New Gfx for Warhammer online ATI v Nvidia

[Syd]

Running a 8800gts512 atm and finding that at 1900x1220 it is quite a bit juddery when panning.
THinking of upgrading to maybe a 4870 512/1024 or a 260/280. Would obviously prefer the cheaper route but rather spend a bit more now and avoid another upgrade for a little while.

BTW if i am running 4GB in 32bit windows and a 512 card which bit of memory do i lose?

[kalniel]

Running a 8800gts512 atm and finding that at 1900x1220 it is quite a bit juddery when panning.
THinking of upgrading to maybe a 4870 512/1024 or a 260/280. Would obviously prefer the cheaper route but rather spend a bit more now and avoid another upgrade for a little while.

Any of those cards would probably eliminate juddering.

BTW if i am running 4GB in 32bit windows and a 512 card which bit of memory do i lose?

Vista or XP?

In XP you're already reserving the last 2gb or so of your 4gb virtual address space so there's plenty of room for up to a single 1gb card, even if the driver model kept the graphics virtual memory in the same pool as the system virtual memory, which I don't think it does.

In Vista it depends whether the game is using DirectX9 or 10. In 9 Vista has a habbit of duplicating the virtual address space from the graphics card, eating up the system virtual address space and causing a problem with high memory cards. In 10 the game is programmed to use the vista driver model properly and this isn't such a problem, but it definitely uses some of the system virtual address space.

As for which bit of memory you'd lose in each case.. well it's the 'last' bit if windows runs out of addresses to assign for the memory.

Incidentally though, what programs are you running that use more than 2gb RAM?

[Syd]

Kalniel, you have been instumental in at least my last 2 GFX card purchases so for that I thank you

I have been looking at the XFX :

http://www.scan.co.uk/product.aspx?ProductId=25547

Which scan have been doing for bout £180.00 looks pretty good.

I'm running 32bit XP and as for what requires 4GB - it was cheapish and i figured that 4 must be better than 2 (with a poss vista 64 upgrade at some point)

[Webby]

Strange that you are having problems with Warhammer online with that card I was under the impression that it wasn't that graphically intensive, some reviews showed it at 50fps at 1680*1050 4xAA 16xAF on a HD3850 so you should be equalling that no problem...

[kalniel]

Webby again makes a good point -it's not known to be an especially intensive game, although you are running it at an extreme resolution. Are you certain the juddering is loss of framerate rather than tearing caused by lack of v-sync? What settings are you running it on (vysnc, AA, AF etc.)?

Glad I've been helpful in the past, though maybe not helpful enough if you'd had to upgrade several times! I'm still pootling along on my now old card!

[Webby]

Could it also be a server lag issue rather than graphics card? Not sure how Warhammer Online works (don't have it) but if the are a lot of people all running around the same map then server load could well cause issues, your connection could be fine but if the server is over loaded you will still get problems.

Run fraps and see what the frame rates are like when you get the juddering, if the frame rates remain high it could be tearing as Kalniel suggests or server lag, if frame rates drop off then I guess the problem is graphics based (or maybe server, not sure if the data from them is slow if your graphics card renders more identical frames (high frame rate still) or waits (low frame rate)).

[beanbandit]

Don't buy a new card until you're 100% sure there is something wrong with what you have. WAR is known to be buggy with Juddering/stutter/hitching issues. Problem is it only effect some systems, while others run it perfectly.

[mkell]

Syd, Im having the same problem. and I'm running a 8600 see my post here

http://forums.hexus.net/help-technic...5-war-wtf.html

Its defo not your graphics card.

I am going to try the "buff throttle" add on on curse and see how that helps I'll post back once i have tried it out.

[Splash]

I'll offer the same advice as I did to Mkell a minute ago - try running the game in a window at the next resolution down. I'm running Crossfired HD4870s and still get stability issues when running at 1920*1200. Running in a window makes the game much more stable.

There are still stability issues with the client by the looks, though these are getting slowly patched out.

[shaithis]

While its not massively demanding on the video card, 1920x1200 quite a strain and I would expect an 8800 to start showing it.

Its easily tested by dropping down a resolution for testing, if you see a noticeable performance gain dropping to 1680x1050, then it's probably the graphics card.

Currently running WAR @ 2560x1600 with everything maxed and get the occasional slow-down when in RvR battles with tons of effects going off.