How much of a difference...

[airhog99]

Honestly, you'd be surprised what a clean computer can do. I can't stress it enough. Turning off all the other crap will give you a performance boost sometimes equivalent to hundreds of dollars in hardware upgrades. This poor old girl still ticks right along in Aces High. 2xFSAA, 3/4 sliders, advanced terrain, advanced water, and all effects enabled, she'll still pump 30-100 FPS unless something MASSIVE comes my way. I've had one night so far where I had to turn stuff down due to two hoards colliding over a field that didn't belong to either of them.

Before you go buying too much more hardware, have a look into what exactly your computer is running. Trim your services, kill startup programs, and make sure everything's in good shape and usable for everyday tasks. Then go even further with something like FSAutoStart or AlacrityPC to make your computer focused on AH when it's running; while it is necessary during normal use, there's not much reason to have the Print Spooler running with AH going for example. And all this is free.
If you still need more performance after that, then go about buying more hardware...but you'll get more return out of it with your system in peak shape to begin with.

But a GeForce 6800 is a very, very good graphics card! Waaaay faster than a 7200! No wonder she works well!
I used to have a 6800 and sold it off to help finance a 8800 GTS. The 6800 stomped all over a 6600 I also had (still have around). (And a 6600 should be a lot better than a 7200)

[MrRiplEy[H]]

In this case, where the original post says "either this or that" -- this is a specific case. He's not saying "what's the best gaming card this year" he's not saying "which line is more reliable", he's saying "of these two, which is better" -- in which case looking up reviews (new or old) will help enlighten him. He can then decide for himself, or learn that both are sub-par, and change his original decision, or re-evaluate his budget for a better card, whatever.

No you're totally lost on this, sorry. A user should not be looking at old generation cards, period. When new generation comes in the low-end new card can offer double the power in the same pricepoint as the old one. So by comparing age-old components you're doing a huge misfavor to anyone who really looks for bang-for-buck solutions. The only realistic way is to compare all options, past and current and then make the decision.

I wouldn't want to pay 200 bucks for a radeon 4890 if I can get the same card relabeled, boosted with dx11 support and clocked higher for 180 bucks as 5770.. These prices are not real but you get the point.

[Spite]

Nice try on save but no catch. You just pushed him away from the simplest solution (tomshardware) into a potential pitfall (your link). Prime example on how not to do research, without even checking the facts before posting.

Although I generally agree with what you are saying, you might practice what you preach. 

I wouldn't want to pay 200 bucks for a radeon 4890 if I can get the same card relabeled, boosted with dx11 support and clocked higher for 180 bucks as 5770.

The 5770 is not a relabeled card.  It is a brand new card with 40 nm tech that is exactly half the spec of the 5870.

The 5770 is also not on par with a 4890; it is barely on par with a 4870.

"It's tempting to compare the card (5770) to the HD4870 and HD4890, but the HD5770 has only half the memory bus width of the entire HD48xx series; however every single 5xxx card runs GDDR5 memory at very high clock rates. The memory bandwidth of the HD5750 compares favorably to the HD4850, at 73.6 GB/sec versus 63.5 GB/s, but falls way behind the HD4890 which runs at 124.8 GB/s, as well as all the NVIDIA G200-based cards. It's the penalty ATI paid for slicing the "Cypress" directly in half in order to get the "Juniper"."

5770 BenchMarkReview

As for the original question I agree that RAM will provide the biggest benefit.  I wouldn't want either of the suggested vid cards, even at 30 bucks, but if that is your budget limits, then ...

[MrRiplEy[H]]

Although I generally agree with what you are saying, you might practice what you preach. 

Yeah you're right on that. The 5770 is not reLABELED but a rePLACEMENT for 4890. Obviously it can't be a relabeling if it's a DX11 part and supports eyefinity.

Nevertheless it comes at similar performance and a lower price point + new technology bonus. Makes the older generation cards look like a real bad deal - that is unless their prices drop by 50% or more.

[ZZee]

sorry to hijack the thread, but i had a similar question about my system..

have a an old Hp (a530n) with an AMD athalon 64 1.99G, with 1.5G of ram and a ati 9600 se 128MB card. first off, i am aware that its amazing that I'm even able to run AHII, but it does barely. 30-60fps with EVERYTHING turned off.

my question relates to the Vid card. What is the fastest card available for a AGP 8x slot? I'm looking at the ATI 2600HD (HD2600?) I've seen these cards on eBay for 50$. I'm also going to get another 1G stick of ram for 2G total.

obviously a new rig would be ideal, but that's not financially possible right now, so I'm gonna have to work with what I've got.


comments, thoughts or slander?

[MrRiplEy[H]]

sorry to hijack the thread, but i had a similar question about my system..

have a an old Hp (a530n) with an AMD athalon 64 1.99G, with 1.5G of ram and a ati 9600 se 128MB card. first off, i am aware that its amazing that I'm even able to run AHII, but it does barely. 30-60fps with EVERYTHING turned off.

my question relates to the Vid card. What is the fastest card available for a AGP 8x slot? I'm looking at the ATI 2600HD (HD2600?) I've seen these cards on eBay for 50$. I'm also going to get another 1G stick of ram for 2G total.

obviously a new rig would be ideal, but that's not financially possible right now, so I'm gonna have to work with what I've got.


comments, thoughts or slander?

ATI 3850 is probably best price/performance AGP card you can get. You're going to be cpu limited most likely. Branded computers are a rotten deal, if you change your graphics and cpu it's higly unlikely your power supply will be able to run them. Then with bad luck your motherboard is not built on standard connections meaning you can't even use the case in the future if you want a real upgrade.

Whatever you do, research carefully because there's a fine line between upgrading an old box and burning dollars for nothing. Your upgrade may end up costing over 50% of a new setup and having less than 50% of the performance.

[ZZee]

thanks.

not really looking to mess with anything other then a new video card. i've never had a good system for AH, so i don't know what i'am missing, which is good. i just figured for under a 75.00 i could make my system less crappy and extend the time i can use it for AH.

i'll look into that ati card




zzee