Topic: question:? (Read 1013 times)

[SJ]Madmax · « **on:** October 10, 2008, 01:59:24 pm »

Which is the best graphic card at the moment i have a nvidia Geforce 7600Gt and of lately i seem to have issues with my computer locking up and a lot of stuttering which gets abit frustrating :grrr: need some advise

Alan

[SJ]Vector · « **Reply #1 on:** October 10, 2008, 02:11:10 pm »

are you sure its not just a driver problem? if not i guess the answer lies within how much cash you got to spend

[SJ]hendrix · « **Reply #2 on:** October 10, 2008, 02:30:08 pm »

mind if i ask what u want the card for.. as you can spend a lot of money for top of the range card. I use a 7950gtx2 and that runs all my racing games at max settings..

[SJ]Byron · « **Reply #3 on:** October 10, 2008, 02:51:05 pm »

Aye... I'm afraid you've asked the 'how long is a piece of string' question there, Al.

As has been said, it might not be your gfx card that's causing the problems. I'm no expert, so I'll keep me trap shut on this one, but as you know there's plenty of folk here qualified to give excellent advice on sorting it.

Why, only last night, Uncle Peter gave me a hand and pulled off a miracle with my tired old equipment.

[SJ]Pierre61 · « **Reply #4 on:** October 10, 2008, 02:54:07 pm »

I knew we could coax some life out of it ... just a matter of pushing the right buttons, was going like a champ in the end

[SJ]Kristof Huyck · « **Reply #5 on:** October 10, 2008, 03:27:43 pm »

The best graphics card in terms of performance is the Radeon 4870 X2, but that being said most of the sim racing games should work decently with the 7600GT you've got.
Like others said already: it's possible that it's not your graphics card that causes the lock ups or stuttering. It's quite difficult to pinpoint exactly where the problem is located in your case, it could be varies thing:
- drivers: did you update some lately?
- memory: could explain the lockups, you might perform a memtest to check
- hardware issue (power supply, motherboard, ...)

[SJ]Peter Enqvist · « **Reply #6 on:** October 10, 2008, 04:01:40 pm »

Is your 7600GT AGP or PCI-E?

[SJ]Madmax · « **Reply #7 on:** October 10, 2008, 05:39:40 pm »

its a AGP 8x 256mb ddr3 580m m8

Alan

[SJ]granada7511 · « **Reply #8 on:** October 10, 2008, 05:50:39 pm »

to bad they dont make no cards anymore for Agp

its all pci ,
i change everything to pci
now i have a nvidia geforce 9600 gt pci

[SJ]DRokK · « **Reply #9 on:** October 10, 2008, 05:55:55 pm »

in answer to your question Alan this.. http://www.ultimatehardware.net/290.htm is the best agp card out there. but to be honest its not a huge leap from what you have.
like others have posted streamlining your pc could achieve much better results than upgrading to that card. and they are rather hard to find these days. do you have plenty of ram in your pc? that can give some extra oomf too.

[SJ]Stein · « **Reply #10 on:** October 10, 2008, 06:05:59 pm »

Alan, you could get rid of a load of replays that also cause your games to stutter... we've had it before....

just a suggestion m8ey
(if you have em numbered)

Woof ~ Woof

[SJ]DenDanger · « **Reply #11 on:** October 10, 2008, 06:40:37 pm »

The Radeon 3850 is considered the "best" AGP card at the moment.

As for what Steiny said, you might even want to try disabling replays in your plr. I have (for now) and I think it has made a difference.

As for drivers, Gimme a minute to edit this, be right back..

EDIT: Okay, back. Pierre gave me this link for Nvidia drivers. I tried it and found a BIG improvement. My card ain't perfect but it went from total sh** to usable. just a thought...

[SJ]Peter Enqvist · « **Reply #12 on:** October 10, 2008, 09:20:23 pm »

If you really want to upgrade your video card, then the 3850 AGP is the only card you should consider. But the rest of your system has to be rather fast in order for you to see a noticable improvement. What are the rest of your system specs? CPU, RAM, Motherboard, Power supply? If I know what those are, then I can tell you if the 3850 is worth it for you.

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-173-SP&groupid=701&catid=56&subcat=403&name=Sapphire%20ATI%20Radeon%20HD%203850%20Pro%20512MB%20GDDR3%20TV-Out/Dual%20DVI/HDMI%20(AGP)%20-%20Retail

[SJ]Byron · « **Reply #13 on:** October 10, 2008, 10:03:26 pm »

The 3850 AGP is the very card I've got. I bought it to squeeze the last drop of life out of my old AGP motherboard. Since Pete introduced me to the wonderful world of triple buffering (ooh er!), it's been running games well on reasonably high spec at 1680x1050 with my tired old Athlon 3200+ processor. Before I did the 'force triple buffering' thing, however, the motherboard/processor were really struggling to keep up.

In retrospect, I think I'd have been better off sticking with my old Radeon x850 gfx card and waiting till I could upgrade to a pci e motherboard with a new processor.

[SJ]DenDanger · « **Reply #14 on:** October 10, 2008, 10:08:32 pm »

Thing is. As I understand it. AGP is actuallly technically better than PCI-E. PCI-E is more that it's easier for the manufacturers. But of course AGP is also "dead" because they decided it was.

The 24th of Oct, I plan to pick up this little honey. Heeheehee.

Yes, I KNOW my "bottleneck" will switch from my GPU to my CPU but I think I can live with it. HAAAHAAAAHAAAAA!!

[SJ]Byron · « **Reply #15 on:** October 10, 2008, 10:13:07 pm »

I hope there's plenty of room in your case, Den... I had to move a HDD just to fit the damned thing in! It's a lot longer than your average AGP card.

You're also limited on the driver front, cos ATI don't support AGP any more. Took me quite a bit of searching to find the one driver that will work with the 3850.

[SJ]DenDanger · « **Reply #16 on:** October 11, 2008, 03:14:46 am »

Sounds a bit like when I changed my PSU. Had to disconnect the CD/DVD drives to fit it in.

[SJ]DaveGardner · « **Reply #17 on:** October 11, 2008, 08:59:00 am »

bryon

have you checked tweakforce,they have recently added a new ati agp driver, i think it was added a few days ago, i only noticed cos i downloaded and tried to install it by mistake

Dave

[SJ]Kristof Huyck · « **Reply #18 on:** October 11, 2008, 10:38:09 am »

Quote from: [SJ]Dent on October 10, 2008, 10:08:32 pm

Thing is. As I understand it. AGP is actuallly technically better than PCI-E. PCI-E is more that it's easier for the manufacturers. But of course AGP is also "dead" because they decided it was.

In what way AGP is better? PCI Express provides more throughput, scalability and flexibility than AGP. It allowed nVidia and ATI to introduce multi-card solutions like SLI & CF and because PCI Express is bi directional we saw solutions like TurboCache and HyperMemory to improve low budget graphics cards' performance.

[SJ]Cato Larsen · « **Reply #19 on:** October 11, 2008, 10:59:17 am »

Quote from: [SJ]Kristof Huyck on October 11, 2008, 10:38:09 am

Quote from: [SJ]Dent on October 10, 2008, 10:08:32 pm
Thing is. As I understand it. AGP is actuallly technically better than PCI-E. PCI-E is more that it's easier for the manufacturers. But of course AGP is also "dead" because they decided it was.

In what way AGP is better? PCI Express provides more throughput, scalability and flexibility than AGP. It allowed nVidia and ATI to introduce multi-card solutions like SLI & CF and because PCI Express is bi directional we saw solutions like TurboCache and HyperMemory to improve low budget graphics cards' performance.

In short.
Dent met his uberman in Kristof.
If there is ONE guy I do NOT argue with PC technuiqes its Kristof rofl

[SJ]Byron · « **Reply #20 on:** October 11, 2008, 11:06:54 am »

Quote from: DaveG

have you checked tweakforce,they have recently added a new ati agp driver, i think it was added a few days ago

Thanks Dave, I'll check that out.

Quote from: Cato

If there is ONE guy I do NOT argue with PC technuiqes its Kristof

Haha... yeah, there's more chance of Team Portly taking a medal off of BeFast than winning this one!

[SJ]DenDanger · « **Reply #21 on:** October 11, 2008, 02:51:14 pm »

Quote from: [SJ]Kristof Huyck on October 11, 2008, 10:38:09 am

Quote from: [SJ]Dent on October 10, 2008, 10:08:32 pm
Thing is. As I understand it. AGP is actuallly technically better than PCI-E. PCI-E is more that it's easier for the manufacturers. But of course AGP is also "dead" because they decided it was.

In what way AGP is better? PCI Express provides more throughput, scalability and flexibility than AGP. It allowed nVidia and ATI to introduce multi-card solutions like SLI & CF and because PCI Express is bi directional we saw solutions like TurboCache and HyperMemory to improve low budget graphics cards' performance.

Thanks.You explain it a lot better than I been able to find. Though I keep seeing stuff that felt AGP still had life left in it though I also understood the biggest problem too was with more and more powerful GPUs AGP is limited and PCI-E transfers more power or something?

[SJ]Kristof Huyck · « **Reply #22 on:** October 11, 2008, 04:06:38 pm »

Well, a PCI Express slot can deliver more power to the graphics card than an AGP slot, but since it's not enough for today's high end graphics cards it's not exactly a huge benefit imo
The 4870 X2 draws about 260 watt (load), it needs a 6pin PCI Express power connector (up to 75watt) and a 8pin PCI Express power connector (up to 150watt) in order to function right. The slot itself can provide up to 75watt. I think an AGP slot can deliver up to 40 watt.

[SJ]DenDanger · « **Reply #23 on:** October 11, 2008, 04:18:08 pm »

Kristof:

I read a few places something about GTL not running with SLI card set ups? Is that true? And why?

Not that I'm ever going to have to worry about it. LOL.

[SJ]Jarkko Rantajoki · « **Reply #24 on:** October 11, 2008, 07:28:16 pm »

Quote from: [SJ]Dent on October 11, 2008, 04:18:08 pm

Kristof:

I read a few places something about GTL not running with SLI card set ups? Is that true? And why?

Not that I'm ever going to have to worry about it. LOL.

The game engine simply aint optimised to take advantage of multi card setups.

Author Topic: question:? (Read 1013 times)