What graphics card is best for me? How to upgrade for X3?

[BugMeister]

Yessir, crazygoldfish!
You are hereby raised to the rank of THREE-STAR-DUDE

That is the best advice I've seen yet!!

Go from the BOTTOM UP - not the top down..

C'mon, you guys - you KNOW it makes sense!!

[Llama8]

This is my system:

Athlon 2800
1.5Gig of ram 333MHz
ATI 9600
MSI KT4V motherboard
WinXP Home SP2.

I was wondering how much of an impact changing my graphics card would have. I was thinking of the following:

256 Meg ATI 9600XT ~£60
or maybe
256 Meg ATI x700 AGP ~£85.

I'm hope to upgrade my pc next year (at some point. I hope.), but we'll probably be moving house & we will be having a baby then, so I'm going to have other priorities for my disposable income.

Anyway, would either of the above have much of an effect?

[Tracker001]

AMD 2200+
FIC AU_13 Mobo , I can bios set my clock to auto. My base is 1850
htz. CAPABLE TO SPEEDS OVER 2200 . I'v seen it during bench marking runs , with an app. that I have. I'v pumped up the cpu voltage to 1.8
and the ram voltage a tad also . All new drive's
OH ya my G-card is an GeForce 5200 ultra.
The north brige on the mobo is nividia nFource 2 SPP(crush
18D)o and the MCP-T AGP set o as the south
Max AGP interface is 2.1 GIG.
X-3 runs like a camp in low res. But thats's not going to give me
motion sickness.
I'v evan RAN with no sound hardware attached , bios ac97 or
what ever it is tuned off.
NO joy
Evan at that ,this game should be used as a bench mark tool
when the bug's are worked out .
And I see that the little Argon girl is up to her old triks.
And my favorate pair jeans is also ,(and what A) BACK.
I dont know ? How low end is my machine?
I suppose I'll have to find a way to get to 64 bit.
The mobo is able. just not the OS.
OH I know 1 gig stick.s @ 400 . mobo spec's say I can !
But were to find the $$ $$$$ ?????

[G_MAN]

you dont need 64 bit.
I run fine on a 5200 (for the mo - poss buying a new card today)

how much ram you got?

people are running fine on 2500's so your not far off.

[zatbot]

If you have the money, i would strongly suggest going for an ATI Radeon X800 or 9800. lots of people seem to be using these and having a lot of success

[Llama8]

Thanks, I don't think I'm willing to go quite that far, the x800 AGP cards all seem to be similar in price to the PCIx ones (probably due to a lack of demand).

[Tracker001]

you dont need 64 bit.
I run fine on a 5200 (for the mo - poss buying a new card today)

how much ram you got?

people are running fine on 2500's so your not far off.

2x512 @ 133
I'll add a 1gig stick before iI spend ?? what is it $500
Still I'm rather pleased at the perfomance . When I 'm
reading about the problems that other X-Universer's are haveing and
thay have much hotter reg's than mine.
Oh ya got CooLbits and let , IT , find the best perfomence for the G-card's
Mem clock and internal clock
, and got a little more.
The one thing I have noticed - is to play for a while and let the OS
get stabalized with the MeM addresses , were it puts code.
I noticed that with X-2.
And from the advanced box ( G-force) I'm set up with Jeti-2.
Wish I could bench the game's frame/rate! But it' grayed out ?
I"M accually runing good - Yes; I'm all-most there !!!
But it's like the black-eyed pea's say - LOUDER-
On a side note: I'm convinced that the little Argon Girl
is "Saya" Just a hunch ; maybe?

[Ecthelion]

you dont need 64 bit.
I run fine on a 5200 (for the mo - poss buying a new card today)

how much ram you got?

people are running fine on 2500's so your not far off.

2x512 @ 133
I'll add a 1gig stick before iI spend ?? what is it $500
Still I'm rather pleased at the perfomance . When I 'm
reading about the problems that other X-Universer's are haveing and
thay have much hotter reg's than mine.
Oh ya got CooLbits and let , IT , find the best perfomence for the G-card's
Mem clock and internal clock
, and got a little more.
The one thing I have noticed - is to play for a while and let the OS
get stabalized with the MeM addresses , were it puts code.
I noticed that with X-2.
And from the advanced box ( G-force) I'm set up with Jeti-2.
Wish I could bench the game's frame/rate! But it' grayed out ?
I"M accually runing good - Yes; I'm all-most there !!!
But it's like the black-eyed pea's say - LOUDER-
On a side note: I'm convinced that the little Argon Girl
is "Saya" Just a hunch ; maybe?

If you have a gig of RAM, adding more will probably produce very little difference. I tried adding 1 GB to my machine (AMD 64 3500, 1GB RAM, X800XL), and it didn't improve performance at all on any of the newer games I tested out. However, since your computer's a bit older, it may help you. Personally I think more than 1GB of memory is a waste of money in most cases.

[Tracker001]

Actually X-3 is playing rather well on my system.
I think when the next patch comes out it will improve.
It's not the age of the system that count's. To a point!
It's the configuration. This board can jump right into
64 bit if I want to get the operating system.
I'm at the lowest resalution , which is fine , I can hardly see the print
on the hud it's so small . An "UN-ed-u-macaded" guess is -
I'm probubly ruinning at 80% , of the games max, the fram rate is good and stable. I'm set at medeuim texture and low on what ever it is on the games start pannel.
I"m just trying to get more out of it.
For instance , the AGP interface is at 2.1g/sec.
The 5200 ultra is an 8x.
And the DDR DIMMS are 64 bit . unless the sales person gave me the wrong one.
Just wating for the patch.
If you want to see the spec's of the AU-13 mobo go to
First International Computers.

[AdioKIP]

I upgraded my video card over the weekend. Current system specs are listed below. I went from a Radeon 9800 Pro to a Radeon X850 Pro. How come in all the threads the X850 Pro is never mentioned? It's also skipped on Toms hardware review. Is it a newer card or is it one that people are avoiding for a particular reason. So far I've been nothing but happy with it. Turned every affect on and run the game at 1280x1024 and it works great. Still waiting for the next patch to fix some bugs before I really get into it though. The game has alot of potential.

Also 1 other question. My 2nd lcd supports a digital connection but they didnt give me the wire in the box, only an analog wire. Is it worth paying the price for a digital cable, there rather expensive. Is the color/output difference worth the price?

Specs:

AMD Athlon 64 3400+
1 Gig Pc3200 Ram 400mhz FSB (200x2)
ATI Radeon X850 Pro 256meg AGP 8x
Sound Blaster Live 5.1 SoundCard hooked to Kenwood 500 Watt Receiver
2 Samsung 17 Inch LCD's (12ms and 8ms)
200gig and 250gig IDE Hard Drives
2 NEC 16x Dual Layer Burners
Saitek X45
Win2k SP4

[cloudrunner]

I can probably tell the answer to this but i thought i would ask anyway. Which of my systems if at all would x3 run best on..

desktop
xp home sp2
Athlon 2800+
512mb ram
geforce fx5200 (128)
Nforce 2 mb

or
laptop
xp home sp2
intel centrino 1.6ghz
1 gig ram
64mb pci-e Radeon x300 (non integrated)

the laptop always out performs the desktop on graphics, especialy due to the pci express graphics and ram. i would appreciate a comment dont just say no. thanx

[G_MAN]

desktop

[cloudrunner]

would it run at a level whereby it didnt crawl through the frames on normal settings? becuase the 5200 is a budget card and sucks basicaly.

[cloudrunner]

would x3 run on a machine with 64mb graphics if it was pci-express?

[pjknibbs]

The X300 is hardly high-end. Anyway, the bandwidth of a PCI-Express x16 slot is 8Gb/sec full duplex. That sounds good, but you have to remember that the system RAM this is attached to doesn't have anything like as high a bandwidth--the best at the moment is around 3.2Gb/sec (PC3200). That is the SAME memory bandwidth that your cheapo, rubbish FX5200 has to its on-board RAM--so as soon as you start having to swap texture data over the PCI-Express bus you're severely restricting the performance of your card, no matter what type it is.

Furthermore, if you have problems running the game on your 64Mb card, Egosoft can't really help you because you'd be running the game on a machine which is lower than the required minimum spec.

Overall, I agree with the others--X3 is highly CPU dependent and the desktop PC simply has more grunt than the laptop.

[cloudrunner]

the thing is whether i buy a new graphics card for my desktop now or wait like a year max before building my next desktop at which point i would spend out more money to get some decent components and maybe look at sli, or at least make myself future proof so i could upgrade by simply adding an extra card. any thoughts? im really tempted to buy X3 but there is little point if it wont run well.

[Swanny]

Just wanted to contribute with my graphical experience:
when I started running X2 in 1280x1024 -everything- became sooo much nicer in regards to details etc compared to 1024x768. And it ran fast as lightning too.
So with the same hardware (P4-3.2, 1024MB RAM, Gforce 6600GT/128 pcie) I decided to play X3 at the same resolution, with medium settings and AA on. I have to say it ran quite nice, with the occasional hickup.

One weird thing though was that the main menu was kind of slow in keyboard response when you go up and down.

Then I switched to a Gforce 7800GTX/256 pcie, and kept the resolution at 1280x1024, put everything at high quality and AA is still on, and WHAM the main menu runs as fast as a h*orny rabbit. I didn't expect that part of the game to get faster. The rest of X3 also feels somewhat faster I suppose, but not THAT much faster like in the main menu.. the higher details are nice though.
And the pc makes more noise with the 7800GTX too..

//Swanny

[SpamSLapper]

I have read a lot about sound causing performance issues with X3, particularly with on-board sound controllers. I am using onboard AC97 sound on my Asus A8N-SLI motherboard..

What kind of performance increase could I expect if I got a dedicated sound card?

What soundcards are recommended to take the maximum load off the CPU?

[dhl32]

I'm probably gonna get a new PC in a few months (my PC now is a 2 + year old Dell laptop running 1.4 GHz Pentium M and Mobility Radeon 9000)... so what's a good place in the US to get a decent performing desktop for a good price? I don't have the technical prowess to build my own ...

[perdidopunk]

building your own is like building legos, you just need to put the parts together. the trick is knowing which parts to buy. the best place to buy anything is at a trade show / computer expo. you get OEM prices there instead of retail and wind up saving quite a bit. i got my processor/ram/mobo all for under $450 at an expo, so that after the cost of those and the video card i'm paying just about $1000 for hardware on this system. i recommend keeping old hard disks, even if they're IDE. SATA is a ripoff until they figure out a way to spin the platters faster than 7200 or 10000rpm , since you're still only really gonna get average access speeds ~100mbps or less. recycle cd drives too, there haven't been any improvements to those in years. here's an idea of a good gaming system:

>>athlon 64 3200+/3500+
>>1gb pc3200 ram, 2 x 512mb DIMMS, same brand. i like OCZ or Corsair, dual channel
>>ASUS A8N-E motherboard is good, or A8N-SLI if you want to mess with dual vid cards (that's expensive)
>>geforce 6800gt or 7800gt is good, as well as the new radeon x1x00 series. however, if you're not buying the x1800XT, then you should go with geforce because the 6800 outperforms the x1800 XL at times i believe.
>>some sort of case that supports ATX boards. this is very common.
>>a decent power supply unit. thermaltake is a good brand. you'll want 400W+. expect to pay about $70 or more for this. cheap ones are a bad idea.
>>windows xp. it's best to have pro. you can get this OEM for < $300 definitely. or there are ways to obtain it for free, but i won't talk about that, software piracy isn't nice. if you want a free operating system get linux.
>>thermal paste for the processor/heatsink contact. arctic silver 5 is good and cheap
>>a heatsink if you don't want to use the stock CPU cooler, which should be fine unless you overclock, which i don't think you will.

buying a desktop from a system manufacturer is a total ripoff. this means dell, hp, alienware, and any other company that will sell you an already assembled system, even if it's a small business. especially if it's a small business.

read the manuals, put all the parts together, plug the wires in, turn it on, and put the windows cd in the drive. installing windows is easy, and after that it's just a few hours of sitting there swapping device driver cd's and installing all that jazz.

the basic jist of this is that you don't need to be a computer expert to build one, you only need to be a computer expert to be a programmer or a computer engineer.