Far Cry - new graphics card needed

[Ceefer]

Blast Ubisoft! I thought I was going to be OK with my old Ti4600 until HL2/Doom III come out, then they go and release Far Cry. Now I'm going to have to fork out vast amounts of dosh on a DirectX9 card.

Installed Far Cry yesterday and it won't run with acceptable frame rates on anything higher than the 'medium' settings, so I'm missing a lot of the good stuff. Also it stutters a bit when there's a lot of action going on.

Anybody got any advice on a not-too-expensive (<£150) graphics card that'll give me good performance with Far Cry?

[Nick]

Ooh, for that money you can get yerself a 9800Pro which'll run Far Cry just fine, specially with that XP2500 in there too.

I run Far Cry at max everything, forced 4xAA on a 9800XT with no problems at all. (got a XP2400 under the bonnet too)

[Howard]

Radeon 9800pro.

/thread

Edit:
BLAST

If I had got up 2 minutes earlier...

[unrealrocks]

I play farcry with nearly all high settings, I found it to actually be not having enough RAM for the top settings rather than GFX card as I run it fine on my Ti4800.

[Zak33]

I'd agree on that one....its likely your Vid card is OK...it might be neding more memory. When you request high detail settings its not all vid card....its CPU AND MEMORY intensive

[Pete]

i dont really want to play far cry as im not to excited about it but i am going to want to play hl2 doom3 in top graphics with good frame rate so do u think i should wait untill bout a week before the release of hl2 as the best cards will be at there cheapest, or do u think i should wait for the new generation such as nvidia6800 and the new atis what are they? x800s or something?
Pete

[blockers]

Surely a 2.2ghz CPU, and 1gb pc3200 cant be the limiting factor.....have you got your graphics card overclocked at all?

Else go for a r9800pro over the next couple of weeks

[Nick]

Yeah, he's already running a gig of memory, its gotta be the gfx card slowing things up... I'm running a slower CPU with the same amount of memory on nearly the same mobo... its gotta be the GFX card... either that or a driver update?

[steve threlfall]

9800pro is the way to go if your feeling adventurous you can always flash it to a 9800xt with the new bios (and a better cooler of course )

Processor and memory arent a concern i shouldnt think

[Zak33]

I just read his PC specs

DOH...ok...you have sufficient memory

*hides*

you're gonna hate me.....

WHEN DID YOU LAST RE INSTALL WINDOWS ?

How many things run on your PC at one time?

DO you regularly install stuff?

If you hit Cntrl Alt Del....how many things are runnning at once?

[Knoxville]

I've gotta agree with zak if you havn't done a fresh install for a anymore than 8/12 months try it, it could save you loads of cash which you can spend on the next gen graphics cards when half life 2 etc. come out

[Zak33]

poor old Knoxx knows...he's installed loads of times , cos of hassle with PC's....BUT.....you'll be AMAZED how much stuff is runninng on your PC.....not just shocked...AMAZED!

[Howard]

Yes reinstalling after a good year or so of heavy usage is bliss.

I narrowly averted a reinstall last week after realising rolling back Nvidia's Soundstorm drivers was a bit of a bad idea Thank the Lord for System Restore :heart:

[Ceefer]

Well, lots of good advice here. I installed Windows XP on my gaming machine when I got my Barton XP2500 which was just after Christmas. There are no 'extras' on this machine, not even any anti-virus or firewall. I've deliberately kept this machine free of clutter to optimise it for games, unlike my work machine which has a staggering amount of dross running.

I'm sure that a new graphics card is what I need but a Radeon 9800pro for less than £150?? I need to have another search through the online shopping websites. I thought 9800pro's were all like £200+.

[Ceefer]

Drivers! Yup, why didn't I think of that? I'm still running with the default Nvidia drivers that loaded when I installed XP. Time to go downloading!

[Ravens Nest]

I might be too late to suggest this for you but try the new remixed nforce drivers from Mwarhead.
http://mwarhead.motherboardfaqs.com/....php?content.3
They are a collection of the latest drivers for audio, IDE network e.t.c. for the nforce 1/2 & 3 motherboards.

Also give the latest NVIDIA video drivers an install perhaps they may increase performance in Farcry??

Here's the latest official drivers 56.72
http://www.nvidia.com/object/winxp_2k_56.72

And here's the BETA drivers 60.72
http://www.3dchipset.com/drivers/bet...a/nt5/6072.php