Getting a new video card

[Mazz]

i got my card 2 months ago so i expected it to come down in price since then.

i have 512 mb of ram, and the FH loading song goes by twice before i usually finish loading the map. is this normal for anyone else with 512?

[C38368]

Originally Posted by Blistex

I think that it's more of a "we can sell our high-end cards that much cheaper than Nvidia".

ATI sort of has Nvidia over a barrell with their faster and cheaper cards. I think that they're trying to move that much more of their high-end AGP cards so that people who only buy one every 2 years with get a 9800 and skip the next generation of cards all together (a generation that Nvidia might dominate). This way a person will "hop" from ATI card - to ATI card without needing to rest on an Nvidia one.

Could very well be. As is, a person with a 9800 Pro could easily skip the next generation of video cards without so much as a hiccup.
Also, I've noticed that ATI has been pushing the PCI Express standard a lot lately, and from what I've been able to tell, that standard should hit the market in the next couple of months. Possibly some connection there, as well...

Mazz~ Yeah, I think this last price drop happened within the last week, based on a couple discussions I've had with retailers. Not that I'm complaining, or anything...

[Blistex]

Originally Posted by Mazz

i have 512 mb of ram, and the FH loading song goes by twice before i usually finish loading the map. is this normal for anyone else with 512?

Same here, only way to speed that up is to have a 10,000 RMP or SCSI hard disk and Uber fast DDR2 ram. Other than that, I don't really see how you're gonna speed up the loading time.

You can speed up your loading times by buying more RAM, if your mobo supports it. It's worth it. Go up to 1024 MB RAM, and you will see a marked improvement in your load times.

[Anlushac11]

Also alot of people have hard drives with 2mb of cache and I have been hearing that upgrading to a 7200rpm drive with 8mb of cache is quite noticeably faster.

[Beast of War]

I have plugged in 1.5 Gb of memory and i am always the first in a map, in FH or Ravenshield or any other online game.

But lately i am not the only one anymore. I guess 1 Gb of memory or 1.5 Gb does not make a diffrence.

Memory is relative cheap, certainly DDR memory. In AMD systems one should take care though that faster clockrates in memory are not always better. If you have a 133 or 166 FSB CPU, you will be faster with 333 Mhz clocked memory then 400 Mhz clocked memeory. Has something to do with sychronisation losses. Only a 200 Mhz FSB clocked CPU ( up to now only the AMD 3200+ ) benefits from 400 Mhz memory. Other AMD CPU's are considerably faster with 333 hz clocked memory, and are slowed down by 400 Mhz memory !

In harddisks i only saw performace diffrences in rotation speed, 7200 tpm is always much faster on finding the data and transferring it the 5400 tpm. Also, the new Serial ATA disks are MUCH faster then ATA disks, if your mobo supports it.

When i look at that bf1942 engine performance chart i posted myself i see the top nvidia's perform only 12 points less then top ATI cards......while they are half their price !

Here in the Netherlands a ATI 9800 XT 256 mb does a rediculous 440 € But the nvidia card that in the test is almost just as fast cost 250 €

I guess that concludes what i am going for.......12 points out of 212 points does not justify almost twice the price. I am only affraid that the "sudden turn in bf1942 engine" frame rate drop is still there in new nvidia cards...

[Froggin_Ashole42]

Originally Posted by Mazz

a 9800 pro is about 150 above your price range.... what was the whole point of this post? i got mine for $280 and i heard thats pretty low.

To show off my coolness.

Well, I just raised my price range because of payday, if you read one of the earlier posts.Besides,it's sparked some good conversation .
I was tired when I did the 9800 Pro post, I didn't realize it said $300!
http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?j=1&id=1064607240983&skuId=6041384&typ eroduct&productCategoryId=cat01151 Better.

[the_move]

If the computer game industry switches to 32-bit shaders, the 9800 pro bought now are nothing. And it would be very funny if it happens at the end of this year.

[Froggin_Ashole42]

I think they'd start making 32 bit shaders in cards. Then maybe a year after they'd make the games with those.

Oh, by the way. I just noticed that that link from my most recent post doesn't work.It was a Geforce FX 5700 Ultra.Thoughts?

[The Jackalx2k]

I'd say buy from newegg.com

EXCELLENT site if I might add. We ordered parts to build my friends computer (3ghz, 1GB ram, 256mb 9800XT. It's a monster). Well anyways. He ordered the parts and the prices of all the stuff he ordered went down a day or two before his stuff arrived at his house so newegg was like: "Oh here, we will refund you the total amount of money the parts went down." It saved him like 100 bucks. Not many people do that I think