graphic cards

Franz Brink · Post by **Franz Brink** » Fri Jun 20, 2008 5:13 pm

On a childlevel please explain the difference in performance:

Geforce 7900 GT
Radeon X1900 GT
Geforce4 4200
Radeon 9200
ATI 9700Pro
NAVIDIA 6600
ATI X1600
NVIDIA 6800 GT/GS
ATI Radeon HD 2600 PRO
NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GS

Specs. are from rFactor, iRacing and Apple

MarioW · Post by **MarioW** » Fri Jun 20, 2008 5:20 pm

Geforce 7900 GT excellent
Radeon X1900 GT excellent
Geforce4 4200 bad
Radeon 9200 worse
ATI 9700Pro barely/bad
NAVIDIA 6600 barely/bad
ATI X1600 okish/ a bit bad
NVIDIA 6800 GT/GS gt=good gs=ok
ATI Radeon HD 2600 PRO excellent
NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GS excellent

just for rf and iracing.
for more detail see here

Mark Abbott · Post by **Mark Abbott** » Fri Jun 20, 2008 5:32 pm

The 8800 GS in the latest iMacs is fact a 8800 GT under-clocked back to avoid overheating problems, so the card is in fact better spec than a GS bought over the counter. You benefit from the faster bus speed and more streams than the GS.

Phil M · Post by **Phil M** » Fri Jun 20, 2008 6:06 pm

on my second computer I put a x1950pro, it's not in the list but it works not bad

philippe

Post by **Rik Walker** » Fri Jun 20, 2008 6:27 pm

I've run rFactor with a 6800GT (good at DX7, passable at DX8 not really up to DX9), X1950Pro (good in DX9) and 8800GT (excellent in DX9).

Post by **Ray Walton** » Fri Jun 20, 2008 6:33 pm

I too have the X1950 Pro and it rocks. It is an AGP version so the PCI-E I understand is about 10-15% faster. It is supposed to be the very fastest and best AGP card you can buy and I believe it. So those with older systems without PCI-E you can run rFactor pretty much maxed out with great FPS with this card plugged in and maybe also get the fastest CPU your motherboard can support too. I have a socket 757 motherboard (ASUS K8N) and have the fastest AMD CPU it supports, the Athlon XP 3700+ 64bit

So if you cannot afford to buy a new and latest dual/quad core PC the good news is you probably don't actually need to, to run rFactor and other race sims. Just upgrade it with the ATI X1950 Pro Graphics card which is now very cheap at around £100 or less and available in AGP format too. Then if your cpu is a littel slow and an AMD one then you can get a very fast AMD 64 bit XP processor very cheap now days especially from e-Bay many with guarantees too.

I upgraded my PC last year from a XP3000+ to the XP3700+ (Engineering Sample from e-Bay) and the graphics card from my old X800 XTPE to a brand new X1950 Pro with an added inexpensive Zalman VF1000 GFX card cooler for safe significant over clocking and it was a huge improvement. Certainly to me like having a new much higher spec computer. What I saved by upgrading brought me the 22" WS Samsung HiRes 2mS monitor too and that also makes a huge difference to your computing pleasures

))

So YES YES YES AFAIC the X1950Pro should certainly be high up on the list and great bang for bucks now.

Phil M · Post by **Phil M** » Fri Jun 20, 2008 7:13 pm

one more remark

I don't remember bad surprise with ATI driver
I know I have many problem with NVidia driver
perhaps I'm not lucky I send tomorrow my 8800gtx to repair
really happy with these ati1950

philippe

MarioW · Post by **MarioW** » Fri Jun 20, 2008 8:21 pm

One system x800xt here runs rF fine, not great but works solid with some lower res (1024x768) and my mate has a gf8800gtx which also runs more then great.

MarkF · Post by **MarkF** » Fri Jun 20, 2008 8:53 pm

I just happen to have a x1950 for sale too

Post by **Ray Walton** » Sat Jun 21, 2008 5:28 am

What have you changed it for Mark ? Didn't know there was very much better available unless you have moved from AGP to PCI-E of course, but I am way out of date with what is going on with PC stuff lately.

I am of course stuck with AGP for now and happy enough as everything I want runs superbly .. nah excellently. So with what is available to me I have the fastest AGP Graphics card and the fastest AMD Socket 757 (737??) CPU too. To go up from this would require a major upgrade which I cannot afford, would involve my pet hate of reinstalling Win XP which last time took me a month to get back to normal, and to be honest do not need at upgrade right now. Always interested though in what is on the market and what it does that mine doesn't.

MarkF · Post by **MarkF** » Sat Jun 21, 2008 7:03 am

I have been PCIE for a couple of years Ray, just treated myself to a 8800GT at 100quid it was good value for money, my FPS at Magny cour in pit lane went from 55 to 127 and now everything is on high apart from shadows on med and shadow blur off. Seems great on my own but will see when I have others cars this afternoon.

Zotac AMP I have always loved the Saphire ATI cards and Zoltac is part of that company but for the geforce cards.

Also went mad and bought a Logitech G15keyboard, great little gadget, has an LCD display, although quite small, but you can have it display all sorts. FE there is an Rfactor plugin to display tyre temps, brake temps etc. So now I can test and see what the tyre temps are across the whole tyre not just the max, on the fly. Its too small adisplay to remove the on screen LCD though, wouldn't like to try reading it in a race. Its currently giving me all my hardware stats ie temps fan speeds, cpu loads etc.

fpolicardi · Post by **fpolicardi** » Sat Jun 21, 2008 8:49 am

Thank you Ray for the head-up, I have a KN8-E Deluxe too with a Sempron 3400 and an ATI9800Pro. I'll look around for an ATI1950 AGP and maybe a better CPU for my socket.
Ciao

Post by **Ray Walton** » Sat Jun 21, 2008 9:05 am

That 3400+ should not be much of a problem as its pretty fast anyway. The graphics card will be an enormous boost, I moved from the 9800 Pro to the X800 XTPE first and wow what a big jump in FPS that was, and then onto the X1950 Pro and again an equally as massive an FPS rise, so all this allowing almost full spec graphics in rFactor with plenty of FPS, except I still keep shadows to medium and shadow blurring off as prefer the additional frame rate trade off and dislike full shadows anyway.

Strongly recommend getting a Zalman VF1000 cooler for the X1950 as the standard heatsink/fan is really poor particularly on the Sapphire card. Safe and significant graphics card over clocking is possible with the Zalman cooler installed, my GPU temp even over clocked stay well below 58 C. BTW best still not to use maximum over clocking even with these cool temps, for safety just step the clocks back a click or two from what the ATI Tray Tools test tells you is maximum possible without artefacts.

fpolicardi · Post by **fpolicardi** » Sat Jun 21, 2008 11:19 am

Thx Ray