Testing HT #2....Updated a bit....

[RussianSensation]

Originally posted by: FPSguy
and then you have this Radeon 8500 that is a couple generations back from many hard core gamers' video cards.

Just out of curiosity...Isnt Radeon 8500 only 1 generation back? That would make 9XXX cards the next generation meaning 9700 replaced 8500 and then you have 9100/9200/9000 which are all derivates of the old 8500. And then 9500/9600/9700/9800 simply derivatives of the 9700. I am not sure if this is correct but if 8500 = R200 and 9700 = R300 (9800Xt being R350 i believe??). Wouldnt that make R420 the card 2 generations from 8500?

I read somewhere that the rule of thumb is to upgrade your videocard every 2 generations. Therefore the owners of 8500 would look at R420 and skip R300. (thats for those that lack $$$ of course, like me)

 

[mechBgon]

Mmm, thought I'd clarify my suggestion a little. When I say "virus scan" I don't mean it's just sitting in the system tray waiting for something to happen. I mean it's pulling every file off the HDD and examining it, at full throttle.

I did a full manual scan on Turbo II today, just to see how long it would take, and how many files it scans. Anyone want to guess how many files VirusScan Enterprise reported, during a scan of two 18GB hard drives...?







The answer is: over 480000. And that's down from a high of 891000 on Jan. 4th, when I had some extra Office2000 Administrative Installation Points left over from my testing of my recently-revised Win2000Pro/Office2000Pro "Toolbox" kit. Those .CAB files have a lot of stuff inside them! Thank goodness for SCSI, is all I can say.

 

[FPSguy]

Originally posted by: RussianSensation

Originally posted by: FPSguy and then you have this Radeon 8500 that is a couple generations back from many hard core gamers' video cards.

Just out of curiosity...Isnt Radeon 8500 only 1 generation back? That would make 9XXX cards the next generation meaning 9700 replaced 8500 and then you have 9100/9200/9000 which are all derivates of the old 8500. And then 9500/9600/9700/9800 simply derivatives of the 9700. I am not sure if this is correct but if 8500 = R200 and 9700 = R300 (9800Xt being R350 i believe??). Wouldnt that make R420 the card 2 generations from 8500? I read somewhere that the rule of thumb is to upgrade your videocard every 2 generations. Therefore the owners of 8500 would look at R420 and skip R300. (thats for those that lack $$$ of course, like me)

I guess it depends on how you define generation. The 8500 is the R200. 9000 = R250. 9200 = R280. 9500 & 9700 = R300. 9600 & 9800 = R350. 9800XT = R360. However you define it, it's way down the ladder. Then there are NVidia releases since the 8500, which also offer other upgrade "opportunities". Check out Tom's VGA Charts. The 8500 is pretty much in the "Sorry" category. I think when a video card will not hit 30 FPS on a first person shooter that you want to play, it's time for a new video card. (If you are like Duvie and don't play first person shooters much, that rule may not work for you; if you can afford to upgrade sooner, that rule also may not work for you) By that standard, the 8500 would fail when playing Halo and I think some of the other games tested as well.

 

[Duvie]

I guess I am glad I am still in the 50's then!!!


ONe thing after a bit more messing around it is clear that messing with priorities is pointless with HT...It either gives negative results or no results at all...

 

[Duvie]

I hearby am going to suspend these results as it is clear that my system (vid card) is not set for a gaming rig and the results are not being looked at for what they are....

Hardcore gamers will not respect these results cause they feel they need 200fps even though playable would mean never going below 30fps....high detail and 1024x768 for me still meets the requirements so I don't understand the gaming mentality...that is OK though...

These results should be for the pc users that also game a bit....There are advantages as shown in my test for multitasking by light casual games and not hardcore boys....


I am going to focus on some seti + different combinations since those ppl seem to be interested in the multitasking environement....

 

[Jeff7181]

Originally posted by: Duvie
I hearby am going to suspend these results as it is clear that my system (vid card) is not set for a gaming rig and the results are not being looked at for what they are....

Hardcore gamers will not respect these results cause they feel they need 200fps even though playable would mean never going below 30fps....high detail and 1024x768 for me still meets the requirements so I don't understand the gaming mentality...that is OK though...

These results should be for the pc users that also game a bit....There are advantages as shown in my test for multitasking by light casual games and not hardcore boys....


I am going to focus on some seti + different combinations since those ppl seem to be interested in the multitasking environement....

Uh oh... look out... flame war from the video forum may start up in the CPU forum

 

[Duvie]

Update to look at real world FPS then botmatch alone...I think the botmatch on an obvious vid card limited system (non gamer) would not likely be the situation for gamers...So I decided to look at it in the way gamers understand fps and how much will they drop....

 

[orion7144]

I have done alot of this testing with the Folding @ Home client as I have posted before and I am a gamer with a 9700Pro AIW. I see minimal FPS reduction. Mine is closer to 7-12% running UT2K3, Max Payne 2, and so on. Definately no were near the 25% so maybe Duvie's video card is limiting him and maybe not since we both have almost Identicle machines. One of the few things that are different is that I am running 2 raptors in RAID 0 and 2 120gig JB series in RAID 1 with an add on PCI RAID controller.

Last night while using DVD X copy (to back up a movie) I burned 2 movies one with F@H running and one w/o it running. Wtih folding running I only lost ~1 min per frame that takes ~9 min and the it burned the movie in just under 3hrs. Then w/o Folding running it took just under 2.5hrs.

 

[Duvie]

25% was just looking at the botmatch of the demo benchmark but in actual game play I was only 11% fps reduction....

So I see this transcends across vid cards of higher generations....