PCI Card for Doom 3? Need Help.

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.games.doom (More info?)

Hello Everyone. One of my buddies bought a new PC several months ago
and wants to play Doom 3. Here are the stats:

HP a335w
------------------
2.5 GHz P4
768 MB DDR SDRAM
80 Gig hard drive
Pine Technologies GeForce FX 5200 PCI card with 256 MB video RAM

The game does not play smoothly on 800x600 or 640x480. I used the
FRAPs program on 800x600 with all other advanced graphic features
turned off and got about 15 frames per second. I don't know how
accurate FRAPs is, but my point is that it isn't any fun to play at
this speed. The game is pretty much unplayable at 1024x768.

The stats on the processor and RAM look pretty good to me, but from
what I have read, the 256 MB GeForce FX 5200 PCI card ($100) is not
that greatest of cards for games like Doom 3 with high-end graphics.
The problem is that there are no AGP slots, only 2 PCI slots. He
doesn't want to buy a new motherboard. I've looked online and it
seems like the choices for PCI graphics cards are pretty limited.

Does anyone have any suggestions for a good PCI card that they know
will work well with Doom 3? Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks,

Chad

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.games.doom (More info?)

"ChadDiesel" <shaqattack1992-newsgroups@yahoo.com> wrote in message
>
> The stats on the processor and RAM look pretty good to me, but from
> what I have read, the 256 MB GeForce FX 5200 PCI card ($100) is not
> that greatest of cards for games like Doom 3 with high-end graphics.
> The problem is that there are no AGP slots, only 2 PCI slots. He
> doesn't want to buy a new motherboard. I've looked online and it
> seems like the choices for PCI graphics cards are pretty limited.
>

Unfortunately, that's because PCI is a vastly inferior technology to the
modern AGP cards; your friend won't get much better performance out of the
game no matter what PCI card he buys. It's sad but true. The graphics card
is a serious bottleneck on that system; even a low-end AGP card would beat
the pants off anything PCI.

--
--
There is no spoon.

EvilBill - http://www.evilbill.co.uk
My Quake2 FTP site: ftp://65.30.181.223/quake2/EvilBill/
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[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.games.doom (More info?)

From "EvilBill" devlin_wright@tiscali.co.uk :

> . . . PCI is a vastly inferior technology to
> the modern AGP cards . . .
> even a low-end AGP card would beat
> the pants off anything PCI.

I am trying to build a PC from scratch and I want to play
DOOM 3 in full-bore mode with all the extra effects.
I have been told that the best card for this is the ATI
RADEON. I went to ATI's website. They make it look
like the top of the line is the X800, but this card is
described as 'PCI Express'. Two notches down from
this is the RADEON 9800, which is described as 'AGP'.
So which is better ?

Also, did someone in this group mention a few weeks
ago that 512 megs video RAM would be ideal ? It looks
like RADEON cards max out at 256 megs.

Computers have changed so much since I was building them !

Sean Bernard
SeanB51229@aol.com

 

[BW]

Archived from groups: alt.games.doom (More info?)

PCI Express is the newest technology, and is *way* faster than plain old
PCI, and faster than AGP too. Obviously you need a motherboard with PCI
Express slots to use such a card.
For Doom3, a 512 megs video card would allow you to play at ultra quality
mode smoothly, but tbh, I think you'd have to look hard to notice any
difference between high and ultra quality mode anyway. Also, I'm not even
sure there *are* any consumer-level video cards with 512 megs available yet,
but maybe there are.
Anyway, to answer you first question, I'm pretty sure the X800 is better,
but there's loads of benchmark comparisons around on the web, if you wanna
check.

> I am trying to build a PC from scratch and I want to play
> DOOM 3 in full-bore mode with all the extra effects.
> I have been told that the best card for this is the ATI
> RADEON. I went to ATI's website. They make it look
> like the top of the line is the X800, but this card is
> described as 'PCI Express'. Two notches down from
> this is the RADEON 9800, which is described as 'AGP'.
> So which is better ?
>
> Also, did someone in this group mention a few weeks
> ago that 512 megs video RAM would be ideal ? It looks
> like RADEON cards max out at 256 megs.
>
> Computers have changed so much since I was building them !
>
> Sean Bernard
> SeanB51229@aol.com