What graphic card should I get

[Crimson Castle]

Hello there.

I have a P3 850 Intel/Asus setup, with 512MB RAM, 26G HD, Creative Gforce 2MX 32mb card.

I played with Shogun and thought it was the best game in the whole world. I must have spent several weeks playing that game.
It was absolutely beautiful!!!! I loved how the troops moved on the battlefield!!!!!!

I just got Medieval TW but I find it a little disappointing. The movement of my troops on the battlefield wasn't as smooth as Shogun. It looked glitchy (I turned off ICQ, firewalls, cable connection, ambient, smoke, sound resolution turned low etc.. etc..) But I liked like the other improvments like easy troops allocations...

Do i need to get a better graphics card? would a new Gf4 ti 128mb help to improve the graphics?? Or do I need to get a better processor?



BTW, I even noticed that some of the battle sounds were copied from Shogun.

[DaCount]

Hi,

Well the hardware setup you have is even better then mine (700mhz AMD, Gforce 2mx, 256mb). So your system should run it smoothly (mine does). So perhaps you want to take a look at your drivers and other stuff before buying new equipment....

[ToranagaSama]

By the information you provided, I can see only one "quick" fix to improve performance. That 26 gig HD is a bit old, at best it operates at 5400 rpm at 33 or 66.

Today, you can pick up an 80 or 160 gig HD operating at 7200 rpm w. a 133 wide pipe. You'll note the difference immediately in all your operations. Here in the US, 80 gigs sell for roughly US$99.00.

Other than that time for an overall. No sense purchasing a modern video card when that P3 850 can't keep up with it. I'd be a waste.

Upgarding the CPU means upgrading the motherboard as well AND a new power supply!! The newer CPU's have greater power requirements. Again, you'll see immediate overall improvement. This should run roughly US$300.00.

The video card is the last thing to consider in a sub/standard system (today's standard). Your CPU is a generation, maybe generation and a half old and won't keep up with a GF4.

512MB of RAM is more than adequate. OH! Is that DDR RAM? I forgot, if you go for the CPU/MB/PS upgrade you'll may also need to upgrade the RAM. You may find a board for the new CPU that will be backward compatible with your RAM, but why bother?? Add $125 ($200 if you want quality RAM).

So you see, no real quick fix. A total upgrade for you would be in the neighborhood of US$1000.00.

You could get by with US$500.00, but that won't include a modern video card (which isn't so bad at all); and is the way I'd go if money is an issue.

If money is really tight, then go for the HD upgrade, make sure you've got all the latest drivers for ALL the parts in your system; AND spend a good deal of time on the "Tweaking" sites and learn to adjust your system for maximum benefit.

[Emperor Theodoripiklos IV]

shoot for a $1000 i got meself a custom made Cyber Power gaming system with a P4 prozessor at 2.0 gigs and a nvida G4 at 64
(Withouth the monitor)
Damn thing even came with neonlights http://www.totalwar.org/ubb/wink.gif

[Crimson Castle]

Sorry I forgot to mention that I have a 26g 7200rpm HD. Its not 5200rpm

Hmmm... I didn't realize that my P3 850 won't be able to handle a Gf4Ti card.

As a quick fix solution, would going for a GF3Ti card help instead?

[ToranagaSama]

Alita,

Check the Emperor's post above, he's got a CPU that's not only a generation ahead Pentium "4" vs your 3, but its also more than twice as fast 2 gigahertz vs your 850.

So you see your quite far behind the ball.

The video card is dependent upon just how much information the CPU can push to it for video processing. Get it?

Your present CPU cannot "push" enough information to so that the COST of a "new" video card can be justified. You just won't notice that much of a difference.

For the cost of a GF4 you can upgrade your CPU, motherboard, and power supply and you WILL notice a difference even with the present card.

So, how much you got to spend??

Its best to do your own homework, so here's a couple excellent sites with good info and guides:
www.anandtech.com (http://www.anandtech.com) www.tomshardware.com (http://www.tomshardware.com)

[Crimson Castle]

I understand the problem of having a too powerful graphics card and a standard processor.

OK, a G4 is out of the question but would a G3ti offer a worthwhile compensation?

[Pachinko]

I have a 1.4 pentium4 with Gforce2 plus 246 RAM!...Its good very good! Thats not your problem. You need to look for that background stuff...Like Virus and ICQ like that get rid of it. Thats for me anyway.

P.

[Perec_Dojo]

MTW is not a game that requires alot of horsepower to work properly. My system is as follows:

Athlon 500
128 Megs RAM
8 Gig HDD
Voodoo3 3000 16Meg Video
Aureal Sound

MTW and STW run identically on my system, which is to say, very well. I have some minor stuttering on the larger battles, and some sound glitches (those Aureal drivers are very out of date at this point), but otherwise a smoothe gaming experience. Have you manually set your cache size? Around 500 Megs should do it. Also, are you trying multi or SP? MP definitely requires more power, and is currently quite buggy. I also suspect, however, that my old Voodoo card may just excel at the kind of 2D tasks that the TW series requires. nVidia's drivers have never been that strong in 2D rendering, especially the older cards.

I hope this was helpful in some way.

[hunkypex]

well ive been convinced to not buy a geforce 4 ti
but would a geforce3ti be better than a geforce 4 mx.

i have an athlon 1000 with 512 ram.

[absent]

Ugh, don't even consider a GF4 MX. It's actually a GF2 in disguise. It's such a horrible bullshit card it gives me the creeps. nVidia is cheating it's customers with the GF4 MX.

DO NOT BUY A GEFORCE 4 MX CARD.

[Annapolis]

edit: I accidently posted twice... and the damn thing is set up so only "forum leaders" can delete posts

[This message has been edited by Annapolis (edited 09-14-2002).]

[Annapolis]

alita, what is your budget.
BTW hey, why is the Gf4 MX a bad card? its a nVidia, and 64mb???

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"Onward Chrisitan soldiers, marching as to war,
With the Cross of Jesus going on before.
Christ the royal Master leads against the foe;
Forward into battle see his banners go!"
S. Baring-Goul

[Forward Observer]

There was a thread back a few days ago titled something like "what system are you runing MTW on and how is it performing?".

It appeared that most people with mid range systems (750 mhz to 1 Gig) were having better results than those with the higher end systems (1.5 to 2 gig).

I even had a reply from one of the developers that clearly stated that my system (1.7 gig,512 mb RdRam, G3 Ti200, SB gamer live) was about double the specs used by their very own game coders.

I personaly think it is a sound related issue since muting the sound in MTW totally clears up my FPS problems, even at the highest resolutions. Of course I don't want to play the game sans sound, so I have done all of the suggested tweaks like turning off sound hardware acceleration and such. The results are not totally to my satisfaction, and why should I have to turn off the features that my hardware was designed to do in the first place.

I now get occasional sound anomilies like static and unwanted reverb, but the FPS is acceptable for single player campaign play.

I hope they can address this in a patch if it continues to be a problem for the higher end systems. I am not sure I want to upgrade to the latest SB live sound card, which might have no effect at all, and I still want to hear from anyone who has a sound card other than one made by Creative.

Cheers

P.S. It is a well documented fact that the G4 MX series of cards are just G2's in diguise. Get a G3 Ti200 or 500 on the cheap and wait for the next generation of cards due out by year end.

Cheers again

2nd P.S. I have noticed that after booting up my system, then playing MTW, and exiting the game that my system resources (usable RAM) drops by 5 to 6 per cent. From what I have heard and read this generally indicates a memory leak in the software. I have many games that I play, that the resources remain unchanged no matter how many times I enter and exit the game (the software). A loss of memory generally idicates some sort of software issue. Of course Window ME (Memeory Eater) may be just a much to blame as anything.

Cheers for the 3rd time


3rd P.S. I hope that most of this doesn't seem too incoherent. I have just polished off my 4 th glass of cheap white Zinfandel. I figured that if most of my generals were often drunk, I might as well join them. (Hic!)


Cheers for the 4th and final time, I hope.


4th P.S. The game is still great, anyway.

Last Cheers (I lied the last time)
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Artillery adds dignity to what would otherwise be a vulgar brawl.

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[This message has been edited by Forward Observer (edited 09-14-2002).]

[This message has been edited by Forward Observer (edited 09-14-2002).]

[Forward Observer]

Drunken double post. Sorry!



[This message has been edited by Forward Observer (edited 09-14-2002).]

[ToranagaSama]

Forward Observer,

What brand soundcard do you have? You can pick up a SB Live "value" card for about $25 (maybe less); and a Plantinum w. all the bells and whistles for $50 or less. Well worth it in my estimation.

Also, WinME on that system?? Damn Sham!!!

Annapolis,

Nvidia's "mx" cards are intentionally crippled intended to ripoff the uninformed who have Champagne dreams and Beer budgets.

Does anyone remember Intel's 486sx chips? How about their Celeron line (not including the 300A of course)? AMD's Duron? These were and are all "crippled" chips. Sorta like a Porsche with a Volkswagen engine inside. They want you to think your paying for a Volkswagen and getting a Porsche engine. Just a con! Nvidia simply borrowed the idea from these guys.

Gentlemen, look at perc_dojo's system, then stop and think! If he can run MTW AND other more demanding games on that ancient, decreped, ready for the grave computer system http://www.totalwar.org/ubb/biggrin.gif , then what's my problem? Think about it, some of you have a CPU twice as fast, 5 times the RAM, a video card, while not the newest is about 3 times as powerful---what's the problem? Does, perc_dojo dable in black magic?? What's he doing that I'm not!!

Alita,

Your the kind of customer that would drive an HONEST salesmen NUTS!!

Go ahead, get the GF3ti, make yourself happy, that's what counts. Better yet, the GF4ti, make your friends jealous.

[ToranagaSama]

Quote Originally posted by Perec_Dojo:

Athlon 500
128 Megs RAM
8 Gig HDD
Voodoo3 3000 16Meg Video
Aureal Sound
[/QUOTE]

Aureal huh....upgraded my system a few months back and it was a hard decision to finally dump my old Diamond MonsterSound card. It worked just fine, but like you said, the drivers were starting to show a little age.

A new Audigy or Turtle Beach card would bust my budget----so I went to Pricewatch and found a white box SBLive Plantium---for $25 bucks. D/led the drivers and software and am happy as punch. Just did a check out of curiosity, best I could find was $49.00 from Amazon no less.

Now, if CA will address the hardware accelerator problem....

[Shiro]

Transferred to tech forum...

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"Everything Shiro said sounds good to me."
-Solypsist