PCI Video Card selection

arden

Hi,

I got the following board Supermicro P4DL6

http://www.supermicro.com/products/motherboard/Xeon/GC-LE/P4DL6.cfm

and I need a good video card for it. I was looking at the following

Chaintech GeForce FX 5200 / 256MB DDR / PCI / DVI / TV-Out / Video Card
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=1339387&Tab=2&NoMapp=0

PowerColor Radeon 9250 / 256MB DDR / PCI / VGA / DVI / TV Out / Video Card
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=1081946&Tab=2&NoMapp=0

and

XFX GeForce FX5200 256MB DDR, PCI, TV-Out/DVI, Retail
http://www.komplett.ie/k/ki.asp?sku=304713&cks=PRL

and I was wondering which one would you's consider my best option.

The main use of the computer would be to run a gaming server off of it (for local lan only), but I would like to be able to use it as a client also, hence as good a PCI card as I can find.

All feedback is welcome.

Thanks,
arden

duridian

It's a pity PCI-X graphic cards are so hard to find and/or expensive, as that would be the best slot to use on that server type board of yours. (not to be confused with PCI-Express, they are 2 very different things)
Anyway of the choices available to you I would advise if possible to get an ATI Radeon 9xxx card over a Geforce FX5xxx. You really ony have 2 choices anyway nowadays in PCI cards - FX5200 or Radeon 9250. Neither of these is a very powerful card but the Radeon is marginally better. You wouldn't want to expect too much of this card if using the pc as client, Doom3/F.E.A.R. modern type games aren't realistically gonna work too well due to the limitations of a slower gpu running through a PCI bus, but you should be ok for older games maybe even UT2003/UT2004 once you don't go too mad upping the resolution and eye candy.
Also the amount of ram on this class of card doesn't need to be more than 128MB, see here as I explained earlier. The 256MB is just a marketing trick, there is no real advantage as the gpu can't make efficient use of the extra ram.
I see two of your links are to tigerdirect.com, I don't know for sure but I think most US dealers won't deliver outside the States, and even if they do you will possibly face customs charges. An alternative link to a suitable Radeon 9250 PCI card if I may suggest is this one from Dabs. I believe Dabs have a relatively low carriage charge for goods going to Ireland as well.
Anyway hope something I have said is of help, good luck with it.

Fanny Cradock

my prior card was a radeon 9250 SE, and, to be blunt, it is a very limited card. as an example: i used to get between 1 and 40 fps on wolfenstein: enemy territory (this game is nearly 2 years old), whereas the 6600gt i have now gives me a fairly steady 125fps (map depending). if you want to play games with this you will most likely only be able to play older games.

TerrorFirmer

Fanny Cradock wrote:

my prior card was a radeon 9250 SE, and, to be blunt, it is a very limited card. as an example: i used to get between 1 and 40 fps on wolfenstein: enemy territory (this game is nearly 2 years old), whereas the 6600gt i have now gives me a fairly steady 125fps (map depending). if you want to play games with this you will most likely only be able to play older games.

That really sounds wrong. I used to play Wolf on a 32mb Riva TnT2 - most options high, decent frame rate...my friend, back in the day, used to run it maxed out on his uber leet Geforce 2 64mb....

duridian

It does sound unusually slow, even for a Radeon 9250SE PCI. Although the SE version would only have a 64bit memory interface, the regular 9250 has a 128bit. That might account for it to some extent, though even at that it should still be better than say a Geforce2 MX

Fanny Cradock

sure we are talking about the same game?

admittedly i had a crap processor (p3) and and only 512 ram and i plyed on large servers (up to 60), but the game maxed out on a Geforce 2 64mb...

duridian

Ah, I think I remember we talked about that P3 system before now, was it a Dell Optiplex or something along those lines? It was probably the amount of work the cpu was being loaded with, calculating for that many players that caused the slowdown so, rather than the graphics card. The graphics card would have to produce the picture of what was in your field of view at the time, but the poor auld P3 would have the job of working out where everyone/thing was at the time, regardless of whether you could see them or not e.g. an enemy shooting you from behind would not appear in your field of view, but his position still had a huge bearing on the game, even though it was putting no load onto the graphics since you couldn't see him, if you see what I mean, hence the cpu would have to be keeping track of his position.
Also remember MobileInfantry said Wolf, not Enemy Territory, he may have meant the single player game, or may have not played it on such busy servers, hence less calculations for the cpu.
I had forgotten about the P3 and taken for granted since you had the pci 9250 that you were playing on something like a Dell Dimension 2400 (a very common and more recent landing zone for PCI GFX cards. Same old, same old, no AGP slot) It was the P3 that couldn't hack it I'd wager, not the Radeon.

arden

Hi duridian,

Thanks for the info! Very helpful.

I was wondering about the 256 and 128 memory issue. UT has an option to load extra textures into memory, making access to them a little quicker, considering if I went for the 256 card this might work out to my advantage a little. The down side to the 256 card on the dabs site is that its only DirectX 8.1 and OpenGL (which I might be using anyway) 1.3 as for the 128 card its a DirectX 9 card too. Is there much of an improvement?

The server has 2 xeon cpus both with hyper threading clocking at 2.2 ghz in it with 4 gig of ram so maybe open opengl might be a better option ?

Regards,
arden

TerrorFirmer

I used to Play Return to Castle Wolfenstein And Enemy Territory regularly on a 32 man server most days, but I was running:

p3 500mhz
192mb Ram
32mb tnt2

And it ran perfectly, nice visuals, smooth. Now I know you said you played on 60 player servers, but seeing as your card is much better then mine was, that shouldn't make a huge differerence. I'd imagine it was more so your ram or cpu that was causing that problem, then the card. Remember, the 9250 can play Far Cry, Half Life 2, Battlefield 2, maybe not the best, but when it can play those games, you aren't going to have an issue with a 4 year old game.

Plus, Wolf only needs a 16mb card to run. 32mb is ideal, 64mb a dream back in the day, let alone a 128mb card.

satchmo

duridian wrote:

Also the amount of ram on this class of card doesn't need to be more than 128MB, see here as I explained earlier. The 256MB is just a marketing trick, there is no real advantage as the gpu can't make efficient use of the extra ram.

Where are you getting this from? Sure, most current games won't use the extra RAM because they're targetting hardware with 128 megs (although some support higher amounts too - the Doom 3 engine is ready to make use of 512MB video hardware if and when it becomes available), but saying the GPU can't make "efficient use" of it is rubbish.

Fanny Cradock

duridian wrote:

Ah, I think I remember we talked about that P3 system before now, was it a Dell Optiplex or something along those lines? It was probably the amount of work the cpu was being loaded with, calculating for that many players that caused the slowdown so, rather than the graphics card. The graphics card would have to produce the picture of what was in your field of view at the time, but the poor auld P3 would have the job of working out where everyone/thing was at the time, regardless of whether you could see them or not e.g. an enemy shooting you from behind would not appear in your field of view, but his position still had a huge bearing on the game, even though it was putting no load onto the graphics since you couldn't see him, if you see what I mean, hence the cpu would have to be keeping track of his position.
Also remember MobileInfantry said Wolf, not Enemy Territory, he may have meant the single player game, or may have not played it on such busy servers, hence less calculations for the cpu.
I had forgotten about the P3 and taken for granted since you had the pci 9250 that you were playing on something like a Dell Dimension 2400 (a very common and more recent landing zone for PCI GFX cards. Same old, same old, no AGP slot) It was the P3 that couldn't hack it I'd wager, not the Radeon.

sorry to backtrack....

well remembered, duridian!! you are correct when you say optiplex. it's up in the attic gathering dust as i type! the advice you gave way back when was genuinely appreciated.

duridian

@ satchmo
I would suggest before you stick your head out from under that bridge again, that if the only purpose of your posting is to take pointless potshots, when people are only trying to help others on this forum, that you just don't post anything. The other users in this thread, and myself, were only trying to help out Arden by informing either of our own experience with such graphic cards, or passing on info which we have heard from others on the subject. You on the other hand choose to promote the universally rejected notion that adding more ram is worthwhile in low-end graphics card performance (it scarcely even makes a difference with cards as powerful as the 9800Pro, not to talk about a 9250). This idea of yours is the real rubbish, and sounds like the advertising that graphics card manufacturers use to make their overpriced 256MB "budget" cards sound more appealing to less informed buyers.

@Fanny Cradock
Yes, I was thinking that might be the one when you mentioned the P3. Glad to hear you are gaming on a nice 6600GT nowadays.

@Arden
Sounds like you should have no problems in the cpu and ram department anyway. As for the graphics card, unfortunately none of the available cards are going to be good for DX9. None of the GeforceFX line would be considered good at DX9, not even the high 5900 models, and the 5200 is at the bottom of the heap. Some of the Radeon 9xxx models were considerably better at DX9 but I believe this did not include the 9200/9250.
I could only find the one PCI based graphics card on Dabs site, the one which I referred to earlier. If you go into the specifications it says DirectX 8.1 and OpenGL 1.5 for that card. Don't knnow what 256MB card you were meant on Dabs, were you maybe looking at an AGP card by accident or were you referring to the 256MB 9250 on Tigerdirect?
It is really up to yourself but I personally would not bother with a 256MB version of such a card. The fact that either card has only a memory bandwidth of 64bits, makes the extra memory even more pointless. Another unfortunate disadvantage of the PCI version. The standard AGP version of the 9250 had a 128 bit interface, only the lower spec 9250SE had 64bit in the AGP cards.

satchmo

Bridge? What? Get off your high horse. Hell I'm all for helping people, but I figure if people give advice that's incorrect then someone should tell them.

No amount of video memory is ever going to make any graphics card automagically run faster - it's extra memory for storing textures and geometry on-board to reduce the amount of AGP transactions for applications that need that much data. When video memory is full, surplus data has to be stored in AGP memory (ie in system memory) which can result in thrashing when the driver has to continually swap the desired data in and out over the AGP bus... this problem is even worse over PCI.

But like I said, most current games target a maximum of 128MB of video memory because that's the most common amount in cards at the moment, so you're not going to see any difference with a 256MB card. You're right to say there's no point with the extra RAM on a card with 64-bit memory bandwidth, but then even with 128MB the memory bandwidth is still a limiting factor, so extra memory is kind of a moot point. The point I was actually making was that the GPU can use the higher 128MB of memory just as "efficiently" as it can the lower 128MB. Whether the application uses it or not is a different story.

Oh I get it, bridge/troll... you're trying to be funny. Good for you.

duridian

satchmo wrote:

Bridge? What? Get off your high horse. Hell I'm all for helping people, but I figure if people give advice that's incorrect then someone should tell them.

No amount of video memory is ever going to make any graphics card automagically run faster - it's extra memory for storing textures and geometry on-board to reduce the amount of AGP transactions for applications that need that much data. When video memory is full, surplus data has to be stored in AGP memory (ie in system memory) which can result in thrashing when the driver has to continually swap the desired data in and out over the AGP bus... this problem is even worse over PCI.

But like I said, most current games target a maximum of 128MB of video memory because that's the most common amount in cards at the moment, so you're not going to see any difference with a 256MB card. You're right to say there's no point with the extra RAM on a card with 64-bit memory bandwidth, but then even with 128MB the memory bandwidth is still a limiting factor, so extra memory is kind of a moot point. The point I was actually making was that the GPU can use the higher 128MB of memory just as "efficiently" as it can the lower 128MB. Whether the application uses it or not is a different story.

Oh I get it, bridge/troll... you're trying to be funny. Good for you.

Yes, a troll, because that is all you are being here, nitpicking over a point on how I phrase something. I know damn well that the gpu can access any part of the ram as well as the next, but my point is that since this extra ram shows no benefit in performance ie. framerate, the gpu is gaining nothing from it now is it, so it can hardly be called worthwhile adding the larger amount of ram.
We can keep bickering away over you disliking the way I phrase things but it isn't going to be any help to Arden. A more expensive 256MB card is just going to be a waste of money.

satchmo

Grand so - if you know "damn well", then just try to be a bit clearer about the reason why next time.

arden

Hi again lads.

I've finally made my decision as to which card I'm going for

http://www.gecube.com/products-02.php?prod_cat_pid=11&prod_cat_id=44

as I can get them cheaper then what I have found online.

Thanks again.
arden

duridian

satchmo wrote:

Grand so - if you know "damn well", then just try to be a bit clearer about the reason why next time.

I will, as long as you mind your own business next time. I don't owe an explanation to you for something I say to another boards user.