Right video and sound cards for PJ64

[Tre]

Hey all, I'm planning to upgrade my sound and graphics cards in the immediate future (as in by the end of the month) and was hoping to get some feedback as to whether you guys would recommend these for use in PJ64.

For the graphics card, I'm thinking of sticking with ATI Radeon cards, mostly because I am using a MS-6590 (v2.X) ATX motherboard from the MSI KT6 Delta series. Not the most powerful board, I know, but it's fine for what I need. I'm wanting to upgrade to an ATI Radeon X1600 Pro (512MB DDR2 ram and 8x/4x AGP). It's not ~cheap~ cost wise ($206), but that's not a problem.

My question is will this be compatible with PJ64 and run smoothly and allow me the most bang for my buck? I'm really wanting to upgrade my graphics card anyway, so that my non-emulated games and movies will look even better, but if it's not going to do much for PJ64 I might go with something else.

As for sound, I saw a really nice Creative Sound Blaster card that supports the 5.1 surround sound speakers that I am using. It's the "X-Fi Xtreme Gamer" card. I know that my on-board sound has been allowing for my games to pop and make some of the games run slower, would this fix that?

I'm already enjoying the games with my current set up (shown in my signature), but I want to take it to another level. What do you guys think of my choices?

 

[axcc123]

that is what i'd go for too

 

[NES_player4LIFE]

looks and sounds nice ;p

 

[Samurai Snack]

i prefer NVidia GeForce cards more than ATI Radeon cards because my current card (NVidia GeForce FX 5200) works very well on some of my high graphics, non-emulated games like GuildWars and Command & Conquer Generals.

 

[Tre]

I'm actually checking this thread back and forth across the day to see the replies, and so far it seems like I'm making a good choice here.

Samurai Snack, I don't actually intend to play non-emulated games on this system. I've set this computer up only to play roms, music and movies. Plus the guy that helped me build this computer suggested ATI cards over others, because he's had more experience with my mobo configuration than me. I could likely get away with an NVidia, though I'm sort of curious as to your impression of using one with PJ64 and other emulators. For instance, I'm running FCE Ultra for NES, VisualBoy Advance for GBA/GBx, and Zsnes for Snes... and they all run perfectly with my ATI 9200se. I'm just wanting to make my N64 games look as close to their original counterparts as I can (and I still get some clipping from time to time as well as a few graphical slips), and I ~think~ I read in the FAQs somewhere that an ATI is going to have minimal issues as opposed to other card types. Did I read that wrong or something? I just ~really~ want my OoT and MM to look as close to the real thing.

 

[cooliscool]

Other than the added bandwidth and fill rate, allowing higher resolutions, and more extreme use of AA and AF, upgrading from your 9200SE (granted you have the latest Catalyst drivers installed), will not make, for example, Jabo's D3D look any better.

Adding a sound card also will likely do nothing: pops in N64 emulators are usually more related to either core issues or your computer not running the game at fullspeed (I don't see why it wouldn't with your specs, though, they are sufficient).

 

[Tre]

I don't actually have the Catalyst drivers installed (didn't know about them), only the default drivers that came with my card. It is very likely I'm having something going on to cause my games to not run full speed... but I can't begin to think of ~what~.

For instance, in OoT, if I go to the Gerudo fortress on Epona and go to the middle (with three Gerudo there) the game will start to slow down to about 43FPS and sometimes a little slower. It's a VERY noticable lag.

I've been wanting to upgrade anyway, and I figured "Why not go with the best cards my system could handle?". Though I am curious why my computer wouldn't make the full use of it's current resources to run PJ64 better than this? Especially if I have sufficient specs.

Though I am wanting to get a new sound card not just for PJ64. I'm finding that I want better quality music playback than I have, and want to get the best support for 5.1 and 7.1 surround sound to go with the new speakers I'll be getting (Logitech X540). So if it doesn't do much of anything to add to PJ64, that's alright. But if the graphics card doesn't, I might be irritated with myself.

 

[Clements]

Get an X-Fi XtremeMusic for general audio. You probably will not notice any difference in PJ64 though, mainly PC games and audio apps will benefit. Graphics card probably won't make a noticeable difference in PJ64 either, but again will benefit PC games considerably.

 

[Tre]

I think I'll go for it. Though it won't give me a "seriously" noticeable difference in PJ64, it'll be worth it in the end. I appreciate the feedback, because I'm not the most tech-savy individual out there. I'm hoping this will be worth the upgrade in all aspects.

I'll likely post a thread in the future asking how I can get the best out of the cards for PJ64. But for now, I think that's all I have to ask about it.

 

[Doomulation]

X-Fi cards work great. Have one of my own.
If you're getting low speeds on your machine, then I'd say that something is amiss with your config, because that processor should give full speed.
Both ati and nvidia cards should do fine, though some (like Glide64) may have some slight problems with ati graphics.
Onboard sound isn't bad, though there may be some poor quality out there. Have you tried enabling sync sound? It really helps in Zelda to remove the poping and cracking.

 

[Tre]

I'm glad to hear something positive about X-Fi (other than what the Bestbuy guy told me), I'm hoping not to regret getting it.

I am pretty confident my configuration is solid, I've not had problems with other emulators nor have I had crashing, resetting, or other errors. My bios and XP are both set up to their best configuration, and I am 100% positive that all 2.20ghz of my cpu is accounted for correctly. But I might have overlooked ~something~, that's always possible.

I did indeed use the "Synch sound" option when I was still using Jabo's direct sound and the popping ~did~ seem to go away for a while. What I mean is that the popping and oddities in the sounds that the ocarina songs would make went away, and I didn't get nearly as many odd sound errors. It's possible that it's just in how my sound plugin and the rom work with each other.

I have noticed that the slowdown ~only~ occurs when I have a lot of sprites and objects on screen in PJ64, and it's VERY likely that my configuration of PJ64 is able to account for some of that slowdown. Though I don't think I've changed anything since the last time I had a serious slowdown happen from playing with other plugins. I have had almost fullspeed 90% of the time in my games. In OoT I had slow down upon going into the Gerudo fortress, and in the ending credit when everyone is dancing and happy and stuff. Other than that, it was almost perfect.

Any suggestion that would account for that?

 

[squall_leonhart]

the XiFi is one problematic piece of hjardware.. and as always, creative is blaming everyone else, but thier own poor hardware design, if there is problems.

 

[Tre]

Wait... if XiFi is problematic, what would you recommend instead then? I'm wanting something that will give me excellent sound, but I don't want my computer to start going spasmatic on me...

 

[squall_leonhart]

i said if there is problems

the known problems on XiFi's is audio stuttering and instability while running openal enhanced games.

most are on Nforce 4 and 6xx boards

 

[Tre]

Had me worried for a moment, Squall. I don't know if I'll have those problems, but for $100, I hope I won't...

 

[squall_leonhart]

i hope your using an nforce chipset on that board.. Via chipsets are problems with creative cards..

 

[WhiteTigerX7]

NForce boards are really good stuff. Intel has some great stuff as well.

If you go for a video card, I recommend NVidia. They have a much better track record than ATI with games both old and new. I've had ATI and I'm glad I ditched them.

As for audio... too many choices in my opinion but as Clements said, X-Fi cards are the best. You can get away with roughly any audio chipset however most of the time even most newer onboard HD codecs have good quality sound anymore. I have a Realtek 880(D) HD codec in my laptop and it has just about as good a quality of audio as my old Live! 512 did in my old desktop.

 

[squall_leonhart]

well of late, nvidia's driver quality has slipped... and its all been ever since they started trying to implement the new control panel...

 

[painkiller78]

Hi...
Well I would recomend you to go with NVidia, you can modifies with a text editor the inf. installer and add custom resolutions that way (very handy with emulator like MAME), with ATI is another story, you have to break you ass using PowerStrip, a program very few people have the knowledge to use it properly, in the past I always prefered NVidia, sadly because of my job and $$$ actually only have a laptop, it's was sad for me when I discover that the best card my money could by for it was an ATI one, however it work good for non-emulated stuff, with emulators too, the only thing I miss is a easy way to add custom resolutions.

 

[WhiteTigerX7]

New Control Panel is fully working now for NVidia cards. Latest 9x.xx series drivers have great image quality.

See I had a Radeon 8500 which was supposed to be a good card. That was till I noticed just about all the key features were disabled which my system actually supported. I had no Texture Memory over AGP meaning AGP Texturing was disabled. Fast Writes which is a precashe for AGP 4x and 8x was disabled, and I was stuck with the 3.7 drivers if I wanted compatibility with OpenGL and DirectX games kept crashing back to desktop and the VPU recovery kept forcing me to reboot. I stuck with them till about six driver releases later and no fixes were done for my card so I sank about 75 bucks into a GeForce 4 Ti 4600 and noticed Nvidia had all those setting enabled and my games worked great especially my cherished older games. I had contacted ATI's support many time to get no response except see our support site which was a mess of jumbled topics. When one of my older games broke with a driver revision I contacted Nvidia and got a write back stating that they would file my report and look into it, guess what... next driver revision about a week or two later game worked again.