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EverythingXen
Arch-villain
Joined: 01 Feb 2002
Posts: 4342
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| Xen must smash video card manufacturers |
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Well, today was sufficiently aggrevating. I upgraded my video card (cue the 'dun dun dunnn' music) and naturally nothing wanted to work anymore including (especially) NWN. Sigh.
Fortunately I've got the game PLAYABLE again and I must admit... it's certainly a pretty thing with the graphic settings cranked (seeing as I went from a 32 meg GF2 to a 256 meg DDR Radeon 9600...). My first day experiences have done little to improve my years old recollections of ATI sucking.
But the games I did get working again were nothing short of gorgeous... Star Wars Galaxies was so much crisper and I could finally see the water effects in the newer games (much nicer than screenshots... much). It's what I get for jumping ahead and getting a card that's only been out four months over my standard 'get one generation back so most of the kinks are worked out.' rule...
Why oh why can't things work without tweaking anymore?
_________________
Estuans interius, Ira vehementi
"The old world dies and with it the old ways. We will rebuild it as it should be, MUST be... Immortal!"
=Member of the Nonflamers Guild=
=Worshipper of the Written Word= |
Fri Jan 23, 2004 6:11 am |
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Danicek
The Old One
Joined: 15 Dec 2001
Posts: 5922
Location: Czech Republic |
Trying to upgrade from NVidia card to an ATI one without formating/making fresh installation of Windows is everytime quite difficult :]. |
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Fri Jan 23, 2004 7:00 am |
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EverythingXen
Arch-villain
Joined: 01 Feb 2002
Posts: 4342
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So I've noticed. There's a reason I have a partitioned drive, ultimately. If it keeps acting up I'll reformat the operating system partition gleefully.
_________________
Estuans interius, Ira vehementi
"The old world dies and with it the old ways. We will rebuild it as it should be, MUST be... Immortal!"
=Member of the Nonflamers Guild=
=Worshipper of the Written Word= |
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Fri Jan 23, 2004 8:02 am |
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Remus
Overgrown Cat
Joined: 03 Jul 2002
Posts: 1657
Location: Fish bowl |
The ATI driver seemed more complex and prone to instability, beside it certainly bigger and bloated compare nVidia'. But if you can get the card running properly, it will worth your money.
The worst ATI driver can does is corrupting your OS and forced you to reformat if you have certain hardware configurations, or if you tweaked the OS registry or OS options that conflict with ATI driver:
-weak power supply can cause system rebooting, or game crashing randomly. Usually 300-350 watts, depend on how many hardwares you have.
-Proper AGP voltage for your ATI card (in BIOS), less or more unnecessary 0.1 voltage can cause instability. Usually 1.5 by default.
-Disable/enable options like AGP8X (or use 4X), VPU Recover, Fastwrite, Write combining, each in turn, if necessary if game crash, lock up, etc.
- Proper AGP Aperture size (in Bios) not larger than 64MB (or maybe 128, i can't remember).
- Don't mess anything in registry than can alter virtual memory functions, or after installing ATI driver your OS will corrupted.
- must completely wipe up original ATI driver before installing new driver, or reinstalling the game that had problem before.
Further info refer to Rage3D forums.
---------------------------------------------------
I ran NWN (ver. 1.61) very well under ATI driver 3.9 but many people have slow down problem. KoTOR also works fine.
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Fri Jan 23, 2004 11:36 am |
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Dhruin
Stranger In A Strange Land
Joined: 20 May 2002
Posts: 1825
Location: Sydney, Australia |
I've never had a problem with my Radeon but our NWN team will attest to the @#$%!! problems I have with Kayla's. *sigh*
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Editor @ RPGDot |
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Fri Jan 23, 2004 11:46 am |
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Jaz
Late Night Spook
Joined: 20 Jan 2002
Posts: 9708
Location: RPGDot |
When I 'upgraded' my video card last week (it wasn't an actual upgrade - I sold my old GeForce 4 Ti 4200/w 128 MB of RAM and snatched a returned old R9600/w 256 MB RAM instead, probably the one you have, EX), I experienced no problems with my installed games, no problems at all. And despite somber predictions as to the plain 9600 being far worse than the Ti 4200 (well, so what, I actually made money switching them), I experienced the exact opposite. The 9600 seems to understand DirectX 9 while the Ti4200 did not, resulting in a FAR smoother CoD, for example.
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Jaz |
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Fri Jan 23, 2004 1:28 pm |
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EverythingXen
Arch-villain
Joined: 01 Feb 2002
Posts: 4342
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Yep, that's the card configuration I have. I know the extra 128 megs DDR does exactly crap all when it comes to card performance on any graphic intense game (the card's own bus limits the transfer rate enough that it just doesn't matter, even if they made a 512 meg card. It's the architecture that is inferior to the Pro series... but 80 bucks is 80 bucks, and I don't run a lot of super-fps intensive applications. Besides SWG, which I am still getting 14 to 20 FPS with the new card in... which I now do at minimum graphic settings and at maximum graphic settings as well (I suppose that means my RAM or processor or board is the actual bottleneck now). So I shrugged and said "I'm still getting crappy FPS... but they're very, very PRETTY crappy FPS." And pretty (the DX9 compatibility, pixel shading, etc) is what I wanted.) but I think it could help in older graphic intense games... besides, it was a price difference of 10 bucks. How could I pass up double RAM for 10 bucks?
_________________
Estuans interius, Ira vehementi
"The old world dies and with it the old ways. We will rebuild it as it should be, MUST be... Immortal!"
=Member of the Nonflamers Guild=
=Worshipper of the Written Word= |
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Fri Jan 23, 2004 4:09 pm |
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Sir Markus
Counselor of the King
Joined: 11 Jan 2002
Posts: 369
Location: Columbus, Ohio USA |
I'm suprised you had trouble upgrading. I went from a Geforce2 to a Radeon 9600pro with no problems. You did get a nice card for a good price. Once you get your issues worked out you'll be glad you bought it. |
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Fri Jan 23, 2004 4:26 pm |
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Hexy
High Emperor
Joined: 28 Jun 2002
Posts: 621
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Funny, recently I've only had problems with GeForce.
My GeForce 4600 Ti with it's crappy drivers with (what I believe) severe DirectX 9 incompability has recently made it impossible to play games like WarCraft 3, SpellForce and so forth. I was thinking about getting some Radeon card, since I've only heard good stuff about ATI.
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Like some bold seer in a trance;
Seeing all his own mischance |
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Fri Jan 23, 2004 5:24 pm |
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Jaz
Late Night Spook
Joined: 20 Jan 2002
Posts: 9708
Location: RPGDot |
Get one, the newer Radeons are the better choice IMO, definitely (I said *newer*  ). But if you can afford it, make sure you don't buy a 'plain' card but a Pro or XT one.
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Jaz |
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Fri Jan 23, 2004 5:39 pm |
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Danicek
The Old One
Joined: 15 Dec 2001
Posts: 5922
Location: Czech Republic |
ATI and NVidia really made it nice. It is really confusing to know what card is stronger than "normal" and what weaker. And producers sometimes make it even more confusing...
However I guess it should go like this (from weakest to strongest):
ATI: SE, LE, Normal, Pro, XT
NVIDIA: MX, DT, XT, Normal, Ultra |
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Fri Jan 23, 2004 5:53 pm |
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xSamhainx
Paws of Doom
Joined: 11 Sep 2002
Posts: 2192
Location: San Diego |
Looks like my intuition might be right on this one ='.'=
I just got a 9800 Pro 128mb yesterday on sale (couldnt pass it up), and became real uneasy about running home and just slapping the thing in without backing up anything of worth first. My pc wigged out big time on me last time I switched video stuff around, I actually had to reformat. So I went back and bought a KVM switch and a cable and started the migration of files to my old 450 mhz coelacanth first just in case.Then of course, fate threw me a curveball and knocked out the electricity in my area for about 2 hours in the middle of the transfer! Undaunted, I shall commence "Operation Coelacanth" tonight when I get home, not willing to take any chances...
If you have never heard of or used a KVM switch, I highly recommend checking one out if you only have 1 monitor and a few pcs. It basically allows you to plug 2 pcs (there are some with more ports) into it, and use one monitor/mouse/keyboard. Great little gizmo, I love it!
http://catalog.belkin.com/IWCatProductPage.process?Merchant_Id=&Section_Id=201725&pcount=&Product_Id=134809
--It's no panacea tho, there are a couple things one should know-
**Ive read that there is some degree of signal degradation when using one. Thus far, all Ive done with it is the aforementioned transferis interruptus, and it didnt seem to affect anything at all. Wouldnt suprise me tho if gaming took a little kick in the shorts from it.
**Unfortunately, there are no USB ports on them as far as I can tell. There were like 4 different ones at the store, and none had USB. So make sure to have a couple adapters if your mouse and keyboard use USB.
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“Then away out in the woods I heard that kind of a sound that a ghost makes when it wants to tell about something that's on its mind and can't make itself understood, and so can't rest easy in its grave, and has to go about that way every night grieving.”-Mark Twain |
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Fri Jan 23, 2004 6:12 pm |
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EverythingXen
Arch-villain
Joined: 01 Feb 2002
Posts: 4342
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quote:
Originally posted by Danicek
ATI and NVidia really made it nice. It is really confusing to know what card is stronger than "normal" and what weaker. And producers sometimes make it even more confusing...
However I guess it should go like this (from weakest to strongest):
ATI: SE, LE, Normal, Pro, XT
NVIDIA: MX, DT, XT, Normal, Ultra
Video cards tend to follow a simple rule: You get what you pay for. The tricky part is when the cards are of similar price and of high end quality (such as the Ultra vs the XT).
If a card has twice the memory of a fellow card but the fellow card is twice the price... there's probably a reason besides the store clerk being high when they used the pricing gun.
_________________
Estuans interius, Ira vehementi
"The old world dies and with it the old ways. We will rebuild it as it should be, MUST be... Immortal!"
=Member of the Nonflamers Guild=
=Worshipper of the Written Word= |
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Fri Jan 23, 2004 6:19 pm |
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Dhruin
Stranger In A Strange Land
Joined: 20 May 2002
Posts: 1825
Location: Sydney, Australia |
Rather than use a KVM (or multiple monitors etc) I have several machines networked and I just use VNC remote access software to control them. Works very nicely in most circumstances.
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Editor @ RPGDot |
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Sat Jan 24, 2004 2:05 am |
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Remus
Overgrown Cat
Joined: 03 Jul 2002
Posts: 1657
Location: Fish bowl |
ATI current hardware is certainly better than nVidia, beside improvements in their driver although i still think need more optimization and redesign (easier and safer when install or remove driver, etc).
There is some talks next new graphic card release (Feb/March) from both will be very similiar in hardware and specifications. Let's see who will win the next round. I am more interested in PC Express generation though.
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Sat Jan 24, 2004 2:47 am |
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