Is there any real dif in video cards?

[Dr. Merc]

Greetings, all -

I just picked up this marvelous game a few weeks ago, and, like apparently many people, it gets real sluggish at times, especially when speeded up.

After reading forum comments on the matter, it appears it all boils down to the video card. I just have a stock onboard chip in my Lenovo. It does, however, have an x16 slot, which is what I believe is required for a 'hot' video card.

Digging through the UbiSoft 'requirements' page, I came up with this:

*Supported Video Cards:
ATI RADEON 9600 / 9700 / 9800, X300 - X850, X1300 - X1800
NVIDIA GeForce 6200 / 6600 / 6800 / 7800

Almost all of these are available on Amazon, some of them 'used' for as low as fifteen bucks.

The question for the group is, are any of these particularly better when it comes to game play, or is it really just a matter of "either you have one of these or you don't"?

If the latter, I'll just go ahead and buy one of the cheap used cards, but if some of them are definitely better than the others, I wouldn't mind spending the bucks to get it.

Much thanks for any info,
Doc

[fireftr18]

Welcome aboard.

Check the screen door. I thinks it's a little loose.

There is a difference between video cards. To make it simple, the more money the better. I have an ATI Mobility Radeon HD 6370 with 256mb dedicated video RAM. It is a mid level card and I can run the game at full settings without any problem. My old computer had an onboard card with shared RAM and I had to have the settings set low. There are others on this forum that are able to give much more information on different cards.

More RAM also helps the game run smoother.

[Dr. Merc]

Thanks for the info. I have four gigs of mem on a 64-bit system. One of the first experiments I tried was lowering all the graphic settings and it didn't make any dif. I also tried various game resolutions, including changing the Hertz, as well as some background tests, like closing down every running Windows program and reducing the screen res to 640 x 480 to reduce video memory usage, but none of it made any dif.

In other news, I sank my first airplane this morning. And the game didn't even give me any tonnage credit for it! It was a big 8-engine seaplane located in some harbor I was raiding, Taipei. Even at the shallowest depth setting, the torp I threw at it went under.

So I rammed it.

It was actually pretty cool. The wing kind of got hung up on the conning tower for a bit so I was actually dragging it along as it slowly disintegrated. Everybody on deck had a terrific time.

Like I said, I didn't get any points for it, but it sure felt good.

[les green01]

can't help you on the card issue but wanted to say welcome aboard

short answer is yes there is but the harder question is if the differences will be that noticeable or if they will matter to you and the way you use it.

in most cases any decent quality card will give you all you are looking for from it

[Dr. Merc]

I decided to go through Amazon and price every card on the list. Here are the ultra-bargains:

ATI Radeon:
X850 - $15 (used)
X1300 - $17 (used)
X300 - $20 (new)
9600 - $20 (used)

The NVidia cards were too crossreferenced and such and were hard to track down. Besides, I've had ATI cards in the past and they worked fine, so one of the above should do.

Any thoughts, gentlemen?

Doc

[Fifi]

SH series seems designed for ATI cards...
I own good Nvidias, but have troubles running SH4 or SH5.
Go for an ATI if you are SH fan...
Other games are great on Nvidias though!

[les green01]

if it was me I would buy new on everything on computer stuff when you buy use your asking for trouble,unless it was from a person from subsim

Originally Posted by Dr. Merc

I decided to go through Amazon and price every card on the list. Here are the ultra-bargains:

ATI Radeon:
X850 - $15 (used)
X1300 - $17 (used)
X300 - $20 (new)
9600 - $20 (used)

The NVidia cards were too crossreferenced and such and were hard to track down. Besides, I've had ATI cards in the past and they worked fine, so one of the above should do.

Any thoughts, gentlemen?

Doc

in reference to my other post, I was not talking about the minimum game listed requirements I was referring to a mid level video card in the $100 range vs spending $200-$300 for one.

if you go with the ones you listed then those cards will be not very good and the game will look very bad for you but it "may" run "ok" with them.

its like saying you can get around town on a bicycle but if you get a car your life will be so much better for it.


if you cant possibly spend $100 on a decent video card then you wont be happy with anything you buy on your list.

buy the way what video do you have right now?

[Yoshiki]

I'm running the SH series on a 64-Bit system with 12 GB and a
ATi Radeon HD5700 card.

Now - I believe that most of you laugh at the fact that I'm running
the games with such an antiquated video card...
But it works perfectly.

I have this rule of thumb: If it works with the latest FPS then
it must run with a subsim.

From a programmers point of view: The guys from Romania
are good in wasting resources - a subsim is not exactly
an application that should require a top notch card.

Heck - the first sims back in the 80's were subsims - because
they didn't require too much resources...