Aces High Bulletin Board

General Forums => Hardware and Software => Topic started by: ra on December 05, 2002, 09:33:46 AM

Title: Will a new video card help?
Post by: ra on December 05, 2002, 09:33:46 AM

I'm stuck with a 1gig PIII with 512 meg PC133 for the forseeable future.  It has a Geforce2 MX400 video card.  It works great for AH except when I'm near a cloud bank, where the FR drops to the low teens.  Flying in the CT recently with eastern front terrain and low clouds was a slide show.  Il-2 can be hard to play as well, under demanding graphic circumstances.   Would a better video card SIGNIFICANTLY improve my near-cloud FR?  I wouldn't want to bother unless I could get at least a 50% FR increase near clouds.  I have heard that a video card can't overcome low FR's if the bottleneck is the CPU, which is what I'm worried about here.

ra

Title: Will a new video card help?
Post by: fffreeze220 on December 05, 2002, 10:03:05 AM

U should upgrade both.

Title: Will a new video card help?
Post by: Skuzzy on December 05, 2002, 10:32:11 AM

You could get quite a bit of a gain in the video department with a new card.

My office system has a slower CPU than yours (800Mhz P3), but it has an ATI8500 in it and I very rarely have any issues with frame rate.

Worst case is when there are 15 to 20 fighters all flying around a smoke filled base and it will drop to about 15-18 FPS.  Most of the time it is above 70 FPS.

Title: Will a new video card help?
Post by: ra on December 05, 2002, 06:35:51 PM

Skuzzy, thanks for the feedback.  I guess I know what to ask Santa for now.  :)


ra

Title: Will a new video card help?
Post by: Booky on December 06, 2002, 01:37:21 AM

You definetly could get better FR with a newer card. I would suggest nothing more than a GF3 ti500 or GF4 4200 at most or else your CPU will turn into a bottlenect for sure. Don't worry about you CPU right now, 1GHz is plenty.


Booky