To buy or not to buy.

[Vincent_Vega]

Found an OEM 9800XT 256mb for £182. Is this a good deal? its a little over my budget but its about time to upgrade.

have a looksee: http://www.microdirect.co.uk/ProductInfo.a...=6860&GroupID=0 (http://www.microdirect.co.uk/ProductInfo.aspx?ProductID=6860&GroupID=0)
theyr selling loads it seems..

and eh cooling probs have improved, took off my fan and cleaned the heatsink (was clogged full of dust!) and the temp is a good 6-10 degrees cooler :D also bought a few exhausts - a quid each on ebuyer, madness!

-Veg

[Rob]

n1 vega :D

go for it m8

[SaMuRaI]

£182 for the xt version.. :o You would be daft to pass it up m8. Retail versions are going between £250 and £300 still.
If your considering a new mobo as well....abit nf7 ver.2 nforce2 for £47....complete bargain

[Gunwitch]

N1 nick. A good clean of the old inside of a pc does wonders. Still get the mobo that dave suggested, it'll be alot better in the long run and you can flash the bios on it no hassle :).

Fans are good, you can never have too many fans, although if you get the g-card, get the vantec artic cooling brick to go on it :) mega cool then.

I'd even go so far as to say get a bigger case just for the airflow. Since i've sorted out mine, the highest temp i get is 42 degrees and thats under strain in cs: source (bigger case, better airflow you see :) ).

[Vincent_Vega]

Bought the beast, farcry runs like a dream on 1200 x whatever. Doom3 is ridiclous tho, cant even get running reasonably on medium settings! It should be able to handle doom3 surely? 256mb, 256 bit 9800xt...
elp! :unsure:

[TargetPractice]

The new generation of cards handle D3 an order of magnitude better, especially the 6800 series. I would have thought a 6800GT 128MB @ £232.52 from Scan would do nicely. I presume it's the 256MB version that's in this roundup (http://graphics.tomshardware.com/graphic/20041004/vga_charts-07.html) though.

What's your CPU and what not? That might be important...

It could also be that your card is not what you were told it was, like it's broken.

[Vincent_Vega]

That roundup shows the 9800xt to be gettin 46 fps on high quality, I get 1 fps if im lucky on high. :unsure:
got 512mb 333mhz ram, 3000+ amd proc... Fastwrites are on.. newest drivers... :huh:

[TargetPractice]

Your processor and memory are fine. Are you exagerating with 1fps I hope?! Are you getting an indication from D3 itself as to what FPS it's doing or are you just saying it 'feels' like 1 fps : \

[Vincent_Vega]

well, its from what i see on my screen, i'll move my mouse...then a second later it''ll jerk, then a second or so passes...it'll jerk...and again
i dont know how to measure fps in d3 itself :unsure:

[TargetPractice]

To get Doom 3 to give an FPS display, CTRL+ALT+~ to get into the console and then com_showFPS 1.

[ROBERTA]

Promoting TP to Chief Science Officer

Based on his geralous input in to all things and readings ending in "nm" and Confucious like wizardy with GFX card Read Outs.

Scotty, pass me thr Tri-Corder please with chips and peas.

[Gunwitch]

Mmmm This planet is made entirely from Widdly Wee

[PureLoneWolf]

Run the timedemo VV

I get 85 fps on Ultra settings @ 1024x1068 on Doom 3

My rig

Asus Radeon 9800XT 256mb (Stock speeds)
Athlon XP 3200+ (Stock 400FSB)
Thermaltake Volcano 12 HS&Fan
1.5gb Kingston Ram, with Vantec Heatspreaders (1gb in Dual channel)
Lan Party NFII Ultra Mainboard
120gb SATA
2x160gb PIDE Maxtor 7200RPM in Raid 1
1x80gb PIDE Seagate
All in nicely cooled Antec SuperLANBoy Case
Windows XP Pro SP1

List your specs and settings for D3

[PureLoneWolf]

lol - Apologies Wes et al

I was wondering why my first reply didn't appear, then I noticed I hit the report button <_< :huh:

[TargetPractice]

That's one of the oddest resolutions I've seen PureLoneWolf! You're vertical res is higher than your horizontal : O The only typo I can think of is that you managed to type 10 instead of 7 for 1068 : \

Since I don't have D3 I can't give you a time demo score : /

[Rob]

mmh

Run the timedemo VV

How do you do that ?

[PureLoneWolf]

Originally posted by TargetPractice@Nov 16 2004, 02:08 PM
you managed to type 10 instead of 7 for 1068 : \
Yup :huh:

Not very well today, can't seem to type or think, certainly not both

1024x768 it is

I get 45-50 on 1280x1024 at the same settings

AA= x8
AF = x8

Can't remember the command for timedemo, google for it

Just remember to run it twice and use the second run as your real FPS (Simulates textures being precached)

[Vincent_Vega]

Ran a timedemo, 1028x768 on high setting (bump mapping off) gives 37.7fps with fps lag at a few points, (better than i was getting - upgraded my heatsink today - might have something to do with it :s) 800x600 same settings gives 44fps and no lag

my setup:

ASRock K7S8X
AMD Athlon 3000+
Thermaltake Volcano 12 hs+fan
2 x 256mb dimms PC2700 ram
Sapphire 9800xt 256mb (using catalyst 4.11 drivers)
maxtor 120 gig ATA133 cache HD

the only thing that comes to mind is my ram - speed and/or quantity.. or maybe my mobo is just sh*te. :D

[Vincent_Vega]

ran it twice in a row, and it came up 45fps on 1024x768 for the second reading with no fps lag. AA off, AF off. bump mapping was on tho, (posted wrong setting in last post)

oh yeah and am running windows XP sp2
and i've got a crappy case, but its all cooled properly - cpu runs at 35 degrees C under load.

(rob type 'timedemo demo1 usecache' into console)

[Gunwitch]

Get rid of windows SP2 Nick it's shit and full of crap.

Bought myself a FX5900XT today for 117 from Komplett. Not the top of the range model, but it's a hell of alot better than my FX5600

[PureLoneWolf]

Tis a nice card Nat.

Vinny - Your ram should be ok,obviously more and faster is better, but I suspect your mobo tbh. I know a lot of people that have had performance issues and AGP problems with ASRock boards.

Is your ram running in Dual channel mode? Again, not a huge thing, but anywhere you can alleviate bottlenecks will help.

SP2 is cack as Nat says, but it shouldn't hit your performance that hard - Oh, and download the 4.12 Catalyst Beta drivers, more OpenGL performance tweaks and optimisations for HL2/CSS

[Vincent_Vega]

:unsure: not even sure if my board has a dual channel mode! - My bios settings?
The board is cack, but have officially spent all my money unfortunately! anyone have any recommendations on new boards that will flawlessly integrate into my system? :D
Even better, anyone got a spare board lying around I can buy!?!?

ta muchly for the advice PLW, should come on the server m8! or even tonights prac! :P

[Gunwitch]

Nick the K7N2 Nforce 2 mobo from MSI is a good cheap board, around 34 - 45 quid posted on Komplett or Ebuyer. Will take up to a 3200 proc. It's what i use and what i generally recommend.

The card i got was a Gainward jobby, still piss all over mine:
Gainward GeForce FX5900XT 128MB DDR 2.81 PCS 96,00 AGP, "Ultra/1100XT TV-DVI" -Demo