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.

[Forward Observer]

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.

I realize that power supply is important. I just mis-read his last post and thought he was getting power supply and graphics card slots confused. I was the one confused.

Anyway, on the same note, I've had to buy a new PSU for my last two rigs because the manufacturer put the lowest OEM wattage crap unit they could get by with.

That seems to have changed now since all the new graphics cards are pretty power hungry by themselves

Cheers


P.S. I also know that the G7600GS is a slightly better card, but everything I could read about the subject on-line said that for a lot less money the the
G7600GT was a much better bang for the buck than the G7800GS. Since they are both old technology, I opted to save over $100 difference in the price at the time.

[baron_Leo]

I also had the problem with having only an AGP slot, and I bought a 7300 GT and it's cool. Now for christmas I've got an Asrock DUAL-VSTA Motherboard (ith as DDRi and DDRII AGP+PCIE) and a PIV 3,0 with HT, and now it is even more cooler. It is a cheap card and really good. I recommend it!

[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.

[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.

[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.

[PaulTa]

Uhh... If he has cooling issues and is seeing artifacts because his current graphics card is burning up, I think about the last thing he wants to do in his case is try and overclock a card.

@BrianMHS- If you have artifacts, it's probably because your graphics card is overheating. Check the case first off to make sure that the fan on the card is still running. If so, see if you can measure the ambient temperature in your case. If worst comes to worst, run your computer on a 3d app for a while, turn your computer off, discharge static on a metal plate, and give the heatsink on your graphics card the finger test (with spit preferably). If you can't hold it there because of pain, then something is wrong.

If you live in North America, newegg is your best bet for a new graphics card. Tell me what your budget is and I'll see if I can recommend something that will get the job done for you.

[Keith_the_Great]

don't know if this is really worth pointing out as i'm not 100% sure

i can't speak much about Intel BUT as AMD CPU's go:

the AMD Athlon-XP and mb, is the older 32bit with AGP video slots,
the first AMD Semprons were also AGP,

the newer Semprons should have PCI Express,

AMD Athlon 64 dual core are all PCI Express

all new computers that use DDR Dual Channel Memory should have PCI Express

anyone who's thinking of buying (dual core computer) with onboard graphics as standard, will probably have ATI or More likely Gforce 6100 chipset.

thing thing is: is the top of the range AGP card going to preform better then onboard Dual core motherboard 6100 graphics?

it might be cheaper in the long run to buy a new motherboard, cpu, memory.


just a wee thought; i thought the idea about PCI express, is the fact you can use more then one graphic card as multi cards will work together ie daisy chaining them!!!

[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.

[sapi]

I wouldn't notice since i'm running 1680x1050 :P

More to the point though, you're probably right, but it is a small difference and it'd be better to have a smooth frame rate than a little better image quality.

The only things worth sacrificing frames for are, imo, the first 2x of aa, the first 4x of af and hdr (though i don't run bloom in m2tw as i dont' notice the difference)

[BlackAxe3001]

1680x1050! Now that's got to be nice. I only have 1440x900. At your rez I would say 2x is good. I also run 4x AF but no hdr (6800). I did try bloom and no bloom. I couldn't really tell the difference either. Bloom is kind of like a fake hdr anyway. Don't quote me on that though. I haven't read too much on bloom vs hdr.

[sapi]

Yeh, you're right about bloom - there was a massive discussion/debate/arguement/flame war about it on the official oblivion forums shortly after release :P

And yeh, running at this res is nice, except in newer games like oblivion where i have to turn my settings down just to run smoothly (7800gt)