"Robert Simmons" said:
Hiya All, got a bit of a problem. My Asus Gforce4 TI-4200 died on me.
I need a new video card. I play EQ2 a lot and need a card that
"video card w/ pixel shader and vertex shader support. With at least 128MB
of texture memory "
So what do you recommend ?
Thank in advance for any/all help in this.
Cardiac of the BlackBurrow server, mere 29 Templar
There are performance charts here. Simply use the performance
chart, then get prices from a place like Newegg, and plot
price versus frame rate. That should give you an idea of
what a high frame rate costs. Also remember, that the high end
video cards now are powerful enough, that you will most likely
be CPU limited. A super high end video card allows higher than
normal resolutions to be used (big-ass LCD monitor), or turning
on anti-aliasing and the like. If that kind of "eye candy" doesn't
matter to you, a more intermediate video card may be good enough.
http://graphics.tomshardware.com/graphic/20050705/index.html
Also, be careful when shopping, to verify you are getting an
AGP card, as the slot type might not be prominently displayed
in the advert.
This article makes mention of Everquest's characteristics. It
says Everquest is a "CPU crusher", so you may find that no matter
what platform you place the video card in, the frame rate may
not increase in a dramatic fashion.
http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=2451&p=11
"Everquest 2 does put a larger strain on the CPU than many
other games..."
You might find some useful advice on the private forums:
http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview.aspx?catid=31&threadid=1636676&enterthread=y
http://forums.nvidia.com/index.php?showtopic=140&pid=591&mode=threaded&show=&st=&#entry591
I would say the answer to your question, is not as easy as
finding the best video card to play Quake 3. Buying the fastest
video card may not be enough. Even upgrading your platform and
processor may not be enough. To some extent, you are at the
mercy of the EQ2 software developers and the video card companies
driver developments (i.e. if the game could use all the horsepower
of a dual core processor, then that might be the answer - that
requires multiple threads of execution). Probably the best upgrade
you could buy, would be if the EQ2 developers rewrote their
code
For some historical perspective, I like this chart, as you can
see the overlap between generations of cards. You can compare
your TI-4200 to some of the newer cards.
http://www.benchmark.pl/artykuly/zestawienie_GPU_2/skala_wydajnosci.html
HTH,
Paul
