Radeon 9600 Upgrade?! Doom 3

sticker

I've just upgraded my system to the following specs:

AMD 3000+ - Upgrade
1 gig DDR 400 - Upgrade
180gig HD
XP Home
Infinity NFII Ultra motherboard - Upgrade
Audigy 2 ZS Pro sound - Upgrade
Radeon 9600 - Have a while now

I was dissaponted to find that even after the upgrade Doom3 is very slow on 1024x768 at sliders up. Set to high quality - NOT ULTRA HIGH!

If I'm to upgrade to another graphics card, without breaking the bank - budget of maybe 250euro -

Is there a big jump in praformance to say the PowerColor Radeon 9800 PRO 128MB DDR AGP? This is selling for 215euro locally?

Any recommendation are appreciated!

By the by - I've installed the latest Catylst drivers:
wxp-w2k-DOOM3-HOTFIX-8-05-040727a-017086E

Thanks!!!

Conor

Ciaran500

The 9800Pro is currently the best value card. YOu should be able to get it cheaper than €215 online.

grimloch

if you buy now you can get the sapphire 9800 from komplett for 205 as they have a deal going, most people here say the sapphire one is better as it has a bigger memory interface than the powercolour

Mutant_Fruit

The best way to bump up Doom3 performance is to disable shadows. It made it well playable for me on my 9600pro, at medium detail, 1024x768. I also disabled high quality special effects.

Thordon

The detail setting only applies to how compressed the textures are, if your card is 256mb, its best suited to high, if its 128mb, set it to medium. Theres very little visual difference between the detail settings. Its to do with video memory usage, although high and ultra use 8xAF too I think, but you can change these in your ATI control panel if you really want to.

Also, have you done any tweaking? Go into DoomConfig.cfg and change/add the lines:

seta image_useCache "1"
seta image_cacheMegs "256" <-- set to 1/4 of your system RAM
seta image_cacheMinK "2048"

This is the best tweak, but there are others if you search around.

I agree with turning off shadows, the game is still excellent without them, but they slow you down a lot.

Mutant_Fruit

I think this is definately worth a shot for all ATI USERS ONLY. This Tweak gives a nice performance boost on all ATI cards. I went from 32fps to 39 fps on my 9600pro, which i believe is a 20% increase. Thats not to shabby at all.

Thordon

I tried the tweak, went from 15.5fps/26fps to 15.5fps/26.3fps on the timedemo, on my 9600 np, oh well

sticker

grimloch wrote:

if you buy now you can get the sapphire 9800 from komplett for 205 as they have a deal going, most people here say the sapphire one is better as it has a bigger memory interface than the powercolour

Cheers mate! & Thanks all for responding...

grimloch

no problem

sticker

Just raising this thread again guys - Anyone heard of any better deals going for a ATI graphics upgrade?

I was going for a PowerColor 9800 pro - Komplett have it for €215, but I could stretch the budget to €365 for a Sapphire Radeon 9800 Atlantis PRO 256MB AGP, ATI,"Ultimate Edition", Full-Retail.

Would this mean I wouldn't need to worry about a graphics upgrade for some time?

Cheers...

Ciaran500

www.Jes.de has a 9800pro for about €199.


For around €300 you can get a vanilla 6800. I'm not sure how this perform compared to a 9800pro. Look at some reviews.

Col_Loki

Yea the 6800 is going for €299 here....... http://www.jes-computer.de/product_info.php?pID=17559 and outperforms the 9800XT, best card for that price range.

Other than that its a little bit more of a stretch to a 6800GT or a X800pro.

The 9800pro Ultimate is just a passivly cooled 256mb 9800pro, its not worth the money TBH , the 6800 is much better value and performance wise.

sticker

Ciaran500 wrote:

www.Jes.de has a 9800pro for about €199.


For around €300 you can get a vanilla 6800. I'm not sure how this perform compared to a 9800pro. Look at some reviews.

Thanks Mate,

Anywhere closer to home tobuy for that price?!!

Is Jes.de a reliable source? shipping a gfx card? Would you recommend them from experience?

Ciaran500

I bought a PSU and HDD off them a week ago and had no problems. Delivery was a bit slow but thats GLS's fault. Jes shipped very quick after I ordered.


EDIT: I doubt you would get anywhere in Ireland with a 9800pro for less than €200. e.g. Peats:Sapphire Radeon 9800 Pro 128MB €299 :rolleyes:

Col_Loki

Ive ordered 5/6 times from jes and no problems at all. Shipping takes 5-7days roughly and if you pay by bank draft it takes an extra 4-5 (time it takes for the draft to clear in germany).

Komplett have them for €335 but thats not much more local TBH. Irish shops are way behind theres only a few who keep up with the market....... and i cant find any 9800pro's for €199, 6800's for €299 anywhere else.

sticker

Col_Loki wrote:

Yea the 6800 is going for €299 here....... http://www.jes-computer.de/product_info.php?pID=17559 and outperforms the 9800XT, best card for that price range.

Other than that its a little bit more of a stretch to a 6800GT or a X800pro.

The 9800pro Ultimate is just a passivly cooled 256mb 9800pro, its not worth the money TBH , the 6800 is much better value and performance wise.

I'm not sure I understand;

There's a 256MB ATI Original Radeon 9800 Pro RTL on Jes for €289 - thats 128MB more poke! Would I definately get more performance from a 128MB GeForce FX6800?! Apologies, I'm just a klittle green when it comes to hardware!

Ciaran500

This going to be hard to explain, but I'll try. The ram size will not always show how well a gfx card performs. The ram on the gfx card is used to store the textures while playing a game. If the textures are bigger than the ram on the graphics card it has to store some of them on the harddrive or the system ram.(this is slower than onboard ram). The 6800 runs faster than the 9800pro independant of how much ram it has.

Very few game need 256mb of graphics memory (doom being one of the first) but if it is needed you will get a bit of slow down when it has to get new textures.


I told you it was gonna be hard.

BloodBath

Very few game need 256mb of graphics memory (doom being one of the first) but if it is needed you will get a bit of slow down when it has to get new textures.

I thought it was just a slight loss in visual quality as it compresses the textures rather than display them normally.


BloodBath

Azza

The game is not worth upgrading for I was rather dissapointed with it and most other people I have talked too as well. Asides it still looks good on medium detail at 1024x768. A friend of mine got it working well on a his 9600xt using cat 4.8. There is also tweaks out there that improve performance for ati cards. And there is a beta of cat 4.9 that improves performance as well.

Ciaran500

BloodBath wrote:

I thought it was just a slight loss in visual quality as it compresses the textures rather than display them normally.

I'm not 100% on what it does, I thought it put them in the page file but I could easily be wrong.

ViperVenoM

yeh id agree with Azza

a) its not worth upgrading for
b) the detail settings dont seem to make much of a difference when i had my barton at 3200+ with my 9800xt @ stock, which aint much more than a 9800pro...it ran pretty smooth in ultra and everything turned on about 30-60fps (apart from the ...2nd to last boss..then i had about 20fps :rolleyes: )

but on my secondary with the 9600pro i was getting about 30-50fps on medium in 800x600 or high 20's in 1024..but it didnt look that much different to the xt...havent tried it on my new rig..and i dont intend to its pretty crap imo a 9800pro will play it looking the same as a 9600 on lower settings and the 4.9 betas got me a few extra fps anyways if you wanna upgrade ..do it but not for dooms sake think more ahead...like half life 2 maybe? from what ive seen the lower end new nvidias are struggling to pull away from the 9800pros/xt in some benches..dunno how accurate they are yet but i guess its down to what other games you play (dunno if you mentioned it i havent read all the thread im just browsing while i wait for pcmark to download)

BloodBath

The lower end new nvidias destroy the lower end newer Ati's. The X800Xt is the only card that margainly beats it's Nvidia rival, the 6800ultra, and that's only in direct3d. The gap is closing with every new driver as well.

-edit-

I'm not 100% on what it does, I thought it put them in the page file but I could easily be wrong.

It definitly doesn't do this. If the card memory is ever filled it switches to your system ram. This is what your agp aperture size is for but it is very rarely needed. Only for older cards. The amound of card memory mainly affects the compression rate of the textures.


BloodBath

sticker

Azza wrote:

The game is not worth upgrading for I was rather dissapointed with it and most other people I have talked too as well. Asides it still looks good on medium detail at 1024x768. A friend of mine got it working well on a his 9600xt using cat 4.8. There is also tweaks out there that improve performance for ati cards. And there is a beta of cat 4.9 that improves performance as well.

The reason I started this thread was in mind of an upgrade that would hold me solid for at least a year with coming games - Obviously Half Life 2. So It's not just to cater for one game.

Insadently, I'm playing Doom3 atm, and I for one think its fairly sweet a game!

I take the point that Ciaran500 raised that the RAM does not directly effect the performance, But with new games needing better poke cards, would it not make sence to buy one with 256? I've a gig of DDR on my system, But I suppose I just don't want to make sure that if I invest, I get my moneys worth for all games to come! That in mind do you think the vanilla 6800 is a wise investment? Thanks again...

Ciaran500

BloodBath wrote:

It definitly doesn't do this. If the card memory is ever filled it switches to your system ram. This is what your agp aperture size is for but it is very rarely needed. Only for older cards. The amound of card memory mainly affects the compression rate of the textures.

I completley forgot about the agp aperture.


I think your better buying a 6800 if you have €300 to spend on a graphics card. If you have €200 then a 9800pro is what you should buy. How much you want to spend is up to you.

Giblet

You can get a 6800 for ~250 euro on overclockers.co.uk

Kicks the ass of the 9800 pro for the price!

sticker

Giblet wrote:

You can get a 6800 for ~250 euro on overclockers.co.uk

Kicks the ass of the 9800 pro for the price!

There are many 6800's there on overclockers - Which one is best for my budget?!

The Chaintech Apogee 6800 128MB DDR TV-Out/DVI seems the pokest for my money...???! Althought its €344 !!! Is there a HUGE difference between the Core engine clock speed & DDR Memory speed?

358MHz Core Engine Clock speed
- 128MB 770MHz high speed DDR memory
- Superscalar 12-Pipe GPU Architecture
- CineFX 3.0 Engine
- The Industry's First On-Chip Video Processor
- UltraShadow II Technology
- 64-Bit Texture Filtering and Blending
- Intellisample 3.0 Technology
- Unified Driver Architecture (UDA)
- nView Multi-Display Technology
- Digital Vibrance Control 3.0
- High-Speed DDR Memory Interface
- 256-Bit Memory Interface with Advanced Memory Control
- 128-Bit Studio-Precision Computation
- Full-Speed 32-Bit Color Precision
- Advanced Adaptive De-Interlacing
- Video Scaling and Filtering
- TV-Out
- Dual 400MHz RAMDACs
- 0.13 Micron Process Technology
- Commandos3 full games

Ciaran500

The cheapest one.


EDIT: The top one is the cheapest and looks good.

ViperVenoM

6800's destroy 9800's i never said they didnt..just i was reading some HL2 benchies a while back and the lowest 6800 was exactly the same frame rate as the 9800xt until it got to like 1600x1200 and u started getting the AA and AF in...these where when it was in beta stages so its probably a lot different by now...as for every other game well the 6800 will of course be on top..just what i saw for hl2 though...

sticker

Thanks everyone for your valuable advice! I've decided I'm going to put €400 towards a kick ass card -

Which is the best one to go for atm:

Examples on JES:

PNY Verto GeForce 6800 GT GDDR3 €399

256MB Powercolor X800 Pro RTL €419

256MB Sapphire Radeon X800 Pro Lite-RTL €389

256MB Palit Radeon X800 Pro Retail €419

256MB AOpen Aeolus 6800GT-DV256 Retail €429

256MB Xelo Radeon X800 Pro Retail €419

By the way, My System:
DFI Infinity NFII Ultra
AMD XP3000+
1 gig DDR 400 RAM
180 gig HD
Augidy 2 ZS Platnum Pro

Allowing for the fact I go with a serious card, I assume I will be able to play Doom3 / HL2 / Next gen game at full sliders up with a healthy frame rate...?!!

Thanks again guys...

Ciaran500

Geforce 6800GT 256mb €367

http://www.dabs.com/uk/productview?quicklinx=3BH3


EDIT: Yes it should allow you to play all these games at full detail.

ViperVenoM

well my 9800xt is playing all these games easy with high detail and high res..any of them cards will wipe the floor with mine so your gonna get some mighty fine detail/framerate

BloodBath

well my 9800xt is playing all these games easy with high detail and high res..any of them cards will wipe the floor with mine so your gonna get some mighty fine detail/framerate

A 9800xt is decent for Doom3 but it doesn't run it in max detail. I have one with a high speed processor and play on high detail (not ultra) at 1280x1024 but it can get a little shakey in some places. I might drop to 1024x768

Changing to a 6800gt soon anyway.


BloodBath

sticker

Ciaran500 wrote:

Geforce 6800GT 256mb €367

http://www.dabs.com/uk/productview?quicklinx=3BH3


EDIT: Yes it should allow you to play all these games at full detail.

They've none at the moment - With no forecast as to when it'll be back in stock - Do you know of any other suppliers? Thanks! your help is appreciated mate!!

sticker

I know it a score more, but is this in the same ballpark?

PNY any good?

ViperVenoM

BloodBath wrote:

A 9800xt is decent for Doom3 but it doesn't run it in max detail. I have one with a high speed processor and play on high detail (not ultra) at 1280x1024 but it can get a little shakey in some places. I might drop to 1024x768

Changing to a 6800gt soon anyway.


BloodBath

fair enough..i played doom 3 in 1024x768 in ultra detail with 35+ fps ..which was good enough for me..didnt expect 1280 res to be an even option for my card...but i play most of my games in 1024x768 anyway so..no biggy

that was with my barton too actually...would prob be a little better now..but i dont intend to ever go on it again :rolleyes:

BloodBath

Hmmm just realised I had 2xAA and 8xAF turned on in the graphics card settings. Also updated the drivers and it's running a lot better now.

Noticed you have a 3400+ too, they run Doom3 better anyway.


BloodBath

Azza

I play everything at 1024x768 as my monitor has a hideous refresh rate. Doom III runs fine at ultra detail level on my rig at that resolution I assume its getting at least 35+fps and I can't recall encoutnering slow down anywhere. Near the end of the gaem now.

Ciaran500

sticker wrote:

I know it a score more, but is this in the same ballpark?

PNY any good?

All the 6800GT are built from a reference design from nvidia. The only difference between all the companys cards are different cooler and different "freebies" that come with it. Normally a couple of games.

TacT

Get a GT if you're going to spend that kind of money! clock speeds also fall into play as well as software bundle/pcb colour or whatever else floats your boat. My gainward GT Golden shambles does 440core and 1.18Ghz on the memory surpassing Ultra speeds and getting me scores in the same region as them.

12.2K in 3dmk03 running an xp3000+ @2.27Ghz - 11x216 on an A7N8X-X with a Gig of ram and I was shocked by the score!

compare linky

First card I've ever had allowing me to play with AA/AF which is nice although looking back on it perhaps the X800 series is the way to go if you want to pile it on due to the small loss of performance they experience compared to their 6800 counterparts when using AA/AF?

Problem I have with my card -- bloody noise of this dual fan cooling system is ridiculous! Will be replacing it later on down the line as it's audible over my aero7+ on full whack which is just ludicrous! Thank god for fan speed control...

Ciaran500

He is getting a GT.

sticker

Ciaran500 wrote:

Geforce 6800GT 256mb €367

http://www.dabs.com/uk/productview?quicklinx=3BH3


EDIT: Yes it should allow you to play all these games at full detail.

I don't see any software bundled with this - Or any other Dabs 6800GT cards?!

Ciaran500

There isn't any.