What graphics card to get?

My techie friend says I need to bite the bullet and switch from the onboard graphics (Nividia 6150) in my computer to a separate card. Problem is, I know only enough to be dangerous about this stuff. I don't want to spend a lot of money just to play SL but I would like my speed and stuff to be better. I'm soo confused over all the numbers. I gather that Nividia is better for SL than ATI so I guess that's a start.

The series I see are in my price range (let's say up to $50 or so):

8400
8500
9400

The problem is I have a small desktop PC and I think it only takes smaller cards (the manual says PCI Express 16 - 204mm x 108mm x 16mm or smaller). So I don't know if that size means low profile or not.

I gather the 512mb ones are at the right size / price point??

HELP!!!

Out of those three, either the 9400GT or 8500GT. The 9400 should be a little faster. The 8400 is a dog, pass on it.

Would either of those handle a 350W power supply? SL is finally doing in my X300 and I'm not interested in buying a whole new machine or even putting too much into this one as it's 5 years old.

Who are you and what have you done with Brenda?

A 350 watt power supply shouldn't have any problem with either of those. You could probably move up a bit to an 8600GT or 9500GT cheaper if you don't need a low profile card.

looking at this

http://www.interfacebus.com/PCIe_Card_Dimensions.html

it would suggest you do not need a low profile card, but you need to make sure its not too long (like the big boys 9800 or GTX) and not too thick, which 16mm most stock video cooling solutions should fit

quickly glancing around looks like a 9500 will fit, but a 9600 is too long, and looks like it might be too fat, and on average its about 10 bucks more, and its a better bang for the buck (imo)

I didn't say I was going to do it yet. I have a regular tower and it is PCI so I guess a low profile card isn't necessary? Thanks.

The manual says I have a 250w power supply. It won't take anything else apparently. Will a 9500 work?

what is the make and model of your computer

I went ahead and got a low profile Nvidia 9500GT. So far so good. Resolution went from low to high and I now get green lights on the lag meter where I used to get red/yellow on the client side.

You did well then, just remember you're now at the top of your systems capabilities and start planning to replace it in 12months time. Perhaps pick up a second hand $100 tower and upgrade it to a 7800, 8800, or 9800.

False in every way imaginable. Not to be an ass but to say one company is better is ignorant.

Right now I have a Radeon 4850 2gb version, plays everything on high, and plays gta IV great on highest resolution. Fact is, it's not about company, it's about how the cards run. Even take a look at the 4870x2, spanks as I'm sure nVidia has their counterpart.

I'd suggest shopping more, because personally I've owned about 10 nVidia cards and most of them ran quite a bit hotter than the ATI counterparts I've owned. Firstly I'd read reviews instead of listening to people on forums. Unless you need help seeing if something is compatible. Even me, don't let me influence your decisions other than the fact of taking my advice and looking at customer and professional reviews. Best way to do it.

ATI has issues with their OpenGL drivers that result in significantly poorer performance in SL than comparable Nvidia cards.

A 2GB HD 4850 can run SL on high? The 512MB 8800GT I use now runs SL fast on Ultra, with 4xAA, AF and a couple debug settings to jack up graphics detail. The 4850 should be able to do at least that well. You're getting performance that's more comparable with a lower end card like the 9500 than to a 9800GTX+ your card should be competitive with.

For Second Life, until ATI gets their OpenGL act together, yes, Nvidia is the better choice.

SL is not a graphic intensive game compared to many other games. I can run everything to the highest setting not a problem. And each company generally goes through periods where they have issues with their drivers. Doesn't mean their hardware is any less better than the other. Reason being they usually fix their issues.

I run every other game I have which is very graphic intesive at highest setting using opengl, and I have never had an issue. Honestly the only time a game has ever crashed on me, or even my computer was when I used SL. I don't blame ATI's drivers as much as I would the game seeing as I never had any issues for years now.

The purpose of my buying a new card, as it is for many who post in SL Forums, was to play SL better AND have some side benefit for the Photoshop work I do. If you look at the JIRAs and many of LL's own statements, ATI just doesn't work as well for SL because of the OpenGL issues. I'm sure they make perfectly good hardware -- the drivers keep coming up over and over as in issue for SL specifically.

/me does not play computer games other than SL.

LOL, I think I'll learn to live with this for at least two years. I love the small size of my baby and it looks nice. Besides I have to lean all over my tech friend to do some of this stuff although I'm getting better at it. But if someone dropped a really fast machine on my doorstep, I wouldn't throw it out.

First of all, SL is not a game. But that's another discussion.

In any case, SL is EXTREMELY graphics intensive, just not in the way you're probably thinking. In fact, SL is actually more graphics intensive than any video game in the world when you think about it in terms of asset efficiency, or more to the point, inefficiency. Because all the assets are user-created, very few of them are well optimized. Polygon waste and texture waste abound. That puts a tremendous strain on even the most powerful of graphics cards. Hence the low frame rates we all experience, even for those of us with very high end computers.

Video game assets, on the other hand, are created by professionals who DO make it a point to optimize everything they create for best performance. There's a world of difference there.



You mean everything except the OpenGL functions that your ATI cards can't deal with.



That may be true, but ATI stubbornly has been refusing to follow established OpenGL standards for many years now. They march to their own drummer, and they show no signs of wanting to conform any time soon. Because of that, nVidia has been the better choice for SL since day one, and will likely continue to be into the foreseeable future.

That's not a slight against ATI as a company. It's a simple and straight forward report of the facts on the ground. Across the board, ATI products don't jive as well with SL's implementation of OpenGL than nVidia products do. No offense to you personally, but to deny that is either to be disingenuous or to profess your own ignorance of the situation. Either way, such denial is not accurate to the facts.




OK, so you do admit SL has some problems on your system then. Wherever you see fit to cast the "blame" doesn't change that. Call it SL's fault if it makes you feel better, but again, that doesn't change the fact that SL and ATI just don't mix very well. Therefore, to recommend nVidia as the superior choice for SL users is the only logical thing to do, no matter how well each company's products might or might not work with other programs and games. SL in particular is what we're discussing here.

In any case, often the reason video games work better with ATI products than SL does is because there's extra coding in place to bridge the gap between the standards and ATI's oddball requirements. Not every software developer has the budget or the time to write everything twice like that, though. Clearly, LL does not.

nVidia chooses to follow the standards, which makes it a lot easier for developers to work with them. ATI chooses to make things more difficult. I'm sure they've got their reasons, whatever they may be. But that hardly matters for this discussion. What's relevant is the fact that LL and ATI have differing philosophies about how certain things should be implemented, and because of that, no ATI video card works as well with SL as its nVidia counterpart.





I'm not sure how that's relevant. So maybe the particular ATI cards you've owned have had more effective cooling systems than the particular nVidia cards you've owned. Or maybe the particular nVidia models simply were designed to run hot (many are). That says nothing about actual graphics performance. As long as the temperatures are within spec, who cares if one device runs hotter than another? Again, no offense intended, but that's an awfully silly point of comparison, don't you think?



Two things:

First, you make it sound as if you feel the experiences reported here must be somehow less valid than those reported on review sites. I'm not sure why you'd make such an implication. In both cases, all you've got to go on is the word of strangers who have allegedly used the product you're interested in. I read reviews all the time, and I also read a ton of forums. I can promise you there's always more than enough BS to sort through in both in order to find the truth. Just because something's marked "review" instead of "forum post" doesn't make it more reliable (or less reliable). Opinions are opinions. Experiences are experiences. Labeling makes no difference.

Even so-called "professional" reviews often leave things out, or miss the boat on certain issues. And sometimes they're just plain wrong. Professional reviewers are flawed opinionated humans, just like the rest of us. More often than not their input is VERY valuable, but one should never take what they say as THE definitive authority on anything.

Second, why do you say "instead of"? Wouldn't "in addition to" be the better approach? Shouldn't we be encouraging people to read reviews AND forum posts both? Anyone who only reads one or the other is missing half the story, always. There are almost always differently assorted pieces of critical need-to-know information in both places. It's only by reading everything one can find on a subject that one can put all the pieces together to make an informed decision.




Well, isn't that what we're specifically talking about here? That's the whole point of this forum, isn't it? It's about what does and doesn't work with SL.

Is there much of a difference between the various manufacturers? I was looking at 8600 GT's at new egg and tiger direct and see prices from $50-80. I'm guessing the chips are all the same? At new egg I see an EVGA for $49 and a PNY for $79. This has a $20 mail in rebate, but I hate mail in rebates so I try to avoid them. The only difference I see is that the PNY was video outputs for TV, which I don't need.

Brenda,

If I had a regular computer case with room and a normal power supply, I would have bought a 9600GT with 512mb. It's supposedly much faster than both. There are some available for around $55.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814121314

My understanding from my research is that the 9500GT will be faster than the 8600GT given same memory size & type.

Basically, nVidia provides the core design, and the manufacturers tend to add little bells & whistles of their own from there. Different makes will sometimes offer added features, such as increased clock speeds, additional memory, varied cooling system designs, etc. Also, many believe that certain manufacturers tend to make more reliable products than others. Whether or not you believe that, what is certain is that they do offer different warranties, and levels of customer service.

XFX offers the best warranty in the business. It covers repair/replacement for life, and it's fully transferable. Their customer service is very good. Their cards tend to be very fast, and are quite popular with gamers.

BFG's warranty is almost as good, but it's not transferable. I've never dealt with them directly, so I have no idea how good or bad their customer service is. As with XFX, BFG cards are usually some of the fastest available, and are also popular among gamers.

EVGA's warranty is variable. Some items are lifetime, others are 1-3 years. Their customer service is absolutely fantastic. They're my all time favorite tech company in that regard. Their cards are very, very solid, good quality.

ASUS's warranty is 3 years on graphics card. I've never bought a standalone card from them, but I LOVE their laptops. I've heard their customer service is not the greatest, but I have no idea, since I've never had to call them, and I've been using their laptops for about three years now. If the laptops are any indication, ASUS products are extremely reliable, and top quality.

PNY is sort of a no-frills, pain-jane, manufacturer. Their warranty is one year. Their cards are reliable, but nothing special. Their prices tend to be toward the low end of the nVidia scale.

Other manufacturers I know of are Leadtek, Foxconn, Gigabyte, MSI, and Biostar. I don't know anything about them, though.

I hope that helps.

Thank You Chosen. It seems EVGA is well regarded fro what I read. I'm finding better prices for them as opposed to PNY's actually, although everyone seems to have those damned mail in rebates. *shakes fist*

I'm using that video card, and I'm satisfied.

It works quite well with SL even with the experimental rendering features that I'm testing - not only realtime shadows from Sun and Moon but also projected lights:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bqiOsAE3FYI
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R_CQPRcHZGU
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=18zR_XXNdLY

I made those video on Linux
CPU: Intel Core2 6420 2.13GHz
4 GB RAM

This system lets me run SL at 30 FPS - maximum details, 4x Antialias, Anisotropic Filtering, 1600x1200. Enabling shadows, framerate wil drop under 10 FPS.
I'd say the current bottleneck is the CPU, or the GPU (video card).

@Brenda:
When upgrading your video card, double-check that your power supply is enough - I had to upgrade mine to use a Nvidia 9600GT.

According to my SL experience, I can confirm that Nvidia video cards generally will work well with Second Life. For those interested in new SL rendering features, 8xxx and 9xxx Nvidia series are both supposed to support shadows.

I have a 350 watt power supply, and I don't intend to replace that as well. I really am loathe to even throw $50 into the video card, but my x300 is geting cranky and I don't think it will make it to the end of the year like I had hoped to get a new computer.

power requirements also depends on your system

350 watts was the minimum back when my 6600GT was new, and that card, with that era of computer could suck wattage, and blow good amounts of heat out

i ran it on a 250 watt power supply for about a year then it got "weird", i upgraded to a 550 watt power supply and it ran fine, but both of its fans were on 24/7 and still blowing out heat

compared to a modern computer, that same 550 watt power supply is in my wifes dual core with a 9600GT in it, its barley warm and only 1 of the fans occasionally kicks on when she is playing sims 2

nvidia says 450 watt power for a 9600GT, if your machine is fairly new, and pretty simple 350 watt should be fine if its a quality one (no 15$ bob's computer shack brand)

me personally, id get like a good 650 watt one, and when your ready to upgrade, you can buy a cheap shell of a computer and pimp it out cheaply and you have no worries about power (and thats what i do!)

Oh, ps: evga is fine, but they have a standard warranty. BFG Tech and XFX on the other hand have lifetime warranties, which is nice to know

on evga's favor, i sent in a busted 6600 and got a 7600GS in return

its like 1 seriously overworked tough gal, who was polite and helpful ... they lost my card, but after a month (sigh) i got a brand new replacement (time including shipping)




agreed, but you have to read the fine print, which kinda sucks since you cant see it without digging



any card made by a quality motherboard maker will be good

except for the option of xfx (which is a game oriented co) most will be basic stock cards, solid, but not uber fast when held up to the graphics card makers



PNY used to make super uber nasty gamer cards (my old geforce 2 gts, which i still have) but nowdays they sell stock reference cards, and as you said squat warranty, for the same price as above

meh



Leadtek is a old gamer / workstation name, when the geforce chipset came out they made the fastest card available (i still have mine, but its not much good now) overclocked with a celeron cooler strapped to it, ddr ram the whole 9 yards (for year 2000), they have been consumed somewhere to stamp out reference cards, nothing special

the rest are in the same boat as any other motherboard manufacture, standard issue reference cards, solid but not juiced up for that extra edge

my parents have a gigabyte card, ati 9600 in 2005 for 49 bucks was not bad

I got the XFX 9500GT because several reviewers said they were running it in 250w systems fine and it was one of the few that fit my widdle baby PC.