UNWANTED GUEST on 10/12/2005 at 01:26
I wish I was smarter in knowing this stuff......... :p
I was wondering if the 128 MB card will work in running all of the Thief games and missions -
or do I need the 256?
What is the advantage in having the 256 for the games?
ATI Radeon 9800 Pro 128MB AGP Video Card
or
ATI Radeon 9800 Pro 256MB AGP VGA DVI-I S-Video out Video Card
Thanks so much!
Unwanted
looking to finally getting a card to play T3
the 128 card has.........
Chipset ATI RV360
Silicon Process .130nm low-k (TSMC)
Packaging Flipchip
Pipeline Configuration 4x1 (Pixel Pipe lines x Texture Sampling Units)
Memory Interface 256-bit interface DDR/DDR II
GPU Interface 256bit
RAMDAC 2x400MHz 10-bit DAC's
Bus Standard agp
Board Configuration Radeon 9800pro
Core Clock Rate 380MHz
Pixel Fill-rate 2G Pixels/sec
Texture Fill-rate 2G Textures/sec
Memory Speed 680MHz DDR
Memory Bandwidth 21-22GB/sec
Frame Buffer Size 128MB
API Compliancy Microsoft directx 9.0
Resolution upto 2048x1536@85HZ
Zwolf on 10/12/2005 at 01:55
They're both DX9 compliant cards, so either will play T3 theoretically. Both of them will of course allow you to play both T1 and T2. However, the better choice would be the 256 meg card for several reasons. The more on-board video memory your card has will allow for better utilization of texturing and the amount of available memory for a number of other effects used in game. Also I would assume that Thief is not (god forbid) the only game you'll ever play. Most new games need higher overall system requirments. Remember that a new video card in an old system may not be the best answer. I have a 9800 pro 128 meg card in a system I don't even use for games anymore, it's pretty old as far as vid cards go. For example, the system I use for gaming is about two years old now and consists of:
Abit IC7-G2 Motherboard (Intel 875p chipset socket 478)
Pentium 4 3.2c
2 gigs Geil Golden Dragon DDR
2 200 gig Seagate SATA HDD's
Soundblaster Audigy 2 ZS
BFG nVidia 6800GToc 256 meg
So really your overall system spec's maybe as important as which video card you choose. Just a thought.
-=Z=-
Komag on 10/12/2005 at 06:17
Keep in mind that the extra 128mb video ram won't double your performance or anything. It will only help with games that are heavy on large textures and a few other things. In general, you would notice little difference between the two, but you should look up some benchmark stat comparisons instead of just taking my word for it.
My point is that if the 256 is a LOT more money, it's probably not worth it, but if it's just a little more money, then maybe it's worth it.
Domarius on 10/12/2005 at 06:30
Sound advice, Zwolf.
To answer your question in a more general way; the difference between 128mb and 256mb is sort of like this;
When your video card RAM is full of textures, the game overflows the textures into your normal system RAM. When your video card needs to draw somethig that uses those extra textures, it swaps some textures out of its RAM for the textures it needs from the system RAM.
This swapping takes a little time, and the performance decrease will show up in the frame rate.
The times you will notice this is when you are continually running past objects that all use different textures from each other.
If you're in some mansion that's re-using a lot of the same textures everywhere, then maybe they all fit into the 128mb for the most part and you don't realy notice any slow down.
But if you're running down a street with lots of different looking things passing by you, then as the textures are constantly swapped back and forth, you might notice the frame rate start to drop a bit.
Like Komag said, its probably not worth it if its too much money. We're potentially only talking about a few frames dropped in texture heavy situations.
242 on 10/12/2005 at 11:11
128.
Extra 128 doesn't have much sense in a case of R9800Pro.
UNWANTED GUEST on 13/12/2005 at 23:14
Sorry for my delay in thanking you guys for the info.
Yes, there is a sig difference in price between the two.
Now I have to make sure my computer has a removable card/chipset.
Thanks again!
Gestalt on 13/12/2005 at 23:34
It's good to keep in mind that current gen games tend to have around three textures per surface (diffuse map, normal map and specular map), so video memory is eaten up a lot faster these days. Having extra texture memory is nice, since it will generally enable you to use higher resolution textures where they're available without a very significant performance drop (my Radeon 9600 can run the Doom 3 demo at about the same speed regardless of whether I choose the high or normal texture settings).
If there's a significant difference in price, you'd probably be better off getting a more powerful 128mb card than getting a 256mb one with the same chipset, though.
Aja on 14/12/2005 at 05:48
There's nothing wrong with the 128mb card. It was one of the smartest purchases I've made, computer-wise. Three years later and I can still play new games at decent levels of quality (most games I can still run high-quality, including Thief 3, Doom 3, HL2).
Domarius - I found that upgrading SYSTEM ram helped the swap issue. Far Cry used to pause whenever I opened a door - I bought an extra 512mb (1GB total), and the problem went away. It's when system ram runs out that problems happen.
So, to the original poster - make sure you have a gigabyte of RAM if you're playing Doom 3 or Half Life 2. Thief 3 will work fine on 512, though.
Domarius on 14/12/2005 at 06:03
Aja - if adding more system ram made it go away, then those pauses had nothing to do with your video memory. Especially that long a pause. The performance degradation I'm talking about is just a slightly lower frame rate for a little while.
You noticed a slow down because the huge amounts of map data that were previously hidden behind the door, had to be swapped from the HDD virtual memory into system RAM. Same thing happens on Doom 3.
Generally, upgrading RAM shows huge performance benifits all round. Because its the HDD swapping that really kills the game speed. Video ram to system ram slowdowns are not even comparable.
Upgrading System ram fixes all sorts of things. I've seen map loads (BF1942) go from 5 minutes to 30 seconds - the difference between (I think - don't quote me exactly) about 300mb and 1gig of ram. Because in that case, loading the level required a lot of processing, that was taking up a lot of RAM, and exceeding it and swapping to the HDD. The more the game can work in RAM without swapping, the faster it'll run.
Most of it gets eaten up by textures these days.
UNWANTED GUEST on 28/12/2005 at 18:13
Things are worse!!!!!!!!!!!!.......
I did the right thing in that prior to purchasing the video card/chipset, I did research on my emachines' motherboard and found that my graphics chip is integrated, and I do not have a GLP(?) slot but only have a PCI slot. :grr:
So it seems I cannot use these cards - correct?
What choices do I have left to be able to play T3????
I'm begining to hate my computer:mad: :mad: :mad: - I CAN"T BELEIVE I cannot switch/add a the video card.
Hope something is out there for a PCI besides buyng a new motherboard or computer!
Thanks!!!
Unwanted
