City of Heroes: Live Forum Archive

Can't decide on a vid card

Father Xmas

By Father Xmas,
Posted on: 2009-10-12 17:45 in ALL ACCESS Gameplay Technical Issues Bugs

 

Posted

Well now that I need to do in order to fix my chances to play CoX again, I need to figure out what video card I need...and that's where I need help in.

I have a PSI-E, 500W, 960 MB of RAM and am hoping for something relatively affordable but willing to give any price range a try if the need is there (CoX and the MMO that shat not be named are among the only real PC games I have on this computer, as for the most part I'm a casual net surfer and Photoshop artist). If you need more info about my specs, I posted them previously on this thread: http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=194853

Sorry for taking up your time yet again, by the way.

 

Posted

*still not diggin' the 'click a Quick Reply button' thing...*

Well, to be honest, a switch to a dual core CPU would be a really good idea, seeing as you've got a single Single core P4... 2.8 not bad, but single core and Co* is really hurtin in comparison. Add to that only 1G of ram... doable, but not really great...

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...se&Order=PRICE

IMO, that's a mandatory thing, aside from the video card issue. You need some ram to make Co* work well, and not thrash the hard drive paging stuff. It's cheap at 30 bucks for 2G, which will do wonders over the 1G you have now. If you can afford it, 4G would be better, even though XP can't see all of it.

As far as the video card goes... The PCI-e slot is a 1.0 x16, so anything will work that fits.... so it's down to how much power you can afford to give it. Maybe a nice 9600GT?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...e=&srchInDesc=

I run that one, albiet an EVGA. I like it a lot. Not terribly pricey, and will run in your system.

I'm sure I'll be schooled in the ways of better video cards, but given what you've got, I don't think I'd go higher than that.

August 31, 2012. A Day that will Live in Infamy. Or Information. Possibly Influence. Well, Inf, anyway. Thank you, Paragon Studios, for what you did, and the enjoyment and camaraderie you brought.
This is houtex, aka Mike, signing off the forums. G'night all. - 10/26/2012
Well... perhaps I was premature about that whole 'signing off' thing... - 11-9-2012

 

Posted

While I doubt switching to a dual core is feasible at this time, I'm definitely taking you up on the rest, particularly the extra ram. I especially thank you for the help with the vid card info.

 

Posted

Well it depends on if you are looking for a card to hold you over or one that you can bring with you down the road.

At the very lowest end, I would recommend a 9500GT with 512MB of GDDR3 memory. You can get a nice factory overclocked model for as little as $40 after mail-in rebate.

Double the raw performance for nearly double the price is the 9600GT with 512MB for $75 after rebate.

Bump the raw performance numbers up again by roughly another 50% and you end up with a 512MB 9800GT for $100.

Lastly there's the GTS 250 with 1GB of memory for $130 after rebate. The GTS 250 is roughly 1/3 more powerful than the 9800GT and over 4x faster than the 9500GT.

Each successive video card I listed requires more power than the previous. It's important to know how many watts or amps at +12 volts your power supply produces because that's what the video card will feed on. And when I say raw performance, I'm simply comparing the total FLOP output of the unified shaders. For a more realistic look at performance you can check out the charts from this review. You can look at benchmarks of 19 different games at 4 resolutions and AA/AF modes to get an idea how a card may perform in your system. Please remember that the way video cards are benchmarked is by testing them in a system with the fastest CPU available and each game at it's highest quality setting to show each card's limits. You don't have a fast CPU so the differences in performance won't be as large.

Note I didn't include the GT 220 as a recommendation because of it's similar performance to the 9500GT but it retails at a 9600GT price.

Father Xmas - Level 50 Ice/Ice Tanker - Victory
$725 and $1350 parts lists --- My guide to computer components

Tempus unum hominem manet

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by houtex View Post

*still not diggin' the 'click a Quick Reply button' thing...*
You don't HAVE to click a Quick Reply button. On the left hand column is a New Reply button that opens the editor. In that window, you can scroll down and see the text of ALL of the messages before you clicked the New Reply button.

Also, if you have your editor set for the Advanced WYSIWYG editor, you have all of the editing and formatting capabilities.

Would I like to see them figure out how to configure vBulletin to not force you to click one of the icons to use the Quick Reply box (yes, it can be done, I'm told it's a rather simple setting to change), I don't see any reason to complain about it in every post. I'd also like them to set the software to enforce the signature limits, which I'm told it can do, not just print them on the Edit Signature page. In the meantime, I've found other ways to deal with Signature pics, even though it requires using Firefox for the forums.

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.

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Father Xmas View Post
Lastly there's the GTS 250 with 1GB of memory for $130 after rebate. The GTS 250 is roughly 1/3 more powerful than the 9800GT and over 4x faster than the 9500GT.

I just picked up a Gigabyte version of one of these locally and I have to say I'm very impressed. I was running with an 8600GT before and even that wasn't horrible by any means. Personally, my opinion is this is your best bang for your buck.



We'll see....