How Good Of A Graphics Card Do I "need" ? and a question about windows 7

[rob86 2]

As much as I'd love to have a top of the line, high-end graphics card, I'm going to have to go with a budget model right now. How good of a card do I need to play most games, on low graphics settings? Any major difference between ATI and NVIDIA? I've been seeing a lot of ATI cards in mid-priced pre-built computers lately, mostly in the ATI 4650-70 area. Is something around that range adequate? Should I look for a similarly priced NVIDIA model instead? Or is it useless for games?I just want to get an idea of what something in that price range is capable of. Could it handle (on acceptable video quality at least) games like, Empire: Total War. What about FPS games like FEAR2, Half Life2. I'm not so into gaming that I need to play the newest and prettiest FPS on the market, but I'd like to be able to most games that at least have been released in recent years. I've been using an NVIDIA 5200 on this computer, and it often does the job in older games like Rome Total War, Doom3, but a lot of games just plain don't work.And a question regarding 7, I noticed that almost every game out there says compatible with XP and/or Vista. Does that mean half the games out there don't work on 7? I waited for Vista compatibility to improve before getting a new PC, now they go and release a new OS that's pre-installed on everything..... damn Microsoft! I look on google and see a whole bunch of "Game not working on Win7!!!" but maybe it's been improved since then. I guess my general question here is, should I avoid Windows 7 if at all possible, or is it better than Vista? I'll probably end up installing Linux anyway, but still.. I need Windows to run Windows-only software.

[rvalkass 5]

Any major difference between ATI and NVIDIA?

Not particularly. Both are releasing cards with similar performance at similar prices, so it's a matter of comparing prices at the time you buy. If you're thinking of running Linux then nVidia currently have better drivers, but ATI are catching up and improving all the time.

 

I just want to get an idea of what something in that price range is capable of. Could it handle (on acceptable video quality at least) games like, Empire: Total War. What about FPS games like FEAR2, Half Life2.

For the HD4670, take a look here: http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/

 

The frame rates start on that page and go on for the next few pages.

 

And a question regarding 7, I noticed that almost every game out there says compatible with XP and/or Vista. Does that mean half the games out there don't work on 7? I waited for Vista compatibility to improve before getting a new PC, now they go and release a new OS that's pre-installed on everything..... damn Microsoft! I look on google and see a whole bunch of "Game not working on Win7!!!" but maybe it's been improved since then.

From people I've spoken to it's very hit and miss as to whether older games are working. If you're gonna switch to Microsoft^TM Windows^TM 7 then check in advance that your favourite games will work. Some are releasing patches, but older games aren't getting patches released, so you're stuck.

 

I guess my general question here is, should I avoid Windows 7 if at all possible, or is it better than Vista? I'll probably end up installing Linux anyway, but still.. I need Windows to run Windows-only software.

Go with Linux from the off WINE will probably support just as many older games as Microsoft^TM Windows^TM 7.

[rob86 2]

Thanks for the reply. I'm not going to worry too much about the ATI driver - ubuntu compatibility, I'll have faith in them. I hope I don't regret it! I don't use Compiz anyway, and a lot of the ATI problems I've seen seem to be with that.

[rvalkass 5]

Thanks for the reply. I'm not going to worry too much about the ATI driver - ubuntu compatibility, I'll have faith in them. I hope I don't regret it! I don't use Compiz anyway, and a lot of the ATI problems I've seen seem to be with that.

I've got an ATI card in my current PC running Kubuntu 9.10 and it works perfectly. ATI just seem to be slightly slower to release drivers, and release them for kernel and X versions that are slightly out of date, but as the versions in the Ubuntu repositories aren't usually bleeding edge, it's not that much of a problem. The newer ATI cards are also generally cooler and quieter than the equivalent nVidia card.

[truefusion 3]

For most games out today, you would only need at least 600mhz with at least 32 stream processors. Note, this does not mean you'll be able to play the games at their highest or maximum graphical settings, but all the games you have listed will run fine. I own an ATI 4670 card and have made a review about it. Check it out if you go with one and have any problems with it, as i provide some troubleshooting information. Do not use the ATI drivers in Ubuntu's repository if you go with ATI; Nvidia is fine, though, to go with the one in the repository (though it may not be as up-to-date as you may want it). I say this 'cause i had trouble with them: i would get a screen, but upon restart, the system wouldn't fully load. I do not know if this problem has been fixed, but i'm not going to check, especially since the proprietary ones work fine. Installing from the repository, all that means is that you don't have to manually reinstall the graphics card drivers whenever a new kernel update is installed. This is due mostly to the Linux kernel being a monolithic kernel; the drivers use the kernel headers or sources found on your computer to build a compatible driver for your system. Both ATI and Nvidia release their drivers in a timely fashion; the betas just require slightly more work to track down.

 

Windows 7 is better than Vista, but i don't use either. If i had to choose between the two, i'd go with Windows 7, just because i found it easier to use than Vista—though not as easy as XP. Not sure of its game support, but forcing XP compatibility may solve any problems.

[inverse_bloom 0]

Ive used multiple version of linux with a Radeon 9600XT old, old card! Although I almost always got it working with whatever version of linux i was using at the time, but it didn't always come without headaches. If you are going to stick with just linux, nVidia maybe the way to go (im an ATI fan). If you dont mind delving into xorg configurations (linux command prompt) and such, maybe ATI is the way to go. Generally speaking over the years "ATI" is better value for any midrange budget you have alloted to the cause. Years ago it had a smoother way of rendering textures in games, whereas nVidia was more gritty but tended to punch out pixel fill rates (good for particles). Im not sure what the cards are like today. I agree the 4670 would be the card of my choice if i had the money, it would also be good for the sake of longevity. Good luck.

Edited December 14, 2009 by inverse_bloom (see edit history)

[rob86 2]

Is there a big difference between the ATI HD4670 and the HD4650? And is there a big difference between 1GB and 512mb models? The 4670 seems like a popular choice online, but all of the computers I've seen come with at best a 512mb ATI HD4650.And what's the difference between AGP and PCI? AGP is faster? Is it recommended to go for a more expensive AGP one or are the PCI ones ok?And (there sure are a lot of things to consider on computers) is DDR3 RAM significantly better than DDR2 RAM? Would 6GB DDR3 be better than 8GB DDR2?

Edited December 15, 2009 by rob86 (see edit history)

[inverse_bloom 0]

I cant remember exactly the difference between the Ati HD4650 and Ati HD4670 bar for the fact my research indicated that if you have the money, the HD4670 is worth the extra bit (researched it 4 months ago).

Regarding dedicated memory on video cards. What that does is "temporarily holds" the textures, 3d coordinates for depth and compiled shaders that are processed by the GPU on its way to being put up on screen.

Regarding what you will need for your purposes (512/1024), typically what you do is consider if you are going to run your games at very high resolutions with high detail, in that case there is a possibility that you might want to go with more ram.

But that is if the GPU is able to process quickly enough get good frame rates at those resolutions. Thats why higher end cards typically have more ram onboard to cater for that possibility. However on a mid range card like yours 512 is sufficient. Check this out -

http://techreport.com/review/14230/how-much-graphics-memory-do-you-really-need/3

AGP is an older standard then the new PCI-express. Thus they cost more to purchase because they have little demand compared to PCI-e. For Radeons i dont think Ati makes anything beyond HD3650 for agp anyhow, because the cards were beginning to get slightly bottlenecked by the AGP standard at that point.

Regarding RAM if you have the option always go for the quickest ram, i haven't checked up much in this area in the last year or so, but maybe DDR3 is finally quick enough to really warrant its extra expense. Of course you will need to get a 64 bit Amd chip if you want to utilise anything over 4 GB's of ram becuase that is the circumstances where higher amounts of ram will register. (Most Intels are still 32 bit, in which case 6 gigs wont register in the bios although the computer maybe fitted with it).

In my opinion unless you are doing intense 3d rendering you wont utilize much more than 4-6 gig at the moment anyway. For your intended use, 6 gigs of quick good quality ram is ideal. Corsair immediately comes to mind.

Actually i didnt realise it but Ati HD4890's are good price at the moment maybe that is "another" one you could consider -

http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/

Edited December 15, 2009 by inverse_bloom (see edit history)

[truefusion 3]

And (there sure are a lot of things to consider on computers) is DDR3 RAM significantly better than DDR2 RAM? Would 6GB DDR3 be better than 8GB DDR2?

Depends on your motherboard and what kind of set-up you're going with. While DDR2 and DDR3 have the same amount of pins, the gap in between the pins are positioned differently, so you cannot have a motherboard that supports both DDR2 and DDR3 although the processor may support both. Note that the advertised speed is divided by the channels. For example, if you have DDR2 800 dual-channel, that means 400mhz per stick. Concerning the RAM timings, if your motherboard can't support the advertised RAM timings, then you'll need a better motherboard. Most of the DDR3 RAMs can out perform DDR2. For gaming you won't necessarily need DDR3, but at least 2gigs is recommended—unless you are running Vista or Windows 7, then i'd recommend at least 4gigs.

[webishqiptar 0]

Is it any difference from ATI Radeon and ATI? How to check about compatibility of motherboard and card graphic?

[inverse_bloom 0]

(AMD) ATI have a few product line ups not limited to just "ATI Radeon". There is also "ATI Rage", "ATI Rage mobility", "ATI Radeon Mobility", "ATI FireGL" to name a few. For many motherboards on the market you dont need to check compatability with a specific brand of graphics card. They have one PCI-e slot to plug into, although you have to ensure that what you are putting in is a PCI-e or PCI-e 2.0 compatible graphics card (AGP wont work with PCI).But last i heard you "do" need to check compatability for "some" motherboards to see if they are compatible with a graphics card brand if you intended to have two or more in one computer. Some motherboards are intended for Nvidia others are intended ATI especially if you are looking for a SLI or Crossfire configuration. Another consideration is the type of "processor" you will select from to put in the motherboard, whether it be "AMD", "Intel", or a cheaper CPU.

Edited December 15, 2009 by inverse_bloom (see edit history)

[rayzoredge 2]

I know most of your questions have already been answered, but I'll throw these little tidbits anyway.

 

Check out [url="http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/ Hardware[/url]http://forums.xisto.com/ to compare graphics cards and their performance benchmarks with games at different settings, as well as seeing what will be the best bang for your buck.

 

I wouldn't worry so much about compatibility with Windows 7, since there's always compatibility mode. I would understand if older games wouldn't work (like Windows 95 or MS-DOS games), but there's always a workaround. (I've gotten Mechwarrior 2: Mercenaries to run on XP, and that's good enough for me since Windows 7 has XP mode... if you're willing to cough up the extra cash for Ultimate.)

 

As much as I'd love to have a top of the line, high-end graphics card, I'm going to have to go with a budget model right now. How good of a card do I need to play most games, on low graphics settings? Any major difference between ATI and NVIDIA? I've been seeing a lot of ATI cards in mid-priced pre-built computers lately, mostly in the ATI 4650-70 area. Is something around that range adequate? Should I look for a similarly priced NVIDIA model instead? Or is it useless for games?

 

I just want to get an idea of what something in that price range is capable of. Could it handle (on acceptable video quality at least) games like, Empire: Total War. What about FPS games like FEAR2, Half Life2.

 

I'm not so into gaming that I need to play the newest and prettiest FPS on the market, but I'd like to be able to most games that at least have been released in recent years. I've been using an NVIDIA 5200 on this computer, and it often does the job in older games like Rome Total War, Doom3, but a lot of games just plain don't work.

 

 

And a question regarding 7, I noticed that almost every game out there says compatible with XP and/or Vista. Does that mean half the games out there don't work on 7? I waited for Vista compatibility to improve before getting a new PC, now they go and release a new OS that's pre-installed on everything..... damn Microsoft! I look on google and see a whole bunch of "Game not working on Win7!!!" but maybe it's been improved since then.

 

I guess my general question here is, should I avoid Windows 7 if at all possible, or is it better than Vista? I'll probably end up installing Linux anyway, but still.. I need Windows to run Windows-only software.

[rob86 2]

I've been reading the replies, sorry for not replying I haven't been neglecting the help!

What does everyone think of this computer, for my needs. I want to play games, that's about it. I mean I obviously want to do other things, like run Cubase-ish things, or Photoshop-ish things, but I've been surviving with 512RAM up until now and have had no major complaints. I've never actually run out of RAM doing what I do normally, except when I was converting images in ImageMagick.

Athlon X4 Quad 630 2.8GHz(X4) CPUMB Asrock AMD 780 Motherboard
Memory 4G DDR2 800MHz Max. 16G
HD 1000G 7200RPM
Optical 22XDVDRW
Video 4870 ATI High Def 1G DDR5
Sound 6 Channel Sound
Case 500W OCZ/NZXT ATX Case
Lan Card 10/100M Eithernet Card
USB 2.0 6 USB 2.0 (2 on the Front)
WINDOWS 7 HOME PREMIUM

Does anything stand out as being bad? I don't want to get ripped off, ya know. I don't know much about motherboards or processors these days, and don't really have time to google everything.

Here are some concerns I have about it. For the price, it seems to have a better graphics card than I expected. I was really looking for one with a 4670 as was recommended, but stumbled on this. I'm thinking there has to be some kind of a trade-off, because most computers with comparable prices come with at best, HD 4650, at worst, some Intel thing. What is it? Less RAM? No Lightscribe?

I also notice that it doesn't have "HD Audio" which I know nothing about. Is this a big deal? I don't plan on having a very fancy sound system any time soon, so I'm wondering if I should even care that the soundcard is just basic.

What about Lightscribe? Do people actually use Lightscribe after the initial gimmick wears off? I don't want to miss out on playing with some new modern PC feature, because it's really sucking me in, wanting to witness a disc have an image etched on it, but I have to be realistic here. I can't see myself using Lightscribe disks very often.

Should I be concerned that it's DDR2 RAM and not DDR3? Is 4GB enough, or would I be kicking myself for not getting at least 6GB? Adding a bit more ram isn't the end of the world though, so no big deal there.

The HDD seems to be about average, most PC's I see are 1TB.

Oh, I forgot about all the other things like card readers. The fact that it doesn't even mention a card reader is disturbing, I thought they were standard on all. There's no picture, so I don't know if it's not included, or they just didn't mention it. Hmm.. 6+2 USB ports seems below average too, it's actually less than my PC now. However I'm only using two or three ports, so maybe plugging a few things in the back instead of the front isn't THAT inconvenient.

Thanks for the help guys, I appreciate it!
Edited December 21, 2009 by rob86 (see edit history)

[rayzoredge 2]

You forgot to actually list how much it was.

Looks like a damn solid system in my book. Future-proofed with the quad-core with a good clock speed, plenty of HD space with 1TB AND at 7200RPM, 4GB of RAM... pretty darn good. The graphics card is up there on the higher end, so you can expect smooth frame rates (60+ FPS with high quality, 4xAA, 4xAF) with the latest games.

What puzzles me is that this beast has DDR2 RAM. I would think that it would have that stepped up as well, but maybe it's one of the ways how this system is priced lower than what you would expect. No concern here, though... the only notable differences between DDR2 and DDR3 is a "theoretical" doubled performance (increased bandwidth), power consumption (and savings), and price (DDR3 almost doubling in price compared to DDR2). 4GB of DDR2 RAM, especially coming from 512MB of DDR2 RAM, will be a world of difference already to you, and I wouldn't sweat over not having DDR3 just yet.

I wouldn't worry about not having "HD Audio" either, since you're not concerned with hooking this thing up to a surround sound system. Most stock onboard audio processors are pretty good to begin with nowadays.

LightScribe is just that: a gimmick. I believe I have one on my laptop and have yet to use it, but then again, I don't really burn CDs/DVDs. Maybe I should use it instead of slapping my fancy labels using a Sharpie, my steady hand, and my consistent inability to figure out where to start writing to center the label, but then I think about having to go out and buy LS-specific CDs and DVDs when I already have a million blank CDs right here at home... it seems like more work than it should be. But you get a pretty wicked good-looking CD/DVD that you shut the case on and never look at again (or find again), so it's really up to you. You could burn a pretty cool library of your favorite shows to DVD, in which case the LightScribe'd discs would look much better than ye ole Sharpie...

No one can ever have enough USB ports. I think you're already good with just two in the front, since you have four in the back. And if you really need more, I'd throw in a USB hub to expand it in the back.

Card readers are handy only when you need them. I know that sounds kind of obvious, but I know that most people don't ever use their card readers and they serve more as a great home for dust bunnies. This is something else I wouldn't sweat since you can plug a camera in directly into a computer and use IT as your card reader.

I've been reading the replies, sorry for not replying I haven't been neglecting the help!
What does everyone think of this computer, for my needs. I want to play games, that's about it. I mean I obviously want to do other things, like run Cubase-ish things, or Photoshop-ish things, but I've been surviving with 512RAM up until now and have had no major complaints. I've never actually run out of RAM doing what I do normally, except when I was converting images in ImageMagick.

Does anything stand out as being bad? I don't want to get ripped off, ya know. I don't know much about motherboards or processors these days, and don't really have time to google everything.

Here are some concerns I have about it. For the price, it seems to have a better graphics card than I expected. I was really looking for one with a 4670 as was recommended, but stumbled on this. I'm thinking there has to be some kind of a trade-off, because most computers with comparable prices come with at best, HD 4650, at worst, some Intel thing. What is it? Less RAM? No Lightscribe?

I also notice that it doesn't have "HD Audio" which I know nothing about. Is this a big deal? I don't plan on having a very fancy sound system any time soon, so I'm wondering if I should even care that the soundcard is just basic.

What about Lightscribe? Do people actually use Lightscribe after the initial gimmick wears off? I don't want to miss out on playing with some new modern PC feature, because it's really sucking me in, wanting to witness a disc have an image etched on it, but I have to be realistic here. I can't see myself using Lightscribe disks very often.

Should I be concerned that it's DDR2 RAM and not DDR3? Is 4GB enough, or would I be kicking myself for not getting at least 6GB? Adding a bit more ram isn't the end of the world though, so no big deal there.

The HDD seems to be about average, most PC's I see are 1TB.

Oh, I forgot about all the other things like card readers. The fact that it doesn't even mention a card reader is disturbing, I thought they were standard on all. There's no picture, so I don't know if it's not included, or they just didn't mention it. Hmm.. 6+2 USB ports seems below average too, it's actually less than my PC now. However I'm only using two or three ports, so maybe plugging a few things in the back instead of the front isn't THAT inconvenient.

Thanks for the help guys, I appreciate it!

[rob86 2]

It's $969CAD and called a "Gaming PC" by the small shop that's selling it. I guess the store owner is trying to compete with the bigger stores by building it a little different than FutureShop, which is about the only other store around here I can find that sells desktop PC's. I couldn't find anything with a better than ATI HD4650 graphics card at FS. An ATI HD4870 is about $300, ATI HD4650 is about $100, so that apparently makes up a big chunk of the price. If I have to choose, it seems better to spend money on graphics than fancy DVD's though. I imagine I would be using Linux anyway, so that would cut down on RAM usage a lot. Windows 7 would have to be damn good to tear me away from Linux now, and I'm not expecting to be too impressed by it.