Author Topic: Radeon Video (Read 2104 times)

Airscrew · « **on:** October 07, 2001, 11:48:00 AM »

Hey all, I'm visiting some friends in San Antonio this weekend, and I also need to get a new video card to upgrade from my Voodoo 8mg card. Best Buy is having a sale on two cards
1. ATI Radeon 64mb AGP

2. ATI Radeon 32mb PCI SDR with something called "Charisma Engine" technology

Both are $100.
Does anybody have any information on these cards? Performance wise, or tech. Or can you suggest any other video card for $100 or less?
Thanks
Air

Boozer · « **Reply #1 on:** October 07, 2001, 12:40:00 PM »

My ATI Raedon 64mb card gives me 37-57 fps without tweaking anything on my 256mb 900mhz machine.

don't know if that's helpful, but it does just fine for me.

Airscrew · « **Reply #2 on:** October 07, 2001, 02:18:00 PM »

Thanks Boozer, helps me. I got a 400mhz home built. I probably end up with the 32mb card because Best Buy has a limit of 4 64mb cards per store.
anything would be better than the 9-20 fps I get now, and thats in the training arena.

Followup Question? I read here somewhere that if you have a 3dFX Voodoo card that you cant just install the new card and drivers, you have to completely uninstall the 3dFX drivers and any references to the voodoo card especially in the regedit or the new card wont work. Was that because of the particular brand of card they were upgrading to or was it a Global Voodoo card issue?

Air

[ 10-07-2001: Message edited by: AirScrew ]

SKurj · « **Reply #3 on:** October 07, 2001, 06:29:00 PM »

Airscrew.. you may NOT see a performance increase by upgrading your video to the Radeon.

Your CPU will be the bottleneck, and a 400 doesn't have the power to take advantage of that card.

Save your pennies for a new mobo and cpu as well

SKurj

Manedew · « **Reply #4 on:** October 07, 2001, 08:23:00 PM »

I just bought a 64MB DDR Radeon after tweaking and running highest quality Anti-Aliasing and everythign else that isn't messed up by DX8 format changes... get about 45-40 fps in full smoke high-res on at 1280x1180 or whatever that res. is
BTW 1.2 Athlon KT7A-RAID for a board running at 4xagp. If your looking to build your own system and are buying in san antonio try MMG computers on Babcock got me a good price on board with chip& fan installed. Some other good places few blocks away to on Silcon Dr.

airspro · « **Reply #5 on:** October 07, 2001, 08:33:00 PM »

Go with APG if you have the slot for it .

I have that ati Radeon64 ddr card , and a Nvidia 256Pro ,both , the Radieon card has better color and cause it's a newer faster card better fps , but not by much the fps .

933 p3 , bells , etcs .

Airscrew · « **Reply #6 on:** October 07, 2001, 09:54:00 PM »

Guys, thanks for the advice. Skurj, too late I already picked it up, was able to get the 64mb agp card so I'll be happy if I can get back to 30-40FPS right now.
Manedew, I live near Austin, I was in San Antonio visiting family and friends, but I'll be sure to check it out when I get ready to upgrade, gotta save most of my pennies for a new transmission first (I dont recommend 96 Dodge Carvans, 1st the engine now the transmission)
Any I'm about to take the plunge and begin the surgery, If noone heres from me again I'll probably be in video hell.
Air

Am0n · « **Reply #7 on:** October 08, 2001, 07:37:00 AM »

SKurj

I would say a 8 meg video card is much more of a bottle neck than a 400mhz cpu.

AirScrew

Good move on getting that card.
When it comes to directX rendering 2 things determine your FPS more than anything. Your RAM and your graphics card, the cpu isnt so intensive unless it is very slow, 400 is borderline..

As far as uninstalling the old card, that was only a issue when installing a older "voodoo" card. The newer video cards all seem to take card of that for you when you install them for the first time. If your running windows 98 when you run windows for the first time after chaging the cards out it will detect that there is another video display device "standard vga adapter" and remove the old drivers. There may be some software left over from the old card, but that shouldnt be effected buy the installation of new video rendering software, it will just over write what is needed and the rest can be deleted from "add/remove programs" in the control panel.

Hope you dig your new card, upgrading is always fun!!

Airscrew · « **Reply #8 on:** October 08, 2001, 09:31:00 AM »

Ok, I installed the card last night, no glitches, trouble free install and man it looks great but little improvement
with AH set to 800x600, I get about 10-17FPS around the ground, flying low, and upto 20-26FPS above 10k (no pesky sheep and trees to draw i guess).
400mhz, overclocked to 416 Abit MB with 224mb ram, 64mb video card
Boozer, Manedew, Airspro or anybody else that is using the Radeon 64mb AGP card, can you tell me what settings you are using so I can compare my setup. I may not have something "tweaked" just right. On the other hand Skurj may be right and I'll be shopping again.
You guys have been a lot of help thanks
Air

Am0n · « **Reply #9 on:** October 08, 2001, 10:20:00 AM »

You may not get much better than that, i have 20-30 fps on the ground. 30-40 (if im lucky in the air). You may learn that most people tend to exagerate there FPS a lot when they tell you what they are, beware. I would say on average im getting 20-25 fps.

im running 1024x768 @ 32bit

Duron 800 mhz
Abit KT7RAID (mobo)
2x 30gig ATA100 7200rpm (RAID +0) hard drives
256 megs pc133 cas/2
Geforce II DDR (32 meg)
SB PCI512 w/ 6 speaker surround (audio)
21' Hitachi monitor
Windows 98/Mandrake (linux)
Sidewinder Percison 3

That radeon may get better FPS at higher res, they are not made to play games at 800x600, they are designed to play at higher resolutions. Also adjust your refresh rate as high as your monitor can handle, you should be able to crank it all the way up, i have mine at 120hz.

Buy all means if you got the extra cash get a newer CPU/Mother board, you will have much more luck.

Whats your CPU btw?

[ 10-08-2001: Message edited by: Am0n ]

Airscrew · « **Reply #10 on:** October 08, 2001, 11:19:00 AM »

My cpu is a Celeron 400mhz, overclocked to 416. I'm doing a little looking around see if I can find a 600mhz to hold me over till after christmas. I kinda wanted to hold up upgrading this thing so I could build a new system later.

I was using a higher resolution but my frame rates were lower. Some areas of the screen seem washed out also, while other areas seem to dark.

Am0n · « **Reply #11 on:** October 08, 2001, 12:18:00 PM »

Ouch when talking about proformance a Celeron is a curse word. Its FSB (front side BUS) is horrid (66mhz?) and it has next to no cache(some have not on chip cache, yours may be one). When it comes to gamming cache is what you really need, it reads ahead and the more you got the more it reads ahead.

Now a 400 mhz PII is another story, the PII was the last good chip that Intell ever made. Do your self a favor and check out HardOCP, it is a hard ware site that test everything in comparison to other hardware.

eg.
They show you that the 1.4 Tbird (cost half as much) can out run the 1.8P4 and in some cases the P4 2 ghz.

They have numerous pages of hardware info that you would be interested in reading if you want to get a boost out of your PC and make a proformance concious purchase.

Manedew · « **Reply #12 on:** October 08, 2001, 03:10:00 PM »

Try this Radeon Tweaker http://radeontweaker.sourceforge.net/

it's what i use and i get great fps
but i have much better Chip

Listen to Am0n, current and late Intel chips might have 400mhz front side bus ... but with horrible cache size(excludeing P3)... Don't know much about that chip and board but maybe you could find a better chip for that slot.

Skuzzy · « **Reply #13 on:** October 08, 2001, 03:27:00 PM »

I can tell you the Radeon is waiting around for your CPU.
Check out the link below. This is my site where I did some CPU speed comparisons with the Radeon 64MB DDR card. Starts at a 600Mhz/100FSB and runs to 933Mhz/133FSB CPUS, so you can get an idea of what you have to look forward to when you get around to upgrading your CPU

.

Radeon and CPU comparisons

You will note, you probably can run at max resolutions without much degradation as your CPU is just not fast enough to fill the card at low resolutions.

[ 10-08-2001: Message edited by: Skuzzy ]

Airscrew · « **Reply #14 on:** October 08, 2001, 03:54:00 PM »

My head hurts,.... Skuzzy and AmOn, I'm beginning to see the light. I already did a little looking around today online and found an ABit KT7A w/ 1.13ghz and fan for $199, so I guess I'm about to drain the savings account and no trip to Dallas this weekend. If you know of anybody body that can beat that price please let me know thats my new benchmark so far Abit or Asus MB 800 or higher with the fan for $200 give or take.
In the meantime thou Manedew I'll try out this tweaker thingy and see if it helps a little cause I gotta play. Manedew, what did you pay for your KT7A and cpu??

[ 10-08-2001: Message edited by: AirScrew ]