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 Posted: Thu, 11th Oct 2007 14:19 Post subject: Advice on AGP graphics card. X1950 Pro? |
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Hi. I know it sucks just barging in and demanding answer on your first post, but life's a bitch and most of you know that, so I'm hoping you'll help me anyway.
I'm thinking of upgrading my graphics card. I haven't played many games in months, but after playing the ETQW demo for a few hours, it'll be worth spending £100 play it a little smoother. Portal's look good too.
My current system is (a bit past it, tbh): 2500+ (OC'd to 3000+ speed), 1gb DDR (PC2700) and a 6800LE (12pp, 6vp, 370/740mhz), Nforce 2 mobo (AGP8x).
It plays ETQW with good framerates on low, BF2 with good framerates on medium. Bioshock is barely playable on low. All on 1024 x 786.
Would a X1950 Pro (AGP) allow me to bump most of the settings up a notch (BAM!) and get a few more frames/ps, AND maybe up the resolution. I know it'll be bottlenecked by the rest of the system (a lot), but for £100, is it worth it?
Opinions?
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| Posted: Thu, 11th Oct 2007 14:28 Post subject: |
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| Posted: Thu, 11th Oct 2007 14:55 Post subject: |
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Thanks buddy . That's just what I wanted to hear.
One more question though. I have a 450w power supply, with 30A on the 12V rails. If I plug in 2x Molex connectors, does that mean it has 40A on 12V? Will it work? Does the AGP version have two power sockets? Thanks.
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| Posted: Thu, 11th Oct 2007 16:04 Post subject: |
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Thanks fellas. I just ordered the 512mb Sapphire card (£110 delivered from Aria). I looked at the HIS card, but I wanted to stick to a budget of about £100 and they're closer to £135, and it can't be any louder than my 6800 with the fans on high. It should be here within a few days, so I'll let you know how I get on.
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| Posted: Thu, 11th Oct 2007 22:39 Post subject: |
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The 8 Series GeForces are coming to AGP soon, I would have waited
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| Posted: Fri, 12th Oct 2007 02:40 Post subject: |
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Nah, I'll be playing GTA4 on the PS3 by the time decent drivers come out for it. Its only the 8600, anyway. Thought about it. Decided against it.
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| Posted: Fri, 12th Oct 2007 03:29 Post subject: |
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I would advise you not to even upgrade further with your current AGP rig. I've experienced first hand, 7900GT w/P4 @ 3.8Ghz vs my upgrade 7900GT w/C2D. WORLD of difference.
And those games you mentioned are pretty CPU heavy to begin with.
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| Posted: Sat, 27th Oct 2007 18:34 Post subject: |
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I got the new card fitted a couple of days ago. I had some driver issues at first, but they're sorted now.
WIC is still unplayable, (10-15 fps) but the FPS doesn't seem to be affected much by the settings so I'm guessing thats down to the CPU or RAM.
ETQW is much better. I turned the resolution up to 1280x1024, turned the settings up to high/medium and it runs very smoothly.
I also ran the Crysis demo benchmarks (low-med settings, 1024x768, no AA <-doesn't work properly atm, 8AF):
CPU test = Avg. 35 FPS
GPU test = Avg. 29 FPS
This surprised me, because the GPU should be much better than the CPU, but anyway...
Overall, definately worth £100 even with the issues that the AGP X1950 suffers from (i.e no decent AGP drivers from ATI).
ETQW should keep me busy for a couple of months, and I know HL2:Ep2 and Portal will run well, because HL2 looked good on my Geforce 3. I'll probably get a dual core chip in a couple of months, before I really play Crysis.
Again, thanks to everyone for their advice. I'll probably need more when I'm looking at CPUs.
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| Posted: Sat, 27th Oct 2007 21:47 Post subject: |
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I wouldn't waste money on sth that I'll replace in two months time. Just wait a little bit until new CPU, MEM, and other hardware stuff come out, if you waited untill now I bet you can wait a little more...
"Quantum mechanics is actually, contrary to it's reputation, unbeliveably simple, once you take the physics out."
Scott Aaronson | chiv wrote: | | thats true you know. newton didnt discover gravity. the apple told him about it, and then he killed it. the core was never found. |
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| Posted: Sat, 27th Oct 2007 23:28 Post subject: |
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I wasn't really waiting. I realised that my old gfx card was struggling, so I updated. And for £100 I've already got a big increase in performance. The decision really came down to whether to upgrade, or not bother. I'm glad I did, because I wouldn't have had much fun playing the Crysis demo with my old 128mb card. After playing around with the settings, I played it on 1280x1024, low-medium at an average of 40 fps.
Totally worth £100.
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| Posted: Sun, 28th Oct 2007 00:18 Post subject: |
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they made 939 socket boards with AGP on it so you cna use dual core and AGP 
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| Posted: Wed, 31st Oct 2007 16:47 Post subject: |
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That pretty handy. Some of the boards are a little hard to come by, though. I found one on ebay, $40, plus $80 postage.
Damn those overpaid postal workers!
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