Speaking of Video Drivers and Such....

[Devildog73]

I am running an nVidia 7300 with 256MEGs of vid RAM which I think it shares with the CPU dual core.

I am looking at dropping a 1 Gig vid card in and wonder if anyone has a recommendation as to what works just fine with XP and CFS2 and what is something to definitely avoid buying? I want one that does not share system resources with the CPU to get to the 1 Gig of vid RAM. I am using Riva Tuner to overdrive the current vid card and it is great, but I WANT MORE POWER! POWER, I WANT THE POWER!!!
:focus:
I am running a Dell XPS 410 with Intel's 2.4-GHz Core 2 Duo E6600 processor and 4GB of DDR2-667 RAM. The vid card is an PCI express.

It has an onboard sound card but allows for a PCI add on.
Would it also help to drop a better PCI sound card in?

[gavinc]

Hey DD,
I just went thru much the same process, upgrading my old NVidia 6200 SE (which also shared some of the memory it used with the system memory).

Did a bit of research and decided that
1) there is no real benefit in going for a 1 Gb card vs a 512 Mb card - read several review and they showed maybe a 1 or 2 fps increase with 1 Gb vs 512. I don't think that FSX can take advantage of it and I am sure that it will make no difference to CFS2.

2) If you stick with NVidia you can either go with a 9600 GT, a 9800 GTX or one of the newer GTX cards which cost tons of cash.

I went with a 9600 GT, it is almost as powerful as a 9800 but costs less and draws less power which meant that I didn't have to replace my powersupply.

FSX runs a bit smoother (but on my system FSX is mostly RAM limited) but CFS2 just screams. Before I could get good performance (fps in the 30 - 50 range) but there were a couple of things that would really drag it down. The most visible of these was clouds, in free flight over LOD 9 or 10 mesh with dense cloud cover I would drop down into the low 20s or even high teens now I am in the high 40s.

My card cost me 100€ but I went for a "brand name" version. There were cards available with the 9600 GPU for under 80€

Should mention I am running the following
Intel P4 516 @ 2.8Ghz (single core)
1.5 Gb RAM
XP sp3

Hope this helps.

Gavin

[Devildog73]

Thanks, Gavin,

Newegg has them for about $90.00 US.
They all have user comments ratings, so your input was most helpful.

Lee

[olaf1924]

Devildog you should check your power supply most upgrade cards need at least 450 watts. I am using a evga 8800gt for cfs2 and fsx.

[Devildog73]

olaf, thanks.
I will check the specs on the Dell XPS 410. I am fairly certain it is not minimum standards. I factory ordered this one built for gaming.

[peterpan]

I have just gone through an ugrade CPU and Graphics.
When searching around for best for me I learnt that with Nvidia it is the second number that is the important one.
i.e a 7800 will out perform a 9500 etc.

At Nvidia there is an assist to find what will work in your set up

These are the suggestions I got

"Extreme Gamer/ Power User/ Multi Media Enthusiast
9800GXZ 8800Ultra 8800GTX 8800GTS

Gamer/ Multi Media User
9800GTX 9800GT 8800GT 9600GT 9600GSO 8600GTS 8600GT

Business User/ Casual Gamer/ Home Pc User
9500GT(GDDR3) 9500GT(GDDR2) 9400GT 8500GT 8400GS"

I chose an 8800GTS 320MB

Hope this helps
peter

[Devildog73]

I just went to nVidia website and cannot find the support you are talking about. I am not computer savy enough to figure out what is there I guess.

I don't see anywhere that I can match my Dell 410 XPS with their vid cards.

[Devildog73]

Okay, I took the plunge.

I just bought and installed a EVGA nVidia GeForce 9800GT with 1 Gig of Vid RAM.

I am going to run it through the testing on CFS2 with everything maxed out and some of the Tuskegee missions I have built that killed frame rates and see what she's got.

I'll let you know this evening or tomorrow evening what I find out.

[Buddha13]

Hi Devil Dog.
What is now my spare machine is a Dell 9200 Dimension with an 8800GTX card.Now this card has a power rating of about 550W.But the power supply in the Dell was only rated at 375W.It ran fine and I have never had a problem with it running on 375W.If your Dell has the same power supply(ithink it has) you may not need to change it out.
I think it may be quality and not quantity here.

Buddha13

[Devildog73]

Yes, mine has the 375Watt PS.

This particular card only takes 350Watts of power.