Video Card

[Stev1]

Can anybody suggest the best but not expensive video card to use for SH4.
At the moment i am using an Nvidea FX5700 which works OK with SH3.

[seafarer]

You'll get lots of opinions about this. There are a few people on here using NVidia 8500GT cards and they seemed pleased with them. They are very affordable cards.

I have a NVidia GeForce 8600GT/OC 512MB card (a PNY version) that does quite well. Cranking all the eye candy to max does bog it down (things like volumetric fog are a fps quagmire). For somewhat more money, a great value is the NVidia 8800GT - right now, I'd say it is the best price/performance card available (excellent performance at a superb price point).

These are all PCIe cards btw.

Someone else will have to chime in about Ati cards, as I haven't used one in awhile.

--
My system:
ACER AMD Athlon 64x2 4800+,
Antec TruePower Trio 650watt PS
4GB DDR2 RAM, 400GB SATA HD
PNY GeForce 8600GT/OC 512MB video card
Samsung 216BW - 21.6" wide screen (1680x1050) LCD
Windows Vista Home Premium, 32-bit

[mjc]

You can try the ATI Video Card.

[tomoose]

I'm currently using an AMD 64 3700+ (2.4Ghz) with 2.5Gig of RAM and an nVidia GeForce 7800 GS (AGP slot as I don't have PCI-e) and SHIV runs extremely well. My only disadvantage is that I can't make any movies with SHIV as I (cue Scotty's voice).."dinna have the powerrr!!" ;)

[beartooth91]

Can anybody suggest the best but not expensive video card to use for SH4.
At the moment i am using an Nvidea FX5700 which works OK with SH3.
I have 2 home PC's which I play SH4 on.

The older one is an AGP interface - an Nforce 2 motherboard running the mobile Barton XP-M CPU at 200x11 (2.2gHz). I just bought a new video card for it 2 months ago just to be able to run SH4. I picked an EVGA (Nvidia) 7600 GS. I run the card overclocked at 560 mHz (core) and 440 mHz (memory). I run 1024x768, high quality, with 4x Antialiasing. I also run ROW which does give a FPS hit. In spite of all this, I get 20 fps or better at sea, on the bridge - which is playable. Going into or out of Pearl; the frame rate drops to 15-16 fps. For AGP, I'd recommend these cards in the following order: ATI Radeon HD 2600XT, Nvidia 7600 GT, and the Nvidia 7600 GS. All of these cards are in the neighborhood of $100 to $115.

For PCI Express, I'd recommend - hands down - an Nvidia 8600 GT card, which is what I run on my other PC. With all the above settings, plus 4x Anisotropic Filtering, I get 30-40 fps on the bridge at sea. I love it ! But, even though I make 85k + per year and have little debt; I can't afford the $200 + cards that everyone else seems to run. The 8600 GT will run $80 - $130 at Newegg depending on price and rebate.

[Snuffy]

I have a pair of nVidia 7600 GS with 640 each. :)

Graphics are just fine.

[Hawk_345]

Well im using the nvidea Geforce 8600GTS 256mb, and i cranked everything up on high and the lowest FPS i got so far was 20FPS with the midway atack fleet in front of me, average of 60FPS in good weather, bad weather i have not really used it in yet, and actually you can get 2 8600s at 256mb for around 200$ wich aint bad if you got the slots on your computer. so you can buy one, and then get another later on wich is what i plan on doing.

sustem Specs

intel quad core @2.4GHZ
3GB RAM
nvidea geforce 8600GTS 256mb
Windows Vista home premium

[Caltone]

Prior to release the 8800GT looked to be the best bang for the buck coming in at $249. Due to low availability the price on those has been higher than MSRP in many cases. It is a fantastic card though (i have one) and runs SH4 great with all the bells and whistles at 1680 X 1050

A really good alternative is the ATI 3870 card. They are performing very well in most games, support DX 10, and scale nicely in Crossifre. You can find these in the low $200 range.

[Zantham]

Can anybody suggest the best but not expensive video card to use for SH4.
At the moment i am using an Nvidea FX5700 which works OK with SH3.

Make sure you check if your computer takes a AGP video card or a PCI-Express one, the two are not compatible. If AGP then your choices are very limited; as mentioned above in another post a GeForce 7600 series AGP card will be your best value.

If you have PCI-Express video (this is different from PCI), then to find the best card that works depends on what resolution and quality settings you are playing on. 8800GT 512MB if you are running higher resolutions (1680x1050 or similar) or want to maintain a high framerate no matter what. 8600GTs (good) or GT (not quite as good) if you run lower resolutions. 256MB video RAM is enough for a game like SH4, but 512MB video is 'where its at', especially if you are running mods like ROW.

[Stev1]

Thanks for the info guys, this is the motherboard i am using at the moment, A7N8X-E Deluxe Socket A, Can anyone tell me if this will take a PCi Express video card, as i like the look of the NVidia 8600GTs.
My system which i Built PC myself is:-

AMD Sempron 3000 MMX, 2.0 ghz Processor
Memory is 1024, "upgradinging to 2 - 3 Gig"
Sound Blaster Live 24-bit
Geforce FX5700 with the latest Driver 169.21

this is working ok with SH3 and my other games i.e.
Doom 3, and the Medal of Honor Series

[AVGWarhawk]

If you look at the motherboard were your current card is, each type of slot has a different layout. The box the new cards come in usually have the three different types slots pictured on them. AGP, PCI or PCI-E. That is how I figured it out. Anyway, I just got a AGP Nvidia 7800 GS OS for a song and SH4 is just beautiful and FPS just quite a bit from my ATI X1300 I was using.

[von Kinderei]

I think thats a AGP graphics card only ...

Though that motherboard has 5 PCI slots I don't think you can use a PCI card ... some motherboards are capible of usein' either AGP OR PCI but I serious don't think your's will ... IMHO !

[Go4It]

I had a A7N8X Deluxe Socket A MB w/3700+ AMD 64 with a 6800 GT ( AGP NO/OC ) vid card an I played SH4 with out volumetric fog an everything on the right side of the display settings checked an got decent FPS.

[CaptainHaplo]

I noticed you didnt specify if you want to stay with Nvidia or not. If your looking at ATI - there are a slew of cards that are reasonable. Anything at the X1600 level or above does well with SH4 - basically anything that is DX 10 capable. The new HD series are also reasonable.

[Elder-Pirate]

Thanks for the info guys, this is the motherboard i am using at the moment, A7N8X-E Deluxe Socket A, Can anyone tell me if this will take a PCi Express video card, as i like the look of the NVidia 8600GTs.
My system which i Built PC myself is:-

AMD Sempron 3000 MMX, 2.0 ghz Processor
Memory is 1024, "upgradinging to 2 - 3 Gig"
Sound Blaster Live 24-bit
Geforce FX5700 with the latest Driver 169.21

this is working ok with SH3 and my other games i.e.
Doom 3, and the Medal of Honor Series


I've the A7N8X deluxe MB with a 462 socket running the "Athlon XP 3200+" which is probably the same as yours except for the socket ( and you need to ditch that puny Semtron ) using 3 GB "Crucial Technology" ( MAX Memory on this MB ). Each memory stick is: 1 GB 184_pin DIMM 128X64 DDR PC3200 Unbuffered.

Memory is not just memory for not all 1 GB sticks are the same and some will not work correctly especially when playing games as they will make the computer crash severely as in System crash. This I know for I went for some cheapies and SH4 and a couple other games flopped royal, changed to the correct type of mem and walla no problems. Here is the link for the "Crucial" memory although there are different outfits of your choice.

Click here: http://www.crucial.com/index.aspx then click on Scan my computer. You will be given the correct amount of Ram sticks to use and what their values are, also just what your motherboard is etc.

As yours is almost a twin to mine you would be probably better off with a Nvidia GeForce 7800 GS OC 256mb AGP 8X. This is the max Nvidia video card your mother board can handle.

http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y116/oleman/7800GS_256_AGPcard.jpg

Here is the link for the BFG 7800 GS ( just for reference ):
http://www.bfgtech.com/bfgr78256gsoc.aspx

These cards with enough memory can still do wonders for us that do not have that wonderful PCI-Express as mine does VERY well in SH4. :arrgh!: :yep:

Someday I hope to have a PCI-E hot rod computer but intill then....................:)


Good Luck.

[Elder-Pirate]

I noticed you didnt specify if you want to stay with Nvidia or not. If your looking at ATI - there are a slew of cards that are reasonable. Anything at the X1600 level or above does well with SH4 - basically anything that is DX 10 capable. The new HD series are also reasonable.


With his motherboard, DX10 capable? I don't think so. :nope:

[beartooth91]

Thanks for the info guys, this is the motherboard i am using at the moment, A7N8X-E Deluxe Socket A, Can anyone tell me if this will take a PCi Express video card, as i like the look of the NVidia 8600GTs.
My system which i Built PC myself is:-

AMD Sempron 3000 MMX, 2.0 ghz Processor
Memory is 1024, "upgradinging to 2 - 3 Gig"
Sound Blaster Live 24-bit
Geforce FX5700 with the latest Driver 169.21

this is working ok with SH3 and my other games i.e.
Doom 3, and the Medal of Honor Series
Steve - as I indicated above; my older PC has an Asus A7N8X-X motherboard in it. Same series as yours, but, mine has the lower end audio and doesn't support dual channel memory mode. Great boards if you know what RAM they like !
Since it takes an AGP card I'd look at the (1) ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT, (2) Nvidia 7600 GT, (3) Nvidia 7600 GS. An alternative to (3) would be the ATI Radeon X1650PRO. These will all run between $90 to $115. While I favor Nvidia based cards, the Radeon HD 2600 XT is a compelling buy and it will give you some future as its DirectX10 ready. I've heard the official ATI drivers are problematic for it - this will improve with future driver releases. In the meantime, the modified Omega drivers work just fine from what I read. Also, Nvidia does not make an AGP version of the 8600 GT, however the "compelling" Radeon HD 2600 XT gives comparable performance to the 8600 GT - at least in the PCI Express versions.

[steelbill]

I just got this card for my AGP slot, and I get the green checkerboard screen of death. No joy at all. The card has 512 of ram--- and I run a P4 2.6gig with 2 gigs of ram. It just locks up everything. I downloaded nHancer, so I'm trying to get it to work. My old card got the game up---the ATI 9700 all in wonder...but it was slow. Any Ideas? I have the Asus p5 motherboard. Thanks

[AVGWarhawk]

Go to 3D guru and get the ATI driver removal tool. Get rid of all files related to ATI. Do a search of all files and folders. Dump every bit of ATI off your machine. Also, get Driver Cleaner Pro. Go back into your add/remove program. Remove the driver for the Nvidia card you just installed. Reboot and load the newest Nvida driver. See how she goes. BTW, I have never been successful with nhancer. The regular Nvida program works just fine for me.

Also, if you can, go into your BIOS and set up the BIOS to recognise the AGP slot as the main source for video. I might do this anyway but I checked only find it was searching PCI slots first.

[Rockin Robbins]

A fine card that performs about as well as the 8600GT for half the price. If you were to look at the numbers the 8600 is slightly better, if you A/B the cards in two similar computers you won't be able to tell which is which.

[Kapitan_Phillips]

I'm using a Geforce 7300 GT and it runs fine with a couple unnecessary options disabled, like Volumetric Fog, and that other one "3D Ship Wakes"

Everything else is on, and I get good FPS even in port!

[ekempey]

Anyone have any thoughts on PCI cards? I want to upgrade from my Ati Radeon X1300 (12-15 fps external, 15-18 interior, 20 avg. navigation map).

Dell Dimension 2400
2 Gigs RAM
Radeon X1300 (PCI)
2.7 gHz

[punkmaster98]

try the nvidia 8400gs. it costs $120. its amazing

[ekempey]

I can't seem to find it in PCI, only PCI-E, I checked newegg and a google search. Any other thoughts?

[steelbill]

http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/smartdark/post_old.gif 01-22-2008, 01:42 PM #19 (http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showpost.php?p=756405&postcount=19) AVGWarhawk (http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/member.php?u=219772)
Still no joy on my new 7600gs ---- still the green screan of death. I hear music for 2 seconds, then the full lock up. I have the 1.4 patch of the game. Maybe I should try a reinstall of version one? Video is set at 1280 x 1024 with 32 bit. I have the latest nvid drivers-- 6.14.11.6921 thanks

[AVGWarhawk]

I can't seem to find it in PCI, only PCI-E, I checked newegg and a google search. Any other thoughts?

Try Tigerdirect.com

[AVGWarhawk]

http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/smartdark/post_old.gif 01-22-2008, 01:42 PM #19 (http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showpost.php?p=756405&postcount=19) AVGWarhawk (http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/member.php?u=219772)
Still no joy on my new 7600gs ---- still the green screan of death. I hear music for 2 seconds, then the full lock up. I have the 1.4 patch of the game. Maybe I should try a reinstall of version one? Video is set at 1280 x 1024 with 32 bit. I have the latest nvid drivers-- 6.14.11.6921 thanks


Do you have the newest codec for DX9? If so, we might look at removing the opening movie/UBI stuff so it can go right to the game. Some have had to do this. Update to the newest DX9 first.

[steelbill]

OK-- have the latest dx9--- but still the screen locks up before I can get to the game. I've tried different card settings as I've seen from other threads on the board, (nhancer and the basic card inerface) --- I tried playing direct from the CD...still failed. I noticed from some internal data screens that it says my video card is in a pci slot, when its in an agp x 8 slot (might be the same thing) { Location 7 (PCI bus 1, device 0, function 0} and, I noticed I have higher resolution options at first when loading fresh drivers, but after selecting 1280 x 1024....thats as high as I can go---might be the 19 inch lcd monitor? Still trying as I thought this video card would work...... sub crew getting ready for the Bongo Straits.... :>

[AVGWarhawk]

Your computer says it is in a PCI slot when it is AGP? Can you go into your BIOS and set it up to for AGP? This is what I want you to do Steelbill, go to the General Topics forums. Post a new thread with exactly the problem you have. Subman1 and other who hang on the General Topics forum are great with computers.

[steelbill]

Thanks for the direction. I'm gonna remove the card and kinda start over. I'm just thinking there is some ATI ghost holding me up. This is the only game that wont work..... :arrgh!:

[AVGWarhawk]

Hold it! If other games are working, then it sounds like the game itself is the conflict. Just for kicks, did you uninstall the entire game and reinstall?

[FIREWALL]

Just my 2 cents worth.

Use the driver that came with card. I've had NO problems that way.

I keep hearing the phrase " do you have the latest drivers installed"
and on another thread someone says I went back to original driver and all's fixed.

The latest drivers are not always a cure all IMHO.

[Gino]

Steelbill

I had the very same problem you described on a 7800GS.

I deleted the two intro-movies, and VOILA it worked.

I suggest you try that before opening computers and look at electronic organs :nope:
Also re-installing the game won't help you.

groetjes,

[AVGWarhawk]

Gino,

I offered up the suggestion of removing the movies in post #27. Do you know how to do that so Steelbill can remove them?

[Gino]

Gino,

I offered up the suggestion of removing the movies in post #27. Do you know how to do that so Steelbill can remove them?

I know you did. :smug: But I also noticed that he didn't get that in his next reply.

What you need to do is find the folder that contains two movies. Both have the extension .wmv. I think that one of them is called Intro.wmv You really can't miss them since it's the only 2 files in the folder, and they're both wmv files.

Silly thing is that I had no problems whatsoever. But after a major computercrash this problem started. I have some more problems with wmv video files, but some run fine. It appears to me some refresh rate, resolution or codec issue. Still researching the "phenomena" but my computer crashes to reset when it happens, so I'm a bit reluctant to go deep into the problem...

Game runs fine though.

groetejs,

[steelbill]

I'm up and running --- Bongo Straits look out--- I removed the 2 movies and boom--- up and running. Thanks all for the input. Runs much faster than my old card.... but, I just tried Midway for 10 mintes.... now I have to re-train, it's been so long! I'm buying a round at the Royal Hawaian for you guys.... guess I can write a check as Credit cards havent been invented yet! Steelbill

[steelbill]

I have some more problems with wmv video files, but some run fine. It appears to me some refresh rate, resolution or codec issue. Still researching the "phenomena


Yes-- I have that issue as well. Must be a codec issue, as the wmv files play on DVX player, but not on my BS viewer/player. I'm using the latest nvid drivers... Bill

[AVGWarhawk]

Do you have window media player 11?

[Gino]

Do you have window media player 11?

Yeah, I've got that one too...
Is that where the problem is?

groetjes,

[AVGWarhawk]

I'm not sure. Go to the Microsoft website and look up Media Player codecs. See if there a an update.