S.T.A.L.K.E.R.mod

by **Balious** on 27 Sep 2008 12:02

Seeing as i still need a new graphics card i thought i make my own subject on it.

I currently have a NVIDIA Geforce 8400 GS. I want a better graphics card and hopefully it being very cheap.

by **fatrap** on 27 Sep 2008 12:19

I just upgraded to a EVGA 9800 GTX+ from a 7800GT and there is quite a difference.... the 9800 GTX+ is a odd duck, it really belongs in the 200 series family instead of the 9000 series because of its' smaller die. It has no problem running STALKER on max settings. Anyhow, it seems to be running around $200 and some vendors have rebates...

by **EggChen** on 27 Sep 2008 13:33

Have you tried that baby on CS yet Fatrap?

I was thinking of a 280, so I can max teh shit out of Farcry2 :sunny:

by **fatrap** on 27 Sep 2008 13:43

EggChen wrote:Have you tried that baby on CS yet Fatrap?

I was thinking of a 280, so I can max teh shit out of Farcry2

Nope.... haven't got CS yet! It seemed to run Crysis pretty good..... i just ran on the default medium settings 'cause the rest of my system is holding it back! :sad7:

by **EggChen** on 27 Sep 2008 14:02

Nice, I have tried Crysis recently but decided to hold off until my upgrade.

I'm using a 7800AGP 512Mb, with a dual core 6600, and I managed to get Crysis all on high, with a couple of mediums for the more intensive settings, at 1024x768. Smooth as you like.

Seems like a good game, but I may only play it once, so I'll wait :angryfire:

Anyway - back to the heart of the topic, I like the look of the 200 series in general. I know ATI have trounced it for performance with their latest card, but I think taking into account noise, heat and power consumption as well, the 200 series is the way to go.

The only game they wont play at high res is CS, and I don't think any card does, poorly optimised engine. My only concern for the 280 is the lack of DX10.1 support, but I also read that the differences will be minimal at best between DX10 and 10.1.

Anyone know anything more on this?

by **ket** on 27 Sep 2008 15:33

As long as your system is powerful enough, the HD3870 makes an EXREMELY powerful card for as little as £70 for a 512MB HD3870. Stock the card sould be doing 10k in 3dmark06 standing on its head. OCd the card will do 12k+.

by **EggChen** on 27 Sep 2008 15:35

So what score you getting with Crossfire ket?

by **Balious** on 27 Sep 2008 17:18

Guess i should show all my system specs here:

Processor: Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Quad CPU Q6600 @ 2.40GHz (4 CPUs)

Memory: 1022MB RAM

Hard Drive: 320 GB

Video Card: NVIDIA GeForce 8400 GS

Monitor: Plug and Play Monitor

Sound Card: Realtek HD Audio output

Operating System: Windows XP Professional

This was taken from my xfire specs.
Im also trying to get more memory as well as a graphics card.

by **Kanyhalos** on 27 Sep 2008 17:23

MY PC:

Mainboard: Intel ASRock P4i65G

CPU: Intel Pentium 2.4 Ghz

RAM: Kingston 2Gb DDR400

VGA: Sapphire Radeon x1950Pro 512Mb

Monitor: CTX 17"

Soundcard: Realtek Gigabit

OpSys: Windows XP SP3

by **audioave10** on 27 Sep 2008 17:39

I'm thinking best bang for the "high end buck" is the GTX260. Might be my next card. About $270 US right now. Although ATI has some really good cards right now Nvidia spend more time with game developers
and it shows with the drivers.

by **ket** on 28 Sep 2008 13:12

EggChen wrote:So what score you getting with Crossfire ket?

Insanely, my C2D @ 3.4GHz bottlenecks my HD3870s in CF, once I get a new CPU and clock the snot out of it (4GHz+) my CF score should be around 20 - 22k in 3dm06.

Balious wrote:Guess i should show all my system specs here:

Processor: Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Quad CPU Q6600 @ 2.40GHz (4 CPUs)

Memory: 1022MB RAM

Hard Drive: 320 GB

Video Card: NVIDIA GeForce 8400 GS

Monitor: Plug and Play Monitor

Sound Card: Realtek HD Audio output

Operating System: Windows XP Professional

This was taken from my xfire specs.
Im also trying to get more memory as well as a graphics card.

What mainboard do you have Bal? You can use CPU-Z to find out if your not sure ;) First thing I would advise is getting at least 2x1GB memory sticks, you will notice a huge boost in games especially. Overclockers.co.uk sell some great Kingston HyperX PC8500 memory for £35. Assuming your mobo is a half decent one, you will see huge gains from OCing your quad.

by **Nightwatch** on 28 Sep 2008 23:36

audioave10 wrote:I'm thinking best bang for the "high end buck" is the GTX260. Might be my next card. About $270 US right now. Although ATI has some really good cards right now Nvidia spend more time with game developers
and it shows with the drivers.

GTX260 is now available as 216 cores as well, in addition to the 192 cores model. 20-305 more expensive though.
GTX280 has 240 cores, so gap is closing.

by **nandersen** on 03 Oct 2008 20:07

Let me give me an anti-advice, i.e. which card I can't recommend: GeForce 9800 GTX from XFX. One word: Heat!

by **audioave10** on 23 Oct 2008 05:30

Just download Rivatuner 2.9 and set your fan speed to 65% and your good to go. It seems like all cards these days (Ati & Nvidia) have a
default fan speed of 33% and that's not enough for serious gaming
like Stalker or Crysis. I've always done this and never had a card be too hot. You should also have a good case with intake and exhaust fans set
to move air through the case (usually front to back).

by **nandersen** on 23 Oct 2008 08:59

I AM using RivaTuner and I have a pretty neat fan control scheme setup up... still, even with open case I get it to heat up to 64 deg. or more. With closed case and the fan control it gets as hot as 71 deg. at which temp the fan turns at 85%. I've set it to go 100% at 76 deg.

The VGA that I bought is factory OCd to 720 MHz - I expect that if they do something like this they should improve the automatic fan speed control also.

by **Nightwatch** on 23 Oct 2008 16:52

nandersen wrote:I AM using RivaTuner and I have a pretty neat fan control scheme setup up... still, even with open case I get it to heat up to 64 deg. or more. With closed case and the fan control it gets as hot as 71 deg. at which temp the fan turns at 85%. I've set it to go 100% at 76 deg.

The VGA that I bought is factory OCd to 720 MHz - I expect that if they do something like this they should improve the automatic fan speed control also.

9800GTX series run quite high, 70C seems (though not cool at all) somewhat within the acceptable region. OC ones would be expected to go even higher; and you're right on the failure of XFX in respect of their negligence in improving the cooling accordingly with their OC levels. But they (most of the manufacturers) usually skip this section nowadays in favor of cost cutting, as we know. I'd suggest that you may consider allowing 100% fan speed at around 65-67C, a bit noisy, but would help the card more.

by **Balious** on 24 Oct 2008 13:41

Ok guys a little question for you all.

Whats better?
nVidia SLI 9500 GT or NVidia geforce 8800 GT?

Only asking cause my friend who is looking for specs is confusing me with graphics cards saying 8800 is not worth getting and all that.

He said i should get the 9600GT instead of 8800 GT.

What do you lot think?

by **EggChen** on 24 Oct 2008 20:51

Check here....

http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/gami ... ks,30.html

Choose a game, and a resolution you may be interested in. Example :

http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/gami ... 6,744.html

On that one example the results don't exactly back your friend up.

8800gt 1024mb 83.3fps
9600gt 1024mb 71.4fps

by **audioave10** on 27 Oct 2008 04:32

Balious...tell your friend that SLI is only best used with strong cards, if not
he will find that the next $150 card released will outperform his SLI too
soon. 9600GT's have one main concern...they are single slot cards that
easily fit any case which means they have tiny cooling fans and might
get FRIED without good cooling in his case. They are pretty good though.

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