Newer games are more graphics card dependant .

[TrinireturnofGamez]

The first time i played Generals was on my TNT2 32mb . As you can imagine it played sloooowww . The loading was sloow, the game speed was sllooooww and generally the whole thing was sloow . I thought it was my old P III and slow ram . I didn't expect to see my radeon 8500 speed it up 10 fold .
 It seemed that the problem was the video memory , 32mb was not enough for even low res textures, so it dumped it into the RAM , which dumped into the virtual memory . The pausing to save textures in vmem every 5 seconds slowed the game down . Enter the radeon , the 128mb of DDR was 10x as fast. It could more than hold all the textures and particles at highest detail and 2x anti aliasing . The game is beautiful AND plays fast .
   It seems that nowadays games are becoming less CPU intensive and more GPU intensive . Like people with 450 MHZ P IIs being able to play unreal tournament 2k3 [ with a geforce 2 ultra ] smooth . Any comments ?                    

[Bsensei]

whats the price of this card Radeon 9000+ all                    

[TrinireturnofGamez]

actually all radeon cards from 8500-9200 use the same chipset, just different memory speeds, clock speeds etc. The 8500 is the best of the lot tho, like 80 US on pricewatch for a 128mb one when  i bought it . Doubt you will find many now .                    

[Czar]

It seems that nowadays games are becoming less CPU intensive and more GPU intensive

It's been turning that way for a while now actually, the thing is, a GPU can do way more work in less time than your general CPU because the GPU is optimised for that type of work, hence, offload the brunt of the work onto the GPU and you can use more CPU time for other things like enhanced AI, pathfinding and other general bits and pieces.

I remember when I got my first Riva TNT 16MB card, it gave my old P200-MMX another 12 months of life, it was absolutely amazing that that 1 piece of hardware could lengthen the life of my machine by so much...and with the advances in graphics card technologies like hardware T&L, pixel shaders and much much more, a graphics card upgrade can bring even more life to an aging PC...                    

[PapaSmurf]

and that is why ppl should not be so quick to buy a new chip each time AMD and Intel release a new model.

I have a system runnin a P3 866 with 386 SD RAM: it also packs a Nvidia GeForce4 MX 9000 card w/64mb. And it can run rings around a P4 1.5ghz with the same amount of Ram with a 32mb Vid card.

As soon as the chip makers from AMD/Intel cross the 4 ghz barrier and Vid cards get about 256 mb DDR ram, then i'll know it's time for a new machine.                    

[TriniXaeno]

yes, in our world, the video card is indeed king.                    

[hiddenagenda]

lol@king
I goota upgrade my vidcard in a 2 months yes.
gf4 no cut it any more                    

[Czar]

it also packs a Nvidia GeForce4 MX 9000 card w/64mb.

Oooohhh, that's an interesting card...u sure u not mixin up a couple gfx card names there meh boy? doh tink d mx series has a 9000 anywhere in it...                    

[PapaSmurf]

Well that's what it says on the Box and the card itself.
But i suspect it may be a GF4 MX420 64 SDR PCI card, that's the closest thing i can find with the same specs.                    

[hiddenagenda]

MX 9000 ?
That's quer
And what is it showing up as in ur device manager?                    

[TrinireturnofGamez]

Maybe his MX is one of those cheap ass third company builds . Those need their own drivers and stock nvidia drivers can cause bugs .
   MX 420? owned.......  





   I summon BLIZZAAARD!                    

[Talib]

eh i lookin fuh a new hard-drive an like i want xp too na...bout how much dat will come up to?                    

[!Synth]

actually all radeon cards from 8500-9200 use the same chipset, just different memory speeds, clock speeds etc. The 8500 is the best of the lot tho, like 80 US on pricewatch for a 128mb one when  i bought it . Doubt you will find many now .

8500 = 9100, hardware feature wise.

9000, 9200 is stripped of 4 pipelines.                    

[Anonymous]

Ati radeon pro 9800 pro is a sweet board,nvidia can't contest this card in D3D.!!                    

[unimatrix001]

pplz... of course games are dependant on the vidcard... de better vidcard u have, de better de gameplay graphix (unless u have a dread vidcard and a suck ass system)                    

[PapaSmurf]

HYMC @ cheap ass third company builds
I got mine from baego himself.

But it doesn't matter as in 3 wks I will own a ATI card.                    

[TrinireturnofGamez]

:-D  :-D  :-D  :-D  :-D  :-D
 ATI all de way mon                    

[heero]

ATi 4 life (I trying to get gold)

But they need to get some better manufacturers on-board, like asus and MSI, everybody has currently sold their soul to nvidia.

I wouldn't put it past them to threaten to stop providing nforce2 and FX chipsets to any of these guys who thinking about making ATi cards...                    

[TriniXaeno]

smurf was in the unfortunate situation of having a board with no AGP slot, only PCI.

It was either 1) Change the mobo and get an AGP card or 2) Get an exotic PCI Geforce4

We went with option 2.

Synth, Is there any ATI 8500 or 9800 Card available in PCI?                    

[PapaSmurf]

I am sure there must be. ATI is very accommodating to ppl whop need the power of the PCI slot.