Gettin a Ti4200 - what can i do for best perf/IQ? AnAndAustin: Your expertise please! :)

[Confused]

I currently have a Leadtek GF2MX 400 64MB with TV Out, and am getting a MSI GeForce 4 Ti4200 128mb with DVI/TV Out in a day or 2 (when the delivery comes in at work - oh the perks of working in a computer shop!) so it's a nice little upgrade

I know the first thing will be "crank the res up", but my 15" monitor will only do 1024x768 at 60Hz, which is ok for me. So, what settings (AA, AF etc) would be best to get the best Image Quality and speed at this res. I mainly play GTA3, SOF2, CS, MOH:AA and RTCW. Which settings of AA and AF etc should i set to make the best use of my card?

The computer it's going into is as follows:
ECS K7S5A
Athlon 1.0@1.467 (146.7x10)
384MB PC133 CAS3
Western Digital 40gb 5400rpm ATA100 hdd
SB Live 5.1


Thanks in advance

Confused

 

[Confused]

ANyone?

 

[bot2600]

I hate to sound silly, but 17 inch monitors are pretty cheap now and would make you gaming experience MUCH nicer!

 

[Confused]

Yeah, i'm gonna get a newer monitor in a couple of months (nice flat 19" one) once a few more pay packets have come through, but want to get the GF4 now (as 1st pay packet is enough to cover that but not a new monitor) then just get a nice spiffy monitor in a while to give me that better boost

Bot, you, sound silly, never! Oh, and slightly OT here, are you gonna get any time soon to do some more work on the FlexInstaller for Seti?

 

[bot2600]

I have been tinkering with it lately, but there are some things I just dont know what to do, especially with functionality. It is not a problem with making the program, but with making it so that it would be what is wanted. I redid the user interface, and redid the installer, fixed the scheduling (found out it never worked) redid the multi-cpu support so it does multi-cpu over the lan, the part I am working on now is a good way to add unistall over the lan, and I dont know what kind of inconvience is acceptable. Would it be better to have the installer machine keep a list of the machines it installed to and uninstall that list? That means if you have done installs from a machine and since formatted it you are lost, or is you did lan installs from several different machines, you would have to go to each machine and uninstall each group from there. The way I am looking at now scans the machine it can find through net view, just like the install part does, and tests each machine to see if the client is running, but I dont know how well that would go over, especially on a large network. Then whatever I decide to use there will be incorporated in the toolbox to remotely start/stop and check status on the clients. The main thing is just deciding on a reliable method to find all of the machines running the client, without stepping on the admin or getting him concerned over a bunch of probes over the lan for clients.

 

[sash1]

No one can really tell you what settings to use. It depends on the game. Just fool around with settings and see which you like the best and what settings give you the best performance. I would strongly suggest always using anisotropic filtering for your games. As for AA, it depends on what setting gives you the best performance, whether it be 4x/2x/Quincunx.

But with a GF4, you should easily be able to pull off anisotrophy with QxAA in any game.

Just some notes on your setup. Nothing is really holding you back except for your hard drive. I forget where the article is (I believe it was FiringSquad) that did a 5400RPMs vs. 7200RPMs hard drive comparison, which obviously showed that a 5400RPMs hard drive slows down performance. Although this isn't that big of a deal, hard drives aren't too expensive.

 

[EXman]

(oh the perks of working in a computer shop!)

brudda you need to throw out your $25 15" monitor and get at least a 17" if not a 19"

And ditch the pc133 Cas 3 ram donate it to a good cause get yourself some decent DDR

 

[Confused]

OK the card should be coming into work today, so bump from the grave of this thread!

I have now got an 80gb 7200rpm hdd, and am also getting 512mb DDR today too

Monitor still don't have money to get a decent new one, so the crappy "$25 15" monitor" will have to do for now

Any suggestions on best way to set things up for 1024*768 and how as well!

Thanks

Confused

 

[AnAndAustin]

I've had WinXP nightmares and a few family probs. Plus these forums seem to be disagreeing with my new WinXP reinstall.

Aniso and AA, breifly you should find with an Athlon1.4 and 4200 on any current game at 1024x768x32 should run well with full Ani & 2xAA/QxAA. The lowest level of Ani is still good on nVidia cards, but since 1024 is your res limit tyou may as well crank up the candy. 4xS is the best AA mode, but it will hit you pretty hard, 2xAA and QxAA hardly hit perf at all and are generally the best settings to go for. It is best to override the game's own settings (if it has them) and force 2xAA/QxAA and Aniso through the drivers/nVidia Quicktweak. If you can get a FPS count on your game you generally want to be around 60-80. The FPS and the AA/Aniso are pretty individual things so experiment.