ATI Radeon 9800 a worthy card?

[Ben Pope]

yeah hmm hmm sure...... GTA3 remembering.... ? remember PONG? when
computers first hit the home, games have always been a major part of home
computing..... I don't think your life experience goes back far enough...

If you think about it, the PC probably wasn't designed with games in mind.

Not that thats particularly relevent, they're designed as a multipurpose
computational device. It just so happens that games can be created using a
series of computations, and people like to play game son PCs.

The point is that your average PC architecture isn't designed with hardware
acceleration of gaming specific functions in it. But why should it? It's
multi purpose.

Your average home PC now caters for such eventualities... video cards are
hardware accelerated for graphics processing.

There was a time when a PC couldn;t touch a console, 'cos the architecture
of a console was designed to do one thing... games. These days your latest
console spends so long in development, that a new graphics card has come out
that'll wipe the floor with any console in terms of graphics capability.

Ben

 

[JAD]

I agree that it wasn't the only reason we have Home computers...but I believe that games have always been a intricate part of the
home computing experience...... Yes being multi purpose does takes away from the exclusiveness of gaming enhancements, but it does
help drive the market, and if it wasn't part of it, we would have seen far less advancements.

 

[Ben Pope]

I agree that it wasn't the only reason we have Home computers...but I
believe that games have always been a intricate part of the home
computing experience......

Yeah, I don;t think that has influenced the design of CPUs greatly though.

Yes being multi purpose does takes away from
the exclusiveness of gaming enhancements, but it does help drive the
market, and if it wasn't part of it, we would have seen far less
advancements.

Exactly, CPUs aren't designed with games in mind. There are instruction
sets such as 3DNow that help, but thats not really a big part of it.

Ben

 

[JAD]

yep and instruction is an instruction is an instruction no matter where it comes from..but MMX technology was a CPU enhancement,
and I think it was a 'gaming' influence that brought that on. Some say Music was the push behind the CD ROM I'll bet gaming was
another, They were already pushing 8 disks to run Leisure suit Larry, in the day. A new medium was in need, that 2.0 floppy 3.5 was
an attempt to give a little more space, but that ran out quickly.

 

[Ben Pope]

yep and instruction is an instruction is an instruction no matter where
it comes from..but MMX technology was a CPU enhancement, and I think it
was a 'gaming' influence that brought that on.

Multi Media. Not really game specific. Yes, games make use of multi media.

Some say Music was the
push behind the CD ROM I'll bet gaming was another, They were already
pushing 8 disks to run Leisure suit Larry, in the day.A new medium was
in need, that 2.0 floppy 3.5 was an attempt to give a little more space,
but that ran out quickly.

Oh come on, storage devices are hardly game driven... The CD was originally
for Audio, then data was stuck on it.

Yes, games make use of data, and lots of it, in some cases. When the CD
started getting popular how many "interactive movie" style games were there?
Don't see many of them now.

Ben

 

[Sham B]

As well as closing down all background processes, might be worth checking if
your card is sharing an IRQ. Your MOBO manual should give some info on
this; the AGP port usually shares its IRQ with one of the PCI slots (usually
the one closest to and also sometimes the one furthest away from it,
depending on how many PCI slots you have).

I had this problem on my computer, moving the cards around so that the AGP
slot had its own IRQ, and closing down all unwanted processes fixed it for
me.

S

 

[KCB]

Yeah right... let's re-install our OS whenver we want to play a new
game...djeezzzz.

This makes you really wonder what the hell Windows was designed for anyway.
But again nobody seems to question these things. Ppl shouldn't take things
for granted because after all those years Microsoft should be able the
create a OS that's able to play games (especially since gaming is what
'home-computers' are used for). Or did Microsoft spend all that money over
all this time just to destroy any possible competition instead of really
improving their products like they should have?

Who will know?

I didn't mean to imply that a clean install was done just to have a
non-jerky game environment. Only that when time allowed, and the drive was
wiped for a clean install, the problem went away. I personally loathe
having to re-install anything because it is a big waste of time. That being
said, I will never "upgrade" any of my personal computers again. A clean
install *always* produces better results.

 

[Ed Forsythe]

Right! Never, ever, install a new OS over the old. If you do you're asking
for problems.
--
Happy Flying,
Ed

Yeah right... let's re-install our OS whenever we want to play a new

dumb ass... not every GAME you PLAY, when you upgrade major HARDWARE, not

reinstall but to not install OVER original but to load

 

[J.Clarke]

I would agree that a PC was not "orginally" designed to play games,
but it's gaming that drives the technology today. You don't need a
fast bus, fast chipset, fast memory, a 3D graphics card like the 9800
pro, and 2 or 3 ghz of cpu power to run a spreadsheet or write an
email to Aunt Maude.

You _do_ need the fast bus, fast chipset, fast memory, and 2-3 GHz of
CPU power in a heavily used server managing a large database though.

 

[John Hall]

I would agree that a PC was not "orginally" designed to play games, but it's
gaming that drives the technology today. You don't need a fast bus, fast
chipset, fast memory, a 3D graphics card like the 9800 pro, and 2 or 3 ghz
of cpu power to run a spreadsheet or write an email to Aunt Maude. The
technology has evolved, and it has evolved because of gaming and to suit
gaming which is THE app that really pushes a computer.

On the guys stuttering problem, it is caused for sure by upgrading from ME
to XP, and not doing a clean install. I have upgraded every OS from Windows
3.0 to XP and have never been happy with the results. I always had to bite
the bullet and do a clean install, and then try to salvage whatever I could
of my custom settings. But after the clean install, my machine always ran
like a rocket.

JK

 

[premiersupport]

yeah hmm hmm sure...... GTA3 remembering.... ? remember PONG? when computers first hit the home, games have always been a
major part of home computing..... I don't think your life experience goes back far enough...

Please count me in, my all time favorite is Lode Runner on the Atari 800 on 5
1/4 floppy, protected, had to hack it so i could add lives

second choice was Montezuma's Revenge ( i had a map of that piramyd on the
wall ) hand made to keep track of all the rooms I had been in.

a tough 3rd choice was Miner49ner and the sequel miner 2049 on bank switched
cardtridge

I had the original pong but i tired of it in a month.

I guess Pacman and all the other Atari cart's are there too.






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[John Hall]

I worked for Computer consulting firm as a Sys Admin for two years and was
surprised at the specs on most of their servers, or the ones they managed
for their clients. They were definitely not cutting edge in terms of speed
and power because the purchase of servers is a business decision involving
millions of dollars for large corporations where bang for the buck is always
examined closely. Speed wasn't nearly as important as reliability and
storage capacity as well as the quality of the components that shunted the
data around the network. Servers don't really work that hard. One client
was still running two servers with 486 CPU's and using Windows for
Workgroups. Their other servers were Pentiums running an older version of
Novell Netware. When they upgraded their network in 2001 - 2002 they opted
for an upgraded version of Netware, no hardware upgrade for their servers,
and new Pentium 3 desktops throughout the enterprise running Windows 2000.
During quiet times we managed to play Quake 3 on the desktops, but they
couldn't handle much else. The desktops were all IBM....because they are
reliable and came with good support from IBM. They all had 128 megs of ram,
an ATI Rage video card and a 30 gig hard drive and will probably be used for
about ten years.

JK

 

[Rev Marc]

John, for the most part you probably are correct.
I upgraded from Win2k to XP, Then I added the Radeon ATA 9800 (not Pro)
card.
I should had reformatted first with the Radeon card, then do a fresh install
of XP.
But as it goes with most home-built boxes, the construction process does not
always
take into consideration the impulsive buying possibilities at Best
Buy.....LOL!


Rev Marcus

 

[J.Clarke]

I worked for Computer consulting firm as a Sys Admin for two years and
was surprised at the specs on most of their servers, or the ones they
managed for their clients. They were definitely not cutting edge in
terms of speed and power because the purchase of servers is a business
decision involving millions of dollars for large corporations where
bang for the buck is always examined closely. Speed wasn't nearly as
important as reliability and storage capacity as well as the quality
of the components that shunted the data around the network. Servers
don't really work that hard. One client was still running two servers
with 486 CPU's and using Windows for Workgroups. Their other servers
were Pentiums running an older version of Novell Netware. When they
upgraded their network in 2001 - 2002 they opted for an upgraded
version of Netware, no hardware upgrade for their servers, and new
Pentium 3 desktops throughout the enterprise running Windows 2000.
During quiet times we managed to play Quake 3 on the desktops, but
they couldn't handle much else. The desktops were all IBM....because
they are reliable and came with good support from IBM. They all had
128 megs of ram, an ATI Rage video card and a 30 gig hard drive and
will probably be used for about ten years.

Depends on what the server is used for. Some variants of the System/390
are positioned as servers. If it's departmental file and print then
no, you don't need much machine. If it's handling operations for a
large insurance company that might have 10,000 users sharing the same 3
terabyte database then you need quite a lot of machine, in fact you
need quite a lot of quite a lot of machines if you're doing it with
Intel-based servers.

If all servers were lightweight machines there would be no market for
the Xeon and Itanium.

JK

 

[John Hall]

True. The servers were file servers, and most computation occured at the
work station level. I think that is typical for most companies.

JK

I worked for Computer consulting firm as a Sys Admin for two years and
was surprised at the specs on most of their servers, or the ones they
managed for their clients. They were definitely not cutting edge in
terms of speed and power because the purchase of servers is a business
decision involving millions of dollars for large corporations where
bang for the buck is always examined closely. Speed wasn't nearly as
important as reliability and storage capacity as well as the quality
of the components that shunted the data around the network. Servers
don't really work that hard. One client was still running two servers
with 486 CPU's and using Windows for Workgroups. Their other servers
were Pentiums running an older version of Novell Netware. When they
upgraded their network in 2001 - 2002 they opted for an upgraded
version of Netware, no hardware upgrade for their servers, and new
Pentium 3 desktops throughout the enterprise running Windows 2000.
During quiet times we managed to play Quake 3 on the desktops, but
they couldn't handle much else. The desktops were all IBM....because
they are reliable and came with good support from IBM. They all had
128 megs of ram, an ATI Rage video card and a 30 gig hard drive and
will probably be used for about ten years.

Depends on what the server is used for. Some variants of the System/390
are positioned as servers. If it's departmental file and print then
no, you don't need much machine. If it's handling operations for a
large insurance company that might have 10,000 users sharing the same 3
terabyte database then you need quite a lot of machine, in fact you
need quite a lot of quite a lot of machines if you're doing it with
Intel-based servers.

If all servers were lightweight machines there would be no market for
the Xeon and Itanium.

 

[John Hall]

Yeah, my system is home built and is loaded with impulse purchases from my
local Future Shop which is Canada's Best Buy. Come to think of it, it is
Best Buy in Canada now. I had such a buzz when I first got my 9800 flashed
pro. Now I take it for granted. Then you need the buzz again...and on it
goes.

Geekhood is a curse.

JK

 

[Manu T]

Yes my (personal) experience really goes furter back then GTA3 or the many
ZX Spectrum/C64 games. Anyway the archaic example you mentioned proves what
I stated before. PONG was a dedicated machine for just playing THAT game.
And the Atari systems mentioned below had GFX processors and system design
originating from the Atari VCS. Again Atari computers are NOT PC's (not even
Atari's later offerings like the ST or TT had no resemblance to PC's).

Please count me in, my all time favorite is Lode Runner on the Atari 800 on 5
1/4 floppy, protected, had to hack it so i could add lives

second choice was Montezuma's Revenge ( i had a map of that piramyd on the
wall ) hand made to keep track of all the rooms I had been in.

a tough 3rd choice was Miner49ner and the sequel miner 2049 on bank switched
cardtridge

I had the original pong but i tired of it in a month.

I guess Pacman and all the other Atari cart's are there too.

Anyway the thread wasn't about how fun older games on dedicated games/home
computers were. But to indentify why PC suck so badly in scrolling
landscapes. Oddly enough some games really do the trick e.g. Serious Sam (1)
is a prime example of how good 3D scrolling should be (Even Quake isn't bad
in this respect). There are probably a lot more games who display proper
'game'-behaviour as far as smooth movement is concerned but majority (some
from wel-respected software houses) really are bad (Codemasters efforts are
noteworthy of bad scrolling)

PS: My most favourite old-style game is StarFighter 3000 on Acorn Archimedes
and Lotus Turbo challenge (on various systems). Although SF3000 has been
(badly) ported to several modern systems including PC and PS1 and is not
excactly an ancient game. I really liked Uridium on the C64 (and it's
follow-up Delta). On the speccy were a lot of games that I liked but some
where not exactly the best examples of scrolling landscapes (Marsport e.g.)

Regards,

Manu T