Aces High Bulletin Board
General Forums => Hardware and Software => Topic started by: AWMac on June 28, 2004, 05:58:48 PM
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Just what is "T&L"? and How do I know that the Vid Card that I buy is capable of hardware that supports T&L?
Feels like I'm lost in the dark with a bad flashlight....LOL
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
MacMAW
:)
BTW is a PNY GeForce FX 5200 Ultra, AGP 128 MB DDR - 650 Mhz
capable enough?
Still gotta get a Mobo and CPU to get me back up and flying...
could use a few good recommendations on what to get. Gotta keep the price down and reasonable... Got bills and kids, kids and bills...Been Jones'n since everything moved to AH2. :(
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T & L = "tranform and lighting". AH2, and other higher end games, now require Hardware Transform & Lighting, though some programs can emulate this for lower end video setups (software T&L).
"There has been much speculation and discussion over Hardware Transform and Lighting, referred to here as "TnL". In a nutshell, if the Hardware TnL on the GPU is taken advantage of, the Vid Card does some of the work that is normally done by the CPU. When the GPU accepts all this load that is dedicated to "showing you what you see on your monitor" the CPU has more time to calculate Artificial Intelligence and other needed functions that make the game work properly. So if programmers of the games you play, code with the TnL in mind, it is highly possible that your game will run better and faster.."
As for any particular vid card, sometimes a detailed examination of the specs on the box side, the manufacturers website, or in reviews, will reveal this.
Based on what others have said in here, the FX 5200 card should be playable tho not spectacular, assuming the rest of the system, CPU, RAM and so forth, are within normal AH2 range.
There are a few other recent threads in this forum section that talk about some pretty spectacular gaming systems that can be had for around $1,000 USD or even less.
Good luck, bro! ;)
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Thanx Rasker.
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PUNT
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Heya Mac,
Here's what I've got
Chaintek GeForce FX 5200 256mb 8agp
AMD xp 2400+ cpu
Asus A7N8X-X
512mb pc 2700 DDRAM
40gig HDD
I got most of the stuff from Newegg.com. The card was just under $90, the Ram was $75, and I got the CPU and mobo for about $170, i think. You could even get a faster CPU for that board, prolly a bit cheaper than they were this winter. Even bought a mean-lookin lit case :D .
The card is one of the lower end DX9 compat cards, but I have, for the most part, been able to run AH2 without any probs. I have an old monitor with a 60 Hz refresh, but my fps average low 40s-low60s, sometimes down in the upper 20s when in a pretty nast mess, lots of smoke, on the deck furball kinda stuff. Its been extremely playable (ran AH1 on a 466 celeron with 196meg of ram and a 16meg pci vid card :aok this was a nice step up), and the whole thing was pretty cheap.
Bigger is almost always better, but I'm very pleased with this setup. It was fairly economical, and has been 99% trouble free. Hope this helps.
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Hobsonfire...
So far all I have for the upgrade is a PNY nVidia GeForce 5200 Ultra AGP 128 MB DDR-650 MHz.
Hope I'm on the right track so far.
Thanks Bro,