Need some computer help

popley · Post by **popley** » Mon Apr 18, 2005 12:18 am

Im thinking about getting a new graphics card, but now sure which one to get, my pc specs are:

Pentium 4 cpu 2.40 GHz
2.39GHz
512 MB of RAM

Right now i have a Rage Fury Pro/Xpert 2000 Pro for my graphics card.

Im not that good with computer, just want to play half 2 better and maybe doom 3.
Any help would be great, thank you.

Skynet · Post by **Skynet** » Mon Apr 18, 2005 3:09 am

I also need this question answered again.

About 6months ago I had a gf4 ti4200 that died, apparently the fan wasn't spinning and I didn't notice. I was playin Doom3 quite a bit and fried it

As a cheap replacement I bought a 5700le I think (yuck) and something happened yesterday while tinkering and it no longer works.

My specs are
Athlon 2000+
512 RAM
(which will be upgraded before too long, hopefully)

I too would like to play Half Life 2 better. The 5700 was ok, but frame rate could get a bit choppy sometimes. To give me some idea, is anything on this page worthy of a purchase. I would really like to keep it under $300. Any help for me would be MUCH appreciated. Sorry to hijack your thread man

Post by **Quzar** » Mon Apr 18, 2005 4:38 am

i would go with something around a 9600 or x600. midrange style cards.

popely: ANYTHING will be an upgrade for you and you will see horribly massive results no matter what you upgrade to. id go with a 9600 for you

skynet: i have a feeling you might want to go with something slightly more expensive and newer. also, if you plan on upgrading then it might be an option for you to go PCIe and get an x600 or x700.

Skynet · Post by **Skynet** » Mon Apr 18, 2005 4:45 am

skynet: i have a feeling you might want to go with something slightly more expensive and newer. also, if you plan on upgrading then it might be an option for you to go PCIe and get an x600 or x700.

in terms of up-to-dateness, are you saying those on that page are ancient by todays standards? PCIe only works with mobos that support it though, right? If that is the case, then that's not really that good of an option because it will hopefully be this year, I just dont know when I'd actually have the money to do it

Post by **Quzar** » Mon Apr 18, 2005 4:52 am

no, i took a look at the ones on the page, but most of the ones under 300$ are 5xxx series nvidias which are poor cards. there is a 9600xt there but i think its overpriced at 260 or whatever its at. you should look around for a 9600pro to softmod instead.

Skynet · Post by **Skynet** » Mon Apr 18, 2005 5:02 am

Alright, I'll look then.

If it's not too much of a bother, does anything here seem alright? Expanding on that question, which would be a better name to trust? Albatron, gigabyte, leadtek, asus, jetway or msi?

EDIT: That link might not have worked the way I wanted it to. Anyway, the graphics card link is on the left hand side.

a 9600xt there but i think its overpriced at 260 or whatever its at

You are keeping in mind that's AU$ and not US$? AU$1 = about 75 US cents or so. I think it's up around the 78cent mark, but that's just a guide I give as it's been hovering the 75cent mark for quite a while, give or take 5c.

Bah, I wish I knew more about gfx cards. It's an area where I feel like a noob

Post by **Quzar** » Mon Apr 18, 2005 5:09 am

the link dont work for me =\. I didnt notice the site was in AU$. its still a little overpriced cause im fairly certain you can find it for under 200 US$ (240AU?). If you can find a US site that ships globally you might be able to find it cheaper (enough to make up for the shipping difference).

bizzle · Post by **bizzle** » Mon Apr 18, 2005 6:14 am

Skynet wrote:About 6months ago I had a gf4 ti4200 that died, apparently the fan wasn't spinning and I didn't notice. I was playin Doom3 quite a bit and fried it

Wow, how long where you playing? When I was building my friend's computer I used the video card he has before which was a ti4200. Neither of us noticed it until after Windows was installing when I looked in the case and saw the heatsink hanging off. The thing was barely touching the GPU, only about 25% of it made contact and it red hot. It was like that for about an hour and no damage was made. I'm sure it was hotter than yours with just no fan. I guess we just got really lucky, heh.

Skynet · Post by **Skynet** » Mon Apr 18, 2005 6:23 am

The thing is, I don't know how long the fan hadn't been working for. So that included pretty much any game I was playing. Although Doom3 would've put the most load on it. So afaik it could've not been working for about 2 weeks. I just don't know.

I'm surprised this tnt2 I chucked in temporarily still works, I remember one day during summer we had 46+ degree days (celcius) and I had just the heat sink on it. I had no case fans at the time and no other means of cooling. It got extremely hot that day, the entire week actually. But it still runs fine, for the POS that it is.

quzar: Well, the homepage is http://www.itwarehouse.com.au if you're willing to give me any more advice

And again, truly sorry for the thread hijacking

bizzle · Post by **bizzle** » Mon Apr 18, 2005 6:41 am

quzar wrote:no, i took a look at the ones on the page, but most of the ones under 300$ are 5xxx series nvidias which are poor cards. there is a 9600xt there but i think its overpriced at 260 or whatever its at. you should look around for a 9600pro to softmod instead.

You can only mod a 9600 Pro into a FireGL, but I don't remember if you can do it with only modded drivers. I know you can do it with a BIOS flash though. You can't mod it into a 9600XT or anything, they have two different cores.

Post by **Quzar** » Mon Apr 18, 2005 6:52 am

Xylene wrote:
quzar wrote:no, i took a look at the ones on the page, but most of the ones under 300$ are 5xxx series nvidias which are poor cards. there is a 9600xt there but i think its overpriced at 260 or whatever its at. you should look around for a 9600pro to softmod instead.
You can only mod a 9600 Pro into a FireGL, but I don't remember if you can do it with only modded drivers. I know you can do it with a BIOS flash though. You can't mod it into a 9600XT or anything, they have two different cores.

AFAIK the only difference between the two cores is the temperature sensor used for 'overdrive' unless it works completely different from the 9800pro->9800xt, where you can do bios flashes even though the cores are different and it simply has no temperature sensing capabilities.

BlackAura · Post by **BlackAura** » Mon Apr 18, 2005 7:20 am

quzar wrote:its still a little overpriced cause im fairly certain you can find it for under 200 US$ (240AU?). If you can find a US site that ships globally you might be able to find it cheaper (enough to make up for the shipping difference).

Not in this country. Everything is massively over-priced, and to make matters worse the average income is much lower than other countries (at least, lower than European countries and the US). It really sucks...

My PC kinda blew up recently, and it's been giving me trouble for quite a while, so I just said "the hell with it", and decided to buy all new stuff, except for peripherals, hard drives, and optical drives. I eventually decided to grab a GeForce 6600GT, at $319.

My criteria were - has to work in Linux, has to work in 64-bit Linux, is better that what I currently have (GeForce FX5200), and isn't rediculously expensive. That kinda limits the choices I had - the high-end cards kick in around $400, and they're all overkill for anything I'll use my PC for in the next couple of years, not to mention too expensive for my liking. The low end cards (up to $180 or so) are all worse than what I have, or just crippled versions of other cards. For some reason, they stopped selling top-of-the-range cards as soon as a newer one came out, but keep selling cut-down or budget cards forever. There's basically nothing beween $180 and $300 (where mid-range cards should be), leaving the $300-$400 area, which I would consider to be upper-mid range.

Oh yeah - do not buy another GeForce FX card. As you found out, it's not worth it. If you're staying with nVidia hardware, go for at least a 6600, up to as much as you can afford. Try not to get a crippled version of whatever card you're buying too.

popley - Anything would be a vast improvement. A Radeon 9600 or above, or a GeForce 6xxx would be a good general bet.

Disheveled DrFreeze · Post by **Disheveled DrFreeze** » Mon Apr 18, 2005 9:09 am

both of you, if you got 200 bucks, get a 6600GT, it will kill whatever you have/had

if you dont have 200, but say, 100, get a 6200 and try to mod it into a 6600, but steer clear of the Turbocache and 64 bit versions

a 9600pro is a nice card, but comming from a ti4200 its not that big of an upgrade, if any, id go for the 6600GT

Skynet · Post by **Skynet** » Tue Apr 19, 2005 3:27 am

ok, so I've gotten a few 6600GTs coming from you guys. Freeze, will it make that big of a difference for me? Get this (i dont think I mentioned it before), BF1942 with no mods ran rather crappy. I think HL2 ran better than it. I just couldn't get it to run decently for me

BlackAura: Where did you buy your card from? And if you were to play something like HL2 or Doom3 (let's assume you did) how does it shape up?

EDIT: And how do you know if you're getting a cripped card? Is that like with my 5700 they slapped the LE on the end of it?

BlackAura · Post by **BlackAura** » Tue Apr 19, 2005 4:01 am

BlackAura: Where did you buy your card from? And if you were to play something like HL2 or Doom3 (let's assume you did) how does it shape up?

Haven't got it yet. Probably tomorrow, and I won't have time to assemble the system until Thursday. I bought the thing from Computer Alliance, which is in Brisbane so it's probably not much use to you.

Doom 3's performance is dependent on both the CPU and video card. Benchmarks I've seen on a 3GHz+ P4 indicate that Doom 3 is CPU limited at lower resolutions on a 6600GT. It runs at just under 80FPS (remember - in game Doom 3 is locked at 60FPS) on high quality up to 1024x768. To me, that's more than good enough.

EDIT: And how do you know if you're getting a cripped card? Is that like with my 5700 they slapped the LE on the end of it?

That's one way.

For earlier nVidia cards, they used to do "MX" versions, which were crippled versions of the non-MX versions. The worst offender is the GeForce 4 MX, which is actually a GeForce 2.

After that, nVidia stopped using "MX", and stared using other indicators. The two crippled FX series cards are the FX5200 (the chip is a third the size of the full versions, and is unbelievably slow when using shaders), and the LE versions. The LE versions are basically underclocked versions of the non-LE versions, with cheaper (slower) memory.

On modern graphics cards, the main bottleneck is actually the memory, not the graphics chip itself. The slower memory completely cripples the cards, unless you stick some RAM sinks on it, and try overclocking it back ot it's original specs.

I have no idea about the GeForce 6xxx series. They all seem to be based on a single core, with various features enabled or disabled. The 6800 is the "full" version, with six pixel pipelines (basically, it works on six pixels at once), and a 256-bit memory interface. It's also stupidly expensive. The 6600GT has three pixel pipelines, and a 128-bit memory interface, so it is slower, and doesn't run as well at high resolutions with full antialiasing or anisotropic filtering. The 6600 has a lower clock speed. I would consider the 6600GT to be the mid-range version (and anything more powerful becomes exponentially more expensive), and the plain 6600 to be slightly crippled like the 5700LE, but I might be a bit wrong there.

The other thing to look for is memory bus size. There are crippled versions of some Radeons that have a 64-bit memory bus instead of the more usual 128-bit memory bus. Basically, this halves the memory bandwidth, with the same effect has decreasing the memory speed. 128-bit is fine (although 256-bit is better and found on high-end cards), but 64-bit just isn't enough for modern games.

Skynet · Post by **Skynet** » Tue Apr 19, 2005 4:10 am

Thanks for the info.

I'll check that website out anyway, see if they deliver to SA. If not, my mum lives in Cairns and my grandparents in Brisbane. So I'm sure someone could work something out for me.

I'll start looking for a 6600GT then. Which name should I trust the most, or is it entirely up to me and how much I wanna pay? Albatron, gigabyte, leadtek, asus, jetway or msi are the names I can pick from a local computer store. Are there any that I should avoid completely?

Andeh · Post by **Andeh** » Tue Apr 19, 2005 4:14 am

GeForce 6600GT no competition for the price.
Go with either MSI, Leadtek, or Gigabyte. I would recommend MSI since they have good software bundles and great cooling. Although the cooling on the Leadtek cards is arguably better.
Personally I have an MSI 6800 modded to ultra specs. couldnt ask for more!

Skynet · Post by **Skynet** » Tue Apr 19, 2005 4:33 am

Alright, I'll check out those three and weigh the costs for each, etc. See what I can come up with.

BlackAura · Post by **BlackAura** » Tue Apr 19, 2005 5:19 am

Depends on what you can get - they're all based around nVidia's reference boards (they all have the exact same board layout, and 95% the same components). The only differences are build quality (most well-known manufacturers are good, avoid ones you've never heard of), cooling (important if you're overclocking, not so much otherwise), and software / hardware bundles. MSI have exceptional bundles with their cards, if you want to go with them.

If you like (and you haven't bought one already), I can probably do some benchmarking on Thursday or Friday, with Doom 3 at least. I could try Half Life 2, but aside from only having the demo version, it took us hours to get the thing running. Thank you very much, Steam...

Oh yeah... I'm considering changing the card I'm getting to a fanless 6600GT. Basically, my PC is loud enough as it is, and I'd rather build a quiet system. So, does anyone have any experience with a fanless 6600GT (or similar)? I know they block a PCI slot because of the extra huge heatsink, but I don't care - I have nothing to put in any of them. Other than that, is it more likely to overheat, or what? Even if it does run hot, could I stick a smaller fan in a slot adjacent to the card to get some more air running over it, and (more importantly) keep the hot air away from my other components?

Skynet · Post by **Skynet** » Tue Apr 19, 2005 5:43 am

The only differences are build quality (most well-known manufacturers are good, avoid ones you've never heard of), cooling (important if you're overclocking, not so much otherwise), and software / hardware bundles. MSI have exceptional bundles with their cards, if you want to go with them.

Alright, I'll check ITWarehouse and check out their MSI deals, see if I can get some goodies with it, for a decent price.

If you like (and you haven't bought one already), I can probably do some benchmarking on Thursday or Friday, with Doom 3 at least. I could try Half Life 2, but aside from only having the demo version, it took us hours to get the thing running. Thank you very much, Steam...

That would be great, if you wouldn't mind. I know what you mean about steam. I bought HL2 and had it back home by about 8pm. By the time I was playing it, it was almost 10. What with the bajillion cds to install from and all that activation crap that you need to do, woohoo for dialup!