Upgraded video card....

[mthrockmor]

In another thread I noted the plan to upgrade my video card. Well, it's in.

I purchased a GT720 1Gig low profile card. In AH2 I'm able to turn on all the eye candy and keep the frame rate above 50. In AH3, turn it all off and max at 21.

I have  2 quad, 2.33Ghz, 4 Gb RAM, 64 bit in a Dell Optiplex 755 unit. The shop informed me I'd need another computer to get any faster. Not looking good.

Any suggestions?

Boo

[Estes]

Yeah, you're going to want to pickup a 64bit copy of windows 7 or later to get past that 4 gigs of ram which is on the really low side. Which unfortunately means you're going to need to build a new basically.

[SirNuke]

I'm afraid you wasted your money on that video card, you can make sure you are using the latest drivers, but that video card is very low end and will most likely not be able to run the game decently...

As stated your cpu platform is too old (almost 10 years) to be upgraded in any significant fashion.

[bustr]

Since you can put that card in a slot in your PC. You have the slot. But, that PC comes with I think a 250W power supply which cannot run a card that has 1G GDDR5, data paths 128bit, and Band Width of 80-128 G byte sec.

That card is not giving you good performance because at most if you have the GDDR5 version, 40 G byte sec band width and only 64bit data paths.

You would probably have to run the game in 512 Mode with everything turned off in the graphics page and all the sliders down to the minimums. I wonder if that card with GDDR5 ram might be about equivalent to the GTX9800 with 512 GDDR3 ram for game performance?

[Chalenge]

No, with that particular card all the advantages go to the 9800.

[hgtonyvi]

Seriously guy?? All that tech talk for one little fix? All you need is the right power supply and motherboard. All that tech talk confuses people.

[hgtonyvi]

Just check the power supply requirement for the new video card you want to use and also make sure ur motherboard supports the slot where the video card is suppose to be in. After just connect the wires and install the drives.. You should be good to go...all these other info about "this and that" is not needed lol.. Enjoy ur new card 

[save]

Boo, you need a better computer if you want to enjoy future gaming as a whole.
When the air is full of enemy and friendly planes in AH3, you will enjoy a slow slide-show flying low over ground with current setup.
You can also be sure graphics requirements will rise with time in AH3 and well as other games.


I5 intel processor or better.
Z97 motherboard
64-bit windows 7.
Gtx970 graphics card.
550w power supply.


if you want all things to start up quite much faster, buy a 256 gig SSD drive instead of a spinning HDD where you keep OS and frequent used programs.

[Bizman]

Just check the power supply requirement for the new video card you want to use and also make sure ur motherboard supports the slot where the video card is suppose to be in. After just connect the wires and install the drives.. You should be good to go...all these other info about "this and that" is not needed lol.. Enjoy ur new card 

You're partially right. Pci-e has been the standard for so long that hardly anyone uses AGP any more. Also, the pci-e generation doesn't really matter much, they're compatible both ways. So yes, a new card and power supply would do.

The other part: If you read the OP, the new card isn't that enjoyable in the Alpha, nor will it be in AH3.

[Bizman]

Boo, you need a better computer if you want to enjoy future gaming as a whole.
When the air is full of enemy and friendly planes in AH3, you will enjoy a slow slide-show flying low over ground with current setup.
You can also be sure graphics requirements will rise with time in AH3 and well as other games.


I5 intel processor or better.
Z97 motherboard
64-bit windows 7.
Gtx970 graphics card.
550w power supply.


if you want all things to start up quite much faster, buy a 256 gig SSD drive instead of a spinning HDD where you keep OS and frequent used programs.

That's a good basic gamer. Just add 8 GB of RAM. For AH3 and other GPU dependent games, the Pentium G3258 can do wonders for the price, as well as the i3-4170. http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/gaming-cpu-review-overclock,3106-2.html is some good reading.

[Chilli]

It seems Boo, that you missed what Skuzzy was warning about in his answer in another thread (referring to Nvidia GTX 720 as *20 = any of their series that ends in 20):

Be careful.  It is not just about the RAM.  An NVidia *20 with 1GB of video RAM will run badly just because the GPU is horribly inefficient/slow.

 

I found the GTX 730 for the same price (check Amazon).  Even then, I would defer to Skuzzy's impression of that GPU. 

750 Ti is going for 40 to 70 dollars more.  Then still not knowing your PSU rating, may have to add another 75 dollars.  Who knows, I can't say for sure but seems there was a better video card that required less PSU Watts, when taking into account savings on PSU, might be a better value.  Note, the 730 had a customer confirmed running with 280 Watt PSU.

So hgtonyvi,

Since Boo was asking what were his options, dishing more money for a PSU might not be the answer.  The technical talk, is important information that even his experts wouldn't have the answer for because of the specifics used by AH3.  The best comparison that can be made for baseline system is here:

No need to panic.  Most people will make bad purchasing decisions if they do. We still have a Beta period to go through and the current game will continue running in parallel during that as well.  The Alpha is not done yet.  It is still premature to talk about hardware requirements.

HiTech's current 7 year old computer runs the Alpha great.  Intel E8400 CPU with GB of system RAM, Windows 7 64 bit, and an NVidia 660GTX video card (3 years old) with 2GB of video RAM.

What I am saying is, you may have a good core system and all that is needed is a video card upgrade.  Certainly is up to the user as to whether or not they want to by a new computer.

That said, Windows XP 32 bit (32 bit anything actually) is going to be a tough operating system to get everything needed. A 64 bit operating system would be a good upgrade.  Trying to cram everything into a single 4GB address space is getting really hard.

[save]

You are right about Cpu, Bizman, I was not only thinking of Aces High but gaming in general, some are better using all cores/threads than others, and good ability to overclock for example an i5 4690 extends its lifespan quite some.

[bustr]

Players having really low FPS problems seem to either have DDR3 ram or GDDR5 ram and 64bit data paths with band width well below 80. Or Win10 problems, or SLI issues.

The 720 and 730 both have bandwidth with GDDR5 at 40. Much lower with the DDR3 options. The GTX 9800 has DDR3 ram, 256 bit data paths, and band width at 70. The GTX 9800 you still have to turn off all the options and dial everything back to have FPS enough to perform the alpha testing. My wife's PC has a GTX9800 and XP and could only get FPS on the runway of about 5-8. Being a 1999 mother board, it finally died during testing. You might get a bit better FPS from the 9800 with a newer mother board and a 64bit OS. The video card's ram type, band width and data paths give you a reasonable guess to "general" performance.

Just remember, the final graphics performance tweeking has not happened yet.

Hitech's Video Card.

NVidia 660GTX
2G GDDR5
Data paths 192bit
Band Width - 144.2 G byte sec.
PCI-E 3.0
Minimum PS - 450W

amazon.com
New - $141.95
Used - $108.99

PCI-E3.0 will run in a PCI-E2.0 slot.

[MADe]

In another thread I noted the plan to upgrade my video card. Well, it's in.

I purchased a GT720 1Gig low profile card. In AH2 I'm able to turn on all the eye candy and keep the frame rate above 50. In AH3, turn it all off and max at 21.

I have  2 quad, 2.33Ghz, 4 Gb RAM, 64 bit in a Dell Optiplex 755 unit. The shop informed me I'd need another computer to get any faster. Not looking good.

Any suggestions?

Boo

Well if you want to get aggressive, take risk, you could do the research and see if you can overclock your system.
But that's a big risk especially when in its current config, it can be used to play AH2 and help you run down an affordable modern pc. DIY will get you biggest bang for your buck but it might not be as cheap as you need.
luck