How much details and far can I go with a Radeon 9800 Pro. ..

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.comp.periphs.videocards.ati (More info?)

I was just reading
http://www.rage3d.com/board/showthread.php?threadid=33751308 thread
about playing UT2K4 with a very high details you'll need a 256MB VGA
card!

Can someone please kindly explain how the math work for combinations
of video settings and resolutions? How high and far can I go with my
ATI Radeon Pro AIW with 128 MB of RAM? I mostly use 1152x864
resolution, 32-bit, anisotropic at 16X (max), 2x FSAA, quality, and
many other stuff I like to max out. If there is not enough video
memory, what happens? Does the game start using HDD, get choppy, etc.?
If not, then what types of symptoms show up (e.g., graphic
corruptions)?

Is there an utility to watch/log how much video memory is being used
in the video card? My system configuration can be found here:
http://alpha.zimage.com/~ant/antfarm/about/computers.txt ...

Thank you in advance.
--
"You'd think we could just attract ants like normal people."
--Wolverine (X-Men:TAS)
/\___/\
/ /\ /\ \ Phillip Pi (Ant) @ The Ant Farm: http://antfarm.ma.cx
| |o o| | E-mail: philpi@earthlink.netANT or ANTant@zimage.com
\ _ / Remove ANT if replying by e-mail from a newsgroup/mailing
( ) list.

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.comp.periphs.videocards.ati (More info?)

ANTant@zimage.com wrote in message news:<r9idnWCQk4AGA-XdRVn-vg@mminternet.net>...
> I was just reading
> http://www.rage3d.com/board/showthread.php?threadid=33751308 thread
> about playing UT2K4 with a very high details you'll need a 256MB VGA
> card!
>
> Can someone please kindly explain how the math work for combinations
> of video settings and resolutions? How high and far can I go with my
> ATI Radeon Pro AIW with 128 MB of RAM? I mostly use 1152x864
> resolution, 32-bit, anisotropic at 16X (max), 2x FSAA, quality, and
> many other stuff I like to max out. If there is not enough video
> memory, what happens? Does the game start using HDD, get choppy, etc.?
> If not, then what types of symptoms show up (e.g., graphic
> corruptions)?
>
> Is there an utility to watch/log how much video memory is being used
> in the video card? My system configuration can be found here:
> http://alpha.zimage.com/~ant/antfarm/about/computers.txt ...
>
> Thank you in advance.

Don't worry... Directx and the videocard drivers will take care of
everything. Really... only 2d can be calculated ..because 3d depends
on the quality of the textures, the vision of depth..the number of
players/items in the game.

So just leave all that to the drivers/directx...if your card has 128Mb
....it will ensure the games run at that.. if your card has 64Mb ..it
will ensure the games run at such ... and so on!

 

[blah]

Archived from groups: alt.comp.periphs.videocards.ati (More info?)

<ANTant@zimage.com> wrote in message
news:r9idnWCQk4AGA-XdRVn-vg@mminternet.net...
> I was just reading
> http://www.rage3d.com/board/showthread.php?threadid=33751308 thread
> about playing UT2K4 with a very high details you'll need a 256MB VGA
> card!
>
> Can someone please kindly explain how the math work for combinations
> of video settings and resolutions? How high and far can I go with my
> ATI Radeon Pro AIW with 128 MB of RAM? I mostly use 1152x864
> resolution, 32-bit, anisotropic at 16X (max), 2x FSAA, quality, and
> many other stuff I like to max out. If there is not enough video
> memory, what happens? Does the game start using HDD, get choppy, etc.?
> If not, then what types of symptoms show up (e.g., graphic
> corruptions)?
>
> Is there an utility to watch/log how much video memory is being used
> in the video card? My system configuration can be found here:
> http://alpha.zimage.com/~ant/antfarm/about/computers.txt ...
>
> Thank you in advance.
> --
> "You'd think we could just attract ants like normal people."
> --Wolverine (X-Men:TAS)
> /\___/\
> / /\ /\ \ Phillip Pi (Ant) @ The Ant Farm: http://antfarm.ma.cx
> | |o o| | E-mail: philpi@earthlink.netANT or ANTant@zimage.com
> \ _ / Remove ANT if replying by e-mail from a newsgroup/mailing
> ( ) list.



On card memory only affects the size (quality) of the textures that can be
loaded. A high quality texture uses more memory than a low quality texture,
multiply this by the hundreds of textures used in a level and you could work
this out. I did see someone do this for Q3, but can't recall where.
Things like AA and FSAA are done by the processor on the VGA card (assuming
hardware based).
When you run out of on card memory then you start to use AGP aperture memory
(that setting in the BIOS), which is just a bit of your RAM (this slows
things down as well), then the HDD swap file I imagine. Your system would
probably just choke and you FPS drop.
Most benchmarking I have seen you only get 1-2 fps advantage with 256Mb mem.
If you want to know how far you can go just crank up the resolution till it
becomes unplayable
AFAIK FSAA is disabled at 1600*1200, but I could be wrong about that.

I'm sure some of what I wrote is incorrect, but it's just a guide.