System Requirements? - Page 3

Zatrais · 2002-12-31, 05:12 PM

GF FX is not a competitor to the R300 chip (or radeon 9700 line).. the GF FX will compete whit the R350 line that ATI is making (not much heard of this yet, they're keeping the lid pretty tight). The GF FX has the specs to beat the Radeon 9700, how this works in real use has yet to be seen.

As for the G4 vs 9700... they're pretty close in performce whitout AA or AF enabled whit resoilutions up to and including 1024x768. But once you enable AA and FA the Radeon 9700 kicks the crap out of the G4. Also when you go beyond 1024x768 the Radeon 9700 really starts to shine performance wise. All this is also whit 32bit not 16bit.

Personally i think the GF FX will be a problem card for a while considering that this is the first Nvidia card that has AA and FA options. Will most likely be some growing pains whit those options for a while.

Incase you wonder what i base my analasys on the G4 vs R9700... i've used them both in my system... hehe.

To put it simply, if you don't mind jagged lines, less clear textures whit lacking performance past the 1024x768 res go whit the G4. If you want AA and FA, running games at resolutions past 1024x768 then go whit the 9700.

I'd go whit the R9700, because well once you've tasted AA and FA you never want to go back to whitout them hehe

Dragoon412 · 2002-12-31, 06:43 PM

As for the G4 vs 9700... they're pretty close in performce whitout AA or AF enabled whit resoilutions up to and including 1024x768. But once you enable AA and FA the Radeon 9700 kicks the crap out of the G4. Also when you go beyond 1024x768 the Radeon 9700 really starts to shine performance wise. All this is also whit 32bit not 16bit.

And as I pointed out before, what that shows is that the processor is the limiting factor in the benchmarking setup. As you increase the resolution and add anti-aliasing and the like, the load on the video card increases, but the processor load does NOT.

So the GF4 scores about the same as the 9700 when the benchmark is processor-dependant, but as the benchmark moves to place higher demand on the GPU, the 9700 smokes the G4. The truth of the matter is that the 9700 Pro is so powerful that even now, pairing it with a high-end 3.0ghz P4/RDRAM test machine, it's *still* pulling away from the GF4 as you push the resolution and features - I don't honestly think we'll see that card's performance ceiling for a couple more months.

Really, the GF4 is a more powerful card than the Radeon 8500, but the 9700 is just WAY out of its league. The moment ATi released the RV300, every other card on the market was relegate to obsolecense. This wasn't a normal product cycle performance increase -- the RV300 is so powerful that it has more power by itself than most high end gaming systems.

Take a look at some benchmarks:

First, Jedi Knight 2 , which is probably the most CPU-intensive game out there.

Then, UT2k3.

And those aren't even with FSAA and AF enabled - look at the FSAA, AF, and FSAA & AF tests, where the 9700 Pro consistantly turns out nearly three times the numbers that the TI 4600 does.

The 9700 Pro is just WAY out of the league of anything else on the market right now.

�io · 2002-12-31, 06:48 PM

Hehe i was just checking out Tom's hardware comparaison. It made me think twice about getting a TI4600. I'm most likely gonna get a 9700pro now.

Zatrais · 2002-12-31, 07:42 PM

yup the Radeon 9700 kicks ass, it's the card i'm currently using, but as Dragoon said the current PC's dosn't even do it justice yet because they can't throw enough at it hehe... Get a radeon 9700 and you're set for a while.

Whit the Radeon 9700 today you basicly pay for WAY better images in games whit the AA and FA.. not to mention pixel shading (water in Morrowind for instance looks damn sweet whit it) and you get a card that will last longer than the G4, but you pay abit more for it.. not to mention that it's a power beast aswell so be sure to have a nice big powersupply... it needs it's on 4pin power like the HD's use.

oh 1 final tip for future Radeon 9700 pro *hint dio hehe* owners, don't share the 4 pin power connector whit annything else. Yes it can be used whit another because it can "split" but that in most cases just slows things down. It also caused some problems for me until i gave it its own supply hehe

bliksta · 2002-12-31, 08:13 PM

radeons for life

Dragoon412 · 2003-01-02, 02:32 PM

*sigh*

I know it's practically a moot point, but, Vimp, the Voodoo 5 would smoke a GF2. The Voodoo 5 was comparable to a GF3, performance-wise.

MrVicchio · 2003-01-02, 02:43 PM

SmokeJumperPS
Station Admin
Registered: Sep 2001 posted 12-31-2002 09:23 AM user search report post
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Our system is extremely complex, but I'll do the nutshell description here:
a) We load "thumbnails" of everything on the continent at load time. That way, you will always see a texture, and there's no appreciable load pause when something pops into view (like a vehicle or building).

b) We load in higher-res textures in your CPUs free-time. In otherwords, when you're not doing much that keeps your system busy, we have it loading higher-end textures so that your images improve. These higher-res textures are "bubbled" in, to use your phrasing. Basically, they are added in to your memory cache whenever you are in range of possibly needing to see those objects.

c) We flush textures, as needed, but try to never flush textures unless required. The less memory swaps, the better. Memory flushes typically occur between continents.

d) We allow players to use the thumbnail version of the graphics when playing, if desired. The graphics result is less pleasing (a bit blurry), but all textures are loaded at all times, thus eliminating load "ticks" as the hard drive is accessed.
(Folks with the 512MB RAM on the min specs wouldn't see this anyway...but this allows folks with lower than 512MB to play well. Yes...we're working on lowering our min specs.)

I think that helps right there

�io · 2003-01-02, 03:26 PM

Well it depends on the peeps. I know i could very likely play PS on my system (1.4Ghz,256 DDR, GeForce2mx400 64meg) but with everything in low. PlanetSide deserves better, hence i'll be upgrading no matter what.

Dragoon412 · 2003-01-02, 04:15 PM

Ditto -- my system's bran new, actually, but it's lacking in the perfromance department. I had a power surge on my old system that blew the surge supressor, the power supply, the mainboard, etc, so I had to build a brand new system on extremely short funds and time, and got stuck with a:

P4 1.6ghz
512 MB Crucial PC2100 DDR RAM
ATi Radeon 8500
*cries* an SiS 651 chipset on my mainboard

But, hey, it's a Shuttle SS51G; the tower isn't any larger than my toaster, and it's very quiet.

I plan on updating, too... probably to 1 gig of Corsair PC2700 DDR RAM (Curical has creat customer service, but their RAM has major stability issues when you overclock it) and a Radeon 9700 Pro. I guess I could update my processor, too, but I really don't think it'll be a major issue; I can overclock it to 2.3ghz without any stability issues, and I have PLENTY of cooling - it's just a question of getting RAM that I can ramp up the settings for, too.