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Thread: Clueless needs baby step advice

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    Clueless needs baby step advice

    This is probably a "d'oh, stupid n00b" type question but I was pointed in this direction after first asking for advice on my more regular forum about Lush (the bath products shop!) so that's an idea of how non-techy I am...

    When it (finally) comes out I'm looking to get the next Batman game for my PC since I really enjoyed the last one and am a fan of caped crusader-related things, though I'm not generally a gamer. I've seen that the recently released PC system requirements (not sure if it's recommended or minimum - it didn't specify) say: "Video Card: ATI 3850HD 512 MB or NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT 512MB".

    According to my system I have an NVIDIA GeForce 8600 GT. Does that mean that the game won't play on my system? Or that if it does actually load it would be hopelessly laggy and slow? If so then I'd be willing to get a new video card and upgrade since from what I've seen on youtube you pretty much take your case off, unscrew the old one and put the new one in then download some drivers, but what sort of card should I get? I don't want to shell out megabucks since I hardly play any "serious" games like this.

    From my non-expert looking at play.com's graphics cards all the brand spanking new NVIDIA cards - in the "GTX 500s" series - seem to be £100s, to which I say hell no to basically let me play one game properly! There seem to be some from the "GTX 200s" series of cards around on play.com for about £30 but I don't really want to scrape the bare minimum of the requirements for this game and then have my computer be out of date again in couple of months. What sort of thing should I aim for?

    Other random bits relating to my computer: it's a PC, an Aspire M5201, AMD Phenom(tm) 9550 Quad Core 2.20gGHz, 4GB of RAM, Vista, nothing overly technical ever done to it by me. If I should have included anything else please let me know.

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    Re: Clueless needs baby step advice

    Hi Alocin,

    One potentially useful piece of info is what resolution is your screen? This will influence in what card you would need. If you are using a 17" 1024x768 4:3 ratio screen you will need a much less powerfull card than if you are running a 24" 1920x1200 widescreen.

    I find the charts that they publish at TomsHardware pretty useful for a general idea of the releative speeds of different cards. Looking at that the recommended card, 8800GT isn't on there, but it was pretty much the saem as a 9800GT which is on there (9800GT is ever so slightly faster).

    So looking at cards that might be cheap but go faster than a 9800GT I picked out a AMD 6570 that is substancially faster, but only £58 over at Scan. or a AMD 6670 at 59.90

    Now I've never used either of these cards, and tbh know very little about them as I tend to use Nvidea, but if you do a little googling you should find some reviews that will let you know what they are like, like this one. Bear in mind that you will want to aim to get around 60fps average (frames per second) at your screens resolution for comfortable use, but some people are quite happy at 30.

    Have a look around at what your options are, come back here with what your thinking of and I'm sure someone more knowledgeble than me will be able to heklp out with specific cards.

    Cam

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    Re: Clueless needs baby step advice

    Oh I forgot to say that the 8600GT will probably not be much fun unless you are using a really low resolution monitor as those specs will almost certainly be the minimum specs, and they, ahem, are liberal with the truth with those. But as you already own that why not wait for the game to come out, see what the performance is like, and then decide to upgrade or not?

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    Anthropomorphic Personification shaithis's Avatar
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    Re: Clueless needs baby step advice

    IF you were thinking of spending around the £100ish mark.....you can actually get a semi-free upgrade.....but only because you are buying it for Batman..

    All nVidia GTX560 and above cards come with a steam code for Batman Arkham City.....so you could offset the price of the game against a bump in gfx card model....you can get a 560 at the moment for £145....but there are deals kicking around every other day on various sites.

    As you are predominantly buying the card for Batman, I would strongly suggest buying a nVidia card as B:AA and B:AC both support nVidia Physx.....B-mans cloak (as well as many other things) just never looks right to me anymore without Physx.
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    Re: Clueless needs baby step advice

    I would think those specifications are for minimum requirements. I also think they would be aimed at people using monitors with 1680x1050 resolution, or something similar, to make sure they are comfortably covering most setups in use today.

    Once you let us know what resolution you have, in XP right click on your desktop and choose "properties"- once there select the "settings" tab to view your resolution, we can be more accurate but I don't think the 8600GT will be able to cope with the game and you'd probably experience a lot of lag.

    The HD6570 and HD6670 are great cards and should handle most games at 1680x1050 resolution, some even with medium graphics so are great suggestions by camabitboy.

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    Re: Clueless needs baby step advice

    Quote Originally Posted by shaithis View Post
    IF you were thinking of spending around the £100ish mark.....you can actually get a semi-free upgrade.....but only because you are buying it for Batman..

    All nVidia GTX560 and above cards come with a steam code for Batman Arkham City.....so you could offset the price of the game against a bump in gfx card model....you can get a 560 at the moment for £145....but there are deals kicking around every other day on various sites.

    As you are predominantly buying the card for Batman, I would strongly suggest buying a nVidia card as B:AA and B:AC both support nVidia Physx.....B-mans cloak (as well as many other things) just never looks right to me anymore without Physx.
    Now thats ^ a great recommendation. A 560 will be a good investment for a few years and with the free batman code if you can stretch to the £100 mark then its a great idea. Just remember although you only think that you'll want to play batman at the mo there are a host of other great games that you'd love if you gave them a try. Hell even lego batman is quite fun

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    Re: Clueless needs baby step advice

    However there's a matter of power supply, would the current PSU be able to cope with a gtx560?

    One of the old 9800gt "eco" cards would be a good if you can find one.

    the cheap 4xx and 5xx series cards will not be much good for you, they might be newer but that doesn't mean they are better.
    in standard naming conventions on graphics cards the first number is the series the numbers after it the numbers after that are the performance within the series.

    Sticking with play.com the best nvidia sub £100 card is probably the gts450 http://www.play.com/PC/PCs/-/3320/25...d/Product.html

    Best sub £100 ati card from play would be the 6750 http://www.play.com/PC/PCs/-/3320/25...d/Product.html

    These are both pretty much as low as I'd be willing to go for a gaming card, esp for new games,

    (please note the 6570 is not faster than the 9800gt it's slower, you need to go to the 6670 to equal the aging 9800gt)
    A lot of the lower end ati cards have little difference between the 5xxx series and 6xxx series mainly because they are just rebrands (ie the gpu is the same) with improvements to the card power regulation to lower power draw.
    Ati has been taking a leaf out of nvidia's book recently on rebranding.

    Depending on the resolution, shaithis suggestion of a nVidia GTX560 is a good one, the batman games are very graphically demanding and make good use of PhysX which needs an nvidia card.
    However this might require a new PSU as well
    This would probably be the best bet http://www.play.com/PC/PCs/-/3328/25...t/Product.html

    You might be better off going to some ware other than play

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    Re: Clueless needs baby step advice

    Thanks very much for your replies!

    I think my monitor is 1280x1024 - 98% of the time this is my internet access and bog-standard word processing sort of computer, and other than some pretty old Age of Empires/Civ games and the last Batman one it doesn't see a lot of gaming action! I'm not a gamer at heart but it's a time issue as much as anything...

    I did see the Batman code thing on the Nvidia website and thought about that, but £145 is still seeming like quite a bit just to enable my computer to play one game - I suppose it would depend on how many more years I intend to use this PC and what sort of future games I might want to play on it though, and it could be a good investment if I get more use from it later on. I will take another look! (Oh and the "steam" thing - is that a way of downloading the game via the internet rather than getting a physical disc? Can you back it up and burn it to a DVD or download it again if your PC dies?)

    I briefly thought about getting a second hand xbox 360 from somewhere like CeX and just getting the console version instead - at least then that's still out tomorrow as well, rather than 18 November as it's now looking like for the PC version! I might still crack if I'm just too impatient!

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    Re: Clueless needs baby step advice

    A 360 is the quick and easy solution. Otherwise you just need to your current powersupply. If it's OK then I'd second the choice of a 560 (non-ti) if you can afford it, otherwise look for a second hand 460 if you still want a great batman experience.

    Well now you've got your techie advice, what's your favourite lush product? I just had the green bubbleroon last night and it was fab

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    Re: Clueless needs baby step advice

    Lush-tastic! I'm more of a shower girl than baths, but I am currently loving the Candy Cane soap. I have to keep telling myself that it probably won't taste as nice as it smells...

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    Re: Clueless needs baby step advice

    As others have said, a GTX560 would be a decent bet, although I have two counter-points to make to that.

    Firstly, there's the price: yes, it includes a download voucher for Batman, but it's still a £145 minimum outlay. The pre-order for B:AC at amazon is only £25, so that's £120 you're investing in the graphics card.

    Secondly, there's your current system specs, and particularly that Phenom 9550. It's not a terrible processor, but it's quite slow by today's standards and only just matches up to the minimum requirements. Basically, buying a graphics card that's significantly above the minimum graphics requirement may not provide you with a good gameplay experience because the processor will hold you back. So I'd definitely think twice about investing more than you need to in the graphics card, unless you might be willing to invest a bit extra in upgrading your CPU as well (a £60 CPU upgrade would make a big difference, IMNSHO ).

    Unfortunately, one area that nvidia aren't as competitive at the minute is the sub £100 market. So in the £80ish area that the AMD 6750 and 6770 sit in, nvidia provide the GTS450, which has very similar performance to the 6750, at a very similar price. The downside is that the GTS450 draws quite a bit more power than the 6750, so you need to make sure the power supply is up to it. According to the Acer website your computer could have anywhere between a 250W power supply and a 400W power supply, which will have a pretty big impact on what graphics cards you can run.

    tl;dr? Stick with an £80ish graphics card like the GTS450, assuming that your power supply is up to the job and you don't intend to upgrade your CPU too!

    As to Lush, I've always been a huge fan of avobath, and before I cut all my hair off I loved hybrid, too...
    Last edited by scaryjim; 20-10-2011 at 11:18 PM. Reason: Apparently I can't write ******* in a post...?

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    Re: Clueless needs baby step advice

    Considering your resolution anything for about £70 will be fine for that game and many others. I can recommend these: GTX 440 , HD6670 I'd favour the AMD card(HD6670) myself.

    I wouldn't recommend getting the GTX560 because I don't know what power supply you use, it needs something around 350-400W which might not have been used for your system if you bought it already built. So getting a power supply as well makes that option very expensive. The GTX440 and HD6670 won't require a new power supply because they don't require more than 300W.

    As for Steam, it is an online distribution system. You have 1 account that games are linked to and with that account you log into the application. You can download and install your games as many times as you like and on as many computers but you'll only be able to access them with your account login which means only 1 person can play at a time. You can backup the games by simply copying the Steam folder to a back up drive, when you re-install Steam just copy that folder over the newly installed one and it will automatically recognise the contents and update itself accordingly.

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    Re: Clueless needs baby step advice

    Looking at a recent Hexus refview featuring both cards, I could never recommend a GT440 over a GTS450. Yes, the GTS450 requires more power, but it's head and shoulder above the GT440 in games performance, and it's not much more expensive - a 512MB DDR5 model (make sure you go for a DDR5 version, not a DDR3 version) is only ~ £80.

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    Re: Clueless needs baby step advice

    Right, I am thinking about a GT440 at the moment since that seems pretty "safe", it should make the game work, it's better than only going one or two steps up but isn't ridiculously expensive.

    Realistically what is the difference between a 512MB, 1GB and 2GB card? I was looking at these two Zotac cards and I would post links but it won't let me. Basically it's a "Zotac GeForce GT 440 1GB Synergy Graphics Card" or the same but a 2GB version, just under and just over £60.

    There's less than a tenner difference between them; would the 2GB version be noticeably better? Would it last longer before it gets effectively out of date?

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    Re: Clueless needs baby step advice

    Quote Originally Posted by alocin42 View Post
    Right, I am thinking about a GT440 at the moment since that seems pretty "safe", it should make the game work, it's better than only going one or two steps up but isn't ridiculously expensive.

    Realistically what is the difference between a 512MB, 1GB and 2GB card? I was looking at these two Zotac cards and I would post links but it won't let me. Basically it's a "Zotac GeForce GT 440 1GB Synergy Graphics Card" or the same but a 2GB version, just under and just over £60.

    There's less than a tenner difference between them; would the 2GB version be noticeably better? Would it last longer before it gets effectively out of date?
    The memory is mostly to do with the resolution you will run your games at. The higher the res, the more memory you want (to a degree, of course)

    It also stands true for when you start doing things like AF (Anisotropic filtering - textures look sharper / nicer) and AA (Anti-aliasing - makes lines look more smooth and less like stairs) as these will eat into the memory of the card.

    In terms of making it last longer, sadly not. Unless you plan to change resolutions (which normally means a screen upgrade) then it will make little difference over time and won't put off the inevitable upgrade down the line.

    And welcome to HEXUS!
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