interesting article why dont put fast card in slow rig

**Thunderbird1GHz** · 08-09-2003, 11:47 AM

This is no lie above. My sisters boyfriend is a World War II fan and loves to play Battlefield 1942. Well I wanted to see how well his system would perform when I dropped my Radeon 9800 Pro into his system. His system specs are:
AGP 4X Motherboard (not sure about chipset)
Windows XP Home Edition
Intel Celeron 1.7GHz
256Mb SDRAM
GeForce 2 MX
So I figured dropping the Radeon 9800 Pro in his system would accelerate the Battlefield 1942 game right? Wrong! The gameplay was stutering it was a slight step up over his GeForce 2 MX. This was quite a shock. I remember back in the day using GeForce 2, 3, 4, Voodoo II, Voodoo III, etc... All those earlier chips were the GPU did most of the work. Now it seems that if you don't have at least a 2GHz or 2.2GHz chip these high powered cards aren't worth the dong they are asking for.

After the dismal performance of the Radeon 9800 Pro on an older system, I decided to toss in a GeForce 3 card I won off of eBay to see how that would help! When I popped the card in using the latest drivers (44.90) I decided to load up his copy of Battlefield 1942. My draw just dropped when I saw how much of a performance increase over the Radeon 9800 Pro running Battlefield 1942. It was truly a night and day difference.

What did I learned from this?

1) The day of only needing to upgrade the graphics card to get better performance is over on lower end systems.
2) You need to have a fast *** system to utilize the latest GPU's.

It's kinda shocking to see that the CPU plays a HUGE role in the latest graphics cards. 2 years ago that wasn't the case at all. All you needed was to upgrade the graphics card and BAM! Instant increase in frame rate. Today, you need a fast CPU just to get the GPU to move. Things sure have changed and so has the dent in consumers wallets!

http://www.3dchipset.com/#187

**Colossus** · 08-09-2003, 11:51 AM

Ugh.. You didnt need to post this twice!

EDIT:

Same comment from the last time you posted this!

I didnt read the link... But I wonder if he did clean the reg... There are so many problems when you just swap video cards from a nVidia to ATI... Sometimes the performance would be piss poor compared to a cleaned reg or format...

I wonder if that had something to do with it...

**Thunderbird1GHz** · 08-09-2003, 11:57 AM

I did post twice, but made a new thread so more people can read. Yes I have to agree with you, he needs to reinstall windows, even with the slowest cpu, dont you think at the very worst, both would perform identical? a 1.7GHz p4 celeron on a 9800 pro still should eat a ti500 even without fsaa, although by very little at below 1280x1024

**Colossus** · 08-09-2003, 12:00 PM

I would say at the very lease it would perform identical.. Not less... But when you pump up the AA/AF it would perform better then a nvidia card....

So yeah I dont think that review is that accurate.

**Thunderbird1GHz** · 08-09-2003, 12:09 PM

by the way any idea how to unlock my fx5200? I made a thread on it too. is it by a bios flash or what? radeon9500s were locked too

**Colossus** · 08-09-2003, 12:10 PM

You cannot install RivaTuner and just pump up the core/mem?

I would assume you would need to flash the BIOS... But I never had to do that since I only bought cards without locked settings

**Thunderbird1GHz** · 08-09-2003, 12:19 PM

already have rivatuner, I clicked enable overclocking but the overclocking tabs are grayed out. with powerstrip if I try to oc it jumps back to stock as soon as I click apply

Im thinking a bios flash is in order, how hard is that

**RavenLord** · 08-09-2003, 12:35 PM

Slow computers are better of with FG3 or GF-Ti, this cards use the least CPU overhead.
Maybe the Radeon 9800 on your friend's computer was slow becouse the old NVidia drivers ware interfiring with the cat driver.

**mikeysg** · 08-09-2003, 12:49 PM

Originally posted by RavenLord
Slow computers are better of with FG3 or GF-Ti, this cards use the least CPU overhead.
Maybe the Radeon 9800 on your friend's computer was slow becouse the old NVidia drivers ware interfiring with the cat driver.

My thoughts exactly

. The Dets MUST be screwing up the performance of the 9800Pro.

BTW, when did you get the 9800Pro, T'bird?

I thought you were holding out for a 9700P at below $100 in 2005/6.

**Colossus** · 08-09-2003, 12:51 PM

He was cut and pasting from the link... He did not write it

It confused me for a whole second

**mikeysg** · 08-09-2003, 01:01 PM

Originally posted by Colossus
He was cut and pasting from the link... He did not write it

It confused me for a whole second

DHOH!

My bad!

I didn't read it carefully, must be getting *yawns and stretches* sleepy

. My bed is calling for me, gotta rest these tired old bones of mine

.

**jagojago12** · 08-09-2003, 01:17 PM

Originally posted by RavenLord
Slow computers are better of with FG3 or GF-Ti, this cards use the least CPU overhead.
Maybe the Radeon 9800 on your friend's computer was slow becouse the old NVidia drivers ware interfiring with the cat driver.

I think it's the GeForce2's that had some of the lowest overhead. Aceshardware.com did some benchmarks in the past and a GeForce3 on a lower-end computer actually performed slower than the GeForce2 on the same low-end computer.

**Colossus** · 08-09-2003, 01:17 PM

Wimp!

Giving in already!

**GetCarter** · 08-09-2003, 01:22 PM

Originally posted by Thunderbird1GHz
This is no lie above. My sisters boyfriend is a World War II fan and loves to play Battlefield 1942. Well I wanted to see how well his system would perform when I dropped my Radeon 9800 Pro into his system. His system specs are:
AGP 4X Motherboard (not sure about chipset)
Windows XP Home Edition
Intel Celeron 1.7GHz
256Mb SDRAM
GeForce 2 MX
So I figured dropping the Radeon 9800 Pro in his system would accelerate the Battlefield 1942 game right? Wrong! The gameplay was stutering it was a slight step up over his GeForce 2 MX. This was quite a shock. I remember back in the day using GeForce 2, 3, 4, Voodoo II, Voodoo III, etc... All those earlier chips were the GPU did most of the work. Now it seems that if you don't have at least a 2GHz or 2.2GHz chip these high powered cards aren't worth the dong they are asking for.

After the dismal performance of the Radeon 9800 Pro on an older system, I decided to toss in a GeForce 3 card I won off of eBay to see how that would help! When I popped the card in using the latest drivers (44.90) I decided to load up his copy of Battlefield 1942. My draw just dropped when I saw how much of a performance increase over the Radeon 9800 Pro running Battlefield 1942. It was truly a night and day difference.

What did I learned from this?

1) The day of only needing to upgrade the graphics card to get better performance is over on lower end systems.
2) You need to have a fast *** system to utilize the latest GPU's.

It's kinda shocking to see that the CPU plays a HUGE role in the latest graphics cards. 2 years ago that wasn't the case at all. All you needed was to upgrade the graphics card and BAM! Instant increase in frame rate. Today, you need a fast CPU just to get the GPU to move. Things sure have changed and so has the dent in consumers wallets!

http://www.3dchipset.com/#187

What resolution were you running it at?
If you want to force the Video Card to do more work, run the game at a higher resolution. This I picked up from another thread, and it works somewhat.

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