3D Graphic card ...again ...;-)

[Guest OO-MPE]

I would like to replace my 3D Graphic card (16Mb-Hercules) by a new one.My PC is about 1,5 year old and has the following basic config :Processor: 1,4 GB AMDRAM : 256 MBSlots available : PCI and AGPJust wondering which 3D Graphic card can be recommended for FLY!II ...(budget : +/- 200 $US or 195 EUR ...)Thanks for any feedback beforehand. BR's, Marc - Belgium

[Guest Colins2]

Marc,Take a look at www.ebuyer.com on their UK site.They list a lot of cards in your price range.Traditionally, the Fly! series has worked best with Nvidia cards but lately people also use the latest Radeons.Almost any of the cards listed will give you a better performance than your existing card.I'm still using a GF3 with 128mb and get good enough performance from that.CheersColin

[Guest hkmiller]

I would also increase your memory to 512 MB. This is an inexpensive upgrade.

[Guest roland_lfor]

I have a new computer since 2 weeks, with 1024MB ram, P4 2.8Ghz and a nVidia FX5600 with 128 MB.It changed my Fly! life with a new tuned render.ini.You can find the FX5600 with 256 MB around 200-220

[Guest BOB_J]

Nice to meet you, Sir Roland! others friends too...Nvidia fx5600 and his "conterpart" ATI 9600(pro)... fx5600 ultra and 9600pro should produce more or less identical results. 9600pro is a more recent product on the shelf, is a little cheaper and better performer, but fx5600 ultra is more currently fitted with vivo. Theorically, they should offer great range overclock as even with stock voltage, mine can be "soft" boosted from 400 to 500MHz. I think that if feed voltage can be increased, with decent cooling and perhaps some "protections" removed, we may expect even more faster engines since stock power consumption of these 0.13 micron processors is very low. Strange thing, 35fps seems to be a little low for a 2.8GHz P4, since I have round twice this number with a 2.1GHz Barton and 9600pro or 4Ti4400(300/300). The 9600"pro" at 500/220 (256Mo), otherwise untweaked, is a little under 4Ti4200-4400-4600 (the first two are 300Mhz or more capable). These "old" reference cards are damn good with FLY!

[Damien BRUNET 0]

Hi,I advise you to buy a GeForce FX5600 which is a good graphic card. If you have more money, buy a GeForce FX5900.I think 512Mo or more RAM would be better ...Regards,;-)Damien BRUNET.e-mail : damien.brunet@udb.fr.st

[Guest roland_lfor]

Dear Bob,I can imagine that the different amount of memory (128 on mine, 256 on your card) can lead to a different display speed.In an other side, I should spend more time to tweak my render.ini and perhaps also use RivaTuner.My problem on tweaking render.ini is that the debug screen doesn't separate the 16 bits slots and the 32 bits slots usage.Did you find a way to retreive both values ?

[Guest BOB_J]

My 4Ti4400/4600 (300/300 750GXL hard modded) has only 128 and work great, the 9600"pro(?)" has 256, but slower mem.128/256 : no significant increase of fps (my reserved memory for textures is actually around "only" 70Mo), but I've not studied others possible "side effects". With the render, don't expect any real improvement : it's the go/no-go, if your score fall down abuptly and unexpectedly under 20 without plenty of polygons, you have to go for debug screen and for sure an increase of slots number somewhere. With the debug screen, you can easily see where is the faulty number of slots, so increase the 16 bits slots first and if no change occur, transfer the changes to the 32 slots, that's all! The clouds are know 256/32 slots eaters.For newbies : use CTRL-Echap in FLY!, mod the render, close the notepad and return to FLY!Registry tweaks of mainboard elements (i.e. northbrige) are to be considered. Serious manufacturers deliver documents for the chips and their parameters. Some values may be "conservative", the only solution is to try and watch for results or... crashes. Wpcredit, Rivatuner can be used to do the job, with proper module. (For a few dollars) more, very few parameters are shown in the standard options screen of graphic cards and you can trim here too manually in the windows registry or with... a tweaker. La morale de l'histoire : I like Rivatuner and omega drivers.

[Guest roland_lfor]

I decreased the anisotropic filter from 8 to 2, and the fps jumped to 45 ! oh boy ;-)