Video Card suggestion...

kobasew07

Junior Member
Nov 13, 2004
3
0
0
hey guys,

Unfortunately, I don't have lots to spend so here's three cards that i need help on deciding which one is better for the price:

Sapphire Atlantis Radeon 9600 Pro Advantage 256MB w/ TV-Out, DVI (Lite Retail) $140 Cdn

ATI Radeon 9600SE 128MB $200 Cdn

eVGA GeForce FX5500 256MB $160 Cdn



or should i just suck it up and get

All-In-Wonder Radeon 9800 Pro 128MB (Retail) for about $350 Cdn

Thanks for your help guys
 

bytor33

Member
Oct 15, 2004
66
0
0
A 6600 gt will be your best bet for your price range. I believe nvidia runs eq 2 faster, as I even got a card with my evga 6800 gt that says nvidia worked directly with sony to optimize it for nvidia cards.
 

stelleg151

Senior member
Sep 2, 2004
822
0
0
I would go with the pro, but maybe find a cheaper 128mb one, as the 256 wont help you at all with that slow of a card.
 

xSkyDrAx

Diamond Member
Sep 14, 2003
7,706
1
0
Currently there is not video card that can handle EQ2 with everything on. Now, out of your list, the 9800 pro would do the best, then the 9600 256 would probably have a slight advantage of the 9600se 128.
 

Bateluer

Lifer
Jun 23, 2001
27,730
8
0
EQ2 is highly optimized for Nvidia. Very highly optimized. With my 6800 GT and P4 2.4C, I am runningat 1280x1024 with almost everything maxed, no FSAA though, ands it mostly smooth. But I'm still on the noob island. I may have to dial it down a bit when I get to Qeynos.

In this case, I think a 6600 GT would be a better choice than the 9800 Pro for EQ2. 9800 Pro would be better for most other games though. Or you could just suck it up, save cash for a few more months and guy a full 6800 GT. :p
 

effee

Golden Member
Sep 4, 2004
1,797
0
0
If only I had EQ2. I could offer some feedback on how it does with my 9800 pro. Unfortunately it just departed the DHL facility in the US. Will take 2 days to get here.
 

kobasew07

Junior Member
Nov 13, 2004
3
0
0
Replying to the post saying that Nvidia works better with eq2. In your opinion, the FX5500 would not be a good choice?
 

Acanthus

Lifer
Aug 28, 2001
19,915
2
76
ostif.org
Originally posted by: Bateluer
EQ2 is highly optimized for Nvidia. Very highly optimized. With my 6800 GT and P4 2.4C, I am runningat 1280x1024 with almost everything maxed, no FSAA though, ands it mostly smooth. But I'm still on the noob island. I may have to dial it down a bit when I get to Qeynos.

In this case, I think a 6600 GT would be a better choice than the 9800 Pro for EQ2. 9800 Pro would be better for most other games though. Or you could just suck it up, save cash for a few more months and guy a full 6800 GT. :p

As far as i know the 6600GT is faster in almost everything...

This isnt X800XT vs 6800UE...
 

Todd33

Diamond Member
Oct 16, 2003
7,842
2
81
Those first three are garbage and EQ2 will be a slide show. You need to at least start with the 9600XT range. I run it on a 9800 pro and it looks and plays great. My friend tried a GF3, but had to promptly order a 5900XT.
 

ProppaT

Member
Oct 17, 2000
96
0
0
By all means, if this card is to play EQII, GET A 256mb card!

People will argue with this, but seriously, this might be the first game to actually take advantage of the ram. From my experience playing it with a few different cards now, you can crank up the texture quality quite a bit with no performance hit as long as your videocard can buffer the textures.

Other than that, just a few bits of advice on getting quality frames in this game...

If you don't have at least 1gb of ram, upgrade. If you don't have the money (or would rather save money on RAM and put it into the videocard) and you happen to have an old hard drive laying around, you might want to install it as a scratch disk for EQ. I have a Radeon X800 Pro w/ 256mb RAM and 512mb system memory and was astounded by the horrible frames I was getting, even in lower resolutions. I installed an old HD in my computer, formatted it, deleted the swapfile on the hd w/ Windows and added a 2gb swapfile to the blank hd and, like magic, the game runs smooth as butter...

No matter what card you get, though, there's so many graphics options in the game that you can turn on and off that you're sure to find something that's playable with practically any DX9 card you get.