The best config

[Airbus_eurofighter]

Well im deppresed because my grafics are a compleatly dessaster, here is my facts:

-Nvidia Gforce 5500 mx (256)
- Windows XP
- Direct x 9.c
- Pentium 4A a 2000 mhz
- 512 of ram

CAn anyone say what can i do to make my computer better for gaming?? or the display page in fs??

Zitin

[marick626]

first off... Do you have money?
I aske you that because if your willing to spend more than $500 on a grafics card then waist it on the Nvidia Geforce 6800 or the ati radeon x850xl. If you dont, try to get a geforce 6600 or an ATi radeon 9600.

and also 1gb of memory wouldnt hurt.

[congo]

Oh dear, another poor person who got sucked into the 256mb graphics card scam.......

Nvidia Gforce 5500 mx (256)  ????? What the heck is that?

It's not the amount of ram on the Graphics card that makes a good card, it's far better to buy a decent card with 128mb of quality ram.

You don't need to spend $500 as a much cheaper NV 6600GT, (GT I said, righto? Not a plain 6600), will suffice.

Is your CPU running at it's designed speed? 2ghz seems slow these days.

RAM will help, but you need more info before you buy any. There are many pitfalls.

[Dan]

If money is an issue, how about an overlcock? You could keep going with the cooling you have, or geta  little fancy and get a water-cooling kit? That would be around

[Airbus_eurofighter]

But i thought that my card is very good one...  :(
And what can i do to get better effects with the hardware i have now??

Zitin

[Airbus_eurofighter]

What is a water cooling kit??

Zitin

[Dan]

The card is not a bad one, but a well tweaked nVidia 6800LE will easily beat it - of course a 6800GT or Ultra would beat that too!

Water cooling - its quitea simple concept really. Instead of cooling your system with air and fans like me and many others, it uses a fluid system like that in most cars / motorcycles. A very popular setup seems to be the Zalman Reserator.



The little block on the left there fits on tot he top of the CPU where the heat sink and fan would usually go, and the coolant flows through it there. A lot of people attach another block and put it on the graphics card too. The tower is the radiator, which in this one also houses the pump. Fill it with distilled water, and it apparently does a great job. That would cost you

[GunnerMan]

I would not buy the reserator. Zalman prides itself in silence. They do make good performing products but for the price there is better. I would not well I would but he probably does not want to spend 200 on a WC setup for 100-900 Mhz (rember its luck of the draw when OCing not all chhips oc) when he could go get a 1 Ghz faster cpu for 200 dollars guaranteed performance.
Don know of any tweaks you can do to that system besides overclocking your video card and or cpu with proper cooling be it air or water.

[4_Series_Scania]

The card is not a bad one, but a well tweaked nVidia 6800LE will easily beat it - of course a 6800GT or Ultra would beat that too!

Sorry Dan, your right, it isn't "Bad" its Bloody awful !  

Any Geforce 6600 or greater will benefit that system,but, not by very much at all.

Why? my current p4 2.6 800fsb cannot drive my 6800LE to its optimum - I'd need a 3.6p4 or the AMD equivalent to do that! - therefore, I would'nt expect the earth from a good card tied to a relatively old system.

I have a friend with a p4 1.8 (Overclocked to 2.4) 1024MB DDR 2100 & Geforce 6800LE, He scores about 5500 on 3D Mark 03, with the same card, I get around 9000, friends with faster CPU's get higher again - in other words, the cpu struggles to drive the card properly, this shows up as poor in-game performance.

6600GT's & 6800LE's are roughly the same price, I went for the LE and it runs very well on my system the same card is quite lame on my friends p4.

Imo, you'd be better off getting a second hand Geforce FX5900 from the likes of e-bay, pay next to nothing for it, in the mean while, save for a better CPU & Motherboard, and, more than likely, RAM then you will be in a position to consider a Geforce 6 series card, otherwise, you will be quite dissapointed I fear.

[GunnerMan]

Well even a FX-55 cant keep up with bandwith provided on the top range cards. Video cards have unbeliveable bandwith but like I said a video card is not an instant system wide uprate. It improves the visual quality and (most of the time) frame rates. If I am runnin an old Athlon XP 1.2 Ghz It would pair well with the lowest end Dx9 card and still not keep up with it.

Im ahh sorry if this threat turned into something more depressing then what you already have but h=hey gotta spend your money on somethin for me its golf and computers

[4_Series_Scania]

Well even a FX-55 cant keep up with bandwith provided on the top range cards. Video cards have unbeliveable bandwith but like I said a video card is not an instant system wide uprate. It improves the visual quality and (most of the time) frame rates. If I am runnin an old Athlon XP 1.2 Ghz It would pair well with the lowest end Dx9 card and still not keep up with it.

Im ahh sorry if this threat turned into something more depressing then what you already have but h=hey gotta spend your money on somethin for me its golf and computers

The New 6800 certainly improved my friends system, alas, he still gets "stutters" playing Battlefield 1942 @ 800x600 with medium settings, something I don't get running the same game @ 1600x1200 4xAA 8xAF & Highest settings,sadly for my friend, purchasing his new card jas just made him realise the rest of his rig isn't upto scratch.

[congo]

[quote]But i thought that my card is very good one...

[GunnerMan]

New video card will help if he has AGP without AGP he myse well have a FX 5200. And yes when I replaced my GF4 MX440 with a 6800U I saw huge performance increase but I know I need a better cpu and or chipset to get the full 500$ out of her.

[congo]

Dan,

Those coolers look great.

My friend has one of these things, but every time his kids have a party, the hoses seem to get chopped up....



and the darn thing smells like it was smoking.  

[Ivan]

I've seen these, that tower is over a meter high...
Car radiators work as well

My hints for more performance
1: no matter what, go to 1024MB ram.
Video depends on your motherboard capabilities

If you have the money to spend, there are two options (both expensive ones but these will keep you going for 1,5-2 years)

High end no future upgrade (semi Dead end platform)
AMD 64 on socket 7xx, AGP and 1024MB RAM

High end with future upgrades
AMD 64 on Socket 939, PCI-e and 1024MB RAM