ed_silvergun Posted January 16, 2002 Share Posted January 16, 2002 That's okay, hope the input helped. I think you're very wise to hold off for the release of JK II before making a decision. You can chat to people on these forums and hear first-hand how well the game performs on different setups, and you'll even be able to find out whether there are compatability problems or driver issues with certain cards. As to DDR vs SDRam, I really can't tell you without knowing more about the cards in question. It depends on stuff like how fast the RAM is clocked at on each board, etc. and it will vary a fair bit between different games as well. Games which need to cache large textures might perform better with the extra 32MB RAM, whereas older games with smaller texture sizes will probably get more performance out of the extra speed afforded by the DDR RAM. My advice is not to take the on-paper specs too seriously, but instead to take a look at some benchmarks to see how the cards stack up in real-world tests. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nob Akimoto Posted January 17, 2002 Share Posted January 17, 2002 Ummm... Why the overly complex blahblah scare the crap out of a non-techy stuff? It's pretty easy to see how JO will perform just by looking at other Q3TA based engines. A good comparasion would be to check RTCW performance(which probably is the most similar on the market in terms of detail level and engine revisions.) DDR SDRAM nowadays is ALWAYS perferrable to standard single data rate, simply because the cards have a massive lack of bandwidth. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
[SWS]Strider Posted January 17, 2002 Share Posted January 17, 2002 I have a geforce 3 and I was pumping out a steady 90fps with everything on and at 1600-1200 res on Elite Force. I have a g4 733 if that makes a difference. Strider Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ed_silvergun Posted January 17, 2002 Share Posted January 17, 2002 Nob Akimoto, nobody's trying to scare anybody... I already said I hope I'm not making anyone think twice about upgrading. I just feel it's much fairer on the guy to warn him of the limited benefits of putting a fast video card in a low-end machine, than to just say "oh yeah, buy a GeForce3 coz they're excellent". Everyday I read forums where I see people advising others to part with huge sums of cash for video cards or other components which are wildly disproportionate to the rest of their systems. Contrary to popular belief, upgrading isn't just a case of "stick in the fastest thing you can afford", and people constantly waste money by following this approach. As I said before, I don't mean to confuse anyone, and if I'm doing so, I'm sorry. At the end of the day, as I said above, the only way to really find out how well different cards perform is to chat to people with similar setups to yourself and to look at some real-world benchmarks. Forget marketing hype and just look at the figures provided for you by experts who test hardware for a living. <A HREF="http://www.tomshardware.com">Tom's Hardware Guide</A> has some brilliant articles on budget cards, including <A HREF="http://www6.tomshardware.com/graphic/01q2/010530/index.html">a round-up of the six best MX and MX400 cards on the market</A>, <A HREF="http://www6.tomshardware.com/graphic/01q2/010625/index.html">a review of Gainward's GeForce2 MX400</A> and <A HREF="http://www6.tomshardware.com/graphic/01q2/010425/index.html">a look at the Hercules Prophet 4500 Kyro II card</A>. In addition, <A HREF="http://firingsquad.gamers.com">Firing Squad</A> has some excellent <A HREF="http://firingsquad.gamers.com/guides/">guides</A>, including some on how to choose components. In light of what I was saying above about the CPU possibly being a better component to upgrade than your graphics card, you might well want to check out the one entitled <A HREF="http://firingsquad.gamers.com/hardware/fillratevscpu/default.asp">"Fillrate vs CPU"</A>, which explains everything you wanted to know about whether the CPU or graphics card is the better bet to upgrade. There are other guides which talk about Anti-Aliasing, Hardware T&L, etc. Everything is explained clearly and precisely, with plenty of graphs showing benchmark scores, and the articles don't assume a huge amount of technical knowledge on the part of the reader. All I'm saying is, if you're going to part with your hard-earned cash, be sure to check out reviews from several different sites, read up on the benchmarks, and you can't go too far wrong. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nob Akimoto Posted January 17, 2002 Share Posted January 17, 2002 Personally I've found THG to be a lot less user friendly and if anything a little too elitist/overbearing for my tastes. The quality of their articles have if anything plummeted over the last year and a half. Most mainstream sites really don't help. The most conchise upgrade option list I've seen was at Ace's with their XP Upgrade article. http://www.aceshardware.com/read.jsp?id=45000226 It involved both switching vidcards, motherboards, just CPU's, and the whole nine yards. I'm quite aware that there's a difference between the phallic performance symbol, and actual gains, but there also is a limit to saying "NO! Compare first!" It certainly doesn't help matters when there's garbage like Anand's cut and pasted from articles books. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CaptainRAVE Posted January 17, 2002 Share Posted January 17, 2002 A 32Mb Geforce 2 will run JK2 fine. When JK2 comes out Im going to geta GeForce 3 Ti and about a 21inch monitor.......even though my Geforce 2 runs max payne max graphics, so JK2 wont have any problems Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ed_silvergun Posted January 18, 2002 Share Posted January 18, 2002 That's an excellent article, there, Akimoto. A great starting point for anyone looking to upgrade a system, and I recommend anyone reading this thread who's thinking of buying new hardware to give it a read first. It's particularly good at explaining how important it is to balance the system and have components which work well together: Yes, video cards are becoming more and more important for the gamer. Our benchmarks make it clear, however, that simply slapping in a faster video card does not always give you a good result... ...CPU power is still very important for 3D gamers. Remember if your video card slows down your frame rate, you can simply reduce the resolution and color depth, and still enjoy your favorite game. However, it much more difficult to solve a CPU power problem, because the best game designers develop games with high AI and superb physics. Most gamers can live with a little bit less eye candy, but good AI and realistic physics are the bare necessities of a good gaming experience... Thanks for the link. Footnote: Also, while I personally like the Tom's Hardware Guide articles, I have to agree with you that they may not be to everyone's tastes. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tay-Mar Posted January 18, 2002 Author Share Posted January 18, 2002 NOB........me old m8 It's good to see yer moving into JKII. Yer prolly reading this going, who is this guy ? Well.........a long time ago, a leader of a small but good XWA clan based in the UK asked how u install the NCA patch and missions.........Yes it was me Just wanted to say thanx, again for making XWA that little bit more fun and welcome to JKII country. Thank you all fer yer advice and help on this subject, I have ordered my Geforce 3 Ti500 and look forward to kicking ass. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gonkish Posted January 23, 2002 Share Posted January 23, 2002 GeForce 3 + Quake 3 = eye-boggling.. I can run it at 1280x960 and pull 60fps no problem. Main thing to consider is your processor speed. To fully utilize the GF3 really should have at least a 1GHz cpu. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
waazzuupp Posted January 23, 2002 Share Posted January 23, 2002 geforce...geforce...geforce..blah...blah...blah! forget the geforce..get a radeon 8500. if you can't afford a retail 8500 then get a 8500 OEM! instead of being clocked at 275/275 like the retail, they are clocked at 230/230. download powerstrip and overclock it to 240/240. it runs great!!! they are even coming out with new drivers soon that will kill the gf3! i play rtcw on my 750 MHz machine and i never go below 20 fps on multiplayer. that is all i play anyway. the trueform make the charactes look AMAZING! the best part is.....you can pick one up for 150$ at pricewatch.com!!!!! that is a great deal man. you should go pick one up. i love mine and the drivers continue to make the card better and better radeon owns geforce !!!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
daviddg4 Posted January 23, 2002 Share Posted January 23, 2002 I agree with you waazzuupp The ATI radeon 8500 is equal to or better then the geforce 3 and has better specifications although some areas the geforce 3 is better than the ATi radeon 8500 if you want to find a review/ test/ comparision of the two graphics cards and more guys check out http://www4.tomshardware.com/graphic/01q4/011107/radeon-03.html They have bench marks running both cards and more from what remember. Please correct me if i am wrong. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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