Hi Everyone-

I'm back! :p

The new system is up and running smoothly, has been for almost a week now. I know that the graphics card I'm using is a bit older- I pulled it from my previous system- but I'm not quite sure just how out of date it is.

Its an Nvidia Geforce 2/mx 400 card. I have downloaded various demos of "older" games (Ceaser3, Unreal Tournament 3, Aliens vs Predator 2) and it seems to run those just fine. I also downloaded Jedi Academy and it runs that one alright, however, the frame rate is a bit choppy and the audio will jump here and there If I lower the detail, that tends to fix the graphics problem. Now- I picked up City of Heroes yesterday and while it does run, it runs fairly slow and choppy. I even lowered the graphic detail as much as I could and it still was hard to control and had a choppy frame rate.

Is this the work of that older graphics card? Most everything else on board is up to date. I'm thinking about picking up an ATI Radeon 9600 pro from newegg, or perhaps a Radeon 9600 se or xt from Best Buy- Does anyone think that will solve the framerate problems with the newer games? Any suggestions on the card I should get?

Thanks

System Specs-
Biostar Mobo
Athlon XP 2400+ Thoroughbred 2ghz Processor
512mb ram
80gb HD
Nvidia Geforce2 mx/400 gfx card
Soundblaster Live auido

That video card is definitely the bottleneck that's causing the choppy gameplay.
Go with either the 9600 Pro or XT(slightly faster), but stay away from the SE as it's a value card that's much slower than the other two cards.

Ski is right. That video card is killing you S L O W L Y :)


If you are looking for a new card I would try www.newegg.com. I just saw an ATI 9600XT Pro for $146.00. Also they have a 9800 Pro for $209.00


IMO a video card is worth pay the extra money for.


Jason

Different games can also affect frame rates differently.

For instance, Max Payne used less polygons and more photo-realistic textures to get its good looks. It also had extremely tight code. So it runs quite well on older hardware.

UT 2003 used standard-fare 3D textures but tons of polygons. The coding was pretty standard. The result? Higher system requirements, and it turned out to be one of those games that ran like cr@p on minimum hardware! On the other hand, by using tons of polygons, the visuals gave less the feeling of "cheating" like Max Payne's approach, so UT 2003 ends up being gorgeous on high-end gaming machines.

With video cards like that you have to just sacrifice the top frame rates, but my Geforce two can run any game including Halo and Knights of the Old Republic with the default settings no problem.