Recommended graphics card?

diddydeltic · Post by **diddydeltic** » Wed Jan 14, 2004 5:13 pm

I am thinking of buying a new pc and have noticed that quite a lot of them come already with GeForce 4 128Mb shared graphics and some come with standard GeForce 128Mb. Has anyone any ideas which would be the best card to have which would be already installed in the pc when I buy it? Some pcs also are already equipped with an Athlon XP2700 any comments on performance on this would be welcomed! (Sorry I don't know much about pc's I'm only quoting what was in the spec.!)
Thanks,
Garry

Speedbird083 · Post by **Speedbird083** » Wed Jan 14, 2004 5:19 pm

I got a Xp2700+ and ATi Radeon 9700 Pro based machine last christmas.
It's a good combination (as long as you have decent ATi Catalyst drivers installed

) and with the technology being over a year old machines with this spec. should be quite cheap now.

baldwin · Post by **baldwin** » Wed Jan 14, 2004 8:14 pm

Stay away from shared graphics, does not mix very well with MSTS. Ok for most other things though.

Mervyn

baldwin · Post by **baldwin** » Wed Jan 14, 2004 8:18 pm

Stay away from shared graphics, does not mix very well with MSTS. Ok for most other things though.

Mervyn

tuitr · Post by **tuitr** » Wed Jan 14, 2004 8:20 pm

Radeon cards are generally acknowledged to be the better series at the higher end (as opposed to the GeForce series) but you may not notice much difference between the two unless you're using high-end 3D applications. That being said, you have to consider the possibility of MSTS 2 being released soon (ha ha) which will undoubtedly place a greater burden on your graphics card.

Backfoot2002 · Post by **Backfoot2002** » Wed Jan 14, 2004 11:38 pm

I have a:

AMD Athlon 2500+ Barton (512kb Cache) 333MHz FSB
768MB DDR 400MHz Ram
256MB Geforce FX5600, x8 AGP, DVI & TV-Out
80GB Hardrive with 8MB Cahce

thos are the main partrs of my, dont want to go on all day about it, but i run train sim in 1024x768, and it runs smooth as anything, even on the Mideast UK which is a pretty power demading route. I bought it for about Â£120 off the internet, and its great, all the games i play look superb, well depending on that games graphics engine. but i would advise to stay wel well away from shared graphics. it takes the memory from you RAM, and overall you end up with a slow speeds.

My model was a "Gainward Geforce FX5600 256MB, DVI, TV-Out, x8 AGP"

as you might have noticed i know quite a bit about PC's so any questions just mail me.

Anton

diddydeltic · Post by **diddydeltic** » Thu Jan 15, 2004 4:17 am

Thanks for the info everyone

jbilton · Post by **jbilton** » Thu Jan 15, 2004 9:08 am

Backfoot2002 wrote:I have a:

AMD Athlon 2500+ Barton (512kb Cache) 333MHz FSB
768MB DDR 400MHz Ram
256MB Geforce FX5600, x8 AGP, DVI & TV-Out
80GB Hardrive with 8MB Cahce

thos are the main partrs of my, dont want to go on all day about it, but i run train sim in 1024x768, and it runs smooth as anything, even on the Mideast UK which is a pretty power demading route. I bought it for about Â£120 off the internet, and its great, all the games i play look superb, well depending on that games graphics engine. but i would advise to stay wel well away from shared graphics. it takes the memory from you RAM, and overall you end up with a slow speeds.

My model was a "Gainward Geforce FX5600 256MB, DVI, TV-Out, x8 AGP"

as you might have noticed i know quite a bit about PC's so any questions just mail me.

Anton

Hi
I'm interested in the bit that your running a 333fsb chip with 400fsb memory....and presumably its stable??
I have a similar setup...and have had nothing but problems.
However I have to say I dont think Mideast is that bad....as I've been running it since I had a celeron 500 .
I recently downloaded CER V4....and get frame rates as low as 4.

Backfoot2002 · Post by **Backfoot2002** » Thu Jan 15, 2004 3:44 pm

It is stable, depending on what chip you have. The reason why i got the 2500+ chip and not a higher one if because, after reading on the intertnet and forums, people were saying that the 2500+ chip was teh best for overclocking. quite a few people mentioned that they have it running at 400FSB, and overclocked teh chip so that it was running asthough it was a Athlon 3000+! i not yet overclocked mine, as i dont feel the need to. when you do overclock though. it does shorten the life of your CPU, so thats why i have left it for the moment. But as time goes on and games become more demanding then, i think i will overclock it, as my motherboard is designed for 400FSB, anyways, so it will be a simple process.

In response to the route:

Mideast is probabaly the route which has slowed my PC down the most, well that and NEC v4.0. I havent tred that many route on it, to be honest, apart from my own. When you say, it ran fine on your celeron, did u have it in the resolution of 1024x768 and Best Graphics, including the spectacular lighting, becuase im sure then it would not run smooth.

I used to have a:

AMD Athlon 2100+
1024 SDRAM (PC133)
60GB hardrive with 8MB cache
64MB Geforce MX200, x4 AGP
and so on...

and with that 800x600 was the the best resolution i could get due to, the cpu speed limitations. even in that resolution on highly detailed routes, such as Mideast & NEC v4.0 ,were enough to slow it down.

Anton

jjules · Post by **jjules** » Thu Jan 15, 2004 5:12 pm

I run this at the moment:

AMD Duron 1.4GHz
256MB ATi Radeon 9600 (I laugh at 128MB!)
128MB PC133 SDRAM (temporarily anyway, will be adding more later)
120GB Seagate HDD
CD-RW and DVD drives (the DVD drive being added this weekend)

Somehow I managed to get my RR43002 running on the NEC v4.0, so long as I was mostly in cabview (not my favourite really, but I did get it going then!). Foolishly I never saved it, and left Baltimore. Got to the entrance of the tunnel leaving towards Philadelphia, and MSTS crashed, froze, whatever. I regretted not saving it!

Hopefully the new RAM I am putting in later (256MB Crucial PC133 SDRAM) will solve the problem. I will be removing the 128MB PC133 SDRAM, as this is an unbranded one, and I want to see what happens with the branded one only...

My advice in terms of graphics cards is a MINIMUM of 128MB memory on it. GeForce cards work better than ATi for some reason. The more memory the better, particularly with fast CPUs and plenty of RAM (that reminds me to buy a load of it soon).

Backfoot2002 · Post by **Backfoot2002** » Thu Jan 15, 2004 6:11 pm

jjules wrote:I run this at the moment:

AMD Duron 1.4GHz
256MB ATi Radeon 9600 (I laugh at 128MB!)
128MB PC133 SDRAM (temporarily anyway, will be adding more later)
120GB Seagate HDD
CD-RW and DVD drives (the DVD drive being added this weekend)

Somehow I managed to get my RR43002 running on the NEC v4.0, so long as I was mostly in cabview (not my favourite really, but I did get it going then!). Foolishly I never saved it, and left Baltimore. Got to the entrance of the tunnel leaving towards Philadelphia, and MSTS crashed, froze, whatever. I regretted not saving it!

Hopefully the new RAM I am putting in later (256MB Crucial PC133 SDRAM) will solve the problem. I will be removing the 128MB PC133 SDRAM, as this is an unbranded one, and I want to see what happens with the branded one only...

My advice in terms of graphics cards is a MINIMUM of 128MB memory on it. GeForce cards work better than ATi for some reason. The more memory the better, particularly with fast CPUs and plenty of RAM (that reminds me to buy a load of it soon).

It was back in teh day when i used SDRAM, i find that nower days it so much slower. Tell me, is that a new system, or an old one that you have upgraded, cos to me the graphics card, and hardrive sound really good, but it is let down by the CPU and the RAM. i had 1024MB of SDRAM in my old PC, and now in my new one which i built i have 768MB DDR, the differece is that the SD ran at 133MHz and this DDR which i have now runs at 400MHz, so its a lot faster.

By the way, where do you buy your PC parts from? maybe i can tell you a good place on the net to buy em, if you dont already know one.

Anton

Speedbird083 · Post by **Speedbird083** » Thu Jan 15, 2004 6:49 pm

While my PC is comatose and I have some money due in(birthday is there anythign I could do with?

XP2700+ on a ASUSTeK A7N8X Deluxe nForce 2 mobo 400Mhz FSB
128Mb ATi Radeon 9700 Pro 8x AGP blah blah blah
512Mb of 333Mhz RAM
2 x 120Gb Maxtor DiamondMax UDMA133 HDDs

I've had it 14 months and it's not been used since September.
Will it still run recent titles well?
Apart from leaving Kings Cross with all the platforms occupied on Mideast it eats MSTS. I bought H&D 2 for christmas and I'm more worried about the recommended specs. for that. I refuse to run games at low detail levels.

Backfoot2002 · Post by **Backfoot2002** » Thu Jan 15, 2004 7:06 pm

Speedbird083 wrote:While my PC is comatose and I have some money due in(birthday is there anythign I could do with?

XP2700+ on a ASUSTeK A7N8X Deluxe nForce 2 mobo 400Mhz FSB
128Mb ATi Radeon 9700 Pro 8x AGP blah blah blah
512Mb of 333Mhz RAM
2 x 120Gb Maxtor DiamondMax UDMA133 HDDs

I've had it 14 months and it's not been used since September.
Will it still run recent titles well?
Apart from leaving Kings Cross with all the platforms occupied on Mideast it eats MSTS. I bought H&D 2 for christmas and I'm more worried about the recommended specs. for that. I refuse to run games at low detail levels.

You could add more RAM to improve performace, Ever since ealry 2002, i didnt settle for any less than 768MB of RAM, on y past 3 pc's i have had 768MB or 1024MB of RAM, and you do see the performace difference quite a bit. At the moment, i have done al i want to do to my PC, and it runs all the games that i put on it

, which is good to know, and i do have quite alot of games, about 120 i think. My full spec is, in computer terms,

:

AMD Athlon 2500+ Barton 512kb Cache 333MHz FSB
768MB DDR 400MHz Ram
80GB Hardrive with 8MB Cache (7,200rpm)
15GB Hardrive (backup drive 5,400rpm)
256MB Geforce FX5600, DVI, TV-Out, x8 AGP
MSI Motherboard with USB 2.0, Firewire, Bluetooh, x 6 USB 1.0
DVD, CD/RW Combo Drive (x48)
DVD/RW,CD/RW/DVD Combo Drive
Then i bought a pre modded tower case with a clear side panel, and then i decided to add some blue neons, to make it look a little more intresting,

GoodForNothing · Post by **GoodForNothing** » Thu Jan 15, 2004 11:53 pm

Then i bought a pre modded tower case with a clear side panel, and then i decided to add some blue neons, to make it look a little more intresting,

Are you a Max power subscriber ?

jjules · Post by **jjules** » Fri Jan 16, 2004 8:54 am

Backfoot2002 wrote:
jjules wrote:I run this at the moment:

AMD Duron 1.4GHz
256MB ATi Radeon 9600 (I laugh at 128MB!)
128MB PC133 SDRAM (temporarily anyway, will be adding more later)
120GB Seagate HDD
CD-RW and DVD drives (the DVD drive being added this weekend)

Somehow I managed to get my RR43002 running on the NEC v4.0, so long as I was mostly in cabview (not my favourite really, but I did get it going then!). Foolishly I never saved it, and left Baltimore. Got to the entrance of the tunnel leaving towards Philadelphia, and MSTS crashed, froze, whatever. I regretted not saving it!

Hopefully the new RAM I am putting in later (256MB Crucial PC133 SDRAM) will solve the problem. I will be removing the 128MB PC133 SDRAM, as this is an unbranded one, and I want to see what happens with the branded one only...

My advice in terms of graphics cards is a MINIMUM of 128MB memory on it. GeForce cards work better than ATi for some reason. The more memory the better, particularly with fast CPUs and plenty of RAM (that reminds me to buy a load of it soon).
It was back in teh day when i used SDRAM, i find that nower days it so much slower. Tell me, is that a new system, or an old one that you have upgraded, cos to me the graphics card, and hardrive sound really good, but it is let down by the CPU and the RAM. i had 1024MB of SDRAM in my old PC, and now in my new one which i built i have 768MB DDR, the differece is that the SD ran at 133MHz and this DDR which i have now runs at 400MHz, so its a lot faster.

By the way, where do you buy your PC parts from? maybe i can tell you a good place on the net to buy em, if you dont already know one.

Anton

Hello. Thanks for messaging me by the way.

Regarding the system I use. It is 100% custom built by me. The motherboard is a bit old now, nearly 2 years I think, which is why I use SDRAM.

The PC my mum has at her house (on my recommendation) runs on PC2100 DDR (it is nearly 2 years old that system), and runs MSTS brilliantly. Some detailed routes are difficult to run well, but most are great. This is the spec. of that machine:

AMD AthlonXP 1700+
256MB PC2100 DDR RAM
40GB Maxtor HDD
64MB GeForce 2 MX400
An Asus motherboard
and other standard stuff which I can't quite remember...

The board in my system cannot handle anything above a 1.4GHz Duron, so I went with that. As I already said, I cannot use DDR, although I wish I had bought a board that supports it at the time! The other stuff is pretty new. I bought a lot from Ebuyer, but the HDD came from bigpockets.co.uk .

Oh, and I put the new RAM in last night. Put it in on its own, switch everything on. First things first, test MSTS out. Started OK, but it stuttered still, and froze after just a few minutes, a worse record than with faulty RAM!

Put the 128MB one in with it, and got a touch further, although that time I set the resolution to 800*600, which I detest after using 1024*768 a lot. Set the graphics to the lowest possible. I even tried it on 640*480 (shudder)!

I am suspecting now one of two things: Drivers for the graphics card (at the least) need updating. OR the motherboard is buggered. Any ideas guys?

Oh, and sorry this has taken it off-topic now!