What gfx power is needed for this?

Espique · Nov 14, 2004, 04:02 PM

Hi,

let me tell you first: I am usually not a gamer. I fire one up maybe once a year. That being said, please forgive any stupidity in my questions

I am running a 2400 Mhz Athlon 64 and a Radeon 9600 XT with 128 MB (Sapphire). I thought this would be some good power. Well I thought wrong. I am playing NFSU 2 and to get some reasonable speed I basically have to turn off most of the eye candy (no details, no anti-aliasing etc.). I need to run it at 1280x1024 because that's the fixed resolution of my LCD display. With speed I don't really mean FPS. It doesn't look slow, but the car steering becomes very slow and unresponsive...

What sort of graphic board would I need to play this game with all the eye candy turned on?

And how could I tweak my 9600XT to the most out of it? I can't believe I have to turn al the candy off... I mean, this card is only a year old....

Thanks for your thought!

Geminiwave · Nov 14, 2004, 04:18 PM

well the first thing would be to get some new drivers. You are probably running VERY old drivers and there have been HUGE framerate increases lately.

go to ati.com and get the new drivers there.

OR you can download Omega drivers at www.omegadrivers.net and use those. They are seriously tweeked out drivers for best image quality and stability without any speed loss. I find them to be very good. They are usually comparable speed to the ATI official drivers. Sometimes a bit faster and sometimes a bit slower(almost never slower though)

Espique · Nov 14, 2004, 06:06 PM

@geminiwave:

I am running pretty recent drivers (catalyst 4.10). Provided these are good, should I be able to get good speed with some eye candy turned on?

Do these Omegadrivers come with something like the ATI Control Center?

Thanks.

Geminiwave · Nov 14, 2004, 08:37 PM

no Omega drivers have a custom control center. Its kindof better really. thats my opinion though.

Anyway you have 4.10's which are pretty good......so I dunno what to tell you. Thats pretty annoying really.

Lemme think...

well Actually the 9600XT is pretty low level as far as cards go. I hate to say it but its a pretty low end card. Even so, it should do alright on NFSU2

I dunno. Anyone else have some ideas?

Espique · Nov 14, 2004, 08:45 PM

ok. what would be an appropriate card then?

Geminiwave · Nov 14, 2004, 09:30 PM

9800PRO and up from there.

then maybe a geforce 5900 or up. I dunno about geforce though.

If you have the moola, just shell it out for a geforce 6800 or a Radeon X800. You got the primo processor for these types of cards.

I am very partial to the 9800 though. Pretty good price and GREAT performance. You might not be able to have full ansio and FSAA on max for every game...but you can run ANY game with top eye-candy max settings...the works. And most of the time you can get quite respectable AA and AF.

Nacht · Nov 14, 2004, 11:14 PM

yea...that card might only be a year old to you, but that gpu is very dated, probably looking at 3 years now. a newer card (9800pro+ or 5900U+) should take care of you.

Powercolour · Nov 15, 2004, 05:20 PM

hold up a sec 9600xt cant run nfsu2 well? akward
have u tried a monitor that can maybe support 1280 x 768?
did u build this comp or...

Geminiwave · Nov 15, 2004, 06:41 PM

I havent seen any desktops with an AMD 64bit 2400...so somehow I'm betting he built it himself.

Espique · Nov 15, 2004, 07:03 PM

yeah I built the rig myself. it's one of the new winchester 90nm athlons, overclocked to 2400 Mhz. I even had it at 2600 (note: from a stock 1800!) but my RAM spit on me...

anyways... I didn't know the 9600 and 9800 series are so much apart... wasn't the 9600 even released after the 9800? what'S the major difference between the two?

@powecolour: I didn't say the 9600XT can't run the game at all, it's just not supportting all the eye candy. I can only get reasonable gaming results by putting the game detail level to very low.

Hm. Maybe I should look for a 9800 PRO. They should be cheaper now that the X800 is out. Do you guys recommend any specific brand/model?

Thanks

Nacht · Nov 15, 2004, 10:20 PM

no, the 9600xt was released with the 9800xt after the release of the 9800pro, but it is just a slightly faster version of the 9600pro, an older part.

jsx[ifl] · Nov 15, 2004, 10:29 PM

my specs are in my sig, and im running @ 1280 full af/aa and all eye candy turned and and smooth as butter. CRT 17" screen locked 85hz.

Powercolour · Nov 16, 2004, 02:04 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Espique

@powecolour: I didn't say the 9600XT can't run the game at all, it's just not supportting all the eye candy. I can only get reasonable gaming results by putting the game detail level to very low.

i said run the game well, which it should be able to do.... but i thought people actually read every word...

Quote:

Originally Posted by jsx[ifl]

my specs are in my sig, and im running @ 1280 full af/aa and all eye candy turned and and smooth as butter. CRT 17" screen locked 85hz.

exactly...

Geminiwave · Nov 16, 2004, 05:23 PM

I recommend either a BBA radeon 9800pro or a Powercolor 9800pro. If you really wanna spend the money, you could even get a HIS 9800Pro with the special cooler.

Espique · Nov 16, 2004, 05:24 PM

sorry powercolour, I didn't mean to offend you. should have read your post better.

@jsx[ifl]: any hints on your specific settings in the drivers? maybe I just do it wrong

Powercolour · Nov 16, 2004, 05:56 PM

don't worry bout it

Espique · Nov 16, 2004, 06:05 PM

ok, how about a 9800XT? are they any better? and can you recommend a 9800 that has a silent cooler?