Okay so some of you know i've always been on the low end specs compared to alot of the guys here with 2000$ top end machines

anyways, this is the 3rd graphics card i've gotten, 32 mb on the old computer (which died) got roughly 30 FPS on that old machine, got a dell with a 128mb nvidia FX 5600, and just last night i received a 256mb FX 5500 (not really sure why i got it, but hey, so far im lovin it)

so i figured well hey.. its 256 mb, after looking at all these cards.. well i thought it was gonna be a few hundred dollars.. i was wrong.

My 128mb 5600 with the specs i run (windowed at 1024x768 not quite at full settings and no AA, i got roughly 45ish FPS with about 10 cars in view, keep in mind my dynamic LOD is up at 1! so that saved alot of FPS) during a normal start from the rear of an FV8 race at the oval i hit 20 FPS, and with dynamic LOD up at 1, not only did i not see but about 5 cars in front of me, they looked like blocks at that..

so i installed the 'new' 256mb 5500 into my computer, with same settings, i got nearly TWICE my average FPS 80+..
obviously you can do the math, 128+128=256 which seems right.. well let me say this; when i got my dell 4600 last year, the FX 5600 128mb edition costed about 120$ or so.. checked out the price of the 256mb 5500... 64$ as of last night on amazon.com

nearly twice the speed for half the price, if you dont think you can afford a brand new graphics card (which i know many of us dont want to/cant) i EXTREMELY encourage you to get this card if you have a 128 or lower mb video card, so far.. for its price i believe you could say this card is nothing short of amazing

[system specs for those interested: (2004 Dell Demension 4600i)
2.8 GHz Pentium 4
512 mb RAM
windows XP home SP1
Dx 9.0c
page file @ 636 mb available
256 mb Nvidia GeForce FX 5500]

[general LFS settings (as of use of 128mb 5600)
user lod: 0.80
dust lod: 0.80
mirror lod: 0.10
mip bias -1
disable/enable (from trees to rubber) all on mirror besides rubber
HVS on @ 24 depth
-------------------------------
minimum sleep of 1ms
multiplayer speedup at 180 m
dynamic lod 1]

the amount of video card memory says NOTHING about the video card's speed. It's not the extra 128Mb which is making the difference for you, but the improved core on that FX 5500; the lower price is possible due to great competition and large yields


if you solely play LFS than it's not a bad buy, but if you plan on playing any other recent game, that FX 5500 will not be sufficient to run them smoothly at 1024x768 even at low/medium detail.

well lets also keep in mind what video card your showing off lol..
the price of your card is almost the price of my whole computer

either way im posting this for a reason as i said, for people that dont have alot of money to spend.. this card would be worth buying

im not saying its the best thing, but so far its the best card i've ever seen for this price.. just found one online for 45$ too

don't pay attention to my signature, it's not relevant here and it's filled with fake specs

Quote from XCNuse :

this card would be worth buying

only if you play solely LFS on your PC

if you are looking for an interesting upgrade, hit Ebay or other 2nd hand market places and hunt down Radeon 9700/9800 Pro; those cards go for $50-70 and are a lot faster then that $45 offering (we're talking 200-400%! faster)

Indeed 256mb makes no difference to the speed. In fact people should be a bit wary if upgrading to a similar speed card with 256mb ram as often they will perform worse than the 128mb version unless you use BIG resolutions. Radeon 9xxx series springs to mind, stick with the 128mb versions there.

O/T, hehe fx-60 lol

NEW ATHLONS ARE imminent. AMD has been sending out the FX-60 chips, dual cores that clock at 2.6GHz.
They are in the hands of at least one INQ friendly box slinger now, so it is only a short period of time before they are in the hands of users.


http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=27644

lol argue all you want, im just saying for me.. its a good low priced card
since i dont know.. much less care.. that much about how a computer works anyway lol

Very intresting/informative read XCN. :up:

jmkz, did you copy my sig, or have I inadvertenly copyed yours?

We are not having a go , we just want the masses to be informed of the truth.
Anyway general rules when buying g cards;

More pipes are better
higher core speed is better
higher memory speed is...

sometimes old cards are still faster than new budgit cards.

given the same series (eg ati 9xxxx) more pipes are better than faster core speed. 9800 has 8 pipes but has a slower core than the 9600 which has 4 pipes.

for budgit cards stick to 128mb versions, more memory wont help you.

never buy a card that ends in LE or SE. ever. mmmk?

just looked at ati's x1300 card. yuck. Please dont buy it. Perfect example of a 'new' but bad card.

good luck!

On all cards prior to the latest and greatest (gefo6 and up, Radeon x and up) 256mb over 128mb has no difference in speed, and in some cases is slower as the memory is usally at slower speeds. The same with my Ti4200. It's only the 64mb version, but it scores higher then the 128mb version in most games. Only losing in 3DMark03.

But really, the gefo5 range... gah, worst-nVidia-cards-EVER!
I was a nVidia fanboy (and still am partly, really want to jump back over), but when I had the choice of a gefo5 or the rad9... sorry nVidia, but it doesn't even come close.

Quote from -wes- :

never buy a card that ends in LE or SE. ever. mmmk?

Well yeah, it's in the name Lame Edition, Shit Edition.

As for the part about the new x1xxx range, it is the same with range, they do up and down the price charts. But the lower end is usally so cut down, it's not really worth the money as the older range cards a better. But most people just think "It's new it has to be better".

.. to many numbers lol computer accessory companies ... actually.. dont you just hate it when your fooled by a commercial or something where you think its better .. but its really not lol

either way, graphics cards are getting pretty advanced, i'd say now would be a good time to get one, have some pretty fast ones for low prices

what sucks is everyone here with 400-600$ video cards.. in a few years at this rate those probably wont be worth but about 100$ or less :S

Quote from XCNuse :

.. to many numbers lol computer accessory companies ... actually.. dont you just hate it when your fooled by a commercial or something where you think its better .. but its really not lol

either way, graphics cards are getting pretty advanced, i'd say now would be a good time to get one, have some pretty fast ones for low prices

what sucks is everyone here with 400-600$ video cards.. in a few years at this rate those probably wont be worth but about 100$ or less :S

I know very well what you mean. But for the few years of fun they give you. It's so worth it. I didn't really need to drop my Ti4200, nor was the MX440 I had before it under preforming in most of the games I had at the time. But I really wanted a new card, and after seeing the joke that was the gefo5 range, I dug deep and got my 9700pro. Still use it today (with a nice Zalman cooler, so it makes no noise, right now I have unhooked all but my proc fan and the PSU fans and I can't hear the PC, and I can play LFS with only a 2c temp rise, so no need to plug them back in yet), and it can play EVERY game I have thrown at it in 1280x1024, but as I now use dualscreen and both in 1024x768, I play all my games in that just so it doesn't cock up my second screen.

But now would be a sucky time to buy a new card if you use AGP. As it is [un?]offically unsupported by nVidia and ATi. Unless you buy some old model stuff, you'd need a whole new rig D: Unless you already have a chip that fits into a PCI-E board. Which is why I'm putting off a overhaul and going to drop in better cooling and just OC to the max

At that speed of card, 256mb isnt really needed. When you get to the top and cards it makes a difference, but on a £40 card, it should really give you a slight FPS increase, but nothing huge.

Yeah, i paid £220 for my graphics card, and its now worth half that, but if you want the performance, then you pay the price. The new 7800GTX 512mb card is a record high at £500, but give it a month after it has been made mainstream in shops it will probably drop by £50-75. Its just a premium you pay for getting good hardware on release.

As for APG quoted above, ATi have rumoured that they are going to be making an AGP version of the X1800 series, but theres no further information as of yet. AGP isnt totally dead yet, but in a years time it will be.

Quote from seggons :

jmkz, did you copy my sig, or have I inadvertenly copyed yours?

I just doubled yours

Quote from Stellios :

At that speed of card, 256mb isnt really needed. When you get to the top and cards it makes a difference, but on a £40 card, it should really give you a slight FPS increase, but nothing huge.

Yeah, i paid £220 for my graphics card, and its now worth half that, but if you want the performance, then you pay the price. The new 7800GTX 512mb card is a record high at £500, but give it a month after it has been made mainstream in shops it will probably drop by £50-75. Its just a premium you pay for getting good hardware on release.

As for APG quoted above, ATi have rumoured that they are going to be making an AGP version of the X1800 series, but theres no further information as of yet. AGP isnt totally dead yet, but in a years time it will be.

I've not heard this yet, but I do hope it is true. As AGP never hit it's bottle neck, just Vista runs faster on PCI-E (as it uses the GPU to render the GUI or some such is what I was told), this is their way of making a forced change over, as companies on all sides benfit if you want Vista (which I'm staying well away from tbh).

im also waiting on m2 and fx60 and its freakin delayed.
512mb 7800gtx is a blast, as expected, and came out yday.
good taste for hw anyway

Well, if no-one else is gonna say it, i will

Good on ya XCNuse

I've got a similar spec to you, only different names, AMD 2600+/ ATI Radoen 9250 , and i'm only getting half your fps

Mind you, i'm a computer numb nuts, so i've probably got half a dozen other things running in the background that i'm not aware of, and i think i've got everything up to max in LFS ??, (i like things to look pretty !)

Somewhere int he graphics oiptions for LFS it actually tells you how much video memory the game is using. IIRC it's only around 32 MB, maybe less. I know other games can use a lot more, but as many other have said, i think more than 128mb is probably overkill.

It's in the Graphics menu. Starting in 12th with 11 AI's on Blackwood, all in FO8's, I'm getting a texture memory usage of 26 MB with all details cranked up.

BTW, framerate before the light turns green is 21 FPS with 8x AA and 16x AF at 2048x1280 on the following system:

AMD Barton 3000+ (2.1GHz, 512KB L2 cache)
512MB PC3200 (slow timings)
GF 6800GT 128MB

Jaggies? What jaggies? (see attached)

GPU memory is needed if you use AA and high resolutions. But IIRC 128 vs 256 difference starts to kick in somewhere like what Forbin used (1600x1200 8xAA and higher) then you see better performance with a 256 or even 512 card....

I only lose 5 fps average going from lowest possible settings at 640x480 to highest settings at 1280x1024 with full AA and AF. I have a geforce 6600gt that I bought for $120.

Once you get past a certain point, the video card you're using doesn't make much difference with LFS. A lot of people will be better off with a CPU upgrade instead.

Quote from Forbin :

Jaggies? What jaggies?

here: (see attached)

Quote from XCNuse :

Okay so some of you know i've always been on the low end specs compared to alot of the guys here with 2000$ top end machines

anyways, this is the 3rd graphics card i've gotten, 32 mb on the old computer (which died) got roughly 30 FPS on that old machine, got a dell with a 128mb nvidia FX 5600, and just last night i received a 256mb FX 5500 (not really sure why i got it, but hey, so far im lovin it)

so i figured well hey.. its 256 mb, after looking at all these cards.. well i thought it was gonna be a few hundred dollars.. i was wrong.

My 128mb 5600 with the specs i run (windowed at 1024x768 not quite at full settings and no AA, i got roughly 45ish FPS with about 10 cars in view, keep in mind my dynamic LOD is up at 1! so that saved alot of FPS) during a normal start from the rear of an FV8 race at the oval i hit 20 FPS, and with dynamic LOD up at 1, not only did i not see but about 5 cars in front of me, they looked like blocks at that..

so i installed the 'new' 256mb 5500 into my computer, with same settings, i got nearly TWICE my average FPS 80+..
obviously you can do the math, 128+128=256 which seems right.. well let me say this; when i got my dell 4600 last year, the FX 5600 128mb edition costed about 120$ or so.. checked out the price of the 256mb 5500... 64$ as of last night on amazon.com

nearly twice the speed for half the price, if you dont think you can afford a brand new graphics card (which i know many of us dont want to/cant) i EXTREMELY encourage you to get this card if you have a 128 or lower mb video card, so far.. for its price i believe you could say this card is nothing short of amazing

[system specs for those interested: (2004 Dell Demension 4600i)
2.8 GHz Pentium 4
512 mb RAM
windows XP home SP1
Dx 9.0c
page file @ 636 mb available
256 mb Nvidia GeForce FX 5500]

[general LFS settings (as of use of 128mb 5600)
user lod: 0.80
dust lod: 0.80
mirror lod: 0.10
mip bias -1
disable/enable (from trees to rubber) all on mirror besides rubber
HVS on @ 24 depth
-------------------------------
minimum sleep of 1ms
multiplayer speedup at 180 m
dynamic lod 1]

Are you kidding me or somthing! your System specs are exactly the same as mine right down to the Graphics card that i got after i braught my PC! Only difference is yours is a dell and mine is an Emachine

Quote from Forbin :

GF 6800GT 128MB

Jaggies? What jaggies? (see attached)

I take it you have the Asus 6800GT/TD 128mb then?

Turn your AF up dude, it looks 20 times better again.

:S what are you trying to say simon?
theres a whole lot more stuff that goes into how a computer performes, i know that much.. what i said is just the basics, theres tons more stuff that i have no clue about

btw this thread is getting interesting lol