M2TW: is Nvidia 6800 GT a good card for it?

[Xiahou Liao]

would this do good for M2TW?

[BlackAxe3001]

Are you looking to buy that card or is that the card you have in your machine currently and are going to use?

Yes it should work. I am using a Go6800 and it runs it alright. Takes some tweaking, but after a few times you get it.

[PaulTa]

If you only have an AGP slot, then you're kind of stuck with that.

If you have a PCI-E slot, then get the 7600 GT OC from BFG Tech on newegg. It's 143 USD, but it has a 65 dollar mail in rebate, which means that you ultimately only end up paying 78 dollars for a great card.

Just make sure you meet all of the system requirements... Including power supply requirements.

[Xiahou Liao]

If you only have an AGP slot, then you're kind of stuck with that.

If you have a PCI-E slot, then get the 7600 GT OC from BFG Tech on newegg. It's 143 USD, but it has a 65 dollar mail in rebate, which means that you ultimately only end up paying 78 dollars for a great card.

Just make sure you meet all of the system requirements... Including power supply requirements.

and how do I know my computer's power supply?

[Forward Observer]

It's not your power supply, but the type of slots that are on your motherboard. Starting just over a year ago, most computer manufacturers switched to mobo's that only come equipped with PCI-Express mounting slots for graphics cards. These have all but replaced mobo's with AGP slots for graphics applications

PCI=Peripheral Component Interconnect (slots first available for any type of card and still on mobos for other apps such as sound or ethernet cards.

AGP=Accelerated Graphic Port (replaced the simple PCI slot for graphics cards)

PCI-E=Express version of the PCI which is supposedly faster than either of the above.

If you have a computer that only has an AGP slot, you will not be able to use the latest generation of graphics cards. I think about the best NVidia card you still get in AGP is the G7600GT, which is what I have. I don't know what the ATI equivalent would be. My rig is a couple of year old, so I am also still stuck with AGP. I plan on a new system just after the first of the year when I figure prices should drop with the holidays over.

You should have some documentation somewhere that will tell you what you have. If nothing else go to your manufacturer's web site and find out.

As far as the card, the type should be listed on the box or somewhere in the description if you are shopping on line.

Cheers.

PS. I just replaced a G6800 with the G7600 because the G6800 performed so poorly in the demo with the big battles. I spent $200 on the thing which is kind of stupid when you think about the fact that AGP cards about to go the way of vinyl records and VCR's

[BlackAxe3001]

Power supply is most definitely something to consider! Try running a x1950xt off of a 350w power supply and see what happens!

A kidding aside, to check the watts and amps of your power supply, pop off the case side and look at the sticker.

The best agp card right now is the x1950pro agp. It will blow anything else away(agp that is). The best agp card from nvidia is the 7800gs, but it sucks compared to the x1950pro.

My Go6800 runs m2tw just fine. You can't have huge unit size or all the eye candy on, but it runs alright. The worst I get is 10fps in a HUGE city battle with thousands of units. Otherwise I run from 15-30fps which is ok for me because I am not ready for an upgrade.

[sapi]

A note:

The best agp card is an agp version of the 1950(insert letters i forget here), but it's way too expensive.

If you're on agp buy a mid range card and upgrade properly in a year or so's time.

[BrianMHS]

Are you looking to buy that card or is that the card you have in your machine currently and are going to use?

Yes it should work. I am using a Go6800 and it runs it alright. Takes some tweaking, but after a few times you get it.

I've got a 6800GT AGP. Also 1GB RAM, Athlon 3200+ (~2GHz). This game is barely tolerable, particularly on the campaign map. Battles are OK, so long as we avoid big cities (I let the computer sim those, can't handle the choppiness), with all settings as low as possible. Auto-detect puts the settings very close to Best (for what that's worth).

But the campaign map drives me up a wall. It depends on the area I'm looking at (and a lot of other things), but throughout mainland Europe, I get 1-8 FPS. And some awesome artifacting. Textures being replaced by other textures, weird glitchy refreshes, large horizontal bars across the map... the fun doesn't stop. The artifacting is also crazy bad on loading screens, but I don't care so much there.

I don't know if my problems are caused by the graphics card (I've got the latest drivers and all that nonsense) or my middle of the line processor and RAM. But it's a testament to how much I like this game that I keep playing with the performance issues I have. Take this with a rather sizable grain of salt, since my computer has other issues it needs to resolve (should probably just reformat). But I had similar problems (minimal artifacting, but crappy performance on campaign map) in Rome:TW.

Anyway, I'm not saying that this graphics card is a bad one (seems to run other games moderately well). But perhaps it has issues with this game? I've got the card, just wanted to let you know the kind of experience I've had with it.

In the meantime, if anybody has any input on what tweaking should be done to make this game run better with my setup, I'd appreciate that as well.

[Pahoo]

With a 6800 GT OC , I'm running everything on high, medium textures. NO shadows. 8x AA.
Huge unit size...very rarely I get slowdowns on giant city sieges with huge armies. Otherwise runs great.

Athlon 3200, 2gig RAM. - edit

[BlackAxe3001]

Artifacts usually mean cooling issues. There have been a couple other threads with this same problem. You need to check you temperatures when running m2tw. If the card gets so hot it will slow down as to not burn up. When it does this fps will drop significantly. Check your temps, if they are anything over 90 then you have a cooling problem. Check for dust caked in the fan and heatsinks and also make sure the fan is spinning and blowing air a decent rate.

[Ar7]

Artifacts usually mean cooling issues. There have been a couple other threads with this same problem. You need to check you temperatures when running m2tw. If the card gets so hot it will slow down as to not burn up. When it does this fps will drop significantly. Check your temps, if they are anything over 90 then you have a cooling problem. Check for dust caked in the fan and heatsinks and also make sure the fan is spinning and blowing air a decent rate.

I had the same problem, pink and green boxes blinked on my screen all the time. After trying a 100 different things the solution came to me, it was the heat. Got a new fan and everything works fine.

[Quillan]

Brian, no guarantee that this will work, but head over to www.guru3d.com and hit the forums. Download the most recent revision of an application called RivaTuner and install that. There is a forum section devoted just to RivaTuner.

RivaTuner can overclock the 6800GT card chip and memory if you need it, and do more than that. I have an AGP slot also on my computer, and when I upgraded my video card a year ago, I didn't want to rebuild with a new motherboard. What I wound up doing was buying an eVga 6800GS which ran at the same speeds as the 6800 Ultra and using RivaTuner to unlock the 4 pixel shader pipelines and the vertex shader unit that are locked on that card. The end result was I got a 6800 Ultra for $225, and it performs well.

You can run the chip at 400 mhz and the memory at 550 (1100) mhz, which is the stock speeds on a 6800 Ultra, assuming the card will do that without problems. That will help some. However, I expect your artifacting and such are due to graphics drivers. A lot of people have been having problems with the 91.xx series. Me, I've still got the 83 or whatever series it is installed and it's working fine. You might try rolling back to an older driver set and see if it will work better.

[BlackAxe3001]

I think some of the best drivers for the 6800 series are 84.21 or maybe it was 84.25. I can't remember exactly, but I am using 84.25 right now. I think I read that off of laptopvideo2go.com (can't seem to find the link right now). I get my drivers from there because the stock Dell ones for my laptop are sucky.

[sapi]

With a 6800 GT OC , I'm running everything on high, medium textures. NO shadows. 8x AA.
Huge unit size...very rarely I get slowdowns on giant city sieges with huge armies. Otherwise runs great.

Athlon 3200, 2gig RAM. - edit

*mutters*

Why is everyone on this forum obsessed with high levels of AA?

It does nothing at levels over 2x if you're running at a decent screen resolution (12x10 or over)

[BlackAxe3001]

Eh, I would have to say that 4x at 1280x1024 is noticeably better than 2x. It depends on how picky you are, but anything over 4x is insane.