my current home setup consists of

cpu
xp2600/xp2500 (cant remember which chip i fitted tbh i have them both for some reason) OC`d to around 2.3ghz
gfx
geforce fx 5600 xt 256mb OC`d to around 350/400 IIRC
1gb ddr (i think its pc3200)


i have just found a cheapo ati 9700 pro on ebay so i thought i would give it a shot, will i see much difference with this change of card?

fps at the moment while racing is around 30fps, and i would like it a bit smoother, i am not that clued up on gfx cards TBH, a mate said i could have his old 9800 pro for £40 but actually trying to get it from him is proving a bit of a hard task
is the 9700 pro much worse then the 9800 pro?

only real game i play at home is LFS with a little UT2003 now and again

thanks in advance...

I have a slightly faster CPU than you (XP 3000+ @ 2.1GHZ) and saw no improvement in framerate without AA and AF when going from a 4600 to a 6800GT. Framerate with AA and AF on is a different story. I can now run full AA and AF with no drop in framerate in LFS.

If all you play is LFS then my guess is a 9700 Pro will do fine. If you play anything else, though, I'd reccommend something a bit more powerful, such as a 6600GT. It's not much more expensive and it's about twice as fast in anything except LFS, althouh I can guarantee you'll be able to run full AA and AF with the 6600GT with no drop in framerate. I'm not so sure about the 9700 Pro.

thanks, all i pretty much play is LFS to be honest, i did actually buy my DFP for gran turismo 4, but once i found out i could use it in LFS it has never been anywhere near the ps2 since

i had also paid for the full s2 licence but never bothered with anything except the small gti and the demo servers for some reason

a few weeks back i decided to dive in at the deep end with the fxo gtr car and now i realise i need some extra ooomph

the 9700 pro was only £40 deliverd, this will probably be the last "tweak" before i replace the whole lot

the game is CPU limited mainly, the 9700 should ensure that you can run at a higher res or with aa/af if you could already play the game smoothly at a lower res. Just be warned, the Catalyst drivers are odd sometimes, get the latest Omega tweaked drivers and you should be ok.

a higher res is what i would like, as long as the FPS will not drop, i saw lots of addons for various higher quality back grounds and such and did not want to meddle to much if it was going to kill the game speed

i did not relise that the game was based on the cpu speed so much??
would it be a good idea to kill all the back ground programs before playing the game?
motherboard monitor etc etc

Quote from Sticky-Micky :

a higher res is what i would like, as long as the FPS will not drop, i saw lots of addons for various higher quality back grounds and such and did not want to meddle to much if it was going to kill the game speed

i did not relise that the game was based on the cpu speed so much??
would it be a good idea to kill all the back ground programs before playing the game?
motherboard monitor etc etc

Yes. LFS does a lot more physics calculations than most other "games". Thus it hammers the CPU much more.

Quote from Sticky-Micky :

a higher res is what i would like, as long as the FPS will not drop, i saw lots of addons for various higher quality back grounds and such and did not want to meddle to much if it was going to kill the game speed

i did not relise that the game was based on the cpu speed so much??
would it be a good idea to kill all the back ground programs before playing the game?
motherboard monitor etc etc

Those high quality textures don't influence your fps that much really, certainly not when you've got a 256 MB card. I have a 6600 256 MB and I haven't noticed a slowdown since I started to use those.
LFS relies on the CPU quite a lot, but not because of the graphics but the physics calculations and such.

had a look today and it turns out my card was not running any AA and AS at all, switched them on to x8, game looked much nicer, frame rate dropped down to around 6fps :eek:

switched them back off, will wait and see what the new card is like :eek:

You say you turned AA to 8x? No wonder your performance went so low, that's a crazy figure... I didn't even know you could go that high.

Try this setting: 1024x768 at 32 bits, AA 4x and AF 8x. Or if you can, 1280x1024x32 bits, AA 2x and AF 8x. Great visual quality, at what should be a good framerate. Good luck!

I run 8x AA and 16x AF at 2048x1280 (no, that's not a typo) with my 6800GT 128MB. The framerate is basically the same as 1024x768 with no AA or AF.

Quote from Forbin :

I run 8x AA and 16x AF at 2048x1280 (no, that's not a typo) with my 6800GT 128MB. The framerate is basically the same as 1024x768 with no AA or AF.

Nvidia 6xxx series and up can do also 16xAA

@Sticky-Micky,

You will get better framerates.I would say up to 60-80FPS and you will be able to turn on like 4xAA+8AF with 9700pro.

this is looking promiseing, TBH i bought this current card and just slung it in and never really botherd with it

then i discoverd overclocking and tweaked it, i never relised i had to set the AA and such by hand :eek:

matter not, its heading for the bin in the next day or 2

Try http://omegadrivers.net/, they are modified drivers from NVIDIA, they boosted my FPS by 25% easily.

Quote from DEVIL 007 :

Nvidia 6xxx series and up can do also 16xAA

Ummmm, if they can then tell me how, the max the nvidia control panel shows is 8xAA and 16xAF. Nvidia cards never used to be able to do 16xAF properly until the 6XXX and above series, but as far as i know 8xAA is the max for any card out at the minute.

A 9700pro should play LFS nicely, and you should get AA and AF up a bit, maybe 2 or 4xAA and 4 or 8xAF with a slight performance drop but huge GFX increase.

blimey, you in newcastle uk??

which part?
i am at the royal quays marina

GFX card "should" get delivered today with a bit of luck, although if it stays sunny, me and the lads are all going to warden law track to race our minimotos tonight so i doubt i will get to install it

Quote from Stellios :

Ummmm, if they can then tell me how, the max the nvidia control panel shows is 8xAA and 16xAF. Nvidia cards never used to be able to do 16xAF properly until the 6XXX and above series, but as far as i know 8xAA is the max for any card out at the minute.

Well,officially you can do max 8xS AA and 16AF but the drivers and 6xxx cards offer higher possibilities unofficially.I think its not in drivers to choose as I heard it makes problem with some games and the FPS penalty is enourmous(unplayable) untill you have something like 7xxx series.
8xS AA is less taxing then proper 8xAA or even 16xAA.

You can do also 32xAA with SLI but I dont have SLI system.

Just download latest version(R.16) of program called Rivatuner and you can do more things then are included in standard NVIDIA panels/tabs
Rivatuner

Its really nice program which provide many possibilities like GPU overclocking,tempreture monitoring,GPU ram ussage,seperate DirectX/OpenGL settings and many more.Its for free and there are no spyware or malware included.

Try it.It works for me but there is hardly any difference between 8xS AA and 16XAA when racing.I am using it just for screenshots capturing even it give me playable FPS on my system.

card has been delivered, unfortunately i am away out tonight to the local minimoto track with my bike, so i am not sure if i will get a chance to test the card tonight, do i have to clear all the nvidia stuff from the pc before i switch the cards?

i got no driver disk so i assume i will have to download the drivers, the card is "refurbished"
i am not sure what they do with them but it looks brand new, i can not find any dirt or any kind of "usage" mark on it anywhere, the heat sink and fan look brand new ??!!??

Yeah, uninstall all your Nvidia display drivers.

Refurbished is when a card is taken back to the manufacterer for being duff (or broken) It is then "fixed" and sold again.

Good luck with your card, its a very very good card (same as a 9800 pro).

ok card is installed

current speed stock
1152 x 862 32bit
d3d = aa4 af 8
ogl = aa0 af 0

fps in hot lapping between 65fps and 80fps
all ai drivers and me at the back of the grid down into T1 @ blackwood 30fps

does this seam about right?
most of the time it was sitting around 45 fps while racing the ai drivers
this is will all ingame settings on max LOD and no compressed skins/textures etc etc

put the screen to 16bit and tbh i can not tell the difference??

does LFS use open gl?

No, as with most Windows games these days, LFS uses Direct3D.

As for any graphics card upgrade, just buy a x800XL - cheap (£102.97 mine cost) and plays any game I ask it to at respectable gfx and lfs as good as I can possibly get it with AA and AF

mine was £40

Quote from Sticky-Micky :

mine was £40

so happy with the performance?

Quote from S14 DRIFT :

As for any graphics card upgrade, just buy a x800XL - cheap (£102.97 mine cost) and plays any game I ask it to at respectable gfx and lfs as good as I can possibly get it with AA and AF

Where from?