Lowest spec pc/gfx card that can run TDS

gunsmoke on 9/2/2009 at 17:01

As seconded by my post.

JudasTheSlick on 9/2/2009 at 19:19

Hehe played through it for the first tim on my old Athlon 2400+ and a radeon 9550GE with 512mb ddr with no issues whatsoever. I think i as playing it on 1024x768 med gfx

voodoo47 on 14/2/2009 at 18:50

athlonxp 3000+/radeon 9800pro was ok on high,no slowdowns,few hiccups here and there.I would say the graphics card is the culprit-especially in the case its the 64bit version (I have that in my office,and it cant run thief2 decently-check the card,if you see a low profile version its definitley 64bit).you should get him a better graphics card,something like x1650/x1950agp,they should be cheap enough and they should handle tds with no problems.

baeuchlein on 15/2/2009 at 18:28

Quote Posted by voodoo47

:weird:Erm... if you have a Radeon 9600SE or maybe a Radeon 9800Whatever, and it can't run Thief 2 decently, then there is something very very wrong there. Even an old Pentium-II (350 MHz) with an ATI Xpert 2000 pro (the 64-bit-version of a Rage 128 Pro, and from about the year2000) can handle Thief 2 without problems (at least at 640x480 resolution - I almost never use 1024x768 for Thief...).

voodoo47 on 16/2/2009 at 08:52

well yeah,I was running in the 1024*768 resolution (r9600se),the game was fully playable,but as soon as you entered a bigger location with more stuff,it started to struggle (those bigger yards in shipping and receiving)..same goes for a hd3450,the card was not up to the the task (I was running it with ddfix so that may had a performance impact as well).

to make long things short,64bit vga cards are simply not meant for gaming..

(http://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?p=1741211#post1741211)

baeuchlein on 17/2/2009 at 22:58

Quote Posted by voodoo47

I have run some tests with "Shipping and Receiving" in the area around Davidson's ship. The results are not exactly what I expected.

Currently, I only have two old computers that can run Thief 2 in a playable way: An old Duron-based computer with 765 MHz CPU speed, 384 MB RAM and an ATI Xpert 2000 pro (the castrated 64-bit version of the Rage 128 Pro) with 32 MB video RAM, and an ancient Pentium-II sneaking at 233 MHz and with 128 MB RAM as well as a nVidia TNT2 Model 64 (another 64-bit castrate of an ancient VGA card used around 2001).

Surprisingly, even the Pentium-II can run Thief 2's "Shipping & Receiving" with 1024x768, usually. In fact, changing the resolution did not change FPS (measured with fraps). Whether I used the 233 MHz computer or the 765 MHz one, changing the resolution from 1024x768 to 640x480 and vice versa almost never changed the FPS.

Near Davidson's ship, the FPS dropped down dramatically to about 15 for the 765 MHz CPU and 4 for the Pentium-II. FPS went down as well for the other areas you mentioned. However, the result was still playable (with the exception of Davidson's ship).

Changing the CPU speed influenced the FPS, and changing the TNT2's GPU speed as well. Changing the speed of the RAM memory onboard the TNT2 instead changed nothing - going down to 100 MHz yielded the same FPS ratings as overclocking to 160 MHz. At least under these conditions I do not think that a 128 bit card (meaning faster memory access for the GPU) would change anything. On the other hand, you're certainly living on the other end of the CPU speed spectrum...;)

Something else that was odd... the FPS ratings did not correspond to how the game "felt". I was doing the tests with the Pentium-II without fraps first, and somehow it felt as if 640x480 resolution went smoother than 1024x768 (like one would probably expect). But as I said, resolution did not change the fps in any way, so I'm not sure how I should interpret this.:weird:

Anyhow... 64-bit cards may not be meant to play today's games, but they should work with old Thief 2 if you have a somewhat decent CPU - unless you happen to be very sensitive to fps matters. Apparently, I'm not very sensitive concering fps.

bikerdude on 22/2/2009 at 11:59

Quote Posted by baeuchlein

Measuring fps with fraps gave me about 9 to 13 fps usually, while occasionally dropping down to 7 fps or rising to 15 or 20 fps (very rare, though). This is obviously not acceptable for many people,

Turns out its an (http://www.xpcgear.com/pwrclrr96ld3.html) AGP 8x Radeon 9550 256M so barley capable of running TDS..

voodoo47 on 23/2/2009 at 14:12

yup,as I said,you should get him a new graphics card..

bikerdude on 23/2/2009 at 16:15

Quote Posted by voodoo47

yup,as I said,you should get him a new graphics card..

Already got the t-shirt, here is the spec of the PC I built for him.

NEW:
Gigabyte Titan180 case
MSI 780G mobo
AMD Athlon 6000+ X2

USED:
Hiper 525w tri fan PSU
2GB DDR2 800
80GB Sata 7200rpm 8mb cache
Radeon HD3850 512mb
Samsung DVD+RW
Floppy w/card reader
Labour, 3hrs (I actually did double that, but hey its for a fellow taffer)

Total £400

Runs all 3 games smoothly, and will even run some of the latest games..

baeuchlein on 23/2/2009 at 21:49

Quote Posted by Bikerdude

Turns out its an AGP 8x Radeon 9550 256M so barley capable of running TDS..

Same card as mine, only from a different manufacturer. Even the card's layout seems to be the same.

Apparently, Thief: Deadly Shadows is GPU-limited in the environment your friend uses. Well, as I said, it's enough for me, but certainly not for everyone.

On the other hand... The 9550's, unlike the 9200's and 9250's, are usually sold as "9550" when using an 128-bit interface between the GPU and the cards' RAMs, while the versions with only a 64-bit connection are called "9550SE". The "full" 9550's (128 bit) use fans on the GPU, the SE versions often come without fan. Thus, it's at least likely a "full" Radeon 9550.

I heard once that there are overclocking utilities for the Radeons out there, maybe you could push the 9550 towards the 9600's values. Haven't tried such a thing myself, however.