ISO video card upgrade

Khauruk · January 16, 2007, 07:01:56 PM

Howdy,

I'm looking to finally upgrade my current old video card rather than buy the MacBook Pro I've been drooling over (just can't justify the expense atm). I have a homebrew Athlon 1.5GHz/1GB ram machine w/ XP Pro and a Radeon 9100 (AGP 4X).

Caveat: I'm looking at the lower end of cards - most should still be a good upgrade for me afaik.

I did some looking at NewEgg and came out w/ these options.http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.asp?Category=38&N=2010380048+1069609639+1068109602&Submit=ENE&SrchInDesc=DirectX+9&SubCategory=48

I'm willing to splurge for 256MB vs. 128MB memory, but how much does 64-bit vs. 128bit interface actually matter for this? Are there any cards/companies on that list to specifically avoid? Any reason to go w/ Nvidia vs. ATI?

It looks like thishttp://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814161151 is reasonable, but what's the speed difference between a Radeon 9250 and GeForce FX5200? 9550 vs. FX5500?

hokarz · January 17, 2007, 02:34:39 AM

stay away from the 5xxx series nvidia cards. They weren't that great when they first came out, 3 years ago. The 6200 would be a good value, but I'm not sure how much of an upgrade it would be over a 9100 ati card. Check out Tomshardware.com and see if you can find some reviews on those particular cards you're looking at.

Khauruk · January 17, 2007, 05:37:36 AM

EQ is a DX9 game, and my current card predates DX9. I'm told that emulation makes a huge performance hit, and any would be a good upgrade. Is this wrong/misguided?

Vidyne · January 17, 2007, 01:14:33 PM

A 6200 would be good yes. Yet you also have to look at the other parts of your computer.

I had a 1800XP(1513mhz), 1gb 266mhz PC2100 ram, Geforce 5500LE 256mb, MSI KT3 Ultra board.

I put in a Geforce 6600 256mb AGP 8x and saw little change... there was some, but not major. Then I upgraded to Gigabyte K8NSC with 2gb dual channel PC3200 400mhz ram, and a Athlon64 3700mhz.

I went from absolutely horrid lag on raids of 40+ with everything low/off, and at the point where I was going to have to give up raiding and just solo/group... and still have lag in those situations sometimes.... to being able to just about do anything in EQ with everything turned on(though I do still get some lag).

Video card may help some is what I'm saying, but your processor might be showing its age too.

If you strictly group/solo, then video card might be worth a try. However when buying a video card for an older computer, be aware that the video card you buy might not work in a new computer later, should you choose to upgrade.

*edit*
Also you are currently running on a PC? Windows XP?
Macbook Pro is a apple/macintosh product.... so... since there is only one mac server in EQ.. wouldnt you have to, change servers?

Khauruk · January 17, 2007, 03:12:35 PM

Quote from: Vidyne on January 17, 2007, 01:14:33 PM
I went from absolutely horrid lag on raids of 40+ with everything low/off, and at the point where I was going to have to give up raiding and just solo/group... and still have lag in those situations sometimes.... to being able to just about do anything in EQ with everything turned on(though I do still get some lag).

Video card may help some is what I'm saying, but your processor might be showing its age too.

If you strictly group/solo, then video card might be worth a try. However when buying a video card for an older computer, be aware that the video card you buy might not work in a new computer later, should you choose to upgrade.

With a very similar system, I would only lag out 2boxing on raids back when I had DSL. Older zones, that is. If it was a DON/DoD zone, I'd sometimes be screwed. But, I think that's purely from the grahics card needing to emulate the dx9 instructions. Maybe I'm just better at optimizing my computer's performance though? I did have every unessential service turned off, etc, etc,....

I'm not expecting huge things, but having a DX9-native card will give me fewer problems in new zones, I expect.

This computer won't be getting upgraded, as I'm itching to get rid of this crap called PCs.

Quote*edit*
Also you are currently running on a PC? Windows XP?
Macbook Pro is a apple/macintosh product.... so... since there is only one mac server in EQ.. wouldnt you have to, change servers?

The new apple notebooks w/ Intel processors will run WindowsXP/Vista very very nicely. So, I will get to thankfully dump PC, and just boot into XP for EQ, when I make the change. Or, if the performance doesn't suck too bad, use Parallels and emulate XP for EQ while being booted into Mac.

I've ruled out the Nvidia 5X line of cards, as I've found they are simply sucktastic on dx9 content. Better than what I currently have of course, but not worth the money spent. Time to decide on 6200, or ATI 9600, I guess.

hokarz · January 17, 2007, 05:01:21 PM

if you plan on upgrading your computer anyway, I'd just save the money and put it into the new one. There is a point where upgrading is just pissing money away, and it looks like you are at that point.

EQ doesn't use the video card as much as some other games. You'd get a better performance boost by upgrading processor and RAM. Of course, it's your money :) you can do what you want

Vidyne · January 18, 2007, 05:04:07 PM

Quote from: Khauruk on January 17, 2007, 03:12:35 PM
Quote from: Vidyne on January 17, 2007, 01:14:33 PM
I went from absolutely horrid lag on raids of 40+ with everything low/off, and at the point where I was going to have to give up raiding and just solo/group... and still have lag in those situations sometimes.... to being able to just about do anything in EQ with everything turned on(though I do still get some lag).

Video card may help some is what I'm saying, but your processor might be showing its age too.

If you strictly group/solo, then video card might be worth a try. However when buying a video card for an older computer, be aware that the video card you buy might not work in a new computer later, should you choose to upgrade.

With a very similar system, I would only lag out 2boxing on raids back when I had DSL. Older zones, that is. If it was a DON/DoD zone, I'd sometimes be screwed. But, I think that's purely from the grahics card needing to emulate the dx9 instructions. Maybe I'm just better at optimizing my computer's performance though? I did have every unessential service turned off, etc, etc,....

I'm not expecting huge things, but having a DX9-native card will give me fewer problems in new zones, I expect.

This computer won't be getting upgraded, as I'm itching to get rid of this crap called PCs.

Well, it only gave lag spikes in 40+ person raids.. At that time we were raiding high end luclin, and starting PoP progession. In tactics/drunder it was extremely laggy on a 60 person raid one night. However 15-30 person raids in SSRA temple would run fine. Then later grouping in the new DoN zones produced horrible lag. After upgrading, even 72 player raids, unless they are in very graphic heavy areas, do not produce any lag.

It was just interferring with Planes of Power and higher zones, with 40, maybe 50 or more players in zone. Or in newest group content, DoN. Solo content in anything other than DoN/RSS zone perhaps in OoW... and smaller raid content without a full turnout usually was managable.

Kunnar · January 19, 2007, 12:30:45 PM

I agree with those that say wait till you upgrade the computer. You will get very little noticable improvement from upgradeing to a 6XXX series card. Also, before splurging on 256megs of ram on that card, make sure the card has at least 8 pixel pipelines. The 5XXX series cards came in 256, but with only 4 pipelines could only use about 120mb of bandwidth. So the extra memory was of no use whatsoever.

All of the cards you looked at on Newegg were 4 pixel pipelines. You will get no real improvement from them.

The GeForce 6600 series has 8 pipelines, and would be a much better solution.

Also, I have heard from friends who play on a Mac that the emulation while running OSX is not that hot. EQ runs far better if you boot into XP.

Otuol · January 30, 2007, 08:57:47 AM

Well, thinking strictly ion terms of EQ, you're better served going with a CPU upgrade or RAM upgrade. While the video card does help some, I've come to know through the years that EQ is heavily CPU dependent. Walking through the old bazaar with traders turned on was a good way to find out. If you had a more up to speed computer at that time it wasn't overly hard to keep traders unhidden, but the lower end CPU's had to turn them off. I went from an AMD 2400xp to an AMD64 3800 and the difference was enormous.

I know that doesn't elude to your video card question much, but maybe it helps with a reason why you were asking.