Black Hood
Watcher
- Joined
- October 20, 2006
- Messages
- 47
(I'm going to put the list of specs and hardware for my computer at the end of my post here so any kind tech-minded folks who read this can look it over.)
Hi folks, I haven't posted for ages though I look at the watch almost daily. I've had very little time for gaming but that's changing, and I've got a stack of games I am really looking forward to: Drakensang, King's Bounty, the Witcher, even Gothic III; and I just ordered Risen, which trumps the others for me. I'm really ridiculously excited about getting to play it.
Long story short, I want to put a new(er) graphics card in my old machine: I installed Drakensang and King's Bounty recently, and I'm having the same graphics problem with both - after playing for a bit I get black spots and lines appearing and disappearing on screen, and occasional freezes. I may have solved the problem with King's Bounty by setting Vertical Sync to "force on" in my graphics cards 3D settings (advice I found after extensive Googling), but I haven't been able to play long enough to see as it was a sporadic problem; and that definitely didn't fix anything in Drakensang. I'm worried Risen may have the same problems on my rig when I get it. I spent a fair amount of time researching online and messing with settings without results; I think my card is just not good enough at this point.
My computer still runs great and I had been playing the Witcher on it without any problems (though on low settings), but it's definitely getting old. I don't want to invest in a whole new machine just yet, but I think if I get a better graphics card I may be able to get some life out of it with these games.
My rig is an Alienware Area 51 from 2003. It's got a Nvidia graphics card, BFG GEFORCE FX 5950 ULTRA 256MB. My motherboard apparently has a single AGP slot, so I'm limited in upgrading to an AGP card.
Newegg and Tigerdirect both have a pretty big assortment of relatively cheap Nvidia and ATI cards for sale; it seems ATI kept making AGP cards after Nvidia stopped, so there are newer ATI AGP cards with more memory and features; however I'm thinking it might be better to go with an Nvidia card since I'm upgrading from one. I'm also having a hard time figuring out what would be my best option since I don't really want to upgrade anything else right now, and I've seen various comments that getting a card that's too powerful might be pointless if the rest of the hardware can't really make use of it. Frankly it was making my head swim reading all this, I'm really not enough of a tech guy. The only upgrade I've done to this machine was to put more RAM in it.
Some of the cards I was looking at as possibilities:
SAPPHIRE 100258L Radeon HD 3650 512MB 128-bit GDDR2 AGP 4X/8X HDCP Ready
SAPPHIRE 100175L Radeon X1650PRO 512MB 128-bit GDDR2 AGP 4X/8X
BFG Tech BFGR76512GSOC GeForce 7600GS 512MB 128-bit GDDR2 AGP 4X/8X
BFG GeForce 7300 GT 512MB AGP
They all have largely positive reviews, but there are so many other AGP cards, a few with 1 GIG memory and lots of bells and whistles, that I don't know what to go for.
I just want a decent-to-excellent card that will go in my machine and work without too much messing around on my part, that will at least let me play these games relatively smoothly, even if that means turning graphics features to low settings. Someday I'll build or buy a new computer, but I think this thing can last a good while yet. It's been a great machine, lots of good memories; I played Gothic I and II through on it and a big chunk of VtM Bloodlines. Oh, and a few years of Dark Ages of Camelot. Where did I ever find the time for that?
Thanks for reading, any advice on what you suggest I should get, or if you can point me towards good sites with information that might help me make a decision, would be welcome!
Here's some info on my computer from DxDiagnostics, and then a parts list I pulled off the Alienware website:
Operating System: Windows XP Home Edition (5.1, Build 2600) Service Pack 3 (2600.xpsp_sp3_gdr.090206-1234)
BIOS: BIOS Date: 11/24/03 15:11:30 Ver: 08.00.09
Processor: Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 CPU 3.20GHz (2 CPUs)
Memory: 2046MB RAM
Page File: 476MB used, 2956MB available
DirectX Version: DirectX 9.0c (4.09.0000.0904)
INTEL D875PBZ MOTHERBOARD AA#C26680-206
INTEL PENTIUM 4 EXTREME EDITION 3.2GHZ 800MHZ FSB
2 SAMSUNG 512MB DDR PC3200
2 PDP 512MB DDR PC3200LL
SEAGATE BARRACUDA 120GB 8MB CACHE SERIAL ATA HD
PLEXTOR PLEXWRITER PREMIUM 52X
PLEXTOR PX-708A 8X DVD±R/W BLACK DRIVE
1.44MB FLOPPY DRIVE BLACK
CREATIVE SOUND BLASTER AUDIGY 2 ZS 7.1
BFG GEFORCE FX 5950 ULTRA 256MB
MICROSOFT WINDOWS XP HOME VER1.1
420 WATT POWER SUPPLY
36" INTERNAL TO EXTERNAL USB CABLE
AVC PENTIUM 4 HSF Z7U2403002
Here's the specs of my existing card. In addition I looked it up and it has a 4 pin power connector and is an AGP 8 card:
Card name: NVIDIA GeForce FX 5950 Ultra
Manufacturer: NVIDIA
Chip type: GeForce FX 5950 Ultra
DAC type: Integrated RAMDAC
Display Memory: 256.0 MB
Current Mode: 1280 x 1024 (32 bit) (60Hz)
Monitor: Default Monitor
Monitor Max Res:
Driver Name: nv4_disp.dll
Driver Version: 6.14.0011.7519 (English)
DDI Version: 9 (or higher)
Driver Attributes: Final Retail
Driver Date/Size: 5/16/2008 15:01:00, 6108928 bytes
Hi folks, I haven't posted for ages though I look at the watch almost daily. I've had very little time for gaming but that's changing, and I've got a stack of games I am really looking forward to: Drakensang, King's Bounty, the Witcher, even Gothic III; and I just ordered Risen, which trumps the others for me. I'm really ridiculously excited about getting to play it.
Long story short, I want to put a new(er) graphics card in my old machine: I installed Drakensang and King's Bounty recently, and I'm having the same graphics problem with both - after playing for a bit I get black spots and lines appearing and disappearing on screen, and occasional freezes. I may have solved the problem with King's Bounty by setting Vertical Sync to "force on" in my graphics cards 3D settings (advice I found after extensive Googling), but I haven't been able to play long enough to see as it was a sporadic problem; and that definitely didn't fix anything in Drakensang. I'm worried Risen may have the same problems on my rig when I get it. I spent a fair amount of time researching online and messing with settings without results; I think my card is just not good enough at this point.
My computer still runs great and I had been playing the Witcher on it without any problems (though on low settings), but it's definitely getting old. I don't want to invest in a whole new machine just yet, but I think if I get a better graphics card I may be able to get some life out of it with these games.
My rig is an Alienware Area 51 from 2003. It's got a Nvidia graphics card, BFG GEFORCE FX 5950 ULTRA 256MB. My motherboard apparently has a single AGP slot, so I'm limited in upgrading to an AGP card.
Newegg and Tigerdirect both have a pretty big assortment of relatively cheap Nvidia and ATI cards for sale; it seems ATI kept making AGP cards after Nvidia stopped, so there are newer ATI AGP cards with more memory and features; however I'm thinking it might be better to go with an Nvidia card since I'm upgrading from one. I'm also having a hard time figuring out what would be my best option since I don't really want to upgrade anything else right now, and I've seen various comments that getting a card that's too powerful might be pointless if the rest of the hardware can't really make use of it. Frankly it was making my head swim reading all this, I'm really not enough of a tech guy. The only upgrade I've done to this machine was to put more RAM in it.
Some of the cards I was looking at as possibilities:
SAPPHIRE 100258L Radeon HD 3650 512MB 128-bit GDDR2 AGP 4X/8X HDCP Ready
SAPPHIRE 100175L Radeon X1650PRO 512MB 128-bit GDDR2 AGP 4X/8X
BFG Tech BFGR76512GSOC GeForce 7600GS 512MB 128-bit GDDR2 AGP 4X/8X
BFG GeForce 7300 GT 512MB AGP
They all have largely positive reviews, but there are so many other AGP cards, a few with 1 GIG memory and lots of bells and whistles, that I don't know what to go for.
I just want a decent-to-excellent card that will go in my machine and work without too much messing around on my part, that will at least let me play these games relatively smoothly, even if that means turning graphics features to low settings. Someday I'll build or buy a new computer, but I think this thing can last a good while yet. It's been a great machine, lots of good memories; I played Gothic I and II through on it and a big chunk of VtM Bloodlines. Oh, and a few years of Dark Ages of Camelot. Where did I ever find the time for that?
Thanks for reading, any advice on what you suggest I should get, or if you can point me towards good sites with information that might help me make a decision, would be welcome!
Here's some info on my computer from DxDiagnostics, and then a parts list I pulled off the Alienware website:
Operating System: Windows XP Home Edition (5.1, Build 2600) Service Pack 3 (2600.xpsp_sp3_gdr.090206-1234)
BIOS: BIOS Date: 11/24/03 15:11:30 Ver: 08.00.09
Processor: Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 CPU 3.20GHz (2 CPUs)
Memory: 2046MB RAM
Page File: 476MB used, 2956MB available
DirectX Version: DirectX 9.0c (4.09.0000.0904)
INTEL D875PBZ MOTHERBOARD AA#C26680-206
INTEL PENTIUM 4 EXTREME EDITION 3.2GHZ 800MHZ FSB
2 SAMSUNG 512MB DDR PC3200
2 PDP 512MB DDR PC3200LL
SEAGATE BARRACUDA 120GB 8MB CACHE SERIAL ATA HD
PLEXTOR PLEXWRITER PREMIUM 52X
PLEXTOR PX-708A 8X DVD±R/W BLACK DRIVE
1.44MB FLOPPY DRIVE BLACK
CREATIVE SOUND BLASTER AUDIGY 2 ZS 7.1
BFG GEFORCE FX 5950 ULTRA 256MB
MICROSOFT WINDOWS XP HOME VER1.1
420 WATT POWER SUPPLY
36" INTERNAL TO EXTERNAL USB CABLE
AVC PENTIUM 4 HSF Z7U2403002
Here's the specs of my existing card. In addition I looked it up and it has a 4 pin power connector and is an AGP 8 card:
Card name: NVIDIA GeForce FX 5950 Ultra
Manufacturer: NVIDIA
Chip type: GeForce FX 5950 Ultra
DAC type: Integrated RAMDAC
Display Memory: 256.0 MB
Current Mode: 1280 x 1024 (32 bit) (60Hz)
Monitor: Default Monitor
Monitor Max Res:
Driver Name: nv4_disp.dll
Driver Version: 6.14.0011.7519 (English)
DDI Version: 9 (or higher)
Driver Attributes: Final Retail
Driver Date/Size: 5/16/2008 15:01:00, 6108928 bytes
- Joined
- Oct 20, 2006
- Messages
- 47