Graphic Card Purchase Help

My computer is 1 month old and it came with some Intel intergrated graphics card I think. According to www.sl.com's System Requirements I do not meet the critiera and it suggests the following graphic cards.

nVidia Geforce 2 (32MB RAM) or higher, or ATI Radeon 8500 (32MB RAM) or higher

Having no idea about this kind of stuff I went to check out each companies website. What is confusing me is the "or higher" part. I can afford a quality card but I dont know which cards would be considered higher than the two listed above other than basing it on price alone, assuming the more expensive they are the better they are?

Here is the list of nVidia cards http://www.nvidia.com/page/desktop.html

And for ATI http://www.ati.com/products/gamer.html

I would really appreciate someone who has experience in this area pointing out which of the cards listed meet or exceed the SL minimun requirements.

Thanks!

Rick

I don't know a lot about graphics cards, but I have a NVIDIA GeForce FX 5900 and it works great

depends how much youre willing to spend, gf6600 are pretty cheap and decent, dont ask me about ati's the one i have are pretty stone age.

If you want to find out what your comp is try this
start / run / dxdiag [enter]
look up things like
Operating system :
Bios :
Prosessor :
Memory :
Display tab
Name :
Approx total memory :

carefull tho, be sure you have either pci-express or agp, some integrated machines doesnt have either! , more info you have about your pc better it is to help you

Operating system : Operating System: Windows XP Home Edition (5.1, Build 2600) Service Pack 2 (2600.xpsp_sp2_gdr.050301-1519)

Bios : Default System BIOS

Prosessor : Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 CPU 3.00GHz (2 CPUs)

Memory : 502MB RAM

Display tab
Name :Intel(R) 82915G/GV/910GL Express Chipset Family
Approx total memory : 128.0 MB

This a dell, or something with oddball numbers so i can find info about it online?, sound like a brand name pc alright

It is a Gateway 556GE.

http://support.gateway.com/s/MOTHERBD/Intel2/102007/102007mvr32.shtml

yep it supports Pci express x16 ,, one thing you might consider is getting 512 more ram, Sl really really like eating up your ram, 512 is bare minimum imo.

Any pci-express card would boost your fps alot by dropping that integrated.

Right now Nvidia has the new 7800 out, pretty darn expensive, a gf6600gt would be pretty nice on that machine , prob any x800 ati to (i just dont know about wich one since i dropped ati as of latly).

I'm no expert in the area, but I do know that there are compatibility problems between ATI and SL. I recently switched to an nVidia card because of it.

ref: http://support.gateway.com/s/PC/R/4753/4753nv.shtml

First off, I run a new 6600gt on a Canterwood motherboard (3.2Ghz) and SL tells me the same thing even with new drivers. I ignore it. Runs fine.

The vidcard I have is the Nvidia 6600gt AGP version so it was more $$$ (the 6600 was designed for PCIexpress i believe). I'd recommend the PCIexpress version if you want to get one even though my CAD apps aren't really liking it; for SL it's plenty. But that built-in graphics chip might not be the source of any problems you might be having (you don't mention any real problems - or did I miss that?)

*Always agree with bumping up memory. (the rest edited out due to having my head up my arse and not reading your post carefully - thanks to Roberta for helping me catch my own mistake)

I'm no expert. You'll want to verify this with someone on here that does this on a regular basis. I don't. But hope that helps a little.

Ok. From http://support.gateway.com/s/PC/R/4753/4753sp3.shtml

Which graphics card to get depends upon what else you use the PC for. SL uses CPU and RAM more than graphics cards. If you are a big gamer then get a better graphics card - if the only graphical thing you are using is SL then get a low spec Geforce.

Your PC comes with 512MB of RAM. Up to 64MB of that can be used by the inbuilt video chip. However the stats you posted say that you have 502MB, and 128MB video RAM. I take this to mean you have 630MB in total. You should get the 128MB back when you install a graphics card as the inbuilt chip won't be using it any more.

You need a graphics card for SL to run on this machine. However extra RAM will make a great deal of difference to the performance.

Your PC doesn't have an AGP slot - it has a PCI express slot.

So.. buy a Geforce card that fits a PCI express slot. Geforces go: Geforce 2s, Geforce 4s, Geforces with 4 digit numbers. If this is just for SL and you are on a budget get any compatible Geforce and spend any extra on RAM.

Having machine with an ATI card I have no problems. I would agree that more system ram is also important. What was causing me issues was running only 512 of system ram on my laptop. Would cause painfully cache swaping to my hard drive all the time.. It is alot better now that I have 1GB of ram. BTW my laptop has a Radeon 9000 Mobility.


As for recommendations.

Nvidia Geforce 6600 PCI-X
or
ATI X600

Both are good and around 100 dollars if you are looking for a budget card that performs well those are it.

Thank you all very much for your hints, tips and suggestions! See I wouldnt have even known I had a PCI-Express card. I would have assumed I had an AGP.

I will do both the upgrade in RAM and will go with an nVidia.

Rick

YAY! My new video card finally arrived. I got the nVidia GeForce 6600 GT for PCI Express.

Now I updated the drivers and all that and its workign fine, however when trying to play with all the different graphic and advanced graphic settings I still get confused as to what I should (or could) have on and what I could (or should) have off to achieve the best visual experience without slower performance.

After playing with some of the selections I went to a few differnet empty sims and had widly different results. Sometimes my FPS would be off the chart other times I was almost frozen and had 2.0 FPS. Also occsaionally I am having almost 50% or more packet loss which is something I never experienced before.

Anyone have any suggestions now that I have this new card as to what to set things too? Thanks!

I run Second Life with a Radeon 9600 Pro. I've had no real problems with it beyond the "general" viewing bugs people mention (poor alpha-layer stacking, skin color weirdness, etc).

However, the ATI chip in my laptop has some texture problems, so I can agree with the sentiment.


As an aside, these are the first ATI products I've owned in years. My last ATI card (a DDR 32mb) was terrible, so I've been using nVidia cards until recently.

Another good card line to try: GeForce FX. Because they're a bit behind the curve in quality, they're at an extremely low pricepoint and make a great bargain. I had one of these in my PC for a while, and it ran Planetside pretty well years ago.

Edit: Scratch that. You bought your card. For future reference then.

Sorta bump. I am still lagging to holy hell when I AM in game, worse than before I had a video card. Still hoping someone has a suggestion.

Also for anyone that has the same nVidia GeForce 6600 GT card I have, is there anything specifically I should have activated in the actual video card settings itself that maybe will help with Second Life peformance.

Well, without being able to really log in and see what I have.. I'd suggest turning EVERYTHING down and see how it runs and after that, slowly adjust it until it runs the way you like it.

My case, I have several things turned down that I frankly just don't care about, like Tree detail.

You did disable the onboard video in the bios didn't you?

Turn off local lighting and shadows, set your draw distance to around 160 or less and your particles to 1000 or so. If this helps , you can bump things up a little at a time until it lags again.

Check your device manager for any yellow error flags. (new card may be conflicting with something else)

Since you had the computer opened to instal the video card, check that all the connections are seated properly and no other cards are loose.

Your network card is likely integraded, make sure your motherboard has updated drivers.

Uninstal the old video drivers(make sure the integrated video drivers are removed if possible) and then reinstall the latest nvida drivers from the website.

One major sourse of lag is the 512 of memory, has that been bumped up?

No the 512 hasnt been bumped up but I do notice just overall quicker computer performance since I put the card in.

And no I did not diable the onboard video bios. I didnt know. I will go ahead and uninstall the OLD video drivers and/or intergrated video ones. All the other stuff I will definately try when we can log back in.