Cos its widely supported by pretty much every app going?
OR
Cos Creative are pretty much the brand name for soundcards... not so much amongst PC enthusiasts, but certainly among the far more numerable but less well informed masses...
As to ram... going from 256m to 512 or a 1gig makes a hell of a difference, certainly more bang for your buck there....
Last edited by Nick; 22-12-2004 at 11:44 PM.
Originally Posted by Dareos
Ok for a thickie like me, could you explain why I wouldn't want a 6800u/X800 with my 15" TFT ?
Yep, creative are, and its not a good thing
With ram, I was accutally refering to speed of ram, and not size.
Size does make a big difference, for example in farcry, 512mb to 1gb, massive difference.
Going from 256mb to 512/1gb, even bigger difference.
With what I said above about ram, I meant between 1gb of cheap ddr266, and 1gb of expencive ddr500. Id expect maybe 1-2k increase in 3dm2k1 scores and hardly noticable increase in games, maybe 10%. a x800 would do a lot more.
this is the kind of thought i've been having for ages...
i've always had people telling me that graphics cards are the most important... but they're too expensive for me, so i've usually got something really old in my rig.
TBH i don't notice a hell of a lot of difference between a sparkly new one and a oldy. as long as it runs the games i wanna play, without struggling, i'm happy.
Sorry Silent, didn't make myself clear, I agree to some extent about about cheap and expensive RAM, I've had some rotten duff sticks of cheap stuff which wwouldn't let me overclock whereas more expensive stuff has worked straight off in a straight swap...
I think that with manufacturing processes improving, we'll certainly see less and less of a difference in the performance of memory sticks from opposite ends of the pricing scale.
So yes, a quicker card WOULD make a bigger difference... but then, that would only be up to a point. With todays top-end cards, SOMETHING in your system would throttle the card's performance. You can only go as fast as the slowest component... which brings us back to my point about about cards these days being sooo powerful that even the fastest CPUs on the market are holding them back.... and by the time CPU speeds have caught up, with todays cards, we'll be maybe two generations on and still face CPU throttling of the latest GFX cards...
I'm starting to wonder if there is a plateau for all this. Is there a level we will get to where theres no point in cards being any quicker?
For example, take a theoretical game where the draw distance is easily comparable to how far you can see in real life. Look around you, you can probably see for maybe a mile or two at best anywhere in this country... (if you can see further, then the card wouldn't have to do much more work as there obviously aren't that many obstrcutions that need to be rendered)... Now, throw in some snazzy code to not bother rendering stuff in fine detail until you're closer to it... chuck in a lot of memory for high res textures and you've pretty much got it covered....
Looking at todays games, we're not far off that now. You can tell me about how complex a scene in a wood might be, but you'll never have to code for what a real life view would look like as you're playing on a screen with a view angle of something like 90 degrees... real life we see 160 degrees or something... so that's nearly half of a real view NOT needing to be coded...
Once we reach the stage where cards and CPUs etc can deliver that, where else is there to go? I reckon that what I've described is actually achievable now with the hardware available at the expensive end of the market... some one just needs to write it, myabe they have... Stalker, anyone?
Skii, no doubt someone with more nouse than me will either shoot me down in flames or confirm I'm right but TFT response times (being something like 16ms for decent ones) mean that a fair few of the frames generated by the card won't even be shown as the screen won't have updated by the time the next frame is on its way... this is what causes ghosting on slower screens, half a frame is being displayed by the screen and in the meantime the next frame has been produced by the GFX card which the screen then displays... so things look a bit like a double exposure on a camera... a right pain when whirling about in an FPS....
The quick high end cards won't improve the situation and native res on a 15"TFT is so low that the card won't even have to break a sweat... wasted bang for you buck... like my twin Voodoo 2's in SLI mode.... I mean, my FRIEND'S twin Voodoo 2's.... I'm not daft enough to make that mistake, oh no... not me... no...
Ahhh right, cheers Deckard m8
So how can 3D max display 200 fps on a TFT with no ghosting ?
Somehow I'm willing to bet LOMAC runs a damn sight smoother on a 6800u than a 5900u, even on my 15" TFT
This is really a matter of personal taste, but...
I don't think the average user is likely to have a 15" TFT that will do more than 1024x768 @ 60Hz
If you look at the kind of testing that Ryszard does - and focus on the results that he gets at that resolution setting - then you will see that you can hit the magical 60 fps with cards that are a lot less powerful than the top of the range offerings
With systems, it is all a question of balance
Buying a 4GHz CPU might seem like a bright idea - but pair it with 128MB of system ram and you will feel foolish
Having an Audigy II with a pair of £5 speakers is also not so smart
Likewise, pairing an old 15" TFT with a £300 graphic card is not the best marriage possible
Spending the same amount of money for these components - but changing the balance will provide you with a better experience
e.g. 3400 class CPU with 512MB ram, on-board multi-channel audio with a set of 5.1/6.1 speakers and a 17" TFT with something like one of the new X800 cards that will be coming down in price soon (or a 6600GT - you'd need to check with Adam
.
"X800GT... snap it up while you still can"
HEXUS
......................................August 2005
Thanks for the reply Andrzej
The only thing that puzzles me is that even if your LCD is only capable of rendering a certain frequency regardless of how many fps your card can chuck out, you are still going to see a smoother rendering ? The issue I have is that even on a 15" TFT at XGA resolution, on some of my flight sims I'm looking at 30fps tops, even with all bells and whistles turned on, and with a high end card I'd be looking at 45. Likewise some less demanding programs will chuck out 100+ fps, but in any of the cases the higher the fps the smoother the dance. If I'm wasting frames because my TFT can't display anything higher than 60 or so fps, I'm not going to worry about that, however if the card hasn't enough grunt to run the next big title smoothly , it becomes an issue !
I am no expert on flight sims...
...but when you quote 30 & 45 fps - do you mean on your system - or you have seen these figures quoted for those graphic cards in other systems ?
The reason I ask is that you also need to split the CPU work from the graphic card work
If those figures are from your system - then that is a pretty demanding flight sim !
If the figures are from another system - then maybe the ram/CPU configuration made a difference as well
.
"X800GT... snap it up while you still can"
HEXUS
......................................August 2005
You misunderstand the concept of response time. The figure quoted there is the time it takes for a single pixel to change from colour X to colour Y.Ahhh right, cheers Deckard m8
So how can 3D max display 200 fps on a TFT with no ghosting ?
Somehow I'm willing to bet LOMAC runs a damn sight smoother on a 6800u than a 5900u, even on my 15" TFT
I use X and Y as its not equal, a lot of the recent TFT screens appear to be manipulating the rule for how they quote the TFT response times. From what i can understand the new 8ms screens may not be "true" 8 ms screens, but instead what they are doing is quoting the best change times.
The closer the colours are to each other the quicker the change, I believe from what i understand going from white to black is potentially very easy, but going from Orange to Blue for example might be quite tricky.
If you consider Half Life2, you will find that a lot of the screen isn't usually having to do a lot of work, its only the centre part of the screen that will be changing and with this the reponse time may only be changing the colour from light brown to dark brown for example. An easy and relatively quick change.
Its like Frames per second on a computer gets compared to how many frame per second the human eye can interpret. Again its the wrong sort of comparision to being making.
TiG
-- Hexus Meets Rock! --
I'm using LOMAC as an example, its a modern day jet combat simulator that was released nearly 2 years ago now, and still needs the fastest possible pc to run, however in the IL2 series it is still common for a few planes and flak to start appearing and you've gone from 50fps to 25 ! Flight sims continue to be the most demanding of games, and even FS2004/2002 will bring the fastest of PCs to a crawl if enough detail is turned on.
With us flight-sim nuts we are constantly striving to get smooth fps, and I'd happily have 40 fps all of the time, rather than 80 one second, and 20 as soon as I fly over a city (as is still the case with LOMAC on a mid range pc)
My point in all of this is my PC is pretty slow in comparison to what can be bought nowadays, (Xp2500, 1Gb DDR333, 5900u - 15" TFT), however for my gaming needs, the faster the GPU the better. I'm not concerned about wasted frames, however I AM concerned when it isn't up to the job when it gets busy.
Cheers Tig - I'm with ya now
Well my dear chap, I have your ear nowas David always said I would...eventually
The issue for the squadron known as MA_rlins (Deckard, TiG, Skii, me t name but a few) fly Il-2 FOrgotten Battles with the new Pacific Fighters game installed too.
and the water, while stunning, and the flak, while equally realsitic, KILLS our vid cards dead
I have an XP2800 with 2x512 at 6-2-2-2, a SCSI sub system, and an X800 Pro.
I have 17" monitor BUT I fly Il-2 at 1024x768 BECAUSE that card aint man enough for the job of all that water, with full AA and half slider AF set.
You'd THINK it would be ok....but its not.
We mainly believe the programmers at Maddox were rushed a bit, by Ubi, to get it out, and the latest patch has helped....BUT I STILL cant fly at sea level with lots of flack before it slows to 15 or 20 fps!!
Do you ATI boys have any Il-2 pilots in the driver team?
If not, get some
(\__/)
(='.'=)
(")_(")
Question is will the ATI dual core/card option make IL2 "FLY" hehe
TiG
-- Hexus Meets Rock! --
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