Radeon 9800SE vs GeForce4 Ti4200

I know neither of these cards is exactly top-of-the-line anymore, but which is more likely to give me better performance in SL? I have a 9800SE right now and depending on where I am in-world, sometimes I'm lucky to get more than 3fps.

I don't know about the ATI card, but I started SL with a Ti 4200, 128mb. It seems to be a pretty solid SL card.

The "SE" is a very stripped down card - like the GeForce "MX" and "LE" lines...

Against a good GeForce4, I'd expect the SE to be slightly worse; but not a huge difference. I posted a lot of info on graphics card choices here:

/111/c8/33477/1.html

Take care,

--Noel "HB" Wade
(Tread Whiplash)

There have been long standing issues (documented copiously in these forums) that are largely a result of a deficient GL implementation in the ATI drivers. As I've not read that these have been fixed, I'll assume that ATI cards are still troublesome with SL and expect an ATI owner will correct me if I am mistaken.

I've used three different NVIDIA cards (4200, 5200 (aka, the 4200ish card that marketing changed the model number on to sucker Malachi into buying one), and the 6800) on three different machines with no issues at all.

Good luck.

wel firstly, if local lighting is on, turn it off, secondly, whats your whole system?

a 4200 will basically never be faster than a 9800, but both should drive sl between 15 and 25 fps, dependin on yer system (with local lighting off)

I have. It never really seems to make a difference in my framerates.


It's a VPR Matrix 253R. I don't think they make this model anymore; I got it from my dad, who got it from a friend of his. In any case, here are the specs:
Motherboard: Intel D845EBT
CPU: P4 2.5GHz
RAM: 1x512MB DDR266 (no idea what brand, but it's probably not directly relevant)
Video: Sapphire Radeon 9800SE
Sound: SB Live! Value
Drives: 160GB RAID array (2x80GB (no idea what brand), RAID2+0), Promise FastTrak100 controller; 160GB Maxtor 4G160J8, Promise Ultra133TX2 controller, AOPEN DRW4110 DVD+R/RW, Pioneer DVR-104 DVD-R/RW
Ethernet: Intel PRO/100 VE

Prior to switching over to this machine (a few months before I joined SL) I was using an AMD machine. It had a Gigabyte GA-7VRXP motherboard, Athlon XP 2100+ (running at the stock 1.7GHz), 512MB (2x256MB DDR300, I think? maybe DDR333) of RAM. I took the sound and video cards and my 160GB Maxtor drive out of it and put them in the machine I'm using now. I've been considering switching back to that machine recently, actually, albeit for reasons unrelated to SL's performance.