Tels on 7/6/2002 at 13:16
My point was that if you look at tomshardware's VGA stats, you'll see that a TI200 isn't *that* slower, but *much* cheaper. And since your CPU isn't abel to drive your card properly, buying a cheaper one and a faster CPU would have benefited your system more. Apart from games, all applications benefit from a faster CPU.
Oh, and overclocking right now is silly, because the CPU is the bottleneck.
Have a look at the stats! ;)
Cheers!
xman on 7/6/2002 at 16:45
Considering the fact that I'll probably change my CPU (and MoBo) before Xmas, I don't think it was a mistake to buy a Ti4400. Then, I'll be able to reach 3Dmark scores around 10000.
I agree with you that the Ti4200 offers a great quality/price rate but the Ti4400 is not bad and it can be overclocked like a Ti4600.
I also agree with you that overclocking it right now is not very useful. That's why I won't try to overclock it higher till I change my CPU.
Tels on 20/6/2002 at 19:55
I bought a new card, Geforce3 TI 200, for about 150 Euro.
My 3dMark 2001 SE score (1024x768, 32bit etc) jumped from 2750 points to 4500. Not bad, but as you see in (
http://www.tomshardware.com/graphic/02q2/020418/vgacharts-05.html) it should be about 6500.
As you can see, a Geforce 2 MX 400 doesn't benefit from a better CPU. I have 1.0 Ghz Thunderbird, while Tom used a XP 2000+, which has not only more Ghz, but is also a faster design. But the score is not much diffetent - 2750 to 2850.
Not for a GF3, I score only 4400 instead of 6500.
As you can see, with the top-model (Ti4400, chepaest is now about 319 Euro at alternate.de) you get 6000 points with a 700Mhz CPU, instead of over 9000 with the XP 2000+)
Sad, isn't it?
Now, back to the thema. Get (
www.fraps.com) - it is great and now works with Arx!
I did run through the demo (again! ;), and I never got less than 25 FPS (in the start cell and at the waterfall, about 28). Most of the time it is 30-35 or even more.
I can now imagine that with the old card it would get sluggish and even drop below 20 frames at f.i. the waterfall.
I really hope that the final game got some tweakings and performance improvements, because I played Serious Sam, and that almost never drops below 40 frames, and this with 800+m long landscapes and a couple dozend monsters in each scene :)
Best wishes,
Te"Hopefully I can buy Arx soon"ls
twisty on 21/6/2002 at 03:53
<b>Tels</b>, I have a 1 Ghz PIII with a Geforce 3 Ti200 and my 3d Mark Score is 5790 without any overclocking.
Its strange, but when I purchased my Geforce 3 earlier this year, it was considered to be a top shelf gaming card. However, with the release of the G4, people seem to be talking about the G3 as if it was an ancient card or something.
Incidently, while I was in a shop yesterday, I spotted a GeForce4 Ti 4200 for almost half the price of what I payed for my G3. Mind you, my G3 card is an Asus and this G4 card was by Winfast Leadtech. I'm not sure how reliable their cards are, whereas Asus hardware is always very reliable.
xman on 21/6/2002 at 12:38
Leadtek is a good brand.
I got my last two video cards from Leadtek, namely:
- GeForce 256 DDR;
- GeForce 4 Ti4400.
The second is highly overclockable thanks to its HUGE heatsink and DOUBLE fans.
I am fully satisfied of my new acquisation (the way I was satisfied of my first GeForce when I bought it).
But, now, as Tels points out, I've got to change my CPU... in Fall probably...
Tels on 21/6/2002 at 14:40
>Tels, I have a 1 Ghz PIII with a Geforce 3 Ti200 and my 3d Mark Score is 5790 >without any overclocking.
Interesting. Probably something misconfigured on my Windows 98 SE?
Anyway, I forgot to add: 3dMark is only a benchmark, and does not really reflect the performance in real-life (e.g. games ;), thus the results should be taken with a barrel of salt.
To the Manufactures: All the cards have the same chip (NVIDIA), and nearly all the same memory. All use the same drivers (NVIDIA) anyway. The only differeces are the color of the board, the fan shape/color (which you don't see anyway) and maybe the board layout.
All the cards of the same range (f.i. TI 3 2000) sport the same performance with about 1-3% difference. You can overlcock them, but this is nothing compared to buy a new card next aear, which usually doubles the performance (and introduces dozends of new features ;)
Unfortunately, NVIDIA has quite a monopol on grafic cards, and which card you actually buy is largely irrelevant. I have never heard of any grafic card having serious defects (it's the same single chip anyway) or failing after 2 years. And after 2 years, you will buy a new card anyway (if it fails, a new card is probably cheaper than an old one ;)
Cheers,
Tels
twisty on 21/6/2002 at 15:23
Quote:
Originally posted by Tels To the Manufactures: All the cards have the same chip (NVIDIA), and nearly all the same memory. All use the same drivers (NVIDIA) anyway. The only differeces are the color of the board, the fan shape/color (which you don't see anyway) and maybe the board layout.
I'm not totally sure about this, as there is the engineering of the board to consider. There also seem to be different anomalies that occur with different manufacturers boards. For example, my Asus G3 Ti200 cannot display stars in Thief 2, whereas Creative G3 Ti200s (according to David the moderator) display the sky perfectly in T2. I'm guessing that it may be a texture compression issue that only occurs with some boards but not with others. Have you tried to play T2 since getting your new card Tels?
Tels on 21/6/2002 at 18:02
No, I haven't it installed nor played for years.
(After the system crash I only installed a minimalistic windows 98 se version,and since then only installed Arx Demo, Arx German demo, OFP, Serious Sam II and 3dMark 2001 (and Norton Utilities plus the via and NVIDIA drivers).
Sometimes I don't boot to windows for weeks (Jedi Knight plays just fine under Linux).
Cheers,
Tels
twisty on 22/6/2002 at 01:48
What brand of card have you got Tels? I actually score 400 <b>less</b> points if I use an Nvidia driver set instead of Asus ones made specifically for my card.
