budget gaming PC performs well vs. high-end

In article <1192782378.635087.194690 RemoveThis @y27g2000pre.googlegroups.com>,
Beladi Nasralla <nasra11a RemoveThis @yahoo.com> wrote:
>I made a budget gaming computer -- AMD X2 Athlon 3600+ and 7600GT
>(both overclocked). I ran Oblivion at playable framerates at almost
>maximum settings. My colleague says that his new computer with 8800GTS
>struggles to run Oblivion at maximum settings, and he wonders why I
>can ran it on my computer. I run Bioshock at maximum settings, and the
>game has no speed problems (that is, it runs at least at 20 fps). And
>yet the reviews show that the high-end cards (like 1950Pro and 7900GT)
>struggle to run the game at full settings.

You don't mention the resolution at which you are running Bioshock vs the
resolution at which your colleague is running it...?

Perhaps you also have a different view of what 'no speed problems' are?
While you may find Bioshock at 20fps to be acceptable, your colleague may
have a different view, and may find 30fps to be totally unacceptable...?

>What is happening ? Maybe my GPU card is better what it is claimed to
>be (it is a grey import from China). The other consideration is that
>both mainboard and the GPU are from the same manufacturer, MSI, and
>the mainboard has an nVidia cheapset (like the videocard). Maybe the
>GPU and the mainboard have an improved compatibility, which results in
>an improved performance ?

I don't think that changes much, if anything.

>This looks less likely so, because I ran the tests Mark3D03 and
>Mark3D05. It came out that the unoverclocked computer had a
>performance at the bottom of the surveyed computer systems of the
>equal specifications. After overclocking, my computer performed the
>test very closely to the median of the similar systems they tested.
>
>That gives ?

I think you're comparing apples to oranges... Try to find out what
resolution other people (or the benchmark results you're comparing to) run
at.

I also have a P4-2400 system with a 7600GT. It was quite capable of
running something like Half Life 2 or Bioshock at an acceptable framerate
when I was still using a CRT, and used a resolution like 800x600 or
1024x768 with quite a lot of the eye-candy enabled. However, when I
switched to a TFT, with a native resolution of 1680x1050, I noticed this
system had considerable problems rendering all these pixels with the same
quality settings I used before.

Regards,

Patrick.
 >> Stay informed about: budget gaming PC performs well vs. high-end 

On Oct 19, 11:29 pm, Patrick Vervoorn
<patrick.vervo....DeleteThis@NOSPAM.perihelion.demon.nl> wrote:
> In article <1192801628.231237.214....DeleteThis@e34g2000pro.googlegroups.com>,
> Beladi Nasralla <nasra....DeleteThis@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> >On Oct 19, 5:45 pm, Patrick Vervoorn
> ><patrick.vervo....DeleteThis@NOSPAM.perihelion.demon.nl> wrote:
> >> You don't mention the resolution at which you are running Bioshock vs the
> >> resolution at which your colleague is running it...?
>
> >I run it with the resolution 1440x900. This is about 1.3 MP. This is
> >also the amount of pixels in the 1240x1024 screen which had been de-
> >facto for LCD screens. When I was buying my LCD, I did not pay much
> >attention to th eresolution, and bought what I have now; I was later
> >sorry that I did not instist when dealing with the salesperson, and
> >did not get a 1650x1050 screen. It has 1.6 MP. But there is a positive
> >side to it, too. With a 1650x1050 screen, my games would run 20%
> >slower than now ith a 1440x900 screen...
>
> Yes, and now find out at what resolution your colleague is running, and
> only then can you make a meaningful comparison between your system and
> his...

He is running 800x600 on his CRT...
 >> Stay informed about: budget gaming PC performs well vs. high-end 

In article <1192801628.231237.214510 DeleteThis @e34g2000pro.googlegroups.com>,
Beladi Nasralla <nasra11a DeleteThis @yahoo.com> wrote:
>On Oct 19, 5:45 pm, Patrick Vervoorn
><patrick.vervo... DeleteThis @NOSPAM.perihelion.demon.nl> wrote:

>> You don't mention the resolution at which you are running Bioshock vs the
>> resolution at which your colleague is running it...?
>
>I run it with the resolution 1440x900. This is about 1.3 MP. This is
>also the amount of pixels in the 1240x1024 screen which had been de-
>facto for LCD screens. When I was buying my LCD, I did not pay much
>attention to th eresolution, and bought what I have now; I was later
>sorry that I did not instist when dealing with the salesperson, and
>did not get a 1650x1050 screen. It has 1.6 MP. But there is a positive
>side to it, too. With a 1650x1050 screen, my games would run 20%
>slower than now ith a 1440x900 screen...

Yes, and now find out at what resolution your colleague is running, and
only then can you make a meaningful comparison between your system and
his...

Regards,

Patrick.
 >> Stay informed about: budget gaming PC performs well vs. high-end 

In article <1192782378.635087.194690.DeleteThis@y27g2000pre.googlegroups.com>,
Beladi Nasralla says...
> I made a budget gaming computer -- AMD X2 Athlon 3600+ and 7600GT
> (both overclocked). I ran Oblivion at playable framerates at almost
> maximum settings. My colleague says that his new computer with 8800GTS
> struggles to run Oblivion at maximum settings, and he wonders why I
> can ran it on my computer. I run Bioshock at maximum settings, and the
> game has no speed problems (that is, it runs at least at 20 fps). And
> yet the reviews show that the high-end cards (like 1950Pro and 7900GT)
> struggle to run the game at full settings.
>
> What is happening ?

You're running the game using DirectX 9 and he's running the game
running DirectX 10. If he forced the game to run in DirectX 9, it'd
trounce yours.

--
Conor

I'm not prejudiced. I hate everyone equally.
 >> Stay informed about: budget gaming PC performs well vs. high-end 

In article <677df$4718bf5a$82a1d3bf$31118@news2.tudelft.nl>, Patrick
Vervoorn says...

> Yes, and now find out at what resolution your colleague is running, and
> only then can you make a meaningful comparison between your system and
> his...
>
Irrelevent. His friend is running DirectX 10.


--
Conor

I'm not prejudiced. I hate everyone equally.
 >> Stay informed about: budget gaming PC performs well vs. high-end 

In alt.comp.hardware.pc-homebuilt Patrick Vervoorn
<patrick.vervoorn.RemoveThis@NOSPAM.perihelion.demon.nl> wrote:

>In article <1192782378.635087.194690.RemoveThis@y27g2000pre.googlegroups.com>,
>Beladi Nasralla <nasra11a.RemoveThis@yahoo.com> wrote:
>>I made a budget gaming computer -- AMD X2 Athlon 3600+ and 7600GT
>>(both overclocked). I ran Oblivion at playable framerates at almost
>>maximum settings. My colleague says that his new computer with 8800GTS
>>struggles to run Oblivion at maximum settings, and he wonders why I
>>can ran it on my computer. I run Bioshock at maximum settings, and the
>>game has no speed problems (that is, it runs at least at 20 fps). And
>>yet the reviews show that the high-end cards (like 1950Pro and 7900GT)
>>struggle to run the game at full settings.
>
>You don't mention the resolution at which you are running Bioshock vs the
>resolution at which your colleague is running it...?
>
>Perhaps you also have a different view of what 'no speed problems' are?
>While you may find Bioshock at 20fps to be acceptable, your colleague may
>have a different view, and may find 30fps to be totally unacceptable...?
>
>>What is happening ? Maybe my GPU card is better what it is claimed to
>>be (it is a grey import from China). The other consideration is that
>>both mainboard and the GPU are from the same manufacturer, MSI, and
>>the mainboard has an nVidia cheapset (like the videocard). Maybe the
>>GPU and the mainboard have an improved compatibility, which results in
>>an improved performance ?
>
>I don't think that changes much, if anything.
>
>>This looks less likely so, because I ran the tests Mark3D03 and
>>Mark3D05. It came out that the unoverclocked computer had a
>>performance at the bottom of the surveyed computer systems of the
>>equal specifications. After overclocking, my computer performed the
>>test very closely to the median of the similar systems they tested.
>>
>>That gives ?
>
>I think you're comparing apples to oranges... Try to find out what
>resolution other people (or the benchmark results you're comparing to) run
>at.
>
>I also have a P4-2400 system with a 7600GT. It was quite capable of
>running something like Half Life 2 or Bioshock at an acceptable framerate
>when I was still using a CRT, and used a resolution like 800x600 or
>1024x768 with quite a lot of the eye-candy enabled. However, when I
>switched to a TFT, with a native resolution of 1680x1050, I noticed this
>system had considerable problems rendering all these pixels with the same
>quality settings I used before.
>
Funny:
I have a similar situation to what the person you replied to has.

*My* computer has an AMD 2400+ with 1-gig (2 sticks) PC3200 memory in it
and an ATI 2006 "All In Wonder" card running an LCD screen (using the
VGA connector) at 1680x1050 pixels. I'm running memory-speed of 200mhz,
FSB of 266, and 133 bus-speed.

*The kid* has a different make (and supposedly much *faster*)
motherboard, with matched 500meg (again, 1 gig) memory for 128-bit
access instead of 64-bit like mine (it *requires* matched sticks). That
PC has an AMD 2800+ CPU, and a later (supposedly faster) video board
(also from ATI) without the extra bells and whistles of the AIW card.
That system has a 21" monitor, which normally is run at 1600x1200.

So ... You'd *expect* that the kid's computer would walk all over mine.
Only instead, while playing World of Wonder, mine *screams* along at
full resolution and all settings at max; while the kid's computer has to
be backed-off in resolution and/or settings to get decent playing speed.

Go figure.

Sometime I'm going down there, taking along a copy of CPU-Z, and see if
the kid's memory settings or something is off. No way should mine walk
all over the kid's ... but it does. You'd think it would be the other
way around.

--
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 >> Stay informed about: budget gaming PC performs well vs. high-end 

In alt.comp.hardware.pc-homebuilt Conor <conor_turton DeleteThis @hotmail.com>
wrote:

>In article <1192782378.635087.194690 DeleteThis @y27g2000pre.googlegroups.com>,
>Beladi Nasralla says...
>> I made a budget gaming computer -- AMD X2 Athlon 3600+ and 7600GT
>> (both overclocked). I ran Oblivion at playable framerates at almost
>> maximum settings. My colleague says that his new computer with 8800GTS
>> struggles to run Oblivion at maximum settings, and he wonders why I
>> can ran it on my computer. I run Bioshock at maximum settings, and the
>> game has no speed problems (that is, it runs at least at 20 fps). And
>> yet the reviews show that the high-end cards (like 1950Pro and 7900GT)
>> struggle to run the game at full settings.
>>
>> What is happening ?
>
>You're running the game using DirectX 9 and he's running the game
>running DirectX 10. If he forced the game to run in DirectX 9, it'd
>trounce yours.

Hmmm ... Does DirectX 10 run under Win-XP?
Both of our computers are still XP.
(Wouldn't HAVE Vista!)
If so, that might be the difference with mine as well.
The kid might have that.

So ... how do you (as you say) "force the game to run under DirectX 9"?
I thought once you had an "upgrade" to DirectX installed, you couldn't
pull it out without completely reinstalling Windows.

I also thought the whole *idea* of "upgrading" DirectX was to get
*faster* performance of video stuff, not slower.

--
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/ ' / ™
,-/-, __ __. ____ /_
(_/ / (_(_/|_/ / <_/ <_
 >> Stay informed about: budget gaming PC performs well vs. high-end 

Beladi Nasralla wrote:

> That gives ?

Yes, different PC configurations have different performance profiles.
This confuses you?
 >> Stay informed about: budget gaming PC performs well vs. high-end 

I can't prove this, but what I suspect is that the Dx10 cards
running under XP, run in software only. That would make them
pretty slow, and also force them to cut back on graphics
quality. I have some Dx10 cards coming in for testing,
and I will post on the result. I will compare them to a
7950 GTS. The Dx10 cards are 8600 GTS , and are
suppose to be right much faster than the 7950. However,
I noticed in benchmarks on the web, that the 7950 was
nearly equal or better in most tests under XP. The PC
I will use is one monster of a machine, and with a 7950
in it, AquaMark3D benched at better than 133,000. I'll
have the 8600 mark sometime late next week. If anybody
knows about possible traps in this test, let me know
in a separate post, and we can rant about it there ...
like driver issues.

johns
 >> Stay informed about: budget gaming PC performs well vs. high-end 

Frank McCoy wrote:

>
> *My* computer has an AMD 2400+ with 1-gig (2 sticks) PC3200 memory in it
> and an ATI 2006 "All In Wonder" card running an LCD screen (using the
> VGA connector) at 1680x1050 pixels. I'm running memory-speed of 200mhz,
> FSB of 266, and 133 bus-speed.
>
> *The kid* has a different make (and supposedly much *faster*)
> motherboard, with matched 500meg (again, 1 gig) memory for 128-bit
> access instead of 64-bit like mine (it *requires* matched sticks). That
> PC has an AMD 2800+ CPU, and a later (supposedly faster) video board
> (also from ATI) without the extra bells and whistles of the AIW card.
> That system has a 21" monitor, which normally is run at 1600x1200.

Is "*The kid*"'s video card model a dark secret? Is the motherboard's
model written in sanskrit?

When you leave out details, of course we then just have to accept your
intellectually incomplete assessment of the situation rather than
hashing out the realities of the performances. Who needs confusing and
hard to gather facts when it just 'feels' like it should be faster, right?
 >> Stay informed about: budget gaming PC performs well vs. high-end 

"johns" <johns321.TakeThisOut@moscow.com> wrote in message
news:1192818255.161715.318220@v29g2000prd.googlegroups.com...
>I can't prove this, but what I suspect is that the Dx10 cards
> running under XP, run in software only. That would make them
> pretty slow, and also force them to cut back on graphics
> quality. I have some Dx10 cards coming in for testing,
> and I will post on the result. I will compare them to a
> 7950 GTS. The Dx10 cards are 8600 GTS , and are
> suppose to be right much faster than the 7950. However,
> I noticed in benchmarks on the web, that the 7950 was
> nearly equal or better in most tests under XP. The PC
> I will use is one monster of a machine, and with a 7950
> in it, AquaMark3D benched at better than 133,000. I'll
> have the 8600 mark sometime late next week. If anybody
> knows about possible traps in this test, let me know
> in a separate post, and we can rant about it there ...
> like driver issues.
>
> johns

No, they don't run in software mode. They run in DirectX 9 hardware mode.
There are no features, hardware OR software, of DX10 supported in XP at all.
There is no 'software DX10 mode.'

And, the 8600GTS is not "much faster than the 7950". The 8600's are lower
mid-range cards (even the GTS.) The 7950 should trounce the 8600GTS in
almost any DirectX 9 game. Unfortunately Tom's Hardware doesn't have the
7950GTS nor the 8600GTS in their testing library, but when comparing the
7950GT vs. the 8600GT, the 7950GT varies from 300% to 50% faster in the
1280x1024 resolution game tests I looked at.

If you want a DX10 card right now, only the 8800's are worth it, in my
opinion.

Of course, in my opinion, since nVidia is releasing new cards later this
year.. the best thing to do is wait, especially if you already own a top-end
DX9 card and XP only.

RF.
 >> Stay informed about: budget gaming PC performs well vs. high-end 

In article <mvqhh3dpindh3eiv706kv1torgnebqjs9d.RemoveThis@4ax.com>, Frank McCoy
says...

> I also thought the whole *idea* of "upgrading" DirectX was to get
> *faster* performance of video stuff, not slower.
>
No. the whole idea of upgrading DirectX is to get more visual effects.
That translates into lower framerates as the graphics card has way more
things to display for the same frame.

--
Conor

I'm not prejudiced. I hate everyone equally.
 >> Stay informed about: budget gaming PC performs well vs. high-end 

In alt.comp.hardware.pc-homebuilt Conor <conor_turton.TakeThisOut@hotmail.com>
wrote:

>In article <mvqhh3dpindh3eiv706kv1torgnebqjs9d.TakeThisOut@4ax.com>, Frank McCoy
>says...
>
>> I also thought the whole *idea* of "upgrading" DirectX was to get
>> *faster* performance of video stuff, not slower.
>>
>No. the whole idea of upgrading DirectX is to get more visual effects.
>That translates into lower framerates as the graphics card has way more
>things to display for the same frame.

Well, if the performance degrades that badly, how do you go back?
(Or can you without reloading Windows completely?)

--
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(_/ / (_(_/|_/ / <_/ <_
 >> Stay informed about: budget gaming PC performs well vs. high-end