advice for VIDEO card upgrading

[Crockett]

I purchased Combat Mission a few days ago and I wait for my copy to hit my doormat .

My system is : a Pentium II , 350 MHz , 64MB RAM , 3 dfx Woodoo 1 and ATI Rage PRO XPERT 98 AGP 2X as a display card , ( Windows ME installed and all drivers updated , DirectX 7.....)

Since yesterday , I see the possibility to partially upgrade my system . I think that I'll wait a few months ( may be 6 or more ) for the prices of the Pentium 4 to drop down to a fair price and meanwhile I'll upgrade my Video card ( as I said a 3dfx Woodoo 1 today ) .

[ I may get some more Ram ( 128 MB ) but , will the RAM for the Pentium 2 work on a Pentium 4 ( or 3 ) ? ]

The question is which is the best video card ? ( to play CM of course but not only CM ) . Names as Woodoo5 or GETFORCE ( GT OR MX ) do not mean a lot me .Is there a big difference between them ?? The more I read reviews the more I am confused !

What is FSAA ? LOD setting

May be there is no objective answer to my question , but if there is and one of them is better but also more expensive , the question is : is the difference in quality so dramatic that it worth the price ?

Thanks .

[brooktrout]

I've been using PC's at work and home now for fifteen years and RAM prices are the best that I have seen. I consider 128 meg the minimum for most situations. You probably will not see any performance increase above 128 meg unless you are running NT.

I have not read much about the P4 yet but I think Intel is still pushing RAMBUS memory with the P4. Somebody correct me on this if I am wrong.

[Olle Petersson]

If you're thinking of changing CPU that soon, don't bother about more RAM.

As for Graphics card; I'm not too much into the tech stuff myself, but there are a few aspects: How much money can you spend, what are you going to use it for, and how long are you planning to keep it?

The latest Voodooo have been troublesome for some persons, but not for others.

The GeForce series is good. I've just ordered a GeForce 256. Not the latest technology, but fairly cheap and good for now, especially with the graphics used in CM (few polygons, large textures). The GeForce2 series is better. GTS is state of the art, but expensive, MX is a low price version with some limitations but the latest tech. If you're bying a GeForce2 MX make sure you get SDR memory and not DDR, since SDR use a 128 bit bus and DDR use 64 bits for that GPU. GeForce2 Go is specially designed for laptop computers that need to have low power consumption.

Cheers

Olle

[medlinke]

I agree about RAM prices. Go to www.pricewatch.com and check out the RAM prices. They had some 128 meg 133mHz RAM for $45 + $9.99 shipping. Definately well worth the upgrade

[Schrullenhaft]

As others have pointed out: The memory you purchase for your system today will NOT work with a Pentium 4 system since the initial ones will require RDRAM - a very expensive RAM technology that will hopefully die off soon. In the second half of 2001 there may be chipsets that will support SDRAM/DDR SDRAM (the latter of the two being the primary type). Going to a Pentium 4 is going to require a whole new system. Your current motherboard will be unable to support a Pentium 4.

It does come down to a matter of cost and what you're going to do in the future. You can upgrade your current system (with some limitations from your motherboard, etc.). But if you're going to buy a new computer 6 months from now it may not be worth the expense to upgrade (unless you can afford to do both).

When you're playing CM it's probably using your ATI Rage Pro video card (which is incapable of displaying fog-tables as its biggest weakness). The Voodoo1 would probably have more compatibility problems with CM and may not be much faster (if at all) over the ATI card.

If you're intent on upgrading your current system with a new video card, then I would suggest a GeForce2 MX. The cost is reasonable, there are minimal display issues with CM and your CPU should be just about fast enough to get some speed benefits out of it. Getting a faster card (GeForce2 GTS, Voodoo 4500/5500, Radeon) would probably be a bit of a waste since your CPU wouldn't be fast enough to get the full speed benefits out of these particular video cards. By the way, the Radeon has the same fog issues as your current ATI video card (at least for the moment).

More memory may help, but probably not to the extent that you may be expecting. 128Mb is something of a standard/minimal recommendation for new systems. With Win9x/ME you may see a bit of a small speed improvement, but probably not much unless you run a lot of applications concurrently.

Within CM it may make larger maps/scenarios a little bit faster.

A faster CPU could definitely help since CM has a lot of floating point calculations. However your motherboard will probably limit you as to what CPUs you can upgrade to (you may or may not be able to support the Pentium III Coppermines - most likely you will need a new motherboard to get this support).

[Crockett]

Thank everybody for your quick answers to my question

I made my choice and will go for a GeForce2 MX ( with SDR memory as you suggest) , which looks like the best choice ( Price/Performance ratio) for my present system .

One more question :

I'm not a technical guru ( AT ALL ! Just want to play ) and I'm a bit confused when I see that there is a LOT of GeForce2 MX cards from different brands ( AsusTeck, Creative , Elsa ,Inno3D , eVGA , Guillemont / Hercules , Janton , Leadtek ) .Is there any important differences between them ?.

Thanks again

[marco]

All geforce 2 mx (a good choice for your money, good as a geforce sdr that 6 month ago costed near 250$..) are similar, as You can see at: http://www.tomshardware.com/graphic/00q3/000904/geforce2mx-10.html

but further details are at:http://www.tomshardware.com/graphic/00q3/000904/geforce2mx-13.html#conclusion

Hi,

Marco

[pmiranda]

Hi,

I'm having a similar problem. In fact, my current TNT2 video card works just fine, except the game randomly crashes after a few minutes: screen is frozen. I tried lots of different things, used the latest drivers, directX, upgraded BIOS, etc. but it's still the same. Or is it that another device (mouse? screen?) has a problem?

The video card works more or less otherwise, although I experienced the same problem with other 3D games and another display problem running 2D Battleground games. I'm under the impression the card is KIA and I might need to change it.

I have a Celeron 466 on an ASUS P2B-F motherboard, 128MB RAM and a flat screen.

[Schrullenhaft]

pmiranda - I have a system running a Creative TNT2 Ultra and an ASUS P2B-F m/b (Win98 2nd) and I haven't experienced any particular problems with CM.

When you say "flat screen" I assume that you still mean that you have a CRT and not an LCD monitor; is that true ? LCD's (except for some of the newest video cards) have to have an analog to digital converter (which is built in to the display) in order to be used with most video cards. Assuming that you have a CRT and your problem is "freezes", then I wouldn't assume that your monitor is to blame.

What mouse do you use ? Are you using drivers from the mouse manufacturer or from Microsoft (via Win9x). Some mouse drivers need to be updated to fix occasional problems (usually artifacts left on the display, etc.). If you're using the latest driver from the manufacturer, then you may want to try a generic driver that comes with Windows (a "standard serial mouse" or "standard PS/2 mouse", depending on your type).

What video drivers are you using with your TNT2 ? Are they NVidia reference drivers or are they releases from the manufacturer ? If they're the NVidia reference drivers I wouldn't recommend using anything newer than the 6.31/6.35 or the BETA 6.47s. The 7.xx series at the moment has many problems. I'm not sure what the benefits of the Detonator 3 series (6.xx) when it comes to TNT2s - most of the modifications and speed improvements apply to GeForce series (and a couple of Detonator 3s cause some performance problems with TNT2s). Some manufacturers prefer that you use their drivers over the reference ones that NVidia provides. This seems to be especially true of ASUS and a couple of others.

What are the display problems that you're seeing in the other games ? Do you know if your video card is sharing an IRQ with another device (especially a sound card or modem) ? If it is, then you may need to do some reconfiguring in order to get it to either have its own IRQ or share one with a device that doesn't get used while you're gaming.

[pmiranda]

I uninstalled my mouse/keyboard driver (I got a Logitech cordless mouse+keyboard), and it looks as if the problem is fixed. I haven't played enough yet to know if it's gone for good, though...

By the way, my TNT2Ultra card's BIOS had to be upgraded to 2.05.13 (incompatibility with ASUS P2B-F because of power supply, otherwise). I also upgraded my ASUS BIOS to 10.13A. I'm using the latest card driver from the manufacturer (Guillemot).

[pmiranda]

Damn! It's not the mouse driver: the game still freezes randomly.

Dear Schrullenhaft, what information do you need exactly to determine what's wrong? I think we have very similar configurations.

Help! This game is too good to stop playing it because of technical problems! :-(

[Schrullenhaft]

I have a SoundBlaster Live Value and a Creative TNT2 Ultra along with several other PCI devices. In order to free up IRQs I've disabled USB (which will use a PCI IRQ). For CM's purposes I've made sure that the sound card and the video card don't share an IRQ. My video card however does share an IRQ with a 3Com 3C905B ethernet NIC (which is unused at the moment). My sound card does not share an IRQ with any other devices.

So you may want to check what IRQs your sound card and video card are using and if they're shared with any other devices. It's OK to share IRQs, but if the devices have to be used concurrently there could be problems (and the drivers may not handle these problems well - resulting in lockups).

To check your IRQ assignments go to Control Panels > System control panel > Device Manager tab > double-click the Computer icon in the list and a dialog box should come up with a listing of IRQ assignments. Ignore the "IRQ Holder for PCI Steering" as a shared device - each PCI device will have one of these "devices" match it.

[pmiranda]

OK. I also have a SB Live! Value sound card. I checked the IRQs and I noticed my Ethernet Adapter uses the same IRQ as my Xentor 32 TNT2 Ultra card. Is that the problem?

I use this network card to connect to the web via cable.

Should I change the IRQ assignments? How?

Thanks for your help!

[Schrullenhaft]

My TNT2 Ultra AGP also shares its IRQ with a NIC (in this case a 3Com 3C905B). However I'm not using it currently, so that could be a difference. I'm guessing that your Cable internet service is always "on" when you boot up ? Do you have the latest drivers for your ethernet NIC ? Do you have any internet utilities/programs loaded up while you're playing CM (like Napster or something else) ? If so you may want to disable them while you're playing and see if that changes anything for you.

The ASUS P2B-F has the capability of assigning IRQs to each PCI slot in the CMOS/BIOS setup (a great feature that not many other motherboards have). The AGP slot is going to grab the same IRQ as the first PCI slot. So if you have something in that slot it will typically use the same IRQ as the AGP card. Sometimes sharing an IRQ with the AGP card is unavoidable - the 2nd PCI slot may also end up sharing an IRQ with the AGP slot if there's nothing in the 1st PCI slot. How many PCI devices do you have (including USB) ? If you have any free IRQs (usually IRQs 5, 9, 10, 11 & 12 can be assigned to PCI devices, though some others can also be used and 12 is used for PS/2 mice) you may be able to assign them to the 1st PCI slot in the CMOS/BIOS setup (Plug and Play portion of the setup). You may then need to physically move any PCI cards from the first PCI slot to another one, but some of the higher numbered slots (4 & 5) share IRQs with the USB device or other PCI slots.

One other problem that will occur however, if you physically move your PCI cards around, is that your devices will be redetected and new drivers will need to be installed for them (you'll get requests for driver or Win98 CD, etc.). Your video will probably come up in VGA 16 color and other possible changes. The biggest problem would be the possible screw up to your Cable modem setup; requiring you to reinstall network protocols and clients, etc. So this could be quite a chore just to find a possible solution to your CM lockups.

[This message has been edited by Schrullenhaft (edited 12-08-2000).]