Airmiles

Any gamers out there?

Would I expect to need/benefit from a graphics card to run Flight Unlimited III on a 700 MHz Pentium III?

Thanks
Miles

Blow Dog

Well, u need a graphics card to run anything and I am presuming you already have one.

What is the one you have?

I am about to go and buy the daddy of all graphics cards, the geforce2 gts, nearly £400 tho.

However, you will notice a kick *** difference in things such as resolution, colour depth and more importantly frame rates, the single most important thing to make a flight simulator run as smooth as possible.

Simple answer to your question, yes, putting a 'good' card in your machine will make a BIG difference. Processors make little difference to gameplay graphics these days.

Cem

Sith

Cem,

Don't do it. There is a new NVidia card meant to be released not long after Christmas. If memory serves me correctly.

Check out http:\tomshardware.com It'll tell you what to expect. The Geforce 2 cards aren't as quick as they could be, 'cause the memory bandwidth is the same as the Geforce DDR cards.

I am thinking about getting a DDR card. It's cheaper, almost as fast and the only thing it doesn't do aswell is FSAA.

You run the Mak' in yet?

P.

Blow Dog

Sith,
Yeah I heard about this new card, but will it support AGP? Or is there a new AGB bus?

Either way, my PC at home goes **** up about 10 times a night and I need to format it desperately (wanna help? ) so I thought I would kill 2 birds with one stone. However, it may be a good idea to wait, as you say.

The Mak is well and truely run in . Dono at end of month. Can't wait.

Cem

DavidBrown

I have a GeForce2 64MB DDR 4x AGP card (motherboard supports 4x AGP too fortunately)

Highly recommended.

robski

Geforce 2 is faster than geforce SDR, not a massive amount, circa 10%

Ive got the 32MB jobbie it rocks.

Sounds like you are looking at the ultra, that is over the top, unless you plan on using 1600 res or higher, then the "normal" card becomes memory bandwith limited. Use one of the web retailers if you need a card.

The other option is the geforce 2 gts pro, it fits between the ultra and the normal gts.
Its got the faster memory of the ultra, with the "slower" core from the normal version.

I would go for that, not the ultra.

These cards are highly overclockable tho.
Can mail details to anyone who wants them, BUT I do not accept any liability if somethin goes wrong!

visit these two

ChrisB

Unless you guys are ultra hardcore gamers, I'd go for the GeForce MX 32MB AGP puppy.

Dabs have the Creative one for £85.

Blow Dog

I already have a geforce prophet, but i dont feel it is enough. I DO play a lot of games too so I notice the extra fps.

cem

ScoobyDoo555

I'd go for the VooDoo 5/5500 - really good and only about £250.
Problems are minimal - might need an extra cooling fan or A/c unit in there and a PSU. Also it's a BIG card!!!!

V good though
Just my 2p

Lee

It does get to be a bit "mines bigger than yours" though. I recently built a system so I just bought best of today's breed (1.1GHz athlon, 64MB geforce2 blah and sb live). You won't catch me upgrading it though !

Its daft. The gfx card was 309+VAT. For that you could buy a PSX2.

robski

guys, one way to get some extra fps
ensure that vsync is turned off

the graphic card waits for the monitor to start the next refresh, and syncronises

can make a lot of diff, especially if you have your monitor at a high res, where it cannot support a high refresh

robski

dowser

Best thing about running a decent graphics card are the extra cycles your CPU can spend on the game's physics.

Couldn't believe the difference the first GeForce DDR made to TOCA2!

Richard