Halflife 2 AGP x8 question

[gloryofbach]

Hi everyone,

I am rather keen to play half life 2 with all the nice Direct X9 pixel shader effects, and as I gather only the 9600 pro and 9800 pro run this acceptably. As I am on a tight budget, I am thinking of upgrading my TI4600 to the 9600 pro, however I have two questions:

1) Most importantly I am running a 2.4 P4 rig with 1 gig of memory and a nice motherboard that only supports up to AGP X4. I know that 9600 pro is AGP x8 compatible and I will have to run it at AGP x4. There is some debate whether X8 makes much difference over X4 at this stage in GPU evolution, and I wonder whether you guys think it would make a lot of difference (ie enough to have to shell out another $150 plus on an 8x AGP motherboard.

2) Does 256 megs of memory make much difference over 128 megs on the GFX card?

Thanks guys,

Alex.

 

[Maskirovka]

first, this should be in the hardware forum

1) dont' buy a new motherboard...8x won't matter that much...if it's noticable at all.

2) no, you won't see much of a difference between 128 and 256 until games come out with higher resolution textures

 

[manny_c44]

1) A good mobo with 8x AGP could cost as little as 60$. But it isn't really worth it if it is the only thing you look to upgrade.

2)No.

3)Wrong Forum

 

[Sotrax]

Don't waste your money for agp 8x, there is absolutely no difference you could notice (in benchmarks it is far less than 1%).
The 256mb version, well, you won't notice a difference in any games including hl2, but perhaps in the future....

 

[gloryofbach]

Thanks guys much appreciated.

Sorry about the forum business, I am new here: Cen this be moved to the hardware forum, mod?

Alex.

 

[SirMcNugget]

and as I gather only the 9600 pro and 9800 pro run this acceptably.

Dont forget the 9500 pro and 9700 pro, both great cards. The 9500 is actually faster than the 9600 due to the 8 pipelines which gives it a much better fill rate. The 9600 runs at a higher clock speed however and has some other optimizations. If you can find a 9500 pro thats another good choice though slightly more then 9600 pro. For the record I have a 9600 pro and its great for the price, but dont expect like huge magical framerates with all the effects.

 

[manny_c44]

Well the recent HL2 benchmarks usually put the 9600pro over the 9500pro. Neither one of them is Overclocked though, so I'm not sure which one would really be the best during actual gameplay after you tweak the card, but my best guess is that they are much more equal than 9500pro owners would like to think, and either one would be a fine choice as a graphics card.

 

[Anwar]

1) it will probably matter in a year or two

2) same answer

 

[Homer]

do NOT get a 256 mb card, the current cards arent fast enough to use it so when the games that do use that much vram come out you will have to upgrade anyway.

 

[ripkord]

the 9500 have 8 pipes (when unlocked) connect3d for example has them, but youre more likely to come across a memo from gabe saying "weve gone gold" than you are finding a connect3d 9500

 

[No Limit]

My advice is you get a 9500 pro instead of the 9600, it will cost you almost the same and the 9500 has 8 pipes which beat the 9600 in almost every benchmark out there.
Good Luck,
Paul

 

[Zyphria]

"9500 has 8 pipes"

Bzzzzzzzzzzt! Not entirely correct. The 9500 Non-Pro with 256mbit pipeline that can be soft-modded to a 9700 np are quite rare these days.

 

[spitcodfry]

Originally posted by Maskirovka
2) no, you won't see much of a difference between 128 and 256 until games come out with higher resolution textures

Actually Gabe has said that Half-Life 2 will take advantage of the 256 cards...I don't know if that means in a significant enough way to notice the difference between that and a 128 card, though. Don't get me wrong, I'm plenty content with my AIW 9800 Pro 128

 

[ZeoviZ]

Actually, 9600 Pro has outperformed 9500 Pro in all the DX9-benchmarks I've seen. And as time goes by, it'll just be more and more better than 9500 Pro due to its newer architecture. Already, there was one benchmark somewhere where 9600 Pro had a slightly better framerate than 9700 Pro....in HL2, 1280x960...

 

[ag3nt187]

Yea, I remember Gabe stating awhile back that they have optimized source for 256mb cards, again like spit said im not sure if its enought to justify the price difference or not.


But for those of you out there that really want to run HL2 with AA/AF on, you might want to look into the 256mb cards.

Here is a snippet taking from firingsquad.com's HL2 performance preview.

"







Half-Life 2 Performance Preview Part 2
September 16, 2003 - Brandon Bell [ View My Other Articles ]


Techdemo w/ AA






Notes
The RADEON 9800 PRO and 9600 PRO take huge hits with 4xAA enabled, nearly 50% at 1024x768. We were told that the 256MB RADEON 9800 PRO performs considerably better than the 128MB card in this scenario, but we didn’t have a card on hand to confirm this."


I have a 9800pro 256mb, and I'm really curious to see benchies with this card. I also heard that doom3 will take advantage of the extra ram as well.

 

[pHATE1982]

Arn't they releasing some equivalent of a high definition pack which will take advantage of the 256mb cards?

(not that'll it'll be a HUGE difference to already amazing graphics)

 

[manny_c44]

No, the person that posted that info was lying.

 

[pHATE1982]

that'll teach for for believing the tripe of a headcrab.... pah






(touche'?)

 

[Maskirovka]

Originally posted by pHATE1982
Arn't they releasing some equivalent of a high definition pack which will take advantage of the 256mb cards?

(not that'll it'll be a HUGE difference to already amazing graphics)

yea i mean it's possible they'll update the textures in the future...but unless the do, the 256mb card won't outpreform the 128mb card by more than a percent or two

 

[gloryofbach]

Well form one of the Valve interviews, it seems they have authored all the texture and art content at extremely high resolutions, and have scaled them down for the current release, though keeping the original V high def ones for a future update... so we may see a HL2 V high definition pack coming out in a mission pack ala "Blue shift" in the future. This would certainly exploit the 256 meg GFX cards!

Alex.