20 réponses à ce sujet

[mechanicalguy]

I'm currently running a AMD II X4 930 with a geforce 9600gso w/ 1 gig of memory on Windows XP.  Would upgrading my memory give me any performance enhancements?  I am running the game on medium settings w/ some stuttering and slowdowns at times.  I'd like some feedback preferably from people who have actually made the upgrade rather than getting theoretical assumptions but any feedback would be appreciated anyways.  Thanks.

[JackM]

I'm currently playing DAO in 1920x1080 with all settings on High and no AA using the following system:

Windows XP SP3
Intel Core2 Duo E8600 @ 3.33GHz
ATI Mobility HD 4850 512 MB (Catalyst 10.7)
3GB of RAM

Until now (I've only completed only about 20% of the story), I didn't notice any stuttering or lag. The average frame rate is 30 outdoor and 40-50 indoor (with VSync on).

Modifié par JackM, 29 juillet 2010 - 09:54 .

[DABhand]

It will help with the smooth running of XP the more you have.

Is your PC a laptop by any chance? I think the 930 is a laptop CPU. Although it does exceed the minimal requirements, it could be choppy at times.

Say you add another 1GB DDR (if it is a laptop and there is a spare memory expansion slot) then you will see a system performance increase initially, the game may be a bit quicker in some retrospects, but it could still be choppy, dont try to play the game at amazingly high settings.

And if you do buy more RAM, make sure it is the same speed and type as what you have currently, mixing different speeds will have a undesired result eventually.

Modifié par DABhand, 29 juillet 2010 - 09:51 .

[mechanicalguy]

@DABhand

Typo. D: Meant 630 so it's a PC CPU. I have a bit of experience building PCs so I understand the whole upgrading process but I just wanted to know if there'd be any actual performance increases by increasing my memory. I've always been a console gamer and usually play strategy games on my computer(usually relatively low system requirements) so I've never seen the need to increase my memory until now. I'm holding off on purchasing a graphics card for a little while so the only really feasible upgrade at the moment is memory.

[DABhand]

Well it will help as there is more RAM for the CPU to store instructions and data in game, but it does come down to other factors.

The OS is in good shape, CPU (yours is 2.8ghz per core so should be fine), the GPU (your 9600 is ok, but not good to play everything on high settings with it, perhaps Medium and perhaps 2x AA at a push). And yes RAM will help as said before, but dont bother paying for a 1GB stick, I would get 2GB and stick it into a DDR slot that is not tied with the one currently Occupied, that way it wont try to dual channel with different sizes.

As for a GPU, a 5770/5790 are not too bad for you at a good price, and not so huge.

Not like ATI's Republic of Gamers 5870x2 4GB card, that is so big, it takes up 3 Expansion Slots of space and is a cry starting £1k+. You need a 64bit OS to run one of those effectively. It wont run a 32bit OS 100%, due to the fact of a 32bit OS limitation on available memory usage.

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/227342 if you want to cry at it ((imho its horrible looking)) 

And the funny thing, the 5970 is a dual 5870 anyway, so why do they think the extra 2GB GDDR is worth another £500. Bahh.

Modifié par DABhand, 30 juillet 2010 - 04:00 .

[basdoorn]

AMD X4 630 CPU is above recommended, NVidia 9600 is below recommended and 1GB is below recommended as well, so work on the last two first. 2GB RAM might help you out quite a bit, as Dragon Age will easily use 800 MB or more RAM, leaving only very little memory for Windows and background tasks with only 1GB total. As upgrading to 2GB of RAM is cheap and easy to do I would really start there first for your system. If you have more budget, you can look at a better video card, like the Ati 5770 or should you have $ 200 to spend the NVidia GTX 460.

Modifié par basdoorn, 30 juillet 2010 - 02:28 .

[DABhand]

basdoorn wrote...

AMD X4 630 CPU is above recommended, NVidia 9600 is below recommended and 1GB is below recommended as well, so work on the last two first. 2GB RAM might help you out quite a bit, as Dragon Age will easily use 800 MB or more RAM, leaving only very little memory for Windows and background tasks with only 1GB total. As upgrading to 2GB of RAM is cheap and easy to do I would really start there first for your system. If you have more budget, you can look at a better video card, like the Ati 5770 or should you have $ 200 to spend the NVidia GTX 460.

The 9600 is not below. Where did you get that information from?

As for the Memory, he is fine with 1GB but more is beneficial, again he is on XP, so 1GB will be fine. Vista or 7 he would need the 2GB min.

[basdoorn]

The NVidia 9600 is below recommended, as the 8800GTS 512MB is the official recommended specification (note the difference between recommended specifications and minimum specifications) as per the official Dragon Age website FAQ linked below.

http://dragonage.bioware.com/game/faq/

Minimum and recommended specifications are shown on the right hand side, you need to scroll down a bit to see them all. With the link below you can compare the video cards showing that the 9600GSO is in fact about 40% slower than the recommended 8800GTS 512MB.

http://www.gpureview...1=548&card2=563

Also, 2GB is the recommended amount of RAM for XP, which is listed on the same page. The minimum for XP is listed as "1GB or more", but like with all the minimum specifications, you should not expect great performance at that level. Vista/Win7 recommended memory is 4GB RAM by the way, in case others are reading this thread.

Modifié par basdoorn, 02 août 2010 - 09:53 .

[DABhand]

It may be a bit slower but does not mean it wont work, I would not use GPU review for that, most of its scores are being placed by other people and any tests are usually the normal crappy ones with specific games.

So I still stand the 9600 GSO is fine and still above the 8800. Performance is not an issue here, the architecture is above the series 8, therefore is above the 8800 even if it is a bit slower.

1GB will be fine on XP, as long as nobody is running memory hungry software like Norton Anti Virus etc, 2GB I did say to him will increase the performance a bit.

As for 4GB Vista recommended that will only work for 64 bit OS's so a bit of a mistake there from Bioware

Modifié par DABhand, 02 août 2010 - 12:58 .

[Gorath Alpha]

All but two of the Geforce 9n00 cards are merely the very same card designs as all of the 8n00 cards, with the exception of the die wafer thickness, and the late- series 8800 firmware changes to the fan control routines. The 9600 GT was the 8800 GS, a lowest performance variation of their high end cards' configuration (well below the Recommended Level).

The 9600 GSO is lower down the ranks than the 9600 GT is by a good margin.

http://www.gpureview...1=563&card2=557

[DABhand]

Still has the hardware necessary to run DA:O though and thats the point.

And also the 9600 GSO is PCI-e 2.0 compliant. It is not that far off the 8800 GTS at all, its Texture filling ability is twice that of the 8800 GTS and its FLOPS is a bit higher, and also its Shader clock about 100MHz faster.

There is advantages over the 8800GTS right there.

Modifié par DABhand, 02 août 2010 - 01:26 .

[Gorath Alpha]

Admittedly, at my age, I notice I forget some things from time to time, which just hardly ever happened in my younger years.  However, the point has always been to improve performance, not to merely offer "adequate" performance, and the 8800 GTS does in fact stand well above the two 9600 cards in performance.  There is (IMO) more potential improvement going from a two year old (design = three years old) MEDIUM grade card to "almost" any high end card from the same three year time frame, than any other upgrade. 

Only the 8800 series (GT & GTS in my current scans of GPU Review numbers) included the firmware correction for the bad fan management, but there were in fact three of the GTS models (for some reason, GPU Review no longer lists the data for the original G80 based 8800 GT, which is the one that I have).  The oldest pair of 8800 GTS cards doesn't fare quite so well, perhaps, but the majority (supposition here) were downgraded instead of destroyed, when improved chips were available to replace the chip version that was in stock -- I'll bet a majority of that stock was remarked and reflashed to become some variety of mobile 8n00. 

http://www.gpureview...1=563&card2=548

Modifié par Gorath Alpha, 02 août 2010 - 03:18 .

[basdoorn]

If you doubt gpureviews and want to call on an architectural advantage of the 9600 series over the 8800 series lets look at the details. AnandTech discussed the 9600 and its architecture in great detail upon introduction.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/2453/1

Regarding the newer architecture Anand has the following to say:  "The differences between G9x and G8x are small, but even so details were light. Their compression technology has evolved to provide higher effective bandwidth between the GPU and framebuffer.... The only other major difference is in PureVideo." From this we can conclude that there are no major gains in architecture for as far as processing power is concerned.
Then on to your second argument, that gpureviews would be untrustworthy. Tech Gage benchmarked the 9600 GSO against the 8800 GTS 512.

http://techgage.com/...so_sonic_768mb/

They picked the fastest 9600 GSO they could find, so the topic starter might well have a cheaper and slower model than the one tested here: "From a reference standpoint, the 9600 GT will still perform better overall than the GSO, despite the higher amount of stream processors. To help make things a little more interesting, Palit's Sonic edition comes pre-overclocked and also has more memory on board, 768MB". Then to pick from their various benchmarks one that can serve as a good indicator for Dragon Age. As Dragon age is a DirectX 9 title that uses Shader Model 3.0 (SM3.0) a good comparison would be the 3D mark HDR/SM3.0 test scores for as far as I can tell.

http://techgage.com/..._sonic_768mb/11

The 8800 GTS 512 scores 5554 points against only 4174 points for the 9600 GSO at 1280x1024 (8800 is 33% faster). At 2560x1600 its 2024 for the 8800 GTS 512 against 1426 for the 9600 GSO (8800 is 41% faster). 
Clearly, all these sources indicate that despite the newer architecture the 8800 GTS 512 card recommended by Bioware is faster by a fair amount than the 9600 GSO of the topic starter.
Finally a general warning, just like Gorath posted above, a newer generation card may well be slower than a previous generation card from a higher price range, just like in this case. In fact, you will hardly ever see a $ 100 card from a new generation perform better than a $ 200 card from the last generation. When in doubt, check the facts and compare cards using benchmarks.

Modifié par basdoorn, 02 août 2010 - 02:59 .

[CrustyCat]

Hey guys, does the OP have 1 GB of system memory, or a 9600 GSO w/ 1 GB of memory? Just wondering. It wasn't made perfectly clear. If it's system memory, yeah, he should get some more. And if he doesn't want to spend a lot of money on a new video card, here's an EVGA 9800 GTX that would be ok http://www.newegg.co...N82E16814130339

[Gorath Alpha]

mechanicalguy wrote...

... I just wanted to know if there'd be any actual performance increases by increasing my memory. ( ... ) I've never seen the need to increase my memory until now. I'm holding off on purchasing a graphics card for a little while so the only really feasible upgrade at the moment is memory.

So far, you have not actually been clear about how much RAM you have installed npw, because video card RAM can also be the 1 GB amount named, as Crusty has pointed out. 

[DABhand]

basdoorn wrote...*snipped*

Ok and the benchmarks are done with what? Was both the GPU's run on a motherboard that supports PCI-e 2.0?

So you are going on the fact the same games are being used to somehow come up with a comparison between the two cards on a couple of the sites listed.

Problem here is the games picked could favour the 8800 somewhat, whereas other games that require high texture filling the 9600GSO would destroy the 8800 easily.

Just remember another bonus the 9600 has with the 8800 is when used in a PCI-e 2.0/2.1 socket it's bandwith is doubled so it outperforms the 8800 there.

I said some factors of the 8800 i would agree beats the 9600, but its not that bad as people think, and as far as I am concerned exceeds the 8800, in terms of specific performance, doubled bandwith, huge texture filling double that of the 8800, a 100mhz increase in the core clock and its FLOPS is a higher amount also.

So  you can goto these hardware reviewing sites and think they have it right, when in fact they have it right in some instances but not right overall. They dont do extensive testing to show the differences between the two cards, just the usual lets see how this plays with Crysis etc which is not a good testing base as far as I am concerned, hell FutureMark stuff is better for benchmarking, but not the 2006 series.

Modifié par DABhand, 03 août 2010 - 04:56 .

[basdoorn]

@Crusty, Gorath: Good point that the GSO9600 could in fact have 1GB of RAM, meaning it would be the later and faster G94 revision. Then again, why would to topic starter list his CPU, GPU and GPU memory and not system memory while asking about a memory upgrade. Seems unlikely to me, but mechanicalguy please update the thread with this information.

[basdoorn]

@DABhand: You are not showing any sources for your arguments. In point of fact, the 8800 GTS 512 already featured PCI-E 2.0 interface as can be seen in the link below. Only the first generation of 8800 GTS with 320 or 640 MB of RAM did not have PCI-E 2.0 support, while Bioware specifically lists the 8800 GTS 512 (with PCI-E 2.0 support) as the recommended card. Based on this there is no bonus for the 9600 on link bandwidth and certainly no winning over the 8800 GTS 512.

http://en.wikipedia....Series#8800_GTS

Also, your claim that the 9600 GSO would destory the 8800 GTS 512 when it comes to texture filling, I could only find 9600 GSO performing less because the first generation had 48 texture units and the newer one 32, while the 8800 GTS 512 had 64. See the link below and the wikipedia entry above.

http://ixbtlabs.com/.../g94-part1.html

Modifié par basdoorn, 03 août 2010 - 12:38 .

[DABhand]

basdoorn wrote...

@DABhand: You are not showing any sources for your arguments. In point of fact, the 8800 GTS 512 already featured PCI-E 2.0 interface as can be seen in the link below. Only the first generation of 8800 GTS with 320 or 640 MB of RAM did not have PCI-E 2.0 support, while Bioware specifically lists the 8800 GTS 512 (with PCI-E 2.0 support) as the recommended card. Based on this there is no bonus for the 9600 on link bandwidth and certainly no winning over the 8800 GTS 512.

http://en.wikipedia....Series#8800_GTS

Also, your claim that the 9600 GSO would destory the 8800 GTS 512 when it comes to texture filling, I could only find 9600 GSO performing less because the first generation had 48 texture units and the newer one 32, while the 8800 GTS 512 had 64. See the link below and the wikipedia entry above.

http://ixbtlabs.com/.../g94-part1.html

Very much later models of the 8800 did have PCI-e 2.0 support true, but if you check the schematics etc you will see not all of them run at 2.0 bandwith.

As to your 2nd point, I am talking about the Texture Fill rate that is something different, and not what you think I was talking about, its almost double that of the 8800. Not only that the 8800 does not have Physx hardware onboard and has to use emulation.

I am still bemused that you deem the 9600GSO to be lower spec than the 8800, which is not true, you cannot base GPU's the way you do, so when you said it is below the minimum specs that is wrong as it is not. No matter what review sites score the card etc, it is above the 8800 in terms of specs.

[basdoorn]

Still you show no sources for any of your claims, so I am going to have to quit this discussion much as I have enjoyed it unless you can present some facts and sources to go with them. Without any arguments or references to support your claims I see no point in continuing our little debate. Before I do however let me go at it one last time and show you some more sources to disprove your latest two claims.
First that the 8800 GTS 512 might not be able to run at PCI-E 2.0 speeds according to some schematics, please link the schematics that you speak of. I give you a link with a GPU-Z screenshot showing the 8800 GTS 512 running at PCI-E 2.0 16x

http://sobol.org/oc/...TS-512-GPUZ.jpg

Then your claim that the Texture fill rate of the 9600 GSO would be higher. I use the following source with general information on texture fill rate:

http://www.gpureview...rticle-375.html

Which states that: "This is called texture mapping and is accomplished by texture mapping units (TMUs) on the videocard. Texture fill rate is a measure of the speed with which a particular card can perform texture mapping.
How To Calculate It
Texture Fill Rate = (# of TMUs) x (Core Clock)"

The 8800 GTS 512 has 64 texture mapping units at 650 MHz (41.6 GTexels/sec)
The first version 9600 GSO has 48 texture mapping units at 550 MHz (26.4 GTexels/sec)
The second (G94) version 9600 GSO has 32 texture mapping units at 650 MHz (20.8 GTexels/sec)

Clearly, the 8800 GTS 512 is the superior part when it comes to texture fill rate and with that we can finaly conclude that it indeed performs better overall than both versions of the 9600 GSO.

Finally I would really like to hear from mechanicalguy if he already has the information he needs and if it was his system memory or his video card memory that was 1GB.

Modifié par basdoorn, 04 août 2010 - 10:18 .

[DABhand]

1. Your basing the newer revision of the 8800, whereas the vast majority of the 8800 in existance only has 24 up to 32 TMU's, whereas the 9600 GSO's had from 32 up to 48 TMU's.



The minimum doesnt specify it has to be latest revision of the 8800 GTS, just on avg an 8800 GTS is required with 512mb GDDR. There was revisions of the card before the G94 where there was 512mb GDDR on the card, and had a poor TFR.



And since your trying to compare a GSO vs a revised GTS 8800, it is a bit unfair in some respects, when the GSO was released the one popular 8800 had a low TFR etc, yes the newer has higher was Nvidia's way of giving a cheap card close to 9800 performance back then, but comparing an older card with a newer revision is not going to win of course.



And notice I did say NOT ALL of the 8800 GTS are going to use the full 2.0 bandwith, that does not mean I said all of them are not, some did but only a small amount.



All my info on the subject is on various sites, since you love to google etc, have you ever considered Nvidia's site? And technical stuff there?



Let me ask a question how much do you know about the operation of GPU's, how they use bus routes, how they make calls to the CPU etc? Cause to be honest you are only so far reading up some flim flam review sites that have been wrong a couple of times in the few reviews etc you linked.





2. You cannot, ever ever ever EVER, base the requirements for a GPU to be based on a benchmark, which is what you basically did by saying the 8800 GTS (later revision) worked better than the 9600 GSO and thusly the GSO was below requirements. I dont care how many links you come up with that is wrong... period. The simple fact is, as already stated, the minimum requirements made no mention that it was to be the 2nd generation 8800 GTS's and also it comes down to architectural scaling, series 8 then series 9 and so forth, doesnt matter if say the 9400 card is worse than the 8800 either the fact is in scaling the 9400 is above the minimum requirement. After all requirements are designed around hardware and not performance.