Guest aaronb Posted February 19, 2000 Share Posted February 19, 2000 I've just switched from: 128MB 333Celeron w 8MB ATI Rage Pro on PCI to 64MB 433Celeron w 4MB ??? 2x AGP (built-in) The difference is astounding - tracers look like the real thing, and movement is much smoother. This system does not have an AGP slot, so if I go to a new graphics card (for increased video memory) it will have to be PCI. Would moving to, for example, a 16MB Voodoo 3 2000 on PCI slow down the graphic presentation? Or would the extra video memory compensate for slower data transfer on the PCI vs AGP? In other words, which part of the whole system (CPU, main memory, interface, video memory) is the primary bottleneck? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
iggi Posted February 19, 2000 Share Posted February 19, 2000 Your wallet Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest aaronb Posted February 19, 2000 Share Posted February 19, 2000 Quoth iggi: <BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR> Your wallet <HR></BLOCKQUOTE> I see stand-up comedy can be done while sitting down Any non-financial suggestions? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PanzerShark Posted February 19, 2000 Share Posted February 19, 2000 I think it's the VRAM you can't live without. I'm not sure about the following but instead of a voodoo 3 i would go for a tnt2 ultra (better/higher VRAM). Once again not sure though (not even sure if a tnt is availible as a pci-card) Hope it helps. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Eridani Posted February 20, 2000 Share Posted February 20, 2000 Vram is primarely important when considering what size textures the card can display... (more vram means bigger and therefore finer textures and better image quality) If you are running windows 98, the fact that the drop between 128 to 64 megs of ram didn't effect anything is of no surprise, windows 98 can't utilize more than 64 megs of ram. In generam my understanding has been that AGP is far from being fully utilized by computer systems so far. Especially since most high-clocked video cards dump everything into their local vram instead of having to worry about the high memory-latency of using main system memory(similar to cache on the CPU). Therefore moving to a high-speed video chip-set with more RAM should definately benefit system performance, despite the fact that its pci. my only question is do they make high-end PCI cards now... this could be ur biggest problem. forgive me if my information is a little out of date... I've been out of the business for 4-5 months. -EridanMan Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest aaronb Posted February 20, 2000 Share Posted February 20, 2000 PanzerShark, Eridani, thanks for the info. Now to find a PCI card with lots of RAM. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest aaronb Posted February 20, 2000 Share Posted February 20, 2000 FYI: Turned into a competition between Voodoo 3 and S540 (the TNT2 Ultra does not support PCI). Reviews agreed: Voodoo 3 slightly faster, S540 much better image quality (get the latest drivers!). So, a new Stealth III S540 with 32 MB is on the way. I'll soon be ready for CoolColJ's larger textures. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
guachi Posted February 20, 2000 Share Posted February 20, 2000 WARNING! I just recently got an AGP Stealth 540 Extreme as a late Christmas gift. While it is certainly faster than my old Matrox G200 with 8MB, for some reason the textures (expecially the ground textures) look absolutely horrible in CM. I mean, absolutely miserable rotten awful kind of bad. All textures are extremely blocky. After a week of of recovering from a hard drive crash while attempting to install the card in the first place, I finally got it working only to see these miserable textures. I've tried everything I could - latest drivers, reference drivers, BIOS tweaking to preferred settings. Nothing has worked. My other programs look fine, just not CM. FOr my CM PBEM opponents, fiddling with my card, the hard drive crash, and a CD-ROM drive that is acting up (it refuses most of the time to be detected at boot up) are what have been consuming my time this week. I've given up on the CD-ROM drive - my solution is to leave the computer on as long as possible once the CD-ROM drive is actually detected. And I'm tempted to return the graphics card, although since it was mail-order it will be a pain to return. Maybe I'll spend $50 more and get a V770 TNT2. Jason Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lindan Posted February 20, 2000 Share Posted February 20, 2000 Jason: DON'T get a Diamond card if you don't have to! More pain to come. If you want a TNT2 /Ultra get Creative Labs, Guillemot or ELSA. Diamond Drivers suck. just my 2p. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lee Posted February 20, 2000 Share Posted February 20, 2000 I'd get the Hercules TNT2 Ultra to replace thet defective card. Next to the Xentor it's the fastest Ultra card out there and should be available for a good price. If you have trouble finding that, then get the Guillemot Xentor 32, should cost more than the Hercules card but it's also a nice card. By the way, I think the Hercules card is called the Dynamite TNT2 Ultra or something like that. Check some of your favorite local and mail order hardware stores for them. Oh and if things are as bad as guachi said, you might want to go with that voodoo 3, aaron. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest aaronb Posted March 10, 2000 Share Posted March 10, 2000 I type this update while hanging my head in wonderment. Aren't computers supposed to be easy to work with today? 1) if it ain't broke, don't fix it. 2) if lots of people tell horror stories about a certain product/manufacturer, and no-one pipes-up in defence, don't buy it. 1) the onboard video (Intel 810e chipset) was working fine (at least with Beta Demo smoke!). I got all lathered up about FPS and temporarily lost my senses. 2) after 13 hours of labour (including time to fill out a Fedex waybill for return shipment), I have given up on the Diamond Stealth III s540 32MB PCI. The entire system was grossly unstable (30-300 seconds before total system lockup), without any programs running, unless I disabled all the accelerator features. I can tell you that CM at 640x480 and 1.5fps is not so much fun. Lessons for others: - according to the Diamond tech guy(s), on-board video is likely to conflict with any card that uses 32MB, due overlapping memory address issues. This might even be correct. - even though the onboard video was disabled in the BIOS (no jumper), Win98 still found it, and created a dual-monitor configuration with the onboard as secondary (and disabled). This may have contributed. - Dell tech support was, as usual, courteous and smart (especially considering that the Stealth was not their fault). - a web search shows the 810e chipset at about 60% of the fps of an NVIDIA Riva TNT2, so, RAM issues aside, it should do for the gold release. - Diamond's return policy is straightforward, but you pay shipping via a trackable method (e.g., Fedex @ $34CDN). When the gold demo comes out, we'll know for sure if the 810e and a 433Celeron can handle transparent smoke. I could always overclock the Celeron. Thanks to all who responded, some via email. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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