I want to know what video card is good to play live for speed

Quote from stickylfs :

I want to know what video card is good to play live for speed

GeForce 9600 GT...

ATi 4870400x32.



Useless thread - totally depends on what PC you've got atm and how much $ / £ / € you've got...

Quote from Solaris1985 :

GeForce 9600 GT...

I have 9600m GT in my notebook. It's really good. No FPS problems at all.

How many FPS have you got? I all time have 30 fps with NVIDIA GeForce 4 MX 440 with AGP8X.

I have nvidia geforce 8500 GT. However running all the time at 90-110 FPS. even in full grid with 50-70 FPS. However i will get another pc this year with upgrades

OK - Question about my system, I want to try this. My computer is old. It is; Windows XP Pro 2002 SP2, Intel Pentium(R) 4, 1.4 GHz, 256MB RAM, NVIDIA GeForce3, 111GB drive with 95.2GB of freespace. I also will need to put a wireless card in it for internet access. I currently run EA Sports F1 2001 without any problem, but this sounds like a lot more intense. What do you think?

Quote from MTnRunnr :

OK - Question about my system, I want to try this. My computer is old. It is; Windows XP Pro 2002 SP2, Intel Pentium(R) 4, 1.4 GHz, 256MB RAM, NVIDIA GeForce3, 111GB drive with 95.2GB of freespace. I also will need to put a wireless card in it for internet access. I currently run EA Sports F1 2001 without any problem, but this sounds like a lot more intense. What do you think?

Welcome to LFS and welcome to LFS Forum

I organized my post in 2 parts: resume of the post and complete post, so you can choose if you want general information or detailed (more specific) information about hardware, games in general and live for speed.


Resume of the post
Your computer most probably will run LFS, but might have fps problems with many cars being rendered on the track, and you'll most likely need to set graphics to minimum.

Live for Speed minimum requirements:
1 GHz CPU, 128 MB memory, 3D graphics card
There's a free demo with 3 cars and 1 track so you can download it and see precisely how well it runs on your computer and see if you are satisfied with the performance
Live for Speed Patch Z (latest ... ame download link (133MB)
The game will be locked to Demo, and you'll need to purchase S1 or S2 in order to unlock more cars and tracks, and some other features.


Complete post
(just read it if you want a more explained post about your computer and newer games)

I'm sure you can run any 2001, 2002, 2003 and maybe even 2004 games well with this computer, but it might have problems with newer ones..
Would you like to only play LFS with it or you want to play other (newer) games too?
I'll make a comparison on your PC according to new games (directx, processor socket, ram DDR, etc) in general and according to [LFS].

Component - comment on new games [comment on LFS]

HDD - good, no problems [LFS: Pass]
Processor - old (old socket), low Ghz [LFS: Pass for minimum requirements]
RAM (memory) - not enough for newer games, old (DDR) [LFS: Pass, might be enough for minimum]
Graphics card - yours is a directx 7 compatible or older if I remember correctly. Newer games use directx9 [LFS: uses directx7 or 8 (if I'm wrong, please anyone correct me). Pass for minimum requirements]
Mother board (MOBO) - you didn't mention your mother board here, but it's presumably a old AGP, with DDR ram and old socket, so if you want to change to a new graphics card, new RAM type or a new processor, you'll probably need to change it too. [mobo doesn't influence on LFS, only on hardware limitation]

Do your graphics card allow Vertex shaders? LFS uses it to improve performance. I think yes you can play LFS on it, but you'll have some fps problems with many cars on the track..
Do you intend to change anything on your computer? How much money do you want to spend on this? Just in case you want suggestions about which components to buy.

Cheapest options for you in my opinion (but I don't recommend doing this, you can get better things than that):
Buy 1GB RAM DDR 400Mhz (if your mobo allows it) it's very cheap, and buy a new graphics card, e.g. FX5500 256MB AGP8x or better (agp) (also, if your mobo allows it). It will cost you almost nothing (in Brazil everything is very expensive, this little "upgrade" I mentioned above would cost BRL $200, this means less (most likely a lot less) than USD $84 )
Upgrading your computer with these components above would allow you to play it on reasonable graphics, having about 30fps (may be better or worse, but it would still have slowdowns when many other cars and different skin textures are on the track).

Personally, only if you want to upgrade this computer (instead of buying a new one or not upgrading at all), I would change to a new mother board (PCI-Ex, socket 775 or newer), change ram type, processor socket/model, buy more ram and a PCI-Express graphics card.
Cheap nVidia cards I know (the first two have AGP and PCI-Ex versions, the other ones are only in PCI-Express): 6600GT, 7600GS(old directx, old shaders, not recommended), 8600GT, 8600GTS, 8800GT, 9600GT, 9800GT


I hope this helps you in any way
And again, welcome!

Thank you Velociround - I appreciate the welcome and the good information. I will give it a shot the way it is, it was very powerful when I purchased it and it is my dedicated gaming computer now. I see that as I get into racing here, I will need more, but it sounds like it should run it for now. thanks so much for your help!

Nvidea GeForce 9600 GT some of us here have and its an exxecelent card

ATi 2900HD has served me well for the last couple of years, playing anything I throw at it. Quite cheap now as well! But high power consumption, I'd recommend at least a 500w PSU

Hmm, im thinking here and i think i gotta buy new card. So ... im thinking that, Geforce GTX260@SLI (2 cards) or HD4870x2 (1 card). Wich one would be better, not asking anything about the price but i havnt got the point ... is Radeon better or nVidia, i would prefer nVidia cuz i have always used that.

I have the ATI Radeon HD 4850 and it's brilliant.

Althought, if you can cough up a bit more cash, then go for the ATI Radeon HD 4870 which my brother has, lol.