Living In Bon Voyage Limbo

[Greg]

And I'm painfully aware of why you got a new board!

[shorty943]

BV, on order at my local. I pick it up end of this week.

On the machine side. It took a couple of months of scrimping and saving, but.
I just dropped the new graphics card in, an MSI built Nvidea 7600GT AGP, with 512 meg of VRAM. Latest drivers from Nvidea, of course.

After the FX 5500, my Athlon 64 bit 3400+ with 1 GB of DDR2 RAM, now flies.

System files on an 80 GB WD caviar 7200 RPM IDE disk, \My Docs, on SATA 120 GB, and the rest, on 160 GB of raided IDE disks, on a Silicone Images Medley raid card.

We'll see, we'll see. After the slight wait while the system gets all its files in order, there is no more jerky lag time in game play. Camera pans and scrolls are smooth, no stop start game lag, it's great.
Even web pages look different.
Crisper, cleaner, yes sirree, a good video card is a sight to behold.
Now to go on holidays.

[Zirconia Wolf]

I've curently got an nVidia e-Ge Force 7600 GT KO with only 256MB RAM that seems happy enough...though I do seem to get some slowdown on lots like the Lost In Love Hedge Maze, but nothing like my poor old 5600! (I do play with the highest graphic options on in the game, so that may be part of it. )

Would really like the 512MB RAM though...

(Shorty, you do know about the problem with the respawning Tour Guides, right? If not, then you should know that there is such a problem & that there is a fix available over on the site-that-shall-remain-nameless. I've created a collection folder of BV okay mods in preperation for my BV upgade. )

[Greg]

So... what's the hottest nVidia board these days?

[shorty943]

Originally Posted by Greg

So... what's the hottest nVidia board these days?

Depends on the m/b bus. AGP, only runs up to NV7600, but it can crank better than an early PCIe for the same card. And we got lucky there, Nvidea originally produced the 7,000 series chips only for PCIe, (PCIe bus and 7,000 chip, released at the same time), must have been enough complaints to get it stuck onto the AGP bus. Thank you Nvidea.
PCIe only shines in SLI, and then it throttles back to 8x like AGP anyway.
I believe, "what the", is the correct expression.

If you have a PCIe m/b, then I still suggest the 7600 Nvidea because it is actually better than the 8,000 series chips. I don't use ATI, because Linux drivers for NV are much better. Also, try to get a graphics card that is made by your m/b maker, they just go together better. I use all MSI gear, even peripherals like optical drives are MSI branded. Card readers, you name it, if MSI make it, I prefer to use it.

Oh dear, I just spillled coffee, all over my keyboard. Thank the Lord Harry, I have just bought a flexible, waterproof keyboard.

[shorty943]

Originally Posted by Zirconia Wolf

I've curently got an nVidia e-Ge Force 7600 GT KO with only 256MB RAM that seems happy enough...though I do seem to get some slowdown on lots like the Lost In Love Hedge Maze, but nothing like my poor old 5600! (I do play with the highest graphic options on in the game, so that may be part of it. )

Would really like the 512MB RAM though...

(Shorty, you do know about the problem with the respawning Tour Guides, right? If not, then you should know that there is such a problem & that there is a fix available over on the site-that-shall-remain-nameless. I've created a collection folder of BV okay mods in preperation for my BV upgade. )

I do now. thanks ZW. I shall proceed to the pirates den, and procure me a copy of that fixer-upperer. And any others an "Hereditary Pirate" may find.
My dear Mother's ancesters were Kernaweck. Cornish, pirates and smugglers. Rum runners and the bane of the revenue man.
Brandy from Spain, Silks from the Orient, all "duty free".

I had a 5500 x 256, until last week, that hated any water, or too much glass on any lot. It now resides in the second string machine, waiting for a Linux installation.

Back in the good old days, it was easy to upgrade a video card. They came with spare VRAM chip slots. We just used to drop in another couple of VRAM chips. Then a PCI 3d "Voodoo" card and link through the primary graphics card.
Yes sirree, an S3 Trio with 32 Meg of VRAM and a Voodoo 3d card with another 32 Meg. That pentium 90 flew baby. She flew. (yeah, I had a Pentium 90 Compaq 590). Junk, my old overdrive 486 was much faster at 120 Mhz.

[Miros1]

Warlokk sez ATI cards don't like his hi-res meshes. The symptom is spikey boobs!

[Greg]

>blank stare<

How do I find out what kind of bus I've got?

I'm thinking I'll stick with nVidia. I know that works.

[Miros1]

nVidia does both AGP and PCI. Lemme see if dxdiag will tell you... nope... other than cracking the case and looking, I dunno. You can always pop into the MOO and ask MikeD...

[Greg]

OK... and if I have the case open (which I do) what do I look at to tell whether it's AGP or PCI?

[Miros1]

I think if the video card is down with the other cards, it's PCI. If it's up a little (about the width of a slot) and wider than the other cards, it's AGP. Lemme ask MikeD, since you don't seem to MOO anymore!

[TomP]

See this image on wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:A...ed_English.png

Has good pointers on which is AGP and which is PCI (original PCI, not PCI Express).

Now for PCI Express, look at this one:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:I...ax_top_500.jpg

On this one the long black and long blue slots are PCI Express x16 (the most common slots PCIe slot for graphics cards)

I would of reposted these images here, but I don't think that would be proper even though it's wikipedia.

[mikedelaney16]

The pics posted by TomP are way better than any description I could offer.

Greg, basically if your PC motherboard is between about 7 and 2 years old it has an AGP slot. If later than that, it most likely has a PCI-Express slot. But there is a problem, some older AGP slots allow insertion of the newest ones, but the results of doing that are destructive and costly, so be careful.

Running EVEREST Free Edition 2.20 can provide a lot of information. Such as AGP slot version.

It's becoming difficult to obtain good new AGP cards thanks to planned obsolescence. I've actually been considering upgrading to a 64 bit board just to gain access to PCI-Express, but unless I go with an older Skt 939 board, I'd also need new RAM. The best new AGP card I can obtain locally only sports 256 MB RAM.

What's going on at present is very much like the transition from 486 to Pentium over the period from 1993-1997 where an upgrade basically requires a whole new motherboard, chip, ram, graphics combination. The fact that 64 bit needs double the RAM doesn't help either.

MikeD

[Sita]

mmm I love BV

I am not using Insim or any globals except JFade's less Sloppy Eating, (something I hate even more than fingers in ears to children's tales). I have noticed some slowdown in graphics, and have a couple of crashes which give me a message about DirectX.
So I spose I need to check out graphics drivers and if I need a new DirectX, beyond that I dunno? When I feel clever enough to read the various sites.
Running on W2K! with 2 gigs RAM and Athlon chip. Mostly it works well... the game itself is excellent, and has revived my interest; I'm playing again more.
Oh and I do use Boolptop testingcheats etc
not an easy task for a dyslexic lol
but only occasionally, usually when the career is all wrong. I don't have it turned on all the time because on the whole I prefer not to have stuff running that isn't doing anything, in case it breaks something... had so much trouble caused (I think) by globals in Sims 1 that I tend to want to avoid them.

[Greg]

Hmm... this is an hp media center pc m380n.


Just like this but with a larger display.

It appears to have one AGP slot and three PCI slots, similar to the ASRock K7VT4A Pro board in the picture.

Are AGP slots better than PCI slots? One of the PCI slots is open so I could use that one.



[MEMO] I also need to replace the power supply. HP PAVILION MICRO 200W W/ P4 CONNECTOR (POWER-V200HP)

[mikedelaney16]

AGP slots are faster that PCI slots. Additionally it would be hard to get a PCI graphics card with more than 64 MB RAM.

[Greg]

I think that means that if I can't find an AGP card that will fit this machine, I give up until I can afford a new machine. My goal is to improve the performance of The Sims 2, which woudn't happen with only 64 MB RAM on the video card.

[Miros1]

AGP cards are usually "better" than PCI cards... but beyond that, yes, you'll have to wait for a new 'puter...

[shorty943]

You've got an AGP graphics setup, Greg. It's the best without a complete motherboard and processor to step up to the next gen PCIe. AGP is the brown slot, closest to the processor, the video connects into the first backpane on the machine. Best choice card, is NV 7600 series. Some of the high end cards take up the first 2 slots, one for the actual card, the other for its fan exhaust. This is why on later AGP motherboards, the AGP slot and first PCI (white), were moved further apart. High end card in early AGP enabled boards, blocked access for another card over the first slot. It didn't use it, just the damned great big cooling fan covered the slot. Couldn't use it.

On the "what the" factor, BV rates quite high, at the moment.

Installed fine, played a bit in stock no custom content mode fine.
Enable custom content, fine.
Go on vacation, oh what the, just wait a, god damn it EA.

Task manager says, Proccess not responding do you want a crash report sent, oh dear, here we go again.


Edit.

Some thing really funny just happened then.


Think about it.
A journalist, a retired sailor, and a housewife?, have just finished explaining to a NASA spaceship engineer how his computer goes together.

Ouch, I missed the pillow.

[Miros1]

<smacks Shorty with a pillow, untied>

Actually, I'm a software engineer, out of work with severe depression...