39 réponses à ce sujet

[Chutchy8804]

I just bought DA after weeks of wanting it, loaded it up and graphics card out of date.  Read these forums so guess i need a new one, I currently have ATI Radeon x600pro which reading forums seems to be quite pants (and old).  Could anyone recommend a nice card to get?  dont neccessarily need top of range but a decent one.  Thanks

[Badly Lit]

A 4870 or 5770 would be more than enough for Dragon Age.

[Maa-Jussi]

OMG!



HD4870 and HD5770 are top of the line in my book.



Will this game even run with my HD4850 (if I ever get it to install).



~ Jussi

[Chutchy8804]

Thanks, is that nvidia or radeon, is it adviseable to take it to a shop or fit myself? i have done memory before but not a G Card.

[Gorath Alpha]

Chutchy8804 wrote...

I just bought DA after weeks of wanting it, loaded it up and graphics card out of date.  Read these forums so guess i need a new one, I currently have ATI Radeon x600pro which reading forums seems to be quite pants (and old).  Could anyone recommend a nice card to get?  dont neccessarily need top of range but a decent one.  Thanks

There must be some new underground use for the word I've missed.  In my lexicon, pants = trousers = slacks, nothing to do with any computer. 

Yes an X600 is very old.  In absolute terms, it was released over five years ago.  In practical terms, since it was a direct PCIe clone from the AGP Radeon 9600 card, it is actually six years old now.  Both of them should have had "n400" performance codes, but ATI was just getting started using numbers for something other than place holders. 

It is a low-qualiity, low power card that doesn't require much current from a power supply that is also getting old (and those lose efficiency faster than any other part of a PC).  High End and Medium-High cards cannot run on the same low current, and therefore an upgrade past the level of an n600 requires a new power supply as well (another $60, since a cheap PSU is just a disaster that hasen't happened yet). 

But the HD 4650 is intended to replace just such a low demand card:

www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx

Gorath
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[Livanniah]

Heh, that's a bit overkill - 4670 can run the game maxed as long as the base CPU isn't too wimpy. (There's some AI lag issues and the like I've seen on our non-dual core)

All the cards mentioned here thusfar are ATI (they use the 4### and 5#### naming convention - back to the 2###'s which were the line that followed the X### line that you had (well the X1### line technically)

Definitely more you can afford the better performance you'll get though - budget is an important concern for these types of questions in the future.

www.tomshardware.com runs a good article in the graphic card section monthly about the best cards for each price range though that has been spot on to date for me.

Modifié par Livanniah, 03 janvier 2010 - 04:39 .

[Chutchy8804]

Is there anything I can link that may help on my system spec? if its going to cost me a lot of money I might as well get a new PC.

[Cuthlan]

Gorath Alpha wrote...

Chutchy8804 wrote...

I just bought DA after weeks of wanting it, loaded it up and graphics card out of date.  Read these forums so guess i need a new one, I currently have ATI Radeon x600pro which reading forums seems to be quite pants (and old).  Could anyone recommend a nice card to get?  dont neccessarily need top of range but a decent one.  Thanks

There must be some new underground use for the word I've missed.  In my lexicon, pants = trousers = slacks, nothing to do with any computer. 

Not new, just British. Slang for "bad".

[Gorath Alpha]

Chutchy8804 wrote...

Is there anything I can link that may help on my system spec? if its going to cost me a lot of money I might as well get a new PC.

Why don't you check my "Basics" article (a link will follow) and find the inventorying link sub-links at Microsoft at the end so you can get all of your components' names, sizes, speeds, etc all itemized?  Then, name some budget type figures and a screen resolution number you are expecting to run at.  That will be a proper starting point.  Also, since a build it yourself upgrade can literally be half the cost of a complete PC, tell us your feelings in that regard. 

Here's the base article (there are two others, but this is the key to all of them): social.bioware.com/forum/1/topic/58/index/509580

Gorath
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[Gorath Alpha]

Cuthlan wrote...

Gorath Alpha wrote...

Chutchy8804 wrote...

I just bought DA after weeks of wanting it, loaded it up and graphics card out of date.    dont neccessarily need top of range but a decent one.  Thanks

There must be some new underground use for the word

Not new, just British. Slang for "bad".

Let's see, you are about six hours ahead, I think, so it's coming on prime time for television where you are, but the only thing we have this entire weekend seems to be our kind of football, and after five or six of those, I need something else. 

Is it equally boring TV tonight if you're not a full-out sports nut on this holiday weekend in the UK?  I'm only asking because it seemed as if this thread had a destination it just never arrived at . .

Gorath
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[Maa-Jussi]

Chutchy8804 wrote...

Thanks, is that nvidia or radeon, is it adviseable to take it to a shop or fit myself? i have done memory before but not a G Card.

If you run "dxdiag" you can see what your PC has inside. Let us know your current computer specs and we can together figure out what would be best for you.

Here' a couple of neat articles from Tom's:

Link 1: Part 1: Building A Balanced Gaming PC
Link 2: Part 2: Building A Balanced Gaming PC

They should show you how even the sweetest graphics card can not do it alone. For example my PC had Radeon HD4850 graphics card, but my processor AMD Athlon 64 X2 5000+ is really way too weak to utilize the graphic card's full power.

 ~ Jussi

[Tyrax Lightning]

Don't forget to look up your Motherboard's Slot types. Ya don't wanna get a sweet Graphics Card & realize to your horror that your Motherboard has no compatible slot to plug it into...
For example, i'm in the process of attempting to build a new puder as well, & got sweet advice from other Forumites here. They recommended a good Motherboard, CPU, Graphics Card, & RAM. The Motherboard has PCI Express 2.0 x16 Slots. I double-checked the Graphics Card choice & confirmed that it was a PCI Express 2.0 x16 connection. Can ya imagine how much it would suck if ya gotta Graphics Card that used a VGA slot instead & found yourself with a PCI Express 2.0 x16 - VGA incompatibility?

If ya already dealt with this, no problem, but better safe than sorry to say somethin, just in case. I wouldn't be suprised if this was easy to overlook.

Hope I helped.

[Gorath Alpha]

I've never heard about any X600 that was for any video bus other than PCIe(16); when ATI (and partners) ran out of Vanilla 9600s and 9600 SEs for the cheap route, they had changed FABs to a thinner die, so it was easier to use the X300 setup and revert to AGP with that, renaming the result "9550" despite it not being at all related to the actual Radeon 9500, which had been a good one, although it did run somewhat hotter than had been common for a Medium card up to then. 

Interestingly, the 9600 / X300 / 9550 rebirths had one more round of life to go.  The X1300 was slightly too expensive to produce to compete with the Geforce 7300 GS and 7200, at the $35 price point (probably should've carried an "X1500" for its performance).  Thus, to sell at the rock bottom level, the 9550 was reborn as the X1050, back to PCIe.

Gorath
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[Tyrax Lightning]

Just tryin to help the TC think safe. The addage 'The devil is in the details' can be terrifyingly true in puder building & upgrading.

[Gorath Alpha]

When the X800s and X850s were released, those did include both AGP and PCIe versions, built on entirely different dies, so neither required a "bridge" chip on it (not many PCIe cards had those, other than the Geforce PCXes). Halfway through the generation's production lifetime, without any fanfare at all, the X700 Pro and X700 XT AGP versions started to appear. ATI and its partners always have had some relatively decent AGP cards available ever since then.

[Mr_Raider]

Chances are, a simple GPU upgrade is not feasible due to the old hardware. Post your PC specs, and we can if it's possible to save it from the scrap heap.

[OH-UP-THIS!]

me thinks we scared him off...............

[SirHederick]

Maa-Jussi wrote...

They should show you how even the sweetest graphics card can not do it alone. For example my PC had Radeon HD4850 graphics card, but my processor AMD Athlon 64 X2 5000+ is really way too weak to utilize the graphic card's full power.

 ~ Jussi

the graphics card uses it's own GPU,  question is, how much VRAM on the card? how much RAM in the system?  I've got a AMD Athalon 64 X2 5600+ and an HD4650 Factory OC 1GB vid card, Windows 7 Professional(64bit), 4GB Ram, I run DAO full screen 1280x1024 all graphics options maxed including Anti Aliasing.   Game runs perfect.

Another thing to remember, If using Windows Vista or Windows 7, the OS needs 1-2GB of RAM itself, and more needs to be added for gaming and what ever else.

[RandomEffingName]

atm you're looking for ATI 4750 or 5770

or Nvidia GT (GTX) 275 or 295

you can easily do either yourself cards are just as easy as RAM

so long as you mobo has the slots, it's basically plug 'n play and DL

latest drivers, but if you prefer and trust your pc shop guys let them do it

[Mrcoffee55]

http://cyri.systemre...lab.com/srtest/



Best webpage to test if your PC has the right specs

[EJ42]

I have a Radeon HD 5870 paired with a QX9650, and the game runs acceptably if I drop it down to 1024x768 at low settings.

[Gorath Alpha]

Mrcoffee55 wrote...

http://cyri.systemre...lab.com/srtest/

Best webpage to test if your PC has the right specs

Please, PLEASE  do the entire world a favor, and forget you ever heard of that ridiculously inaccurate joint! 

They are wrong so often, they are simply a horrible joke! 

Of that type place, the Game-o-Meter at YouGamers is at least decent. 

Thank you.

Gorath
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[Mr_Raider]

EJ42 wrote...

I have a Radeon HD 5870 paired with a QX9650, and the game runs acceptably if I drop it down to 1024x768 at low settings.

You're kidding right? Something is profoundly wrong with that setup. You should be able to run at max settings at virtually any resolution.

[Gorath Alpha]

Anyone who equates VRAM amount with much of anything is probably wrong.  Only a high end card can use more than 256 MBs.  The typical Mainline, medium power gaming cards have 128 bit memory systems, which gives them only a moderate memory bandwidth, which limits the amount of VRAM that they can pass onward to games. 

There is some overlap at the border zone between Medium and High End, where the RAM's speed and the graphics chip's core speed are high enough that the High-Medium cards can work with 512 MBs sometimes, although not always..   therefore, when you have a large display with lots of oixels to juggle, you need to get two things -- the high end performance, and the large amount of VRAM.

Gorath
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