System Rating

  • Thread starter Thread starter Gary MCSE
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Gary MCSE

Graphics appear to be pulling my system rating down to a 2.6.

Currently using an Nvidia Geforce FX 5500 Video Card AGP.

I thought this was a good video card but apparantly not:

What would be a good inexpensive alternative?

Metastatic Disease Sucks

Gary
 
Gary MCSE said:
Graphics appear to be pulling my system rating down to a 2.6.

Currently using an Nvidia Geforce FX 5500 Video Card AGP.

I thought this was a good video card but apparantly not:

What would be a good inexpensive alternative?

Metastatic Disease Sucks
Click to expand...

Unless you have the wrong drivers or the rating is stopping you from having
certain effects or whatever, then I would not put too much faith into the
ratings system. It really does not affect anything.
 
You system works and gives you all the bells and whistles?

Unless you are an avid, habitual player of the latest graphic intensive
games - what does the rating matter?

--


Regards,

Richard Urban
Microsoft MVP Windows Shell/User
(For email, remove the obvious from my address)

Quote from George Ankner:
If you knew as much as you think you know,
You would realize that you don't know what you thought you knew!
 
I originally had an ATI Radeon 9200 SE card in my machine and this gave a
rating of 2.4. However, the 9200 SE was too old to give me AERO so i had to
update my card to an ATI 9550. Currently this gives me an index rating of
3.6 with a score of 3.3 for business etc. I'm no gamer, i simply haven't got
the time to waste. AERO works fine and so does everything else so i'm happy,
i think!

So long as you have AERO and your graphics are smooth i certainly wouldn't
worry about the index score. Future software will be rated specifically fort
his purpose. The index scroe simply tells you whether you can play that game
or run that software. In other words if yuo are looking at a game or some
software that says it has a 4 index rating and you overall system rating (
and remember this rating is given on the lowest base score) is 3.0 then it
is pointless buying the game or software because it won't perform as it
should do on your system.

--
John Barnett MVP
Associate Expert
Windows Shell/User

Web: http://xphelpandsupport.mvps.org
Web: http://vistasupport.mvps.org

The information in this mail/post is supplied "as is". No warranty of any
kind, either expressed or implied, is made in relation to the accuracy,
reliability or content of this mail/post. The Author shall not be liable for
any direct, indirect, incidental or consequential damages arising out of the
use of, or inability to use, information or opinions expressed in this
mail/post..
 
Isn't that a pretty old card? I have a 5950 (256mb), which was expensive
when I bought it three years ago. It gets a rating of 4.0. Frankly, it
handles all the aero stuff just fine. It only balks on some more recent
games. I would imagine your card will be fine unless you're playing games.
 
I picked up an ATI Radeon X1600, 512 MB, PCI-Express for $120 shipped from
New Egg.

Getting 4.2's.



Bill F.
 
Bill Frisbee said:
I picked up an ATI Radeon X1600, 512 MB, PCI-Express for $120 shipped from
New Egg.

Getting 4.2's.
Click to expand...

What does it show for the Graphics score?

Mike
 
2.6 Rating
Games Play Fine
Aero works Flawlesly.

It is a 256 mb AGP with nVidia Graphics.
 
FX 5500 256mb on one machine - 2.6 "Gaming",same as you are getting - don't
have machine on right = do not remember rating for "Graphics".
ATI x1300 256mb on another machine - 4.2 "Gaming", 4.7 "Graphics" - picked
this up at Compusa for 99.xx on sale. I think in the last few weeks seen on
sale at Compusa for 79.xx after rebate.

With all that said now, I honestly cannot tell any difference in the 2.6 and
4.2 ratings, of course my eyes are not the best in the world.

Both machines are Intel dual core 3.4's with 2 gigs memory. The only
difference I can see is that the one with the FX 5500 has a larger delta in
the ratings - 2.6 low to 5.3 high, while the x1300 is much smaller - 4.2 low
to 5.3 high. I do not know how valid the ratings are, but I would think the
smaller the delta, the more "balanced" the setup would be. Again with that
said, I can not tell any difference in the performance or graphis of the two
machines. I am not a "gamer" so that might be where it would make a
difference. In other words, as some of the others stated, if it works for
you, do not worry about the ratings , i.e., not broken - don't fix it.
 
I always liked the Nvidia chipsets for clarity, ease of use and setup and
price.

Maybe its time to try something diferent.

Even the 64bit game Far Cry plays smoothe as silk so maybe I am wasting my
time?

G
 
Graphics: Desktop Performance for Aero: 4.5
Gaming Graphics: 3D business and gaming graphics performance: 4.9


Not bad for a cheap card huh?

Bill F.
 
Gary MCSE said:
I always liked the Nvidia chipsets for clarity, ease of use and setup and
price.

Maybe its time to try something diferent.

Even the 64bit game Far Cry plays smoothe as silk so maybe I am wasting
my time?
Click to expand...

As others have said, if you aren't having any problems then do not worry
about it. The score is meaningless and the only purpose I see to it is
getting people to fork out for new hardware.
 
you can get a Gforce 7600GS in AGP at CompUSA or anywhere you like for that
matter for around $130.00 to $150.00 probably the last decent nvidia card
that'll come out for AGP. with 512 megs mem onboard too.
 
yea I had a 5700FX before and games played ok BUT and here's the thing many
new games coming out like splinter cell double agent require shader model
3.0 and the FX series don't do that so you might run into trouble real soon.

in saying that gforce 7600GS gives me a 5.9 in desktop performance rating
and a 4.3 in 3D business and gamming. and I'm only running it in agp 4x I
believe too might be 2x mobo is old so I don't remember off hand. YMMV
 
I have an AGP 8X ATI Radeon X1950 Pro 512mb and it gives me a rating of 1.
Since I just got that card I was a bit frustrated thinking the number meant
something.

I started questioning the accuracy of that rating so I went ahead and loaded
up some of my games. So far I,ve been able to run all of them with most if
not all of the graphic options turned up at 1280*1024 holding pretty tight to
30 FPS. I am working on getting a more bleeding edge game to try it also but
I think it will be fine.

Just wait till it doesnt do what you need it to do before you panic.
 
That's curious. I have an ATI X1650 PRo, AGP 8X, 512MB, and I get an
experience score of 4.3 with it. Aero works, and so forth. It's been really
solid on Vista Ultimate.

One thing to check is that your BIOS is not set to AGP 4X. That would
probably bring the score down quite a bit.

Good luck,
Tom Dacon
 
I checked that right away. Found that I had it set to use 128 bus instead of
256 and changed it and made sure it was set on 8x and still get a 1.

Funny thing is, I show 799 MB total video memory after it counts in some
system memory it is using also. I dont have on board video and with that no
options in bios to use system mem for video.

/shrugs
 
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