Video Card Upgrade

[swaaye]

I have a radeon 9700 pro and it's worked fine for the most part, but I've had it for around 3 years and am fed up with the bad driver support.  I'm thinking about getting a geforce card and would appreciate any advice on what is a good card that would work with this game for about 100-150 dollars.

 

Thanks

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

 

You should go after either a Radeon X800XL or a GF 6800GT. A 6600GT is not going to be a very noticeable improvement. Nothing is going to improve KOTOR2 much. My 9700 runs the game pretty damn well, considering all the bugs.

 

You also need to remember that you need a beefy CPU to take advantage of the newer cards. Say around at LEAST a Athlon XP 3200+ (2.2Ghz). An Athlon64 Socket 939 is the best way for gamers to go.

[JamieKirby]

Well, i don't get any problems with my ATI card but i tend to get peed off when each driver release doesn't fix the glow problem that hasn't worked since 4.3 and if i use the 4.3 OpenGL dll file into the game directory, it causes random crashes, which i can't explain....so i guess i gotta live without the glowy effect.

[Lcaus Scuks]

You also need to remember that you need a beefy CPU to take advantage of the newer cards. Say around at LEAST a Athlon XP 3200+ (2.2Ghz). An Athlon64 Socket 939 is the best way for gamers to go.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Athlon 64 3200+ socket 939 is clocked at 2000 MHz and has dual channel support; on socket 754, Athlon 64 3200+ has 2200 MHz for the 512 KB cache version and 2000 MHz for the 1 MB cache version but it doesn't have dual channel, AMD will produce CPUs only for socket 939 in the future (Athlon FX-55 is only for socket 939; the best socket 754 CPU is Athlon 64 3700+) and socket 1207 next year. The best now would be an Athlon 64 3500+ socket 939 (2200 MHz) which can be overclocked to 3 GHz. I don't know anthing about Intel CPUs and I don't care, let Dell buy them. Waiting for Athlon FX-57 and FX-59 for socket 939 ...

[swaaye]

Athlon 64 3200+ socket 939 is clocked at 2000 MHz and has dual channel support; on socket 754, Athlon 64 3200+ has 2200 MHz for the 512 KB cache version and 2000 MHz for the 1 MB cache version but it doesn't have dual channel, AMD will produce CPUs only for socket 939 in the future (Athlon FX-55 is only for socket 939; the best socket 754 CPU is Athlon 64 3700+) and socket 1207 next year. The best now would be an Athlon 64 3500+ socket 939 (2200 MHz) which can be overclocked to 3 GHz. I don't know anthing about Intel CPUs and I don't care, let Dell buy them. Waiting for Athlon FX-57 and FX-59 for socket 939 ...

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Yeah but a A64 @ 2Ghz will obliterate a AXP 3200+. My laptop's 1.8Ghz socket 754 A64 is competitive with a 2.6Ghz Athlon XP. I have both and have run lots-o-benchmarks for fun to compare them.

 

Only in pure calculation (CPU benchmarks like Sandra, or some of Sciencemark) will the AXP be a strong competitor. If the program heavily hits the L2 cache or RAM, the A64 is absolutely ahead of AXP. Games strongly desire low latency RAM access and that is why A64 is above all other CPUs for games. Nothing out there can touch A64's onboard memory controller.

 

The only difference between Socket 939 and 754 is that 939 adds dual channel RAM capability. This makes Athlon 64's RAM access akin to a giant L3 cache. It is just amazigly fast due to incredible efficiency. Also, Athlon 64's L2 cache doesn't work very well without dual channel so that gets a boost too. I built one for a friend, a A64 3000+ 939 (runs at 2200Mhz now heh heh). In Sandra 2005 and Everest he was ON TOP of the RAM charts for writes, reads, and latency. Ahead of all P4s significantly. If that's not impressive, I don't know what is.

[LadyCrimson]

After reading this....tell me...I just bought the geforce AGP 6200, because, well, because I didn't want to pay $300-500 for the newer ones, and it's all that was in the store I went to this evening.

 

In general price isn't a financial concern, but I am cheap in that I refuse to pay a lot for features/abilities I don't care about.

While I do want games to look good and have decent overall performance I'm not concerned whether I get super-duper FPS or overclocking abilities etc. Hell I don't think my eyes even notice half the improvements people rave about.

 

So basically - before I go to the trouble of installing this thing - think the 6200 would do fine for someone like me or is there some compelling reason to go back out and hunt for the basic 6600 or 6800 instead?

[LadyCrimson]

Bother..I don't know why I ask these things. Comes from being unknowledgeable/unconfident in graphic cards.

 

Just going to install this one. If it sucks I'll give it to hubby and go buy the expensive one. Har.

[Master Dahvernas]

I would have gone for the 6600 or 6800 personally.

 

Why?

 

Because if you are into games... And I don't mean first person shooters where super-duper frame rates are a necessity... But games like NWN 2 and others that are going to be using Shader 3.0 and other new elements then you're going to want a card that will give you decent performance (the 6800 is by far the best card on the market right now, hands down) for a couple of years at least and you won't have to run out and get a new one.

 

Chances are that with that 6200 you are going to have go out again within the next few months (by Christmas) and get a better card because you will see slower frame rates on the 6200 than others and even in a CRPG like TSL... It becomes annoying. Probably, even moreso since you aren't distracted like you are in a FPS game with tons of things going on and can focus on just a few static images.

 

Hell, you could get a vanilla 6800 (non-Ultra; non-GT) and unlock the additional vertex and pixel pipelines uisng Riva Tuner and you will have a card that performs at the GT and Ultra levels, but on a budget price. This is what I did with my ATI 9500 Pro. I softmodded it to a 9700 and saved $200 dollars (at the time).

[themacman]

get a Nvidia 6600 if the 6800 is out of your price range.

the 6200 is the Nvidia 5200 of 2005.