading Not Available Not Available

FSB 200 MHz 200 MHz

Memory 1008 MB 1024 MB


Display Information
Graphics Chipset NVIDIA GeForce 6600 NVIDIA GeForce 6600

Driver Name NVIDIA GeForce 6600 NVIDIA GeForce 6600

Driver Version 9.1.3.1 8.1.9.8

Driver Status WHQL - Not FM Approved WHQL - FM Approved

Co-operative adapters No Yes

Video Memory 256 MB 128 MB

Core Clock 299 MHz 450 MHz

Memory Clock 501 MHz 1101 MHz


Benchmark Settings

Default Settings Yes Yes

Program Version: 3DMark06 Revision 0 Build 2

Resolution: 1280x1024          1280x1024

Anti-Aliasing None None

Texture Filtering Optimal Optimal

Vertex Shader Profile 3_0 3_0

Pixel Shader Profile 3_0 3_0

Force Full Precision No No

Disable Post-processing No No

Force Software Vertex Shaders No No

Force Software FP Filtering No No

Disable HW Shadow Mapping No No

Color Mipmaps No No

Repeat Count Off Off

Fixed Framerate Off Off



Main Test Results3DMark Score
(3DMarks)
1039
2490


SM 2.0 Score
(Marks)
424
1107


SM 3.0 Score
(Marks)
347
1049


CPU Score
(Marks)
748
697




Detailed Test Results
Graphics Tests
1 - Return to Proxycon
(FPS)
3.371
8.92


2 - Firefly Forest
(FPS)
3.687
9.528



CPU Tests
CPU1 - Red Valley
(FPS)
0.235
0.219


CPU2 - Red Valley
(FPS)
0.381
0.355



HDR Tests
1 - Canyon Flight (SM 3.0)
(FPS)
3.116
8.446


2 - Deep Freeze (SM 3.0)
(FPS)
3.832
12.535

The differences are that this fellow has a different motherboard and his GeForce 6600 has different values:

Video Memory   256 MB   128 MB

Core Clock   299 MHz   450 MHz

Memory Clock   501 MHz   1101 MHz

Red is mine, blue is the other's card... He has almost double the Core clock speed and more than double the Memory Clock speed of my card... But does that have that big an effect? On another comparision, an almost similar system has a GeForce that has Core clock speed of 9 MHz [sic] and Memory clock speed of 501 MHz... yes, that 9 MHz is correct, even though I can't understand how it's possible. Even that system gets better results than my rig.

On CPU tests my computer runs great, but it seems that graphics-card intensive test have something against my computer. Everyone seems to be getting better rates from them than I...

It could be that I have a worse MOBO than those others, or then there's something amiss on my graphics card. Though I don't understand what that could be. After all, it *works*... if it were defective, it would hardly work at all. Or then those people have just overclocked their graphics cards, which I won't start meddling with.

Or are the latest NVidia drivers worse than some older ones? I'm baffled. :

[Herra Tohtori]

 


So, I finally got the 7600 GT. I'm loving it. It actually makes it possible to use shaders in IL-2 FB and Pacific Fighters, andit runs Freespace Open like... well, good. Like divinely good. Thus far I haven't noticed any shockwave drops below 40. Super high resolution shockwaves in adveffects run smoothly.



Actually I think my old 6600 might've been somewhat under-spec for all its history, when it comes to shader speeds... It always felt like it staggered little more than it should have. Or, the difference just may be that big. I dunno. Anyway, I think it was warth every cent.

 


Oh yeah - I invested into a Nexus 400W* PSU earlier this autumn.

Real continuous power, not temporary power like usually. Should be sufficient until I get an entirely new computer, which may be years from now.

[IceFire]

Yeah your GeForce 6600 is probably an LE model while the other fellows was a 6600 GT.  A fairly substantial difference in clock speed and yes that will make up a fair bit of difference.  Traditionally the lower clock models tend to be ones that didn't make the cut at higher clock speeds but still work normally at lower speeds.

So the 7600GT should be a nice big jump for you.  Good card!

[Herra Tohtori]

Well, it should've been a standard 6600 with no letters whatsoever, but perhaps HP ripped me off on that...

The old one was dubbed MSI GeForce 6600 in the computer specs, and it also said so in every menu, driver options and stuff like that, but perhaos it was a so-called "Monday Piece" of the card. It had "256 MB RAM" but it never said what kind of RAM it was, most likely DDR or at most DDR2. Frequencies I already mentioned.

This new one is an XFX GeForce 7600 GT with 256 MB DDR3 memory... And, this card is supposedly an "XXX Edition", whatever that means. Perhaps the card is especially good for viewing porn... prolly not, though. Funny thing is that I didn't even notice the XXX part in the store. This card was the last piece in the shelf. The card also came bundled with a TV cable (fits into S-Video connector in the TV... ) and a DVI-to-VGA converter.

I'm not planning to overclock this card at least until the warranty expires... which is 24 months. It'll most likely run smoothly every game I want to play during that time, as I'm not planning to buy any new games anytime soon. It should also handle the shader-enhanced FS2 Open of the future, which was one of the main reasons I decided to put my money on it.

The new card produces 3DMark03 (can't bother to try any newer) result of 13812, which places me in comparision quite excactly where I should be with this rig, unlike the previous card.

All results:

Main Test Results
3DMark Score   13431 3DMarks
CPU Score   895 CPUMarks

Detailed Test Results
Game Tests
GT1 - Wings of Fury   274.5 fps
GT2 - Battle of Proxycon   106.4 fps
GT3 - Troll's Lair   88.0 fps
GT4 - Mother Nature   86.5 fps

CPU Tests
CPU Test 1   100.9 fps
CPU Test 2   15.7 fps

Feature Tests
Fill Rate (Single-Texturing)   2587.9 MTexels/s
Fill Rate (Multi-Texturing)   7138.5 MTexels/s
Vertex Shader   41.1 fps
Pixel Shader 2.0   292.0 fps
Ragtroll   57.0 fps

Sound Tests
No sounds   64.6 fps
24 sounds   50.5 fps
60 sounds   39.6 fps

Not bad I think. Also, I already noticed a *big* improvement in GIMP performance, be it real or imagined...


I'm Happy With This Card! Even though it cost me 170 €... Well, I could afford it. These things are more expensive here than almost anywhere, but I can live with that. I might've gotten it cheaper somewhere else but all the same, I've got this now and here.