Disappointed in my new vid card.

(Bob) #1

I had a 32mb nVidia GeForce 2 GTS, and recently bought a 128mb GeForce FX 5200. I decided to upgrade because of FPS issues, especially those in Radar. Since the new card has four times as much video memory, I expected the game’s quality to be significantly better.

Unfortunately there are still areas in Radar where I get 20-30 FPS, and a low 10 FPS when looking through a scope in those areas. I don’t understand why this happens, unless its normal for any video card and Radar will always eat your memory for dinner.

These are my system sepcs:
Pentium 4 1.8Ghz
512mb DDR RAM
128mb GeForce FX 5200
Plenty of hard disk space

Is there any way to raise FPS without degrading the quality? I want to be able to play with good quality and good FPS at the same time if at all possible. My monitor is 19 inches so I want to use 1024x768 now instead of 800x600, but my FPS takes a huge spill when I do that.

I recently discovered the com_maxfps (raised it to 300) and com_hunkmegs (raised to 192) commands. My FPS almost reaches 200 in buildings while standing still, but some outside areas still go to 30 or lower. Any suggestions? Also, when I start my computer, 165mb of my 512mb of RAM is already taken, is that normal?

(Pamper) #2

You may have bought the wrong card. The 5200 cards are totally bargain-basement. 5600s are decent, and 5800+ are luxury models for the mega-rich.

Check out this benchmark: http://www6.tomshardware.com/graphic/20030714/vga_card_guide-12.html
Notice that the 5200 gets 57 fps, while the 5600 models get 98 fps or more. Now look at this page to see what score a GeForce2 got:
http://www6.tomshardware.com/graphic/20021218/vgacharts-04.html
33 fps. So the 5200 is less than 2x as fast as what you had, while 5600s would be 3-4x the speed.

I also upgraded my gfx card after installing ET. At first, with a GeForce2, I would get one FPS when looking across the radar field with binoculars. Now I have a GeForce FX 5600, and activating binocs in that position increases my FPS, not decreases them.

I play with medium detail settings, not low, so my FPS are never better than 90. Some rare places even bring them below 30. That especially happens on maps like railgun, where a few areas are slow for CPU-reasons, not vidcard.

(SCDS_reyalP) #3

The FX 5200 is still a low end card. Many of the (non-mx) gforce4 cards have more memory bandwidth. ET likely doesn’t use any of the advanced features. The amount of memory by itself isn’t likely to help much.

com_maxfps limits your frame rate, (which can be good for jumping) but it will not affect what FPS your system puts out. If your system isn’t reaching the value you set for com_maxfps it has no effect.

You can try lowering quality, either in game, or in the video card control panel.

You might gain a little by overclocking it (there are a million and 1 web sites that will tell you how).

Or return the FX 5200 and get something better…

(Mr. Chris) #4

get a geforce4 ti 4200 or 4400 64mb model :drink:

(ExP|Maximus191) #5

Or an Fx 5900 just like me :stuck_out_tongue: :banana:

(amazinglarry) #6

Yea, I run a 4200 64mb. Serves me pretty well, I get pretty good FPS, with no significant slowdown (unless my team is cool in warmup and go all covert ops, and throw a smoke grenade /kill, smoke, /kill… bastards! :smiley:

([=O=]SMYLER) #7

Right, the difference in my post is, I actually have this card in one of my machines so I won’t fill you full of shite with references to benchmark sites and the rest.

With “recommended” settings for this card (obtained by pressing the button in ET) in radar I NEVER go below 30 fps no matter how many people or airstrikes or whatever are going off on the screen around me.

One thing I would check is, whenever you load up the software for the card there is usually a little icon placed in the tray to the bottom right of your screen. In this tray (sorry I’m not on the relevent PC at the moment) there is the option to change performance from quality settings (all fancy effects that when playing the game you REALLY won’t notice and will merely slow the card to a crawl) to HIGH PERFORMANCE settings (ET looks and plays VERY well).

Do this as the diference with this card is phenomenal.

You didn’t mention what brand the card is but I got mine under recommendation because of its abnormally good overclock capabilities, the particular one I bought is the

Leadtek Winfast A340 TDH

This even comes with the software incorporated to do the overclocking stuff. A regular “out of the box” FX 5200 will have the gpu running at 250MHZ and the RAM running at 400MHZ, the leadtek is MORE than comfortable running at 300MHZ and 600MHZ (!!!). This has added even more oomph to my radar FPS which when the card is OC’d NEVER falls below 40 and is much more constant 'round the 50/60 mark at 800x600 “recommended” settings.

Please do not take much notice of people who for one DON’T actually have the hardware which you are seeking advice on and two constantly quote benchmarks from people who write articles for websites who will have a half hour run on the hardware and write an hours worth of shite about it paying more attention to grammar and artistic writing than the actual machinery in question.

Nobody is allowed to get pissed off by what I say by the way and if you do, well you’re a pansy. :smiley: .

Any more questions Bob I’d be happy to help with the aid of my first hand experience.

At the end of the day though if you’re not happy with the card buy another one but spend a significantly greater amount of money on it.

(Bob) #8

I know it would help to do the “Set Recommended” option, but when I click it the settings turn to crap (worse than they already are), and I just don’t think I should have to use the worst settings when I don’t have a slow comp.

But I do know what you are talking about with the card settings, I’m gonna try putting it on high performance (its on high quality right now).

([=O=]SMYLER) #9

Let us know how you get on man.

(Freedom[]Tickler) #10

smylers right,

go into driver applet and set it to maximum performance

I hope you didnt think a sub $75 grfx card was gonna smoke ET : )

I saw ET battery map used in a benchmark in a review of radeon 9600 on Hard OCP website - http://www.hardocp.com/article.html?art=NTAyLDEw

the card was in a p4 3 GHz 800 FSB CPU w/ 1 gig DDR400 , an insanely fast rig, and it only got about 57 FPS

so you definitely dont need an insane rig to get shitty FPS in ET : )

I think its a case of 10lbs/kilos of code in a 5 lb/kilo game engine - they have stretched what the Q3 engine can do to its limits, and especially the huge outdoor maps kill FPS - super fast rig or not

(Dies Irae) #11

Maybe if you play a little with the hidden settings of the Nvidia cards. it can help

A good program that let you do that is NVmax
http://www.majorgeeks.com/downloadget.php?id=387&file=2&evp=855da746d90f3f78ae78d164ae8e6415

Also it help to use a lower FSAA (quincunx works perfect for me (Gforce4MX)

(SylverDragon) #12

I realize this probably isn’t helpful for you, but someone else may be reading and thinking of upgrading. My roomate recently went through an ET induced video card upgrade, and since he is on a budget we went though the joy of looking at benchmarks and reviews on different graphics cards. In the end we figured the best bang for his buck was to buy a slightly older card, and he has been happy ever since. Basically we compared the GForceFX 5600 to the GForce4 Ti4800, and from what benchmarks we saw, the Ti4800 was the way to go. It tended to perform better, and the price was similar. (also, I run a Ti4600 and have great results)
Now, as for the 5200, its basically a business card, great for word, email, and internet, but its not gonna get you there as far as games go. I’m sure it can be made to be playable, but its never gonna be as smooth and pretty as a card that is really made for games. Ya, it sucks having to put down $150-$200 on your video card, but the performance difference you will get will make it worth it. My personal belief is skimp a bit on the processor, right now CPU’s are probably fast enough that they sit around twiddling their thumbs a lot, and spend the extra money on the video card and RAM (though RAM is cheap at the moment). One thing to look at on CPU’s is that (at least for Intel) there is a point at which the price jumps. If you buy right below that jump you can get a good processor for a reasonable price, there just isn’t much need to plunk down the extra few hundred for the top end processor, a slightly slower one, with a better video card and RAM will do more for your games.

(Ubiquitous) #13

I have a GF4 ti 4600 with 128mb ddr ram, and a 1.2GHz Athlon, and I get around 40-76 fps on most maps, and 20-35 on the congested areas of radar, and anywhere on railgun, I get 15-25.

(Bob) #14

Using the “Recommended” settings & setting the card to high performance didn’t have a noticable effect. Guess the card was a pretty stupid buy.

(weasel) #15

Where did you find benchmarks of the Ti4800? I’ve planning on getting a new video card soon, and basically my options are FX5600, Ti4800, and Radeon 9600 Pro. The prices are all within $20 of each other. So far, I’ve found that the 9600Pro generally performs better than the FX5600, but I can’t really find where the Ti4800 fits in.

(Pamper) #16

From curiosity, what did it pick when you asked for a recommendation? What resolution, bit-depth, zbuffer, etc?

My personal guess is that a 64meg GFX5600 beats a 128meg 5200. I see 128 GFX5600 for $130, the Gainward brand.

(BoneZ) #17

I’ve been running a ti4600 for almost a year now and it’s still kicking
a goodly amount of ass :D. Never drops below around 25fps in most cases. Although i had to drop from the 1280x1024 res i used in RTCW down to 1024x768.

([=O=]SMYLER) #18

I’ve got one in my main PC as well Bonez man and they do kick it, but they are still a pretty penny for some reason.

([VF] Dutch) #19

Playing ET in 800X600 with everything on maximum. FPS never dips below 60 on the powerhungry maps (Radar).

System specs:

AMD Athlon 2400+
1024 MB DDR PC-2700
Asus GF4 TI4600 128 MB
Asus mobo
Creative Audigy
2 X Maxtor 120 Gig 7200 Rpm 8 MB’s cache
Windows XP SP1 + all updates since
Detonator 45.23
DirectX 9.0b

Only upped the hunk/zone/soundmegs. Useally FPS is around 80-90 on open fields, inside buildings it goes up to 250-275. I would sacrifice resolution for FPS anyday, there’s little difference between 800X600 & 1024X768 imo (1280X1024 does look better).

(wouter) #20

I play ET in 1280x1024, all settings high on:

PIII 850
GF4 ti 4200 64 mb
256mb of RAM
in linux, my framerates do drop to 25 fps often on radar but usually are quite fine. Then again, it took me ages to get my card setup properly under linux but with quite some performance difference compared to windowsXP. I cant run it as smooth in windows on that resolution, i need to go to 1024x768 for that.