video card question

[Rzeractor]

I am wondering, even though i have a slowish PC, if I get a Geforce 4 Ti 4200, will i be able to run all n64 roms at about 50-60fps?

[2bzy4ne1]

the case is usually that the video card is the bottleneck for the cpu and vice versa. Getting a new video card won't help much (except for eye candy) unless you have a fast cpu to come with it.

[David_Hayter]

Originally posted by 2bzy4ne1
the case is usually that the video card is the bottleneck for the cpu and vice versa. Getting a new video card won't help much (except for eye candy) unless you have a fast cpu to come with it.

Ya dude dont have a pretty bad PC at all (ok, lets say it aint the latest thing, but...), but i dont know why ya asking that question, just run the emus and see by yerself!!!
Good luck
:devil:

[Rzeractor]

so, if I get a GF4 ti with this cpu i won't get any performance increase?

[cooliscool]

From what u have now? Not at all.

From an integrated POS? Hell yes.

[Rzeractor]

hmm, thats odd.
I thought if I get a more powerful video card, I would get better frame rates in games.

[james.miller]

it might make a very small difference, but n64 emulation is very cpu dependand. upgrading the cpu is the best way.

after the gf2 series there isnt as much difference as you would think

[StonedConker]

It will make a huge difference on the speed believe me.I was with a pentium 3 at 450 and since 5 hours i've updated everything(motherboard,ram,Cpu1800xp).Th e only thing i kept from basic hardware is the Voodoo3.Of course the speed is now at full speed but i cannot say that i'm amazed.The surething is that a geforce4 titanium can surely do the work,trust me.;)

[Rzeractor]

so for n64 emulation I would need to get a faster CPU, but for non emulation things, a better video card is the option?

[StonedConker]

Originally posted by Rzeractor
so for n64 emulation I would need to get a faster CPU, but for non emulation things, a better video card is the option?

I would say the opposite

[james.miller]

Originally posted by StonedConker
It will make a huge difference on the speed believe me.I was with a pentium 3 at 450 and since 5 hours i've updated everything(motherboard,ram,Cpu1800xp).Th e only thing i kept from basic hardware is the Voodoo3.Of course the speed is now at full speed but i cannot say that i'm amazed.The surething is that a geforce4 titanium can surely do the work,trust me.;)

well then how do you know what component made a difference? answer is - you dont


Rzeractor - a faster cpu would be the best choice for emulation, yes. as for regular gaming, id sugest upgrading both

[Rzeractor]

hmm, I think I will have to try before I buy.
But I went to nVidia and it analysed my computer:
My card was on 100%
GF2 ultra was 142%
GF3 was 228%
GF4 was 292%

well, that site said if I get a GF4, it would run way faster.

[james.miller]

Originally posted by StonedConker
I would say the opposite

no trust me.


my xp1800 is maxed out at 100% constantly in parts of perfect dark. with that in mind, how come turning on 4x aa only results in a maximum of 5-10fsp drop?

its because the graphics card is more than fast enough, but the cpu is underpowered. To solve then problem - a faster cpu is needed in my case also

[james.miller]

Originally posted by Rzeractor
hmm, I think I will have to try before I buy.
But I went to nVidia and it analysed my computer:
My card was on 100%
GF2 ultra was 142%
GF3 was 228%
GF4 was 292%

well, that site said if I get a GF4, it would run way faster.

you will regret it if you get a ti4200 without upgrading your cpu., because your cpu will be an extreame bottleneck

[Rzeractor]

damn
I think I will have to try before I buy would be the best option.

[james.miller]

the ti4200's are great cards and will serve you well, but you wont be getting anywhere near the level of performance that a gf4 ti4200 coupled with say an xp1600 or a p4 2.4.b

[james.miller]

ive just realised youve got a gf4 420.

remember that ive got a gf4 440 and its allready more than fast enough.

heres a graph show you how the gf4 ti4200 scale:
http://www.anandtech.com/showdoc.html?i=1650&p=3

taken from the site:

The true GeForce4 cards exhibit a remarkably different pattern as they demand higher speed CPUs to unlock their potential. With a slow enough CPU you’d be getting more for your money if you went with a GeForce4 MX than a GeForce4.


your p3 IS one of those slow cpu's

[Rzeractor]

I don't expect a HUGE performance increase, I just want most/all games to run smooth(ish) at full or high detail.

[james.miller]

take another look at what i posted

"....With a slow enough CPU you’d be getting more for your money if you went with a GeForce4 MX than a GeForce4."


you allready have a gf4 420mx. you wont see any increase in performance unless you get a better cpu (and a new motherboard and ram)

it's that simple

[Rzeractor]

i have a GF2 mx400, i just realised i put 420...
oops
:(

but, on that graph, look at the difference with high detail
for the first cpu, the Ti is way above the Mx
considering that, I will get quite a bit performance increase if I get a GF4 Ti 4200.
I will eventually overclock/buy a faster CPU though.

[james.miller]

Originally posted by Rzeractor
i have a GF2 mx400, i just realised i put 420...
oops
:(

but, on that graph, look at the difference with high detail
for the first cpu, the Ti is way above the Mx
considering that, I will get quite a bit performance increase if I get a GF4 Ti 4200

look at the text i posted from the site. then look at the graph. that graph STARTS with an athlon 800 and goes up from there.

your cpu isnt even concidered because its TOO SLOW

lets put it another way. look at that graph.

if that graph went as low as you're cpu, the two would be damn near identical.

i've allready told you that my xp1800 (running at xp2000 speed) with 512mb ddr cant even keep up with my gf4 440mx when it comes to emulating.

do you really expect your pIII-600 with 128mb SDRAM to keep up with a ti4200?????? theres no way in hell.
im telling you now - that is not a wise investment.

[Rzeractor]

well, even though it is 800mhz for the lowest, the Ti 4200 kills the MX400 by a heap on high detail

[james.miller]

LISTEN TO ME!

your question was about videocards and emulation. i gave you an answer. that cpu is too damn slow!

for christ sake, of course the ti4200 is faster. but that isnt really a factor when in come to n64 emulation because like i said,
N64 EMULATION IS CPU DEPENDANT, NOT G/CARD DEPENDANT

you will not see a significant difference in emulation speed.

and, if you were actually refering to performnce in pc games, and not in emulating consoles, then you shouldnt have made this post in the first place

[james.miller]

do a test.

run the emulator in windowed mode, and run speedfan in the background (or anything that monitors cpu usage)
watch it continuously hit 100% when your roms come grinding to a hault and drop to 5-10 fps.

theres your problem right there - the cpu

[Rzeractor]

sorry, its just in another post someone said the video card is more for emulation than the cpu

[james.miller]

it isnt trust me. iits your slow pII-600 and your sevearly limiting sd-ram that is the bottleneck

[Rzeractor]

so, for emulation = cpu speed > video card
but for normal games = video card > cpu speed yeah?

[james.miller]

Originally posted by Rzeractor
so, for emulation = cpu speed > video card
but for normal games = video card > cpu speed yeah?
emulation = yes thats correct
normal games = cpu speed + video speed

[supergamer]

You'll see no difference with a geforce 2 or 4.

[james.miller]

Thankyou!

[karth95]

I went from a amd K6III 400 to an xp1800, with a voodoo 3 3000. My framerates in emulation (any emulation) went up enormously. I wasn't able to play very many non-emulated games, because my video card sucked.
I could play any emulated game I wanted, at a consistant 55-60 fps. I did eventually purchase a gf2 with 64 meg of vram so I could have better openGL support, but that's a whole different story.

If you want to play normal games, you'll have to buy both a faster proc (not hugely faster, but since you gotta, go for something fast+cheap, athlonxp 2000 is like 150$ with a decent mobo) your current video card, though not the greatest in the world, is at least able to handle opengl and will work well with most games until you are able to hook up with a gf3ti500 or a gf4 4xxx. The MX cards are decent (due to a high level of hardware support for directx and opengl functions), but they are running about as fast as my gf2.

In the end, it's like James has been saying. Buy a proc for emulation. For normal games (modern gaming) buy both. You'll enjoy the experience much more.
Karth

[Doomulation]

It's simple put:
CPU - does the dirty work of "running" the emulator or game.
The gfx card - does the dirty work of "rendering" the gfx that's thrown at it.

A game that requires a 800 mhz cpu to run won't run if you'd have a 400 mhz cpu and a geforce4 ti4600. To RUN the game, you need the cpu power.

With more gfx details, you need a better card, since it is the card that calculates and draws the actual picture that are later shown on the screen.

If the gfx card has much to do and it takes long to render the gfx, the cpu has to wait for it to finish before sending new gfx, thus making it slow.

On the other hand, at a slow cpu, the cpu has to spend all its time to get the data and send it to the gfx card, which renders it rather fast and draws it on the screen. Then it has to wait because the cpu hasn't sent more data to it.

Simple.
In n64 emulation, it's more a matter of data to process, than gfx to render. Of course, antialiasing requires more gfx card speed, but that's it.

So...CPU is the #1 factor. Then gfx card as the #2.

[supergamer]

N64 games only, I've got a PII with 350 mhz, geforce2 and GTAIII and it does work perfect (640X480X32). I know somebody who has 667 mhz and a bit slower video (riva TNT2) and GTAIII is almost unplayable and the graphics are ugly too! The N64 games aren't playing faster if you have an 8 mb or a 128!

Maybe a good reason to (don't) buy another video card.

[Doomulation]

Yes, it does! Small amount of ram and ram on video cards DOES matter.

[rickianblaster]

Hey,

As someone who actually does research on these topics I can give you a more knowing standpoint on this.

If you pc is below, I'd say 500Mhz, it won't help. Your system will still have some slowness due to your cpu.

Video cards tend to be the bottleneck in current pcs, even with the latest ATI Radeon 9700 pro.

As for N64, there isn't a lot of graphical challenge. So in this rare kind of case the Cpu would be a better thing to upgrade.

[james.miller]

Originally posted by rickianblaster
As for N64, there isn't a lot of graphical challenge. So in this rare kind of case the Cpu would be a better thing to upgrade.
that has allready been said, rickianblaster.

videocards - bottlenecks? id like to see where you got that from - becuase im looking at the graphs right now that tell me even the gf3s arnt a bottleneck in current pc's, not to mention a r9700 pro!

for n64 emulation - anything upwards of a geforce 2 gts is more than enough.
as for the rest of the system, an athlon xp and at least 256mb ddr is recommended if you want to play 90% of the n64 roms at full speed

[petronius79]

buying a faster processor doesnt alway give speed. Eg MArio Tennis (E) runs at 45 fps with Jabos 1.5 and at 60 fps with Jabos 1.4. Sometimes just the appropriate code needs to be added

[emuguy]

Originally posted by Rzeractor
i have a GF2 mx400, i just realised i put 420...
oops
:(

but, on that graph, look at the difference with high detail
for the first cpu, the Ti is way above the Mx
considering that, I will get quite a bit performance increase if I get a GF4 Ti 4200.
I will eventually overclock/buy a faster CPU though.

high detail? i wasnt aware u could change the detail. or are u referring to the resolution? if there is anything to make details higher, plz tell me :)

ps. get ure 4200, then go and get ureself an xp 1600+-2000+. my mate got an xp 2000+ last week and it only cost him 65 pounds (around 80-90 us dollars i would say, unless ure in some country that will charge massive prices.) new. i have an xp 1600 oc@xp2000 speeds and i get full performance from all games. i do have a gf4 ti 4600 coupled with that but i can safely say that u will definately get the same performance with a ti 4200

[james.miller]

Originally posted by petronius79
buying a faster processor doesnt alway give speed. Eg MArio Tennis (E) runs at 45 fps with Jabos 1.5 and at 60 fps with Jabos 1.4. Sometimes just the appropriate code needs to be added

buying a faster processor will ALLWAYS give you more performace when emulating.

of course there are speed differences between plugins, and the emulators, but you cant tell me that you can enjoy full speed on a p3- 500 just by changing plugins, because its simply impossible.

emuguy - that graph he was refering to was a performance chart of PC games - which you can change the detail level in

[supergamer]

It's possible to play at full speed at a PIII 500 mhz! On a PII 400 mhz and 256 mb ram, any game will work at a really nice speed! Maybe you have to switch between the counter factor.

[james.miller]

counter factor=frame skip= not full speed.

[EnTrOpY]

Everything that I've read suggests that proper emulation is processor dependent and not video card dependent. I believe there's a section in the pj64 emulator FAQ that explains why this is. Basically, if you have a fairly fast system with plenty of RAM, you could cleanly run the emulator with any nVidia based card that's greater than or equal to the TNT chipset. I think that the performance difference that karth95 saw was primarily based on that he tossed his 3dfx card and went with something D3D dependent.

[james.miller]

no it was primarily the cpu. he went from a k6II-400 to an athlonXP 1800. thats over 3-4 time the speed of the k6. thats what gave him the most performance.


remember the cpu does 99% of the work in emulation. it has to emulate the various chips, decode the instruction into something that can be understood. decode and create the sound, and also the graphics.
the graphics card itself doesnt does very little work, all it does is display those graphics.

That is why you gain so little from upgrading your g/card, but so much from upgrading your cpu, and also your ram.

[supergamer]

A commodore has 5 mhz!

[james.miller]

an atari800xl has 1.79 mhz. i think. anyway what the hell did you post that for?

[EnTrOpY]

I knew I got one of those backwards! I have that spec somewhere, I was just too lazy to look it up... Thanx for the correction SuperGamer.

[0N1 L1nK]

Hey james.miller,

wat kinda performance do u get out of yr system for non-emulated games? cos i was gonna upgrade to some similar (athlon1700+, 128+256MB RAM).

[Doomulation]

With such specs, especially 512 mb ram, all games will run flawlessly.

[james.miller]

Originally posted by Doomulation
With such specs, especially 512 mb ram, all games will run flawlessly.
.......not quite.its good. but my gf4 440mx is a real bottleneck to my athlonxp 1800

it runs 90% of games at mediums detail with no speed loss. it strugles with GTA3 a little, and running Tenebrae (the quake mod) is a real no uless you like the 30fps i get lol.

gonna get me a p4 2.54 and a albatron gf4 4200ti. that should make a real difference

[Doomulation]

Oh yeah, the sdram is a bottleneck too. Getting ddr ram will increase the speed as well.

[EnTrOpY]

>>In reply to 'james.miller':

I dunno... my system specs are less than half of yours and I run GTA3 flawlessly... or RTC Wolfenstein (a notorious pig on resources) w/ the highest quality detail textures enabled with virtually no lag whatsoever... I think something else may be slowing you down.

[james.miller]

i doubt that some how......


Originally posted by EnTrOpY
>>In reply to 'james.miller':

I dunno... my system specs are less than half of yours and I run GTA3 flawlessly... installed all the speed up patches have you? thought so

or RTC Wolfenstein (a notorious pig on resources) w/ the highest quality detail textures enabled with virtually no lag whatsoever... I think something else may be slowing you down.

at what res 320x240?
i highly doubt you can run at the highest settings.

like i said i doubt that very much.

beside my 3dmark is in the middle of the field as far as gf4 440mx's & athlonxp 1800+'s go - wich would be a great deal faster than yours.

[supergamer]

To 0N1 L1nK

If you want to play all games very good, you'll need a amd XP 1700+, 256 mb ram, good video hardware (geforce4 titanium 4200 or newer, ati radeon 8500 or newer) and if you want to play all games perfect you'll need a amd XP 2100+, 512 mb ram and a geforce4 titanium 4600 or ati radeon 9700 pro.

[EnTrOpY]

>>In reply to 'james.miller':

Everything specified is running as-is strait out of the box - no patches, cheat codes, etc.

You may have a point about the resolution, as I typically do all my gaming at 800x600 (anything higher just gives me a headache - even on a 20" monitor).

The only modification I've done recently was the GF2 to Quadro 2 mod (moving resistors R121>R122 & R123>R124 respectively) to make the card detect as a Quadro2 and use the Quadro drivers instead. But this mod really didn't have that much of an effect on performance.

As for bench marks, I believe they make for a good reference point, but I wouldn't blindly believe in them as the end-all be-all in determining what type of equipment I should be running my games on for the simple fact that gaming companies market their games to meet the PC specs that the average person would likely own and would probably not exclusively market a game that will only run well on the latest PC that just flew off the assembly line two minutes ago (emulation being an obvious exception).

[james.miller]

no pII-600 will run gta3 flawlessly. period.

as for benchmarks - no that are not the be-all and end-all, but they are a good indication - especially 3dmark2001se.

as for RTC wolfenstien - no way. quake 3 yes you could run smoothly but not RTCW

[CasCraven]

Returning to 64 emulation:

Despite the fact that my whole system may as well be considered a bottleneck to any hardware being discussed here, I'm experiencing severe slowdowns with OpenGL plugins as opposed to those running on DirectX/D3D, on which most games run fine, but with a few errors (notably, white squares under cars in Mario Cart with Jabo's D3D6v1.5, no transparency, and other things). Cpu speed is somewhat of an issue, but the GFX card is pathetic - a moble version of the ATI Rage Pro card, possibly integrated into the MB by dell and just using the ATI processing chip (it happens ocasionally). Is this card not OpenGL accelerated? - is there even such a thing at all? Another system (AMD athalon 1GHz, 128DDR, Nvidia Vanta LT 16MB, etc) runs 1964's OpenGL plugin far faster than Jabo's D3D, and with much greater accuracy. Is it the card's archetecture or something else? Both systems have DirecX8.1, and although a bit dated as far as the latest specs, have the potential to run most things with reasonable speed. Any opinions?

[Doomulation]

The ATI cards is mostly crap (not new new ones, though ^_^). They don't support directx nor opengl very well for n64 emulation afaik.

[supergamer]

OpenGL is supported on an ATI rage pro. Go to www.ati.com and download the newest drivers. Anything does work (set your desktop to 16-bit colors to use 1964 OpenGL).

[Lillymon]

OpenGL works on ATI cards but it works very badly. DirectX is better.

[supergamer]

I know. Direct X support is up to 32 bit color, and OpenGL with a maximum of 16 bit!

[petronius79]

Originally posted by james.miller
no pII-600 will run gta3 flawlessly. period.

as for RTC wolfenstien - no way. quake 3 yes you could run smoothly but not RTCW


thats no Pentium II he's talking about. It is Pentium II Xeon and that thing is more expensive than a Pentium III. I dont know if games can take advantage of that type of processor though. It seems in his case they do.

[james.miller]

by the looks of his sig its a dual p3-600 xeon. but i dont think many game take advantage of duallies. anyway - im sure even the xeon 600 could run gta3 flawlessly with a gf2 mx 400.

COME ON ITS A GEFORCE 2! lol

[ScottJC]

Originally posted by supergamer
I know. Direct X support is up to 32 bit color, and OpenGL with a maximum of 16 bit!

once again you show us your amazing powers of having no idea what you're talking about.

OpenGl can run in 32bit as well :geek:

[CasCraven]

True... So long as you don't mind between 1 and 6 frames a second trying to run OpenGL on this machine:ermm:.

By the way, anybody know why 1964's OpenGL plugin looks almost perfect compared to other plugins? It even runs the menus on Neon Genesis Evangelion (Jap), the little checkered flag on Mario cart's title screen, etc - which pretty much no other plugin can do, at least that I've seen. I was very suprised by its superior preformance over Jabo's already very nice plugin, at least on a system with an Nvidia card. Any explinations?

[supergamer]

Sayargh,

Older video hardware doesn't support 32 bit color openGL. All games does run on 32 bit but you'll see no difference between 16 and 32 bit color. This are the first generation openGL cards (like voodoo 1, Ati rage pro, intel i740...). I know this time where I'm talking about! If you don't belive me, buy an old video card and try.

[************]

Originally posted by supergamer
Sayargh,

Older video hardware doesn't support 32 bit color openGL. All games does run on 32 bit but you'll see no difference between 16 and 32 bit color. This are the first generation openGL cards (like voodoo 1, Ati rage pro, intel i740...). I know this time where I'm talking about! If you don't belive me, buy an old video card and try.


"MUMMY, MAKE THE BAD MAN GO AWAY "

[BTM]

Originally posted by supergamer
This are the first generation openGL cards (like voodoo 1

funny, sille me, i thought VooDoo was 3Dfx ( Glide ) not OpenGL ...

[************]

Originally posted by BTM
funny, sille me, i thought VooDoo was 3Dfx ( Glide ) not OpenGL ...


I was just thinking the same (the rest of the post doesn't make good bedtime reading either, I think you'll find).

After reading through a lot of the recent threads I was also wondering what kind of despicable, inhumain acts the members of this board must have perpetrated against humanity to deserve some of Supergamers replies.

Now I know, not only is it hot down there in hell, with flames licking at my bollocks, but also I have to moderate a messageboard with just Supergamer and lightknight as members, with the power to ban removed by the anti-christ himself (no, I don't mean Justin Timberlake).........for fucking eternity ;)

[supergamer]

BTM,

Voodoo is a 3DFX-card, but it does support opengl. The support for openGL makes it a first-generation OGL-card.

[BTM]

But wasn't OpenGL used in Voodoo cards AFTER it was used in other cards ?

[************]

I'd like to take back what I said above and apologise to Supergamer.

After looking at his profile and discovering he's only 15, I think maybe what I wrote was a bit harsh.

Justin Timberlake can still go and suck satans dick though.

[karth95]

Most of the support for openGL was added via drivers rather than chipset based. I would say it's more of .5 gen myself, but then, I have a great deal of disgust with 3dfx deciding that Glide was going to be 16 bit, because "Nobody really needs 32bit textures in gaming"

[IceCold]

Originally posted by karth95
Most of the support for openGL was added via drivers rather than chipset based. I would say it's more of .5 gen myself, but then, I have a great deal of disgust with 3dfx deciding that Glide was going to be 16 bit, because "Nobody really needs 32bit textures in gaming"

heh - musta been when they saw 32-bit rendering performance falloffs on the TNT/TNT2 - i suppose they figure they concentrate with framerate when working with the Voodoo3 - but nonetheless, even with the missing features it turned out to be a solid card for its time

getting a bit confused here - was a full ICD ever even implemented into drivers or thirdparty drivers?

[petronius79]

Originally posted by CasCraven


By the way, anybody know why 1964's OpenGL plugin looks almost perfect compared to other plugins? It even runs the menus on Neon Genesis Evangelion (Jap), the little checkered flag on Mario cart's title screen, etc - which pretty much no other plugin can do, at least that I've seen. I was very suprised by its superior preformance over Jabo's already very nice plugin, at least on a system with an Nvidia card. Any explinations?

It runs games like Mario and Banjokazooie quite decently. Too bad it isnt further developed at the moment. Or can I get a version higher than 4.5?

[karth95]

Yes, I ran one for quite some time, and it really was a wonderful card. glide64 v.253 is really an exceptional plugin, and I sometimes wish I had 2 agp slots so I could use my old v3 3k alongside my gf2 ti 64, just so I could use it. It made n64 emulation with just the v3 3k quite bearable.

As to the full ICD, I honestly don't know. I just took a look, and it looks like there has been several implementations, but since the card doesn't have the performance specs that today's cards have, I seriously doubt you'd be too happy with the results... of course, things have changed in the 6 months that I've had the gf2, I read on some news site somewhere (note the uncertainty here) that the 3rd party drivers for old 3dfx cards are making some insanely great advances.





heh - musta been when they saw 32-bit rendering performance falloffs on the TNT/TNT2 - i suppose they figure they concentrate with framerate when working with the Voodoo3 - but nonetheless, even with the missing features it turned out to be a solid card for its time

[Rzeractor]

hey guys, im back, yeah sorry about being an arse with the video card / emulation thing - i didnt realise about the CPU doing more work than the Video card was doing

About GTA 3: with my old video card, GF2 mx400 i had no patches or anything, it ran pretty niceley, although i had to lower the draw distance though.
I have yet to try it with my Ti 4200....

In my opinion i reccon that 3dfx cards were the best, they were overpriced but their performance was quite nice - it ran need for speed 3 and 4 without any slowdown. (well, I was using a PII 266MHz with 128mb of ram

[salk]

You don't need two AGP slots (by the way, tests proved that the performance difference between videocards PCI and on AGP slots some time ago was less than 3%...Pump it up Intel) . Just buy a second hand Voodoo 3 PCI and enjoy the great Glide64 plugin (whose version is now 0.30...it's even greater now...:D ). Regards...