graphics card upgrade question

[chaoticone]

would it be worth me upgrading from my fx5800 ultra just yet or wait a while ?

[funnelhead]

are you getting slow down in games? I doubt it with that card...

wait till the next gen cards come out in about 2 months..then it might be worth it. As long as your not getting tinitus, that is.

[chaoticone]

in halo i only get an average of 45 fsp at 1024x768 no af or aa

[Ravens Nest]

Here's a benchmark for Halo, the 5800 ultra on there gets 54.1 fps and the 9800 XT gets 59.54.
http://www20.tomshardware.com/graphi...charts-09.html
So it looks like you wont get much of an increase by buying a new video card

Create a shortcut with the HALO.exe file and try these commands to see if changing pixel shader version increases the speed of game play.

-use11 force pixel shaders 1.1
-use14 force pixel shaders 1.4
-use20 force pixel shaders 2.0

i.e.
"C:\Program Files\Microsoft Games\Halo\halo.exe" -use11

Using pixelshader 1.1 supposedly will increase the game with nvidia cards by upto 25%!

Give that a try m8

[chaoticone]

thx , i thought the ati 9800xt was faster than that

[Kezzer]

it's not down to the card i think it's down to the game. Halo was renowned for being a very poor running game

[Ravens Nest]

Yep kezzer's right, gearbox software ported the game from the XBOX not Bungie who made the original game and made a bit of a mess with it.

But then again the same thing has happened with Deus ex - invisible war

But supposedly Deus ex 2 & HALO have patches being made that will increase performance quite a bit and the rumour is that HALO's patch will increase performance by 50%

The 9800 XT & Pro are amazingly fast, but it does depend on the game.

i.e. neverwinter nights, GTA3, Vice city, Rallisports challenge & Counterstrike run faster on Nvidia hardware but Unreal 2003, Call of duty, battlefield 1942 & Mafia all run better on ATI hardware.

[chaoticone]

whats the differance between a fx5800 ultra and a fx5900 ultra apart from the price

[Rythmic]

speed of core, speed of memory, memory latentcy.

ATM IMHO it's not worth upgrading that card yet, with only a couple of months to the new ones. Specially as it's not that much behind the top of the range.

[funnelhead]

The main architectural ( what the hell?) difference is that 5900's have 256-bit mem path [doubling the memory bandwith], and are under 50 db.

If your a Halo nut - I'm sorry but nothing is gonna play that game like it's quake just yet. soften ur upgrade boner, wait for the patch that raven's nest metioned , and try not to fool around with your sister till next gen cards come out. I know i did.


F