From ATi 9800xt to X850xt and gained only 3 FPS

[Gunja]

Since i finaly decided to order TIR, i tought it might be a good idea to get faster gfx card so i dont get slowdowns when looking around. I had only 500-600 $ (for both TIR and GFX card) on my disposal so i decided to buy fastest AGP card out there. PCI-express is out of question for me atm, becouse i would need to change CPU as well, and that would bring me over 1K. I did my reading about gfx comparison and decided to go with AX850xt thinking that i'll be able to max everything out on 2 y.o. game. Pulled my old 9800xt out, pluged new one in, did the driver thingy and fired up LO. I decided not to change any of my graphics settings at the time, so i can see how much FPS will i gain.

3 FPS (avg 18 to avg 21) :rolleyes: wOOt

So i Fire up another FPS killer called "GT Legends"

With my old 9800 and in DX8 mode I was getting 30-35 FPS with most things set to medium.

When i tryed it with my new X850 the thing just blew me away: 80 FPS in DX9 mode and all settings on max and full.

 

Finaly, some questions :)

My cpu is p4 3ghz and i got 1 gig of ram. Isnt 20ish FPS on med. settings is a bit strange?

If not gfx card, what is the bigest FPS booster in LO ? Is it maybe RAM or CPU ? Is it SLI mode or dual CPU ?

I gues it is all of the above in combo, but what would you get (if u could only get one thing) to get more FPS.

I'm not pissed at the game or mad at ED or anything, just curious, could i invest smarter?

[Andrew_McP]

If not gfx card, what is the bigest FPS booster in LO ? Is it maybe RAM or CPU ? Is it SLI mode or dual CPU ?

 

It's CPU. SLI is for rich folk chasing rainbows and dual core is virtually worthless. You want MHz and lots of them. As LOMAC is DX8, it can't take advantage of the acceleration offered by more recent vid cards. But what you *can* do is fly at higher resolutions with x4fsaa & x8aniso (or even higher) for "free".

 

When I shifted to an X800Pro from a 9700Pro I saw little frame rate boost, but I can fly at 1600x1200 almost as smoothly as I used to fly at 1024x768. Obviously I'd rather have higher (and especially more consistent!) frame rates in LOMAC.

 

As you'll see from my post earlier on, moving from a 2.2GHz Barton to a x2 3800@2.4GHz has given me quite a nice LOMAC boost. The x2 is only going to be useful in movie making, so just read the benchmarks as if they came from a single core processor running at the same speed.

 

Andrew McP

 

PS I bought an Asrock Dual Sata board which has good AGP support *and* a PCI-E slot. It's also very cheap, and I could re-use my AGP card and RAM. I did also buy a new PSU, but my old Zalman 400W *might* have been ok. The problem is that newer hardware demands more power on the 12V lines, whereas older PSUs may be weighted too far in the 5V direction. And if your PSU struggles to cope you can have all sorts of nasty, unpredictable problems.