GFX card

been thinking to retire my poor old radeon x1600 256mb card as it`s starting to struggle with fps at around 10-15 max

wished i was rich to get 1 of those sweet turbo charged cards, but they`re abit out of my price range by a few 100rd euro

set my eyes on this card:
Club3D nVidia GeForce 8500GT 512 MB PCIe

does anyone using it any problems with sl or a significant fps increase to above the 20-25fps?
and also an increase with other gfx heavy games?

system is pritty good and gfx card allways been the bottleneck
p4 3.2ghz
2.5gig ram
XP (up2date)
and ofcourse windows on a main sataII hdd with sl/games on a 2nd 10k/rpm sataII hdd


don`t have to many computer stores here so it`s pritty limited to this or to expensive cards

I just bought a 8600 GT 256 card and it kicks butt!!!

i has nvidia and all i can say is WOW....

well, they have the Club3D nVidia GeForce 8600GT 256 MB PCIe aswell
any big difference between double the memory on the 8500 and 8600?

Here is a great website to compare the differences in cards Alicia

http://www.gpureview.com/

thx, makes abit more sense with some figures showing lol

thx for all the replies but think i`ll shell out abit more and make a leap forward with the new card

hope they have it in stock and put the dinosaur in a box for storage lol

You getting the X1950? The memory bandwith on that is sweet

the card with be fine but then the p4 processor will become your bottleneck so I'm not sure how much faster it will be and I dont know anything about ATI type cards cause I'm strange like that..

if they have it in short */starts praying

have the x1600 overclocked to the max it can handle without crashing the pc, if i do it with that card, my cpu will get jelous and complain it has to work harder rofl


true, but atleast i can play games as they are supposed to be played and sl give abit more then 10-15fps (even on my own island) and improve in crowded spaces

rather have the cpu as the bottleneck then the gfx card as the cpu is 3.2ghz, this setup can last for a few months till it`s time to upgrade everything for the new cpu`s

Hehe yes my p4 takes agp cards or I would use it for SL unfortunately I can't find that will run well with sl so i use the other machine for SL. My card it was 8600 GT err or GTX? i can't remember exactly it was very cheap and its very good for sl and any new games out there as well like vanguard which is probably right now one of the worste.

I'm waiting for the new bleeding edge cpu's to come out then i will upgrade the entire pile again hopefuly it will be fine for more then a couple of years (which is about the amount of time my computers last right now as far as running stuff well)

doing the same

upgrade parts between mb/cpu/ram and when it`s time to change those, do the entire system what is getting outdated again

I'd say that you MAY be disapointed. The P4's are VERY poor CPU's and a 3.2ghz P4 is slower than a 2gig AMD. Upgrading the GPU probably won't give you much of an increase in performance.

perhaps it will or not, but the poor bugger needs to go as it`s my system`s bottleneck, even if the fps will be around the 20 without to much dropping i`d be happy
inworld i can jump into the biggest download area and everything is rezzed pritty quick besides textures, rotating around at 256m with remote cam makes the fps drop to 6-9 and then climb up slowly to 13-14 if i don`t move the cam again

bugger has to go to atleast get the best out of the pc for the time being

Whilst it looks like the GPU is the bottleneck, it may well be the CPU is what I'm saying. Your CPU WILL be running at 100% all the time and may well be contributing more to slow frame rates than the GPU. That said the GPU isn't great BUT I'm just concerned you'll upgrade the GPU and find yourself disapointed.

i know and thx for the warning

i`ve been watching the cpu behavior while playing sl and it hangs around 40-60% with spikes to 70% and while sl being unforcused it`s around 30% so it has some overhead

My sort of wimpish non-gamer puny PC has a 3GHz P4 and 1Gb of memory.
It had Intel on-board 2D graphics !!

The graphics drivers used to crash persistently in each new SL New Look. The eventual live releases didn't crash it very much, but I found that with each release I had to drag down the draw distance a level.

Then I bought an NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GTS 320Mb

It rocks!
It NEVER crashes.
I can run two simultaneous SL instances - after a reboot to clear the effects of a few hours of memory leaks.

The CPU and memory might be a bit wimpish, but it is clear that the graphics side of the equation is the real killer.

the story of my new gfx card...

go to my local store as they had the x1950xt listed
stepping trough the door and ask the first person i see "do u have the x1950xt in stock?"

tik tak tik tak

him: "nope we don`t, if u want we can order it"
me: "hmm ok, how long will it take?"
him: checking comp... "about 6 weeks?"
me: "6 weeks??? i`ll see if some 1 else has it in stock, do u have any 500watt power supplies?"
him: "only some 300-360`s as we`re waiting for delivery"
me: thinking "crap crap crap %^$^%$!!!" "ok, will come back"

rush home, fire up the pc and hit google to find another store...
store 1: "sorry, we don`t have it"
store 2: "not in stock but we can order it"
me: "no ty...."
store 3: "we`re expecting a new delivery anytime soon, would u want to reserve one?"
me: "in 6 weeks?"
store 3: "*laugh* no in 1 to 2 weeks"
me: "no ty...."

hit the web again and search abit further out...
store 4: "the x1950GT?"
me: "no, the x1950xt..."
store 4: "will check, brb..."
5 minutes later...
store 4: "the x1950xt is in stock"
me: "woohoo set it apart and i`ll come get it!"

rush to the car and hit the gas... to be hit with a traffic jam on the highway...5 minutes pass, 20meters...10 minutes pass, 100meters... 15 minutes pass and traffic goes off
3rd lane going as fast as the rest goes as it`s allready 17:15...

walk into the store at around 17:40 and ask the nub if he can fetch me my x1950xt \o/
he comes back with a box and what does it say?

X1950GT!!!!

so some words go trough my mind wich u can guess what they were and ask him if they have the 6800GTS
him: i`ll check...
5 minutes later he comes back and says as expected "nope" DOH!
ask him if he has another good card and he looks like i`ve asked him to build the spaceshuttle at wich his manager is done on the phone and says he`ll have a look

1minutes later he comes back with a new shiny box saying "GeForce 8800 GTS OC"
*big f`ing evil grin"
by then i grabbed a pricelist to have a look
x1950xt 169.95 euro
8800GTS 299.95 euro
8800GTS 319.95 euro

SOLD!!!

so i tell him i need a new power supply aswell, prefferd 500-550 or so
he goes to the back and nothing in stock (here we go again...), nothing in the show cases so it`s all gone and almost closing time ^&%^%

ask him if he has anything else as power supplies in stock and he goes into the back and comes with a Corsair 620watt modulair cable thingy
bit more expensive but wtf, i`ll eat less pizza for a month or 2

rush home zigzagging trough mid rush hour, plug it all into the case (the 8800 almost touching the hdd so big is it...), install the drivers, clean sl cache and hit the connect button!

loggin in, do the shortcut ritual and pan out immidiatly to 250m hoovering over the water with ripple effect on
steady 25 fps!

zoom into normal building distance and the fps shoots to 49/51fps in an instant
texture render goes like 100 times faster (even the huge ones i`ve uploaded for ads)

go to help island as it`s usuall laggy with ppl, while rezzing fps stays abouve 19, when something loads it`s almost instantly rezzed/textured
this is while gfx prefs are set at highest qualities
Katier, thx for the warning, but this is sooooo ()*&$@%^#$%^ awsom!!

Glad it worked out ok