Considering a New Graphics Card
By
Brimstone Bruce,
Posted on: 2009-06-19 10:33 in ALL ACCESS Gameplay Technical Issues Bugs
Need info on your power supply.
Any decent GPU upgrade will require additional power from your system above what the PCI-E slot itself provides, so it's important to know how much power you have available, especially on the +12v rail
Stick with nVidia for your graphics solution. They have much less problems with CoH than ATI does.
Do you really want to put in a new video card knowing that you'll need to turn of Water effects, Depth of Field, Anti-Aliasing, Anisotropic Filtering and Bloom?
If the game spit out 20 dollar bills people would complain that they weren't sequentially numbered. If they were sequentially numbered people would complain that they weren't random enough.
Black Pebble is my new hero.
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Need info on your power supply.
Any decent GPU upgrade will require additional power from your system above what the PCI-E slot itself provides, so it's important to know how much power you have available, especially on the +12v rail
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Well, I know that when I built the durned thing I put a REALLY good power supply in it. It's certainly not a "standard" power supply. (At least, it better not be. It's not what I ordered.) Give me a few and I'll remember how to crack this thing open and get the specs for ya.
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Need info on your power supply.
Any decent GPU upgrade will require additional power from your system above what the PCI-E slot itself provides, so it's important to know how much power you have available, especially on the +12v rail
[/ QUOTE ]
Well, I know that when I built the durned thing I put a REALLY good power supply in it. It's certainly not a "standard" power supply. (At least, it better not be. It's not what I ordered.) Give me a few and I'll remember how to crack this thing open and get the specs for ya.
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It's a Dell power supply. DC output 375Watt.
?????????
Ummmm.....375 is not even remotely good.
This is a standard Dell?
No aftermarket add-ons?
If so, give us the model number and we should be ablt to find out for sure
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?????????
Ummmm.....375 is not even remotely good.
This is a standard Dell?
No aftermarket add-ons?
If so, give us the model number and we should be ablt to find out for sure
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Model No. L375P-00
Well, at the time, I thought it was enough wattage for my needs.
I just used a wattage calculator, found here: http://extreme.outervision.com/PSUEngine. Their estimate is that I need 252 Watts of power for the devices I have. Not debating your wisdom (as I'm no hardware expert--software's my bag), just stating.
The issue isn't simply your total wattage, it's the available power on your +12v rail.
The most power-hungry portions of a PC (CPU and modern video cards) draw their power from there.
According to this, you have 18 amps available
Now keeping that in mind, most midrange GPUs nowadays recommend 20+ amps on the 12v rail.
Looks like you may have more shopping to do
Okay, so I'll need a new graphics card AND a power supply upgrade to go with it.
I can accept that, and APPRECIATE your pointing it out to me. 
And yeah, I can handle swapping out the power supply.
So do you think I should just stick with NVIDIA?
Most new cards want at least a 500-watt power supply. They also have certain demands for amperage on the +12-volt rail. Yours has two +12-volt rails with 18A each, so 36A total.
One of the best cards around the $200 mark is the EVGA GTX 260. However, this requires a 500-watt power supply with 36A on the +12-volt rail. It's actually possible your power supply could cut it, but you'd be using it at near-100% capacity, and I wouldn't expect it to live a long (or happy) life under those conditions. EDIT: Nvm, the GTX 260 takes two 6-pin connections. Your PSU only has one. Don't dew eet.
You could go with this combo:
EVGA GTS 250
OCZ StealthXStream 600W Power Supply
That would run just a little over $200. Ideally, you could put that PSU with the GTX 260, and land at about $230 after mail-in rebates.
One more question: is your computer a Dell 9200? EDIT: Disregard this.
Victory: @Brimstone Bruce
Brimstone Bruce (lvl50 Stone/Fire Tanker) Broadside Bruce (lvl50 Shield/WM Tanker)
Ultionis (lvl50 Dark/Dark Defender) Cortex Crusher (lvl50 Mind/Kin Controller)
Patronox (lvl50 Kat/Dark Scrapper) Harbinger Mk.7 (lvl50 Bots/FF MM)
NightShift for Life.
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Most new cards want at least a 500-watt power supply. They also have certain demands for amperage on the +12-volt rail. Yours has two +12-volt rails with 18A each, so 36A total.
One of the best cards around the $200 mark is the EVGA GTX 260. However, this requires a 500-watt power supply with 36A on the +12-volt rail. It's actually possible your power supply could cut it, but you'd be using it at near-100% capacity, and I wouldn't expect it to live a long (or happy) life under those conditions.
You could go with this combo:
EVGA GTS 250
OCZ StealthXStream 600W Power Supply
That would run just a little over $200. Ideally, you could put that PSU with the GTX 260, and land at about $230 after mail-in rebates.
One more question: is your computer a Dell 9200? EDIT: Disregard this.
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That card looks very close to the one I was eyeballing. It's only marginally more expensive, so still within my price range.
The advice regarding the power supply is sage, and well worth listening to. It would do me little good to put in new equipment only to have the power supply die on me because I wasn't paying attention. I'll get a combo deal.
Still gonna need a memory upgrade tho. On 2GB of RAM, COH pretty much slams the machine hard. I'd like to give it a bit more breathing room. (And yeah, I understand that a lot of that has to do with the way Vista manages memory. Still...)
What's your current memory configuration? ie, X sticks of Y size, with Z slots free.
Victory: @Brimstone Bruce
Brimstone Bruce (lvl50 Stone/Fire Tanker) Broadside Bruce (lvl50 Shield/WM Tanker)
Ultionis (lvl50 Dark/Dark Defender) Cortex Crusher (lvl50 Mind/Kin Controller)
Patronox (lvl50 Kat/Dark Scrapper) Harbinger Mk.7 (lvl50 Bots/FF MM)
NightShift for Life.
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Most new cards want at least a 500-watt power supply. They also have certain demands for amperage on the +12-volt rail. Yours has two +12-volt rails with 18A each, so 36A total.
One of the best cards around the $200 mark is the EVGA GTX 260. However, this requires a 500-watt power supply with 36A on the +12-volt rail. It's actually possible your power supply could cut it, but you'd be using it at near-100% capacity, and I wouldn't expect it to live a long (or happy) life under those conditions.
You could go with this combo:
EVGA GTS 250
OCZ StealthXStream 600W Power Supply
That would run just a little over $200. Ideally, you could put that PSU with the GTX 260, and land at about $230 after mail-in rebates.
One more question: is your computer a Dell 9200? EDIT: Disregard this.
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That card looks very close to the one I was eyeballing. It's only marginally more expensive, so still within my price range.
The advice regarding the power supply is sage, and well worth listening to. It would do me little good to put in new equipment only to have the power supply die on me because I wasn't paying attention. I'll get a combo deal.
Still gonna need a memory upgrade tho. On 2GB of RAM, COH pretty much slams the machine hard. I'd like to give it a bit more breathing room. (And yeah, I understand that a lot of that has to do with the way Vista manages memory. Still...)
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It's not Vista memory management that is the issue, it is a limitation of any 32-bit Windows OS and how memory is addressed. You may not remember is, but we had a smaller memory limitation with 16-bit versions of Windows. 64-bit versions of XP, Vista, and even Windows 7 do not have the 4 GB limit since a 64-bit OS handles memory addresses differently.
Just wanting to point this out since many people have a misconception that this is a Vista issue, not a Windows issue in general, or at least 32-bit versions of Windows.
If the game spit out 20 dollar bills people would complain that they weren't sequentially numbered. If they were sequentially numbered people would complain that they weren't random enough.
Black Pebble is my new hero.
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What's your current memory configuration? ie, X sticks of Y size, with Z slots free.
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EDIT: 2 1gb sticks, 2 slots free.
I've been wanting to go to 4 2GB sticks for a while. (I've got Win7 on a separate partition. Chomping at the bit for a 64-bit OS.)
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Most new cards want at least a 500-watt power supply. They also have certain demands for amperage on the +12-volt rail. Yours has two +12-volt rails with 18A each, so 36A total.
One of the best cards around the $200 mark is the EVGA GTX 260. However, this requires a 500-watt power supply with 36A on the +12-volt rail. It's actually possible your power supply could cut it, but you'd be using it at near-100% capacity, and I wouldn't expect it to live a long (or happy) life under those conditions.
You could go with this combo:
EVGA GTS 250
OCZ StealthXStream 600W Power Supply
That would run just a little over $200. Ideally, you could put that PSU with the GTX 260, and land at about $230 after mail-in rebates.
One more question: is your computer a Dell 9200? EDIT: Disregard this.
[/ QUOTE ]
That card looks very close to the one I was eyeballing. It's only marginally more expensive, so still within my price range.
The advice regarding the power supply is sage, and well worth listening to. It would do me little good to put in new equipment only to have the power supply die on me because I wasn't paying attention. I'll get a combo deal.
Still gonna need a memory upgrade tho. On 2GB of RAM, COH pretty much slams the machine hard. I'd like to give it a bit more breathing room. (And yeah, I understand that a lot of that has to do with the way Vista manages memory. Still...)
[/ QUOTE ]
It's not Vista memory management that is the issue, it is a limitation of any 32-bit Windows OS and how memory is addressed. You may not remember is, but we had a smaller memory limitation with 16-bit versions of Windows. 64-bit versions of XP, Vista, and even Windows 7 do not have the 4 GB limit since a 64-bit OS handles memory addresses differently.
Just wanting to point this out since many people have a misconception that this is a Vista issue, not a Windows issue in general, or at least 32-bit versions of Windows.
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Oh, I get it. I made the mistake of putting 32-bit Vista Ultimate on a 64-bit machine. (WTH was I thinking?!?!)
More to the point, a 32-bit machine can address up to about 3.2 GB of memory. That's the upper address limit. I've got 2GB in here, and the extra RAM would make a noticeable difference.
And Vista *does* make a difference. It loads *far* more of itself into memory to improve performance. XP was nowhere near as memory hungry; Win7 is rumored to be far more judicious (but I can't tell because it lumbers about like a zombie on my paltry 2 GB of RAM).
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820161030
There we go, two more sticks of 1GB DDR2, nice and cheap. As you already know, you may not see all of it, but once you upgrade to something 64-bit, they'll be there waiting for you.
Victory: @Brimstone Bruce
Brimstone Bruce (lvl50 Stone/Fire Tanker) Broadside Bruce (lvl50 Shield/WM Tanker)
Ultionis (lvl50 Dark/Dark Defender) Cortex Crusher (lvl50 Mind/Kin Controller)
Patronox (lvl50 Kat/Dark Scrapper) Harbinger Mk.7 (lvl50 Bots/FF MM)
NightShift for Life.
I think you're still misunderstanding a bit, and I'm not doing that great of a job explaining so I'll leave it to someone else to try to explain the difference between the a 32-bit OS vs 64-bit OS, and 32-bit machine vs 64-bit machine.
If the game spit out 20 dollar bills people would complain that they weren't sequentially numbered. If they were sequentially numbered people would complain that they weren't random enough.
Black Pebble is my new hero.
[ QUOTE ]
I think you're still misunderstanding a bit, and I'm not doing that great of a job explaining so I'll leave it to someone else to try to explain the difference between the a 32-bit OS vs 64-bit OS, and 32-bit machine vs 64-bit machine.
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No sweat. I'll just hammer the tech guys in IT when I get to work on Monday. (Home sick as hell today.)
At the very least, you've made me think. And that's *always* appreciated!
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I think you're still misunderstanding a bit, and I'm not doing that great of a job explaining so I'll leave it to someone else to try to explain the difference between the a 32-bit OS vs 64-bit OS, and 32-bit machine vs 64-bit machine.
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Let me try a quick stab at it. Consider if the system's internal addresses were phone numbers. Person A is the information desk for a company that uses a 4-digit internal extension system. Person B is an international operator for a megacorp.
Person A can re-route people a lot faster, as they have to type far fewer numbers; but can only access a small set of phones; if the company hires more than 10,000 people, they can't have their own phones. There may be some tricks you can use, like assigning one phone to a group, but you have to do a lot more work and it's awkward.
Person B can access a huge number of phones, but has to type a long string of numbers every time to do so; they can do more, but it takes more time to even route to a phone down the hall.
If A's company got bought out by B, A could continue to work without having to retrain if someone programmed a special prefix for all their phones to make them compliant with B's larger network, and A only dealt with their old employees. It allows them to still operate, but they can't access any more than they could; and there would likely be various sorts of odd circumstances where things didn't work as expected.
If B tried to go to work at A, they'd basically fail, as they'd be trying to be doing things the system couldn't handle all the time.
So... A is 32 bit, B is 64 bit. 32-bit hardware can basically only run 32-bit software; 64-bit software will basically just fail (there are weird exceptions, which basically come down to writing a fake 64-bit system as an emulator, which is always slow). 64 bit hardware can run 32 bit software, which may be faster, but will not be able to take advantage of all the memory and other features. 64-bit software on 64-bit hardware will allow you to fully use what you've got, but may be slightly slower on identical tasks.
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So, I am thinking it's time for a new graphics card.
I'm playing on a Dell 64-bit Intel Core2 Quad Core (Q6600) 2.40 GHz with (a paltry) 2GB DDR2-SDRAM, and an NVIDIA GeForce 8600 GTS card. I play on a 19" monitor at 1680×1050. There's also an Aegia Physx card in the machine. (I've never really been sure what NVidia's acquisition of Aegia meant for that bad puppy.)
This weekend, I'd like to beef up the RAM and slap in a new graphcis card. The RAM part is easy. The graphics card, not so much.
I'm debating the switch away from NVIDIA and onto ATI, since I've had a history of bad driver issues with NVIDIA. In a wet-dream sort of way, I'd love to be able to afford an SLI solution, but that's probably WAY beyond my budget.
What I'm looking for are suggestions for graphics cards.
I'm hoping to spend less than 200 bucks on the card. I know, cheap. :-/