Updating Graphics Card - Need Advice

[Ancient Sim]

I did try adding this to another thread about graphics cards, but nobody is biting, so I'm starting another.  I don't like reproducing topics, but I really do need an answer to this. 

Rather than buying a new PC, I am considering getting a new graphics card.  There are loads on EBay, but I have no idea what is the best to get and I don't want to spend too much or I may as well get a new pc and have done with it. What bothers me most is that my tower case has 230V on it and I read somewhere that you need at least 300 (or maybe 350) to run a decent graphics card.  Anyone know anything about this?

It's hard to ask for advice because prices are so different here to what they are in the US, but if someone could tell me the sort of card I should be aiming for with my pc specs, that would help a lot.  I have an AMD Athlon 2000+ 1600 MHZ (overclocked to 2000) with 512MB RAM.  I don't mind doubling the RAM if that would help.

The PC runs very smoothly and TS2 is actually very fast overall.  I just want to be able to see the cinematics and have everything on high.  I can have up to around 20-25 Sims on a lot before there is any noticeable slowing-down, but I do have problems with slowness on very large lots with a lot of Sims and a lot of custom content.  Currently I have most things on high but I don't really get enough detail.  As far as I know, I only have an AGP slot (the PC is 3 years old), not a PCI-Express.  Don't know about the other PCI kind.

Currently, I am considering 3 cards, all of which are very cheap on EBay (all new).  Assuming they will work with my system (esp. the wattage part), which would be best for TS2.  Going by what I've read I would say the Radeon, but I'd appreciate confirmation.  I don't think anything more high-ended would work on my PC, not even sure whether these are too powerful.  They are shown in order of price (highest first), so presumably that's the order of bestestness as well.

ATI Radeon 9600 XT 256MB AGP
nVidia GeForce 6200 8xAGP 256MB
nVidia GeForce FX5700 AGP 256MB

[Hegelian]

Unfortunately, there isn't a single-solution answer. The different components interact (or at least act in concert) to produce the final, in-game result. Although graphics power has a significant affect on game performance, at the end of the day TS2 is CPU-limited, so upgrading the CPU will probably give you more of a boost in the game for things like cinematics and higher detail. But, upgrading either the CPU or the graphics card to something reasonably current (or at least something current 18 months ago) is almost certainly going to require a power-supply upgrade, especially since the PSU in your PC probably doesn't deliver even 230W at operating temperature.

There comes a time in every PC's life when it is less expensive buy a whole new one than try to bring an older model up to current standards. For the cost of a quality 400W PSU, an Athon 64 of some sort (assuming your current motherboard can run one), and a graphics board on the order of a Radeon 9800 Pro or X800 GT, you could probably get a whole new machine sans monitor, keyboard, and mouse.

That said, the Radeon 9600 XT is probably as low as you want to go in graphics cards; any less of an incremental improvement probably isn't worth the money. The 9xxx series is now three generations old, and the cost difference between what were once the mid-range offerings and what were once the high-end models has closed to the point of insignificance. So if a 9800 Pro is only 20 GBP or so more than a 9600 XT, it is a far better value. Furthermore, models in the more recent X8xx line are coming down in price at a rapid rate as they become supplanted by the current X1xxx line (X1600 etc.), so that in some cases an AGP version of an X800 GT or X800 GTO board is pretty much the same price as a 9800 Pro while being anywhere from 25% to 50% faster, depending on the application.

HOWEVER:  the newer faster cards require their own power source in addition to what they draw from the AGP slot, this provided by one of the four-pin Molex power connectors in your PC (the same ones you use for the hard drives). If you are not going to upgrade the power supply, then you will want to stick to one of the older mid-range boards that does not require a power connection, like the 9600 XT. Some current versions of this board come with DDR2 video RAM (such as the one from Sapphire), but none have a 256-bit memory interface for it, even when they have 256 MB of RAM; so while ideally you would want 256 MB RAM with a 256-bit interface, I don't think you're going to find that in a graphics board that doesn't require a power connector (at least with an ATi GPU; I don't know what nVidia has on offer).

Without knowing what model your motherboard is and what chipset it uses, I can't make any recommendations regarding a CPU upgrade, but I suspect from what you say that it is too old to accept any of the current Athlon CPUs.

As far as power supplies go, I do not know if PC Power and Cooling has a presence in the UK (over here, I order direct from the company), but Antec probably does, and its better PSUs are not too bad, although the voltage regulation on even the best models is only average. Something like the Antec NeoHE 380 has 3% regulation on the + lines, which is pretty good for the price. I don't know who the good UK online retailers are, but as an example, eBuyer.com has this unit for £48.98 inc. VAT.

To provide some perspective, from HP UK you can get a complete, up-to-date machine with an Intel P4 517 CPU (2.93 GHz, 800 MHz fsb), 1 GB of DDR2 memory, a 200-GB SATA hard drive, DVD writer, 7.1-channel on-board audio, built-in Ethernet and Firewire, and (ahem) integrated Radeon Xpress 200 graphics—not the best, but it is PCI-E and supports DirectX 9 in hardware—for £499 inc. VAT. Keep in mind that this is a budget machine and it does appear to have a PCI-E 16x slot for adding a graphics board at a later date. I'm not necessarily recommending that you buy this, but you should have some idea of the relative costs of upgrading (within limits) an old PC compared to buying a new one off the shelf. You can see it here:
http://h10010.www1.hp.com/wwpc/uk/en/ho/WF06b/35123-35527-39847-39847-39847-12316208-69700487.html

[Ancient Sim]

Thanks for all the advice, Hegelian (most of which went right over my head!), but unfortunately $499 is over my budget.  On Ebay I can get some pretty decent machines for around £300, one of which has a GEForce 6600 card (don't know how good that is), or for the same price I can get a GEForce 6100 with twice as much hard-drive and more processor power - it's basically a toss-up between the 6600 with a 3000 processor and a 80 GB hd and the 6100 with a 3400 processor and a 160GB hd.  Both are PCI-Express and both pc's have 1gig RAM and DVDRW.  The one with the bigger hard-drive is actually £20 cheaper and also has a keyboard, mouse and speakers and I'm inclined towards that one simply because it has more processor-power.  I could always look at an upgrade on the card as long as it wasn't too much extra.

I nearly bought one tonight but let it go - only 3 out of the 9 were sold so no doubt it will be back on tomorrow.  It does seem like a good system and I can always upgrade the graphics card later if I want to.  As long as the 6100 can run on high settings, it should be fine for me anyway (my eyesight is crap, so I'd probably not gain much from a higher-end card anyway!).

It does look as if a whole new system is my best bet, but as I won't be able to buy another for some considerable time, I need to get something that will last me several years with the minimum (if any) upgrading.  Although this one runs TS2 OK, I just feel that I want more out of the graphics side of things than I'm getting.

[Giggy]

  um thats the most buggiest card. I have it and it randomly shuts down.

[Hegelian]

On Ebay I can get some pretty decent machines for around £300, one of which has a GEForce 6600 card (don't know how good that is), or for the same price I can get a GEForce 6100 with twice as much hard-drive and more processor power - it's basically a toss-up between the 6600 with a 3000 processor and a 80 GB hd and the 6100 with a 3400 processor and a 160GB hd.  Both are PCI-Express and both pc's have 1gig RAM and DVDRW.

This is actually a tougher choice than it may seem. The first impulse is to go with the faster CPU, since the game is so CPU dependent (the hard drive is just storage, so unless you need all that space or it's a 10,000 RPM drive, there's no real performance advantage to the 160 GB drive). But from I've been able to find out, the GeForce 6100 is an integrated graphics "solution" (how I hate that usage!) that is part of an nVidia chipset (the supporting circuitry that connects the CPU to the rest of the system, including memory, graphics, hard drives, USB and Ethernet ports, etc.).

According to nVidia's Web site, the chipsets which use the 6100 graphics engine are for running AMD's Sempron CPU, which is equivalent to Intel's Celeron line. If the PC with the 3000+ processor is uses an Athlon 64 rather than a Sempron 64, I would choose the Athlon even though it has a slower clock speed, especially since that PC also has the GeForce 6600—at least as long as it is either the plain 6600 or (better) the 6600GT model, the latter being roughly the equivalent of an ATi Radeon X800 GT but with a 128-bit memory interface rather than the ATi's 256-bit (this is basically the size of the pathway between the CPU and the RAM—theoretically, a 256-bit interface will transfer twice as much data per clock cycle than the 128-bit interface). Although not fatal, try to avoid the GeForce 6600 LE, which is a downgraded version which has been hobbled too much at its price point to be worthwhile, IMO, and will struggle somewhat with TS2.

The reason the PC with the 3400+ CPU and the larger hard drive is less expensive is probably because of the integrated graphics and, presumably, the Sempron CPU.

Trying to stay reasonably current on a tight budget can be seriously frustrating, as I know from my own experience. My personal PC has reached the point where it can no longer be upgraded in any meaningful way, except perhaps for the addition of an ATi X850 XT graphics board in place of the X800 GT I have now (it's a 2.8 GHz Northwood Pentium 4 in an Intel motherboard running the old i845PE chipset from a few years back); and we just bought nearly the fastest P4 that Reggikko's motherboard will accept (also a 2.8 GHz P4, but with an 800-MHz system clock (FSB—Front-side Bus) instead of the 533-MHz system clock of my PC), since Intel stopped production of those CPUs last March—it was basically now or never. The next stop for me will be a complete system rebuild, since I can go nowhere from here without a new motherboard, CPU, memory modules, power supply, graphics board, and probably hard drives, since I probably won't be able to use my (relatively) old and hot SCSI server drives and their PCI-based controller with any future motherboard I might buy. Needless to say, barring some catastrophic failure of the current machine, that won't be happening anytime soon.   

[Simlover]

Ancient I run the GEforce 6200/256 with a AMD Athlon XP 2.2ghz processor clocking at 1.8, 512mb Ram and have no complaints whatsoever.  I have only just changed my power supply unit from 350 to 500w and the geforce ran on both, it doesnt require additional power either.  I picked up my 6200 for under $100 delivered  and my new 500w PSU for under $40 delivered (Australian).  The thing is these components are both transferrable to a new motherboard when I upgrade again at the end of the year so they are not money wasted on an old machine.

[speedreader]

I am also upgrading my computer.  I currently have an ATI Radeon 9000 with 64 MBs of Ram and quite honestly am impressed it is running Sims at all!  I went to the ATI Upgrade Advisor and input my 'puter info which resulted in a list of 15 ATI video cards to choose from ranging from $40 to $300US.  Since I also just purchased a 1 GB memory card, I don't really want to go to the high end of video cards.  I wound up buying the ATI Radeon X1300 Pro -BUT- I have not installed it yet. 

I play Sims2, some Rollercoaster Tycoon, I have Max Payne but haven't loaded it yet.  I play pretty quiet games - no shoot em up kind of things and the only 3D game I have at this point is Sims.  So my question is, will the X1300 Pro work for me or am I going to run into problems playing Sims.  For about the same price I can get Diamond's Radeon 9600 XT.  Would that be better?  Everything I am finding to read about the 1300 is dated last November or so.  It would cost me another $130 to buy the X800 XL and that's more than I really want to spend.  I would also like to stick with ATI since I have had so little trouble with the one I have.

Thanks for your help.

Edited to add:  I forgot to mention that both the 1300 and 9600 are 256 MB and I have an AGP slot.

[Paperbladder]

I upgraded my Geforce MX 440 to a Geforce 6200 and it improved the graphics dramatically.  I have problems with ingame videos now (Most notably in Civilization 4) but it's a small tradeoff for increased performance.  This card only cost me about $40, so if you're on a budget it might be worth looking into but there are better cards.

[Hegelian]

I am also upgrading my computer.  I currently have an ATI Radeon 9000 with 64 MBs of Ram and quite honestly am impressed it is running Sims at all!  I went to the ATI Upgrade Advisor and input my 'puter info which resulted in a list of 15 ATI video cards to choose from ranging from $40 to $300US.  Since I also just purchased a 1 GB memory card, I don't really want to go to the high end of video cards.  I wound up buying the ATI Radeon X1300 Pro -BUT- I have not installed it yet.

Well, sorry to say, but while it is a current product, the X1300 boards are the budget line, and with only four pixel pipelines (compared to 16 for high-end cards), its performance for 3D games is significantly hobbled. A three-year-old Radeon 9800 Pro will outperform the X1300 Pro in TS2. Of course, the X1300 Pro costs less than 100 USD, whereas the 9800 Pro, which was once the fastest card in town, still retails for about 170 USD; and at that price you can get the AGP version of the Radeon X800 GT or X800 GTO, which while the previous generation, will seriously outperform the X1300.

Currently, the Radeon X800 GT and GTO models from manufacuturers like Sapphire and PowerColor are the best value in AGP cards, at around 175 USD. There doesn't seem to be an nVidia board in that price range that can touch them, and ATi's drivers are a lot better. Keep in mind that the real high-end boards cost in excess of 400 USD; the X800 GT is actually a bargain.

For more money but an even better value if you can pay for it is the Radeon X850 XT AGP, which is, apparently, being phased out—not too long ago this was the fastest gaming board you could by; now you can get it for under 240 USD (I'd get one myself if I had the money)—but for 170 USD you can't beat the X800 GT/GTO . . . and they are highly overclockable if you are so inclined.

It is going to become more and more difficult to find AGP boards, especially at the higher end of the performance curve, so if you want a board that will carry you a few more years, you're going to need to bite the bullet and get the best one you can today.

BTW, Max Payne is a 3D game, a third-person shooter.

[J. M. Pescado]

Thanks for all the advice, Hegelian (most of which went right over my head!), but unfortunately $499 is over my budget.

If your budget is so tiny, I suggest you give up unnecessary luxuries, like food, in order to expand it. Remember, it will take you at least a month to starve to death, so if you give up food for a month, you may get a lot more money out of it. You may even decide you don't really like food anyway, and learn to do without it entirely. The cost savings over time for this can be massive. I mean, pssh. Food, who really needs it anyway?

[DrBeast]

Heh...I did post a reply on the other thread, so when I stumbled across this one I was a bit confuzzled...like, what the hell, didn't I push the Post button again?! Well, Hegelian's advice is much more sound and complete than anything I had to say on this matter 

[speedreader]

Of course, the X1300 Pro costs less than 100 USD, whereas the 9800 Pro, which was once the fastest card in town, still retails for about 170 USD; and at that price you can get the AGP version of the Radeon X800 GT or X800 GTO, which while the previous generation, will seriously outperform the X1300.

Currently, the Radeon X800 GT and GTO models from manufacuturers like Sapphire and PowerColor are the best value in AGP cards, at around 175 USD. There doesn't seem to be an nVidia board in that price range that can touch them, and ATi's drivers are a lot better. Keep in mind that the real high-end boards cost in excess of 400 USD; the X800 GT is actually a bargain.

For more money but an even better value if you can pay for it is the Radeon X850 XT AGP, which is, apparently, being phased out—not too long ago this was the fastest gaming board you could by; now you can get it for under 240 USD (I'd get one myself if I had the money)—but for 170 USD you can't beat the X800 GT/GTO . . . and they are highly overclockable if you are so inclined.

Yep, this is what I am reading.  Need a better card for 3D.  Ah well, at least I never put it in the box!  And where are you shopping?  My X1300 pro cost $170.  The ATI Rad X850 Pro is $280  and the Diamond X800 XL is $300 (US).  The other specifics you name aren't on my list so I don't have a price for them off hand.

BTW, Max Payne is a 3D game, a third-person shooter.

Obviously I have not loaded the game, thought it looked like strategy first, shooter secondary.  Thanks for pointing this out, I will probably not enjoy the game after all.

[akatonbo]

*shrugs* I'm still using the Radeon X300 that came with my Dimension 8400 (bought last March). That plus a 3GHz processor and 1GB RAM give me nothing to complain about as far as graphics or game performance go.

[Ancient Sim]

I eat very little anyway, so although I found JM's advice the best of the lot, there aren't really many more corners I can cut in that area.  I have actually made an offer on a new pc now, but I'm sorta hoping I don't get it because it has the GeForce 6100 graphics and I didn't realise they were integrated (it describes it as a graphics card).  I can get an update on it though, so I'd probably do that. 

If I don't get it, I'll go for something with either the GeForce 6660 or something around that in a Radeon (even though I have no idea which Radeon).  It seems that anything better is above my budget anyway.

[Hegelian]

Yep, this is what I am reading.  Need a better card for 3D.  Ah well, at least I never put it in the box!  And where are you shopping?  My X1300 pro cost $170.  The ATI Rad X850 Pro is $280  and the Diamond X800 XL is $300 (US).  The other specifics you name aren't on my list so I don't have a price for them off hand.

I use Newegg.com for price info. It's also where I buy most of my stuff, although I also check out Buy.com, Zipzoomfly.com, mwave.com, and eWiz.com.

BTW, Max Payne is a 3D game, a third-person shooter.

Obviously I have not loaded the game, thought it looked like strategy first, shooter secondary.  Thanks for pointing this out, I will probably not enjoy the game after all.

The best shooters have a lot more going on than just the shooting, and despite not having stats and leveling, are a lot closer to real role-playing than the so-called role-playing games based on Dungeons & Dragons (where's the role-playing in controlling six characters from a top-down perspective?).

Nonetheless, Max Payne is primarily a shooter:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Payne

[Hegelian]

If I don't get it, I'll go for something with either the GeForce 6660 or something around that in a Radeon (even though I have no idea which Radeon).  It seems that anything better is above my budget anyway.

Although both companies tend to release a number of boards of various configurations within the same family (for example, GeForce 6600, 6600 LE, and 6600 GT; ATi Radeon X800, X800 XL, X800 XT, X800 GT and GTO, X800 Pro), the roughly equivalent boards at the 130 USD level are the 6600 GT w/ 256 MB DDR3 memory and the X800 GT/GTO, also with 256 MB DDR3 memory. Using Newegg as a guide, the 6600 GT runs between 125 and 150 USD, while the X800 GTO runs between 130 and 170 USD (these prices are for the PCI-E versions). In general though, the X800 GTO is a more capable board than the 6600 GT; and at the top of that price range (~170 USD), the Radeon X850 XT is even more powerful.

Last summer Tom's Hardware did a massive graphics board comparative review, and the plain X800 was faster in TS2 than the 6600 GT (admittedly, with only 128 MB RAM) by about 15%. While over the past few years ATi and nVidia have taken turns with having the fastest board, in this price range ATi's X800 line has been significantly better than nVidia's 6600 line (and of course, it has been some time since ATi had the kind of driver problems nVidia seems to have as a matter of course). In fairness, with smooth edges set to max, the GeForce boards moved ahead of the Radeon boards by from 0.5-3 frames per second. Note that in the charts, the SLI designation for GeForce boards means two boards running in tandem.


© 2006 Tom's Guide Publishing

http://www.tomshardware.com/2005/05/24/vga_charts_vi/page14.html

[Hegelian]

*shrugs* I'm still using the Radeon X300 that came with my Dimension 8400 (bought last March). That plus a 3GHz processor and 1GB RAM give me nothing to complain about as far as graphics or game performance go.

According to the Tom's Hardware tests, your X300 should be the equal of a GeForce 6600 or 6800 in TS2 as long as you don't use edge smoothing. But if you set edge-smoothing to max, your framerate will probably drop to something resembling a slide show (about 13 fps). OTOH, the 3 GHz processor should make your game run pretty well with details on high. 

[akatonbo]

*shrugs* I'm still using the Radeon X300 that came with my Dimension 8400 (bought last March). That plus a 3GHz processor and 1GB RAM give me nothing to complain about as far as graphics or game performance go.

According to the Tom's Hardware tests, your X300 should be the equal of a GeForce 6600 or 6800 in TS2 as long as you don't use edge smoothing. But if you set edge-smoothing to max, your framerate will probably drop to something resembling a slide show (about 13 fps). OTOH, the 3 GHz processor should make your game run pretty well with details on high. 

*fires up the game and checks* Huh, it was turned off completely, which I hadn't thought was the case. (Maybe OFB messed with it.) *shrugs and turns it up by one notch*

But yeah, I'm really pleased -- I picked out my computer specifically with TS2 in mind, but I didn't actually know anything about other people's real experiences with the game, I just wanted to be sure I was well above the system requirements (since my experiences with TS1 suggested that I would need to do that to get genuinely good performance) and make sure I got a T&L-capable video card. I was going to go with the... 4800, I think it was, to get the video card, and then realized that I was upgrading the 4800 so much to get the RAM and HD space I wanted that I would actually save a little bit of money by moving up a model to the 8400.

[ZiggyDoodle]

I'm still using the Radeon X300 that came with my Dimension 8400 (bought last March). That plus a 3GHz processor and 1GB RAM give me nothing to complain about as far as graphics or game performance go.

Ditto, akatonbo.  I have the same system.  I do get a bit of lag when I have 12 Sims on one of my community business lots but nothing that is annoying.   I have been trying to decide whether to upgrade the graphics card or add another gig of RAM.  Have to admit that after seeing the X300SE essentially at the bottom of the list, I wonder how the game would perform with one of the upper end cards.

[siriusthinking]

Does anyone here play with an integrated ATI Radeon Xpress200 graphics card?
I just bought a computer that comes with that card. I know I'll need to upgrade it to get a really good performance, but will this be enough to at least run the game + Uni, NL and OFB until I can afford a new card as well?

The computer has 1gig RAM (which I will also be upgrading soon,) an AMD Athlon 64 3800+ processor (2.4GHz) and 250gigs of HD.