FPS Question

[OrderMaster]

ALL other system specs remaining the same, would I see a noticable increses in frame rates if I replace an Intel 845G onboard video with a GF4 MX440 at 4X AGP? Please don't suggest better cards I jus spent all my hardware funds to replace a dead computer,and have this card laying around.

TIA
OrderMaster

[Delta_]

Yes it would help by a large amount.  The onboard graphics you have now are using you CPU and your RAM to process everything it needs to do, installing a new graphics card will free up resources and cause a big increases in performance.  You need to check that you have an AGP slot.  (It is the brown slot nearest to the CPU compared to the PCI black slots it is in parallel with.)

[Skittles]

...compared to the PCI black slots it is in parallel with.)

One minor correction if I may... PCI slots are tan or white. ISA is black.

[Delta_]

One minor correction if I may... PCI slots are tan or white. ISA is black.

Yeah i meant white.

[OrderMaster]

System does have AGP slot but only at 4X.

WinXP Home
P4 2.8GHz
512 MB DDR Ram

More Ram is next investment!!

OrderMaster

[Delta_]

4x is perfect, i even use 4x.  There is only 1-2% increase using 8x over 4x so don't worry about that.

As for RAM you should not have any probs running 512MB right now, i don't.

It is the GFX card that holds you back right now and upgrading that would give you a very nice performance increase.  One warning if you do go for a GF4 avoid the MX420 models they use half bandwidth and are slower than the MX440 models.

[4_Series_Scania]

System does have AGP slot but only at 4X.

WinXP Home
P4 2.8GHz
512 MB DDR Ram

More Ram is next investment!!

OrderMaster

4x or 8x AGP makes little differance, certainly it won't be much with an MX440!

Do try different drivers, you'll be amazed at the differance between say Nvidia 45 series drivers and 56 series drivers....

http://download.guru3d.com/detonator/ take a good look here, you'll see many different drivers, for example, I've found the 60.72 drivers very good for CFS3 but terrible with Far Cry! (Texture corruption ) its a case of suck 'em and see I'm afraid.

Derspite the MX440, with a 2.8ghz CPU you should get reasonable performance, as long as you don't overdoo the detail settings.....


Happy tweaking!

Paul.

[OrderMaster]

Well I went ahead and put in the GF4, it nearly doubled the frame rates.
Thanks for the opinions and advice.

OrderMaster