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

[Deleted User]

I bought x3 a while back, but had to puchase x2 and play that because of system performance.
months later, I'm looking at ways to get x3 up and running by replacing my onboard video. I'm cheap, and don't generally pc game so I don't know much about video cards.

I'm looking at this:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6814161041
256mb gddr3 for under $100 after rebate.

there are a lot of 512mb gddr2 cards there for the same price. Which will I be better off with? 256mb gddr3 or 512mb gddr2?

no, I'm not going to spend over $100 usd or so, but I'd really like to play this game. and now that it's a couple years old, I'm hoping that I don't have too many problems doing this. I'm mainly a console gamer, so I may also have unrealistic expectations of smoothness.

the rest of the important specs:
amd athelon64 X2 3800+
2GB ram
windows xp

[CBJ]

there are a lot of 512mb gddr2 cards there for the same price. Which will I be better off with? 256mb gddr3 or 512mb gddr2?

The amount of memory and the memory speed aren't necessarily the crucial factors. As far as I am aware all X1650s are GDDR3 and whatever you've seen with DDR2 will almost certainly be slower cards because they have slower GPUs regardless of how much memory they have.

The X1650Pro is a reasonable mid-range card and should run most current games well enough. It should certainly be enough for X² and X³ since these games are not GPU-bound on any decent graphics card, and you still have the option of turning down the settings.

If you are expecting the kind of steady framerates in X²/X³ that you see in the average console game then your expectations are definitely unrealistic. The X series games have a full game universe running in the background and no artificial limits on how much action can be going on in the vicinity of the player. There will be peaks and troughs in the framerate, and no matter what your PC's specification it will always be possible to create a situation which brings it to its knees.

[Rug]

I have the all too common dilemma of a system I would love to replace, and a lack of funds to do it with. (Oh, for access to Jericho's credit cards )

Current system is based around Athlon 26+ (overclocked to nearer 30+) with a 9800pro GFX card. I have got a new screen (from CRT to 19" widescreen TFT - part of the upgrade that does not affect the rest of the system), so I really need to run games in 1440x900 instead of 1024x768 - I can't live with non-native resolutions and the attendant mess of pixels. I feel I will need a better GFX card to throw the extra pixels at the new screen.

I'm leaning towards a 7600GT to keep me going for long enough to be able to afford the whole mobo/cpu/RAM/disk/GFX/case/PSU upgrade, in the hope that it will keep me happy in the interim without setting my savings back too far.

Overclockers have a Gainward 7600GT for 99.86GBP, but charge about 8GBP postage.

Novatech have an own brand 7600GT for a few pence more, but charge around 6GBP postage.

On Ebay I can order a 7600GT for 79.95, post free. This is for an XpertVision brand card.

The question is - is there going to be 25 quids worth of difference between the XpertVision card and the Gainward/Novatech ones, or is this that rarest of things - an actual bargain ?

Rug

[CBJ]

You missed a possibility: the eBay item could be an absolute scam rather than an absolute bargain.

Seriously, I would always treat something like that with a degree of scepticism. If something is £20 cheaper than every other place offering roughly the same item, then you need to ask yourself why before you go and order. There are various possibilities: maybe they got hold of the item cheap (which might mean that there is no warranty or that the source is not legitimate) or perhaps the item is not quite as good as the alternatives (perhaps it has a slightly lower specification or is a different card such as a 7600 GS that has been labelled wrongly, whether intentionally or not).

It is very rare for graphics cards to be sold as loss-leaders at a less-then-normal profit to the seller, so personally I would not buy an item like that without a very thorough investigation, which is rather difficult to conduct when an item is being sold on eBay.

[Rug]

OK, I'll avoid Ebay - Ebuyer have a Leadtech model for around 100 post free, so that might be the way to go.

Before launching into the expense, does anyone know if I am likely to see a decent performance boost (with XP 2600+ processor), or will the processor be too poor to feed the GFX card in most games ?

Buying this card is going to push back my big upgrade by 2 or 3 months, which is fine if there is a decent performance hike, but if not I would rather wait. It is likely to be around a year before I can do the full system upgrade (PCI-e and all that that entails).

Any informed guesses ?

Rug

[CBJ]

Most games are GPU-bound. The X series is unusual in that it is CPU-bound because of the complexity of the game universe. However, a 2600+ is fairly low-end now and may start to become an issue. You should see some improvement, but the processor and the fact that you are getting the AGP version of the card do mean that the impact might be limited. Obviously the choice is up to you, but personally I'd be thinking whether I really needed to buy a relatively expensive new AGP card when I was trying to save for a whole new system. If it's about a year before you'll be able to buy a whole new system, you might be better off saving your money and bringing forward slightly the date at which you can buy a system that is fully DX10 and Vista capable.

[Ebyl Vampyre]

I agree with CBJ. I've only got the rolling demo to go by until my game arrives (tomorrow, yay!), and I know a lot has changed with the new retail versions, but my current rig is similar to Rug's.

I played around with it last night trying to squeeze more performance from the demo and came to realize I was very CPU limited with an XP2500+ (OC'd to 3200+) and 6800GT. So my guess is that you will probably see a small difference, but the CPU will really bottleneck it for this game.

And again, it was just on the demo, so take it with a grain of salt, but I figure the results should translate alright to the full game.

Anyway, I'd wait if you can hold out another year with what you've got, but that's just me. I hate upgrading stuff only to have to toss it a year later, so I couldn't bring myself to do it.

[DarthKramer]

Hi. just wanted to know whether X3 will run.
My specs are:

1024mb ram
intel core duo processor T2050
intel graphics media accelerator 950 224 mb (This part worries me)

thanks

[pjknibbs]

And that's the part that SHOULD worry you, because the Intel GMA950 does not fully support the facilities X3 needs to run. Chances are the game will actually work, but some things will not look like they are supposed to--for example, asteroids apparently appear solid black on a GMA950, which makes them somewhat tricky to see!

[Algoran]

Hi, Im basically wondering about the usefulness of dual cores with X3 - I understand X3 will use only one core, with windows and such running on the other. Im looking to upgrade my cpu, and these days dual cores seem to be the thing - but id like to know how much difference it will really make to X3, given that its a cpu-bound game, and dosnt take full advantage of both cores...

My current system is a 7600GT, 2gig ram and a 3ghz intel cpu. For the purposes of improving the performance of X3, would I be better off buying say a Intel Core 2 Duo 2.40GHz E6600, or some single core of similar price? That is if you can even get single cores anymore..

Pretty much id like to be convinced that I wont be disappointed if i get a shiny, expensive new dual core because i find it makes minimal difference to X3 - I would just love to have huge capship battles and seizewell NOT lag

[gunman127]

Unless your motherboard is less than year old, theres a fair chance it won't support a Core2Duo at all.

So you'd need a new motherboard as well, and maybe new RAM, depending on your current chipset.

[Algoran]

My motherboard is fairly new, probably less than a year.. not sure exactly what it is right now, but im pretty sure it can take a core2duo - what do you say assuming it can?

[gunman127]

Fair enough then.

First off, find exactly which motherboard you have.

You can either open your case and squint for it's ID, or use Everest to find it out.
http://www.majorgeeks.com/download4181.html

If you have the dough, an E6600 is a good choice, but if not, and again depending on your motherboard, you could get an E4400 and overclock it.
I have the E4300 in mine right now, and it's 70% above default speeds.

[Algoran]

According to the startup bios message its a GA-8N-SLI, which looks right.
Everest dosnt give it a name but gives it the ID:

10/28/2005-C19-MCP04-6A61EG0DC-00

After doing a little reading on it im not quite so sure it can take a c2d...

[mattstint]

That's a Gigabyte motherboard, check their website for their CPU support list and it'll tell you whether it supports a C2D or not.

[Algoran]

Yea it just says LGA775 Intel® Pentium® D / Pentium® 4 processor under supported processors. Guess that means I need a new motherboard then...

But my original question was, am I likely to see any stunning performance improvements in X3, like dual cores are apparently supposed to give? Im a little confused by the new dual core terminology, looks to me that if i got a E6600 at 2.40GHz, and X3 uses only one core then i would actually have a slower processor than my current 3GHz one, lol...

[Krusade]

Check to see if there's a BIOS update for your motherboard that adds C2D support.

Also X3 will run faster with a dual core processor than a single core as windows can allocate proceses to each core. A 2.4Ghz C2D is far faster than a 3Ghz P4

[mattstint]

Yea it just says LGA775 Intel® Pentium® D / Pentium® 4 processor under supported processors. Guess that means I need a new motherboard then...

But my original question was, am I likely to see any stunning performance improvements in X3, like dual cores are apparently supposed to give? Im a little confused by the new dual core terminology, looks to me that if i got a E6600 at 2.40GHz, and X3 uses only one core then i would actually have a slower processor than my current 3GHz one, lol...

Interestingly I found 2 revisions of your motherboard 1.0 and 1.0.

Which is yours?

Edit: Revision 1.1 supports P4s with 1066 MHz bus but not the C2D. You might get lucky and still be able to use a C2D but have it not be recognised in the BIOS (it'll come up as an unknown intel processor)

Of course it may not work in the first place and I accept no responsibility should you go ahead and order

Thanks to shifty_powers for the extra knowledge I now possess on mobo CPU support

[CBJ]

You will not see stunning performance improvements in X³ with a dual core processor, because the game doesn't use multiple cores. You may see small improvements as drivers and other software running in the other background may be able to use the other core, freeing up some cycles for the game. However, don't let that stop you buying dual core. The C2D processors are so much faster than their Pentium predecessors, even if only one core is being used, that you are likely to see significant performance improvements in all kinds of applications, probably even X³.

But of course this is only relevant if you can actually use a C2D in your system!

[madness 3D]

You will not see stunning performance improvements in X³ with a dual core processor, because the game doesn't use multiple cores. You may see small improvements as drivers and other software running in the other background may be able to use the other core, freeing up some cycles for the game. However, don't let that stop you buying dual core. The C2D processors are so much faster than their Pentium predecessors, even if only one core is being used, that you are likely to see significant performance improvements in all kinds of applications, probably even X³.

But of course this is only relevant if you can actually use a C2D in your system!

Surely if i jumped from say a 2.0ghz AMD cpu to a AMD dual core running at 3.0ghz per core you would see substancial improvements?