Aces High Bulletin Board
General Forums => Aces High General Discussion => Topic started by: Citabria on June 07, 2001, 09:21:00 PM
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i dinae.
computer is getting outdated and my voodoo 3 3000 16 bit looks like vomit when playing aces high especially at twilight :o
my computer is low end at that too.
p3 550mhz
256mb ram
asus p2b mb not sure what speed agp 2x or 4x :confused:
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cit ive always upgraded and built my own systems and ive not done too bad with each upgrade.If you give me a budget ill suggest the best motherboard/processor upgrade and give you a breif rundown on some of the best buys ive come accross :)
my last upgrade was about 4 months ago. an abit Ka7a-raid mobo with 900 athlon thunderbird with a GF2 MX dual display (because i found it £30 cheaper :)).the whole upgrade cost me about a 1/3rd of what it would have had i bought it from a main dealer that sells the whole systems. :D
if you havent built your own system dont be put off by thinking its difficult.When you put them together its very hard to break anything.If you make a mistake with connections etc it generally just doesnt boot.so you fiddle around and try again.Its fun generally and you learn a lot :)
like i said give me a ball park figure you have to spend and ill give you some suggestions.
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Like Hazed, I build my own systems too. I am running the equivalent of a P3 750 w/ 256meg of ram. The kicker is that I have a Diamond Stealth III S540 4xAGP w/ 32 meg of RAM. Who would have figured, but it works great for me!
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Originally posted by Citabria:
p3 550mhz
256mb ram
asus p2b mb not sure what speed agp 2x or 4x :confused:
Based on your puter, I'd recomend either a lower end Gforce2 or Radeon 32 meg card. Your not going to get much benifit from a faster card, and either can be had for $150 or so if you shop around.
I personally have a Radeon 64 DDR VIVO ($200), and it looks great and runs at nice frame rates at 1600x1200 32bit on my Athlon 600. I think the Gforce may be a better value for you though, depending on what features you need. I got the Radeon because I need video in and it was a return so I got it for $175 with a 30 rebate....still looking for a stick to beat that one with :eek:
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Geforce 2 GTS. A 32 Mb version will be plenty.
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I agree but the 64Mg Gforce is even better. shud come with DDR. Gives 70 odd fps on my 900 athalon at 1600x1200 Res.
Good luck
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Citabria, I think all of these guy have missed the point. TO me it sounds like you want to know which video card is the baddest of the bad. Right now that is the Geforce 3. It is the fastest consumer card on the planet hands down. And it is certain to not be outdated in 6 months, as games that are optimized to use its features are jsut now out. Anyway my 2 cents.
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I gotta agree with Gunslayer about the GeForce 3--preferably teamed up with an Athlon 1 GHz or better. :D
I've seen Aces High on a 1.2 GHz TBird system with GeForce3 (not mine, sadly), and it played 1600x1200x32 super smooth--usually was in the 80s or 90s and never dropped below 49 FPS in the worst conditions. I wanted to see what she'd do at 1920x1440 resolution but the monitor my friend was using maxed out at 1600.
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Cit, take a look at the Asus V7700 GF2 GTS.
I get 85FPS in 32bit 16x12.
(http://www.swoop.com/images/logo_small.jpg)
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I have a GeForceII Ultra made by Hercules
with 1.2 thunderbird and 512mb RAM
Game runs great 40-50 fps set to high quality settings at 1024x768x32.
With settings for speed it ran at 120-130 fps ,72 fps in smoke.
(http://null) (http://null)
[ 06-08-2001: Message edited by: ~Caligula~ ]
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Even though you don't need a better vid card to shoot me down multiple times in one sortie, I would recommend a GForce GTS 32mg. They are coming down in price. Creative makes a good one
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Once again guys read the thread title. Cit wants to know what the best vid card is. Not the best for the price.
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Yes Gunslayer, but unless he intends to upgrade his CPU and MoBo, the most expensive, baddest video card is not necessary.
Cit, check out this webpage
www.tomshardware.com (http://www.tomshardware.com)
I've used his advice for building my own and freinds computers for 4 years, great place for hardware info.
www.pricewatch.com (http://www.pricewatch.com) for the best prices.
ts
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I agree with the other posters - GeForce2 GTS 32mb is the best card for your current system.
GeForce3 is the best out there, but realistically not a lot of software is developed yet to take advantage of its improvements over the GeForce2.
I also heartily agree that building your own system is the way to go. I've been building my own since about 1993. It is very therapeutic, it makes you more familiar with your system, and you can be assured that the final product has the best components. It provides for a much easier path in upgrading individual components as time and technology allow. You can also often find people less involved in the "lastest and best" to cheaply sell your own components to, which cuts down on upgrade costs. Many of the Musketeers have built their own systems in the last four months - most of them had never done so before and were skeptical, but the more experienced members of our squad coached them through the process. They are all extremely happy with their systems.
Citabria, if you need any help or advice, please email me and I would be happy to oblige.
Nethawk
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I have to disagree again. There is an old saying in the computer building business. "Buy the best you can afford now." The reason you do this is because if the older the stuff is that you buy , the sooner it will be outdated. Video cards are no exception. While the geforce 2 is a great card, it will be outdated within the next six months. The Geforce 3 is faster than any geforce 2 card, particularly with FSAA on or at higher resolutions. And the Geforce 3 has another good year to year and a half before it becomes obsolete.
And once again let me point to the title of the thread "Guys i need a kick prettythang video card, which is the one?" I didn't think that mean "Hey guys which is the best video card for a guy on a budget with an old system?"
Geforce 3 is the baddest MO on the block right now, thats what the question was.
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A couple of things:
A Gf3 will gain him 0 (yes 0 ) more fps than a GF2 Ultra with his system. A GF2 Pro or GTS with 32 Mb of ram will be almost as fast as the ultra. I did not suggest getting a 64 MB card because Ah does not require that much video ram at this time. Thus the 64 MB card will not be any faster than the 32 MB card. (Most current games are this way.)
I also strongly advise people buy the "latest and greatest" when it comes to computer stuff. Usually what happens is that by the time applications catch up and finally utilize what you've got, the piece of hardware you purchased for $350 is only $100.
Unless Citibria plans to build a new computer with a >1 GHz processor I would not waste money on a GF 3. AH does not make use of DX 8, and so will be no faster than a GF 2 Ultra for the most part.
While it is true that a GF 3 is not going to be obsolete as fast as a GF2, I can guarantee you that I can buy a GF 2 now, and a GF 3 a year from now for less than a GF 3 now. Unless you just have $400 burning a hole through your wallet, why throw it away on something your system cannot utilize?
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SHARKYEXTREME.COM
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Bloom25 makes excellent arguements. AH won't make use of any of the advantages that a GF3 has over a GF2 for quite some time, with a single exception. FSAA (full screen anti aliasing) is not implemented very well on the GF2 and it slows the FPS way down. The GF3, I believe, has a much better FSAA implementation that might be faster and look better. This might be important, expecially to someone who's used to a VooDoo card (some of which, at least, do a much better job than GF2s at FSAA). Regarding memory: my 32MB GeForce 256 won't even do FSAA at 1280x1024x32bit color, it doesn't have enough memory for the subpixel rendering needed in FSAA.
There's no doubt that the GF3 is the card for the future: enhanced 3D geometry processing and programmable special effects shaders. But software will take a long time to make use of those features. AH (unlike CFS2 and WBIII) doesn't even make use of hardware 3D geometry acceleration that was first available in the now 'ancient' GeForce 256.
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My pref is GeForce 2 GTS DDR w/64mb RAM.
I use it for AH and love it.
Frame rates between the 40's and 100's
at 1600 resolution.
great color and clarity.
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I've got a Prophet GeForce 2 GTS 64Megs, 256 RAM and Athlon 800MHz, and from what I've heard, the card is important, but even more important is the CPU... I get a much lower framerate than a guy that has an Athlon 1GHz and a GeForce 2 MX at 1600x1200 (this is the resolution I always use).
My FR is always around the 40s, dropping to 10-20 when near fleet ack or smoke, with no FSAA, Vsync disabled, and the latest drivers.
Daniel, aka Cyrano