So you only have PCI slots and want to game?

PCIGamer said:
I kinda compare it to my old Amiga 3000 computer. I still have one and have kept upgrading over the years. It even has a PCI Graphics board addon card in there :) Even though in todays age, and for the last 12 years its absolutely dog-slow in everything, i guess there is a love affair with keeping older hardware alive.

Personally I have no issue with it and I am as guilty of spending money on PCI graphics cards as other people in this thread.

My old P4 PC is about as tricked out as you can get. It went from Onboard Intel Graphics->FX5200->FX5500->Geforce 6200->Geforce 8400gs. Thats quite a bit of cash to put down on an upgrade path that probably renders 15%-30% improvements for each upgrade. Heck I will probably pick up the 8600GT if i can find it for a reasonable price point.

The 8400gs that I use on that machine works like a charm. The fact that it can "play" (your mileage may vary :p) Crysis, COD4, Fallout 3 etc makes it an easy out for people who dont want to upgrade their computer. To go PCI-E is cheap sure, but you will need to put cash down on a new motherboard, cpu, RAM, video card, PSU upgrade and case. This will set you back at least $500 for something low/mid-range.

Do I use that machine for serious gaming? Heck No, its a Windows MCE machine that talks to my Xbox 360. I run the occasional benchmark on there but thats about it

What I have an issue with is this "benchmarking" of these cards by The General. I couldnt reach 20fps average at 800x600 on Crysis at Low. I couldnt reach 20fps at 800x600 at Fallout 3 at Low and COD4 at 640x480 at Low. And thats on a P4 2.8Ghz system with an overclocked 8400gs, not his P3, ATI 2400 PCI system that runs faster than my rig apparently.

I appreciate his enthusiasm to PCI graphics cards, but I suggest people keep an open mind when they look at his benchmarking numbers
Click to expand...

How does Bioshock look on your card, also Left4dead if you can some how try it out. I got a fullbright problem with a 6200 but your card should have HDR.:suspiciou

is this your card PCIGamer ?

[ame]http://www.amazon.com/BFG-BFGE84512GSP-NVIDIA-GeForce-Graphics/dp/B001LKSFNW[/ame]
 
Hey yall, check out this site:

http://www.xgcdb.com/cards/albatron/pci-8600gt.html

Look on the left side to see more cards. Thats interesting :)

PCIGamer said:
Bioshock looks great on this card. It's what you would expect on any 8 series GeForce card. Framerates on the otherhand are low. Average around 20fps. Certainly playable at low resolutions however.
Click to expand...
What settings do you have it running on, i mean, at 1024x768 or 1280x1024, detail shaders on, etc??????

I played the game when my rig was being bottleneck at 1024x768, detail shaders on high, texture and actors on high, everything else on low and got 6-15fps. No telling how fast it runs now, but i will try it myself soon.

electromagnetic said:
http://www.amazon.com/BFG-BFGE84512GSP-NVIDIA-GeForce-Graphics/dp/B001LKSFNW
Click to expand...
Thats going to be my next PCI card buy, for this rig. If the card doesn't fit, i will buy the albatron 8400gs or sparkle. Rather buy the albatron, because it has a fan.

direwolf007 said:
The is nothing wrong with my computer, or with drivers, or with the benchmark.

The only thing wrong so far in this thread are your results: Your rig "outperforms" two systems (Three, if you count my Via C7-D HTPC - which is also superior to your P3 rig), each being several generations ahead of your ancient P3 ! I don't know who it makes sense to, but it sure isn't me.
but I don't go running around, spewing wrong/misinterpreted/made up results and telling how great my nearly-decade old P3 runs games.
Click to expand...

I have timeshift install, i can do some benchmarks for you, at 1024x768 everything at the highest settings and prove it to you with a video, and benchmark scores using att OSD.

Also, just to note, i play warhead at 1280x1024 low to mainstream and still get 10-22fps in the game. You can believe what you like
 
No way Warhead runs on your PC at 1280x1024 at 10-22 FPS. I will never believe that Warhead would even launch on a 600 MHz P3.

This really doesn't make sense. Why are you buying all these PCI cards when you could just buy a new system?
 
MetalX said:
No way Warhead runs on your PC at 1280x1024 at 10-22 FPS. I will never believe that Warhead would even launch on a 600 MHz P3.
Click to expand...

Here is outrun, capped at 25fps when recording at 1024x768, AAX2.
Warhead, 1280x1024, low to mainstream settings.

http://www.youtube.com/u2konline


Check back at that page, and you will see 2 new timeshift videos and you can see how fast the game is recording in the upper right hand corner. It drops from 20 or 16 to 6 and 10, sometimes even 11 as you will see. Timeshift, 1024x768, AFX2, everything on best settings.

MetalX said:
This really doesn't make sense. Why are you buying all these PCI cards when you could just buy a new system?
Click to expand...
Because i never have a problem with them, and they game just fine with my games.
About my new system, dude i already said i was buying one, a intel pentium dual core, by gateway, 2.4ghz and i will buy a 8600gt pci card with a backup radeon card, the 1gb diamond 4670.

I plan to use PCI cards forever man, plan to use both pcie and pcie. There is nothing wrong with PCI cards.

Anyways, are two timeshift screenshots.


 
Here is Fallout 3 on my P4 2.8Ghz Northwood, PNY 8400gs 512 Meg PCI, 1024x768 at Low Settings with No AA

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2-ML3ljQYCU[/ame]

Playable? Sure but not very enjoyable. 15fps average on my system at this setting.
 
WOW, if i get 15fps in that sort of game, thats very playable to me. It looks good tho, nice and clean looking. Btw, hey pci gamer, have you thought about adding more ram, how much ram can you install?

If you add about 4GB, you should get double the or triple the performance.
 
I watched the crysis warhead video linked to the video tha general posted. People play games like this? That's an epic failure at trying to keep up with current games.
 
Tha General said:
WOW, if i get 15fps in that sort of game, thats very playable to me. It looks good tho, nice and clean looking. Btw, hey pci gamer, have you thought about adding more ram, how much ram can you install?

If you add about 4GB, you should get double the or triple the performance.
Click to expand...


4 gb will double or even triple the performance? In what...

Triple seems a bit far off.
 
supersmashbrada said:
I watched the crysis warhead video linked to the video tha general posted. People play games like this? That's an epic failure at trying to keep up with current games.
Click to expand...
The game doesn't play like that when i am not recording, thats obviously. Warhead runs very smooth at 1280x1024 low to mainstream settings.
 
yeah, but with what specs, I play warhead near that res with full detail, i mean its good frames, but still. Anything close to what I saw is painful.
 
Tha General said:
Also, just to note, i play warhead at 1280x1024 low to mainstream and still get 10-22fps in the game. You can believe what you like
Click to expand...

No you don't. Because a PCI8500GT running on a highly overclocked Wolfdale-2M core doesn't.

It isn't a matter of what I believe, it is a matter of you telling us total things that don't make any sense, at all.

Your Crysis WH video is nowhere near playable. Not even close. Not ever far, actually ! It is a slideshow ! It isn't even close to 10 fps, too !

When you say you get 10-22 fps, what is your average ? It is probably 10.1, with 22 being when you stare at a blank wall.

I am tempted to build a PIII 600Mhz box identical to yours just to show how much B.S you spout, but I'll resist the urge, since I have two systems superior to yours that fail to show the results that you claim to attain.

I'll sum it up:
Tha General is providing results that contradict several results, both mine and independent of mine. Basing a purchase of computer hardware on his results would be ill-advisable, to say the least.

Am I Harsh ? Definitely.

Edit: Since B.S is apparently wrong in some sentences, but in others it is not (huh ?), and accusing someone of lying based on hard evidence is also against the rules - I'll edit so that it makes sense again. The red color remains on the spots my original post had text deleted.
 
Tha General said:
WOW, if i get 15fps in that sort of game, thats very playable to me. It looks good tho, nice and clean looking. Btw, hey pci gamer, have you thought about adding more ram, how much ram can you install?

If you add about 4GB, you should get double the or triple the performance.
Click to expand...

He won't get triple the performance, he will not get double the performance, he will be lucky if he gets another 10-15% performance.

Stop giving advice if you don't have the slightest idea of what you are talking about. Just stop.
 
Tha General said:
WOW, if i get 15fps in that sort of game, thats very playable to me. It looks good tho, nice and clean looking. Btw, hey pci gamer, have you thought about adding more ram, how much ram can you install?

If you add about 4GB, you should get double the or triple the performance.
Click to expand...

Dimension 2350s use the Intel 845GL Chipset. The computer itself was released in 2002 and wont take any more than 512Meg memory in each slot. So 1gb is the max i can do for that system.

And I wont get double or triple the performance. This is just not true.
 
direwolf007 said:
No you don't. Because a PCI8500GT running on a highly overclocked Wolfdale-2M core doesn't.

It isn't a matter of what I believe, it is a matter of you telling us total things that don't make any sense, at all.

Your Crysis WH video is nowhere near playable. Not even close. Not ever far, actually ! It is a slideshow ! It isn't even close to 10 fps, too !

When you say you get 10-22 fps, what is your average ? It is probably 10.1, with 22 being when you stare at a blank wall.

I am tempted to build a PIII 600Mhz box identical to yours just to show how much B.S you spout, but I'll resist the urge, since I have two systems superior to yours that fail to show the results that you claim to attain.

I'll sum it up:
Tha General is providing results that contradict several results, both mine and independent of mine. Basing a purchase of computer hardware on his results would be ill-advisable, to say the least.

Am I Harsh ? Definitely.

Edit: Since B.S is apparently wrong in some sentences, but in others it is not (huh ?), and accusing someone of lying based on hard evidence is also against the rules - I'll edit so that it makes sense again. The red color remains on the spots my original post had text deleted.
Click to expand...


Harsh but true, I wouldnt have said it that way, to each his own but in most instances I agree with you. 10-20 fps isnt really playable it henders you badly, especially in that game where you have to be quick with what you do in most situations.

I do think this thread is needed for the site. Because Tha General is so "dedicated," to the pci interface it has become a bit polluted imo.

My issues are
1. Many people that come to this site for help cant identify their motherboards in a police line up, so how are they to know their interfaces(clearly they dont know the advances of pcie over pci.
2. For the people that know they have only pci slots, most of them know that pci is much slower than pci e, and anything concerning games that run on pci e ( crysis, fallout3, etc) are not helpful to these people as they are mostly just looking for something to hold them over while they use their pc for general uses.
3. Most of the information he's posting concerning bench marks seem inaccurate. Like the crysis bench testing. What he considers playable isnt playable in most people's eyes. If we want to see a slide show we'll jump in our time machines and head back to 1929.

That is all, you are dismissed:p
 
My lastest video, stranglehold
[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BfSB_6Q4sQg[/ame]

At 01:16 - 01:19 very cool right now. This game runs very smooth, slight pauses only because i am running the game off my external HD. BuT Overall 14-24fps, looking at everything in front of me, it stays at 14. , moves up to 24.+ If i had the 8400GS or 8500 or even the 8600 right now, i am pretty sure i would get 30fps.
 
Please man, anything less than 25-30FPS is unplayable. You're the only one who agrees otherwise, and keeps posting videos that look unplayable even to people who don't play anything other than WoW. Stop this ridiculous stuff about PCI cards being so "awesome" and relegate the discussion to what the cards can actually run decently (Crysis NOT being one of them).

This thread is not about your ages-old rig and how 1337 it is. It's to help people who want to play games like The Sims, Spore or WoW on their rig without upgrading everything. So please stop spouting nonsense and posting misleading data. You're the only reason the thread is as long as it is now.
 
I'm convinced you simply don't know what you're missing because you keep flitting around with PCI cards. That Fallout 3 video is brutal at 15, I can't imagine games at 10. I simply don't understand why you would spend the money to buy a game like that just to castrate the experience with a crap computer. Geez, when I moved from my 7800GTX to GTX260 because I wanted to max-out Fallout 3 (and to be able to run a F@H client on it) it was like a new game; the performance improvement was that much improved. And I thought my FPS was fairly smooth with the 7800; just at a lower graphics setting. FYI, the 7800GTX is comparable to a 8600GTS in PCIe (more than 4x the 3dMark06 score than the 8600GT PCI).

Unless you've played these games on a modern system and really are in some sort of deep denial, you'll find that when you move to a modern system, you're going to go from black and white to technicolor. PCI is for tinkering, not main-PC equipment.

I'm curious; how much do you plan to pay for the 4670 you plan to get?
 
Curiosity got the better of me when I read reports about playable framerates on a P3. I tested out a bunch of newer titles, and of course they performed as I expected - horribly.

But whats interesting here is if you read through this thread is how The General initially found out his performance was poor on his rig with his 2400HD, now he gets higher fps and he can game just fine

somewhere in the first 30 pages I found this

Some of the newer games which i can run are crysis, but at pretty terrible speed. I get like 9-15fps. Which is fine, but as soon as i fight the enemies, i get 6fps.
Click to expand...

The is probably the most accurate statement he has said about his gaming experience and is in line with the videos he has posted.

I think we should just move on from here. I am at least. I am happy to keep reading this thread and provide any advice to people looking to buy PCI graphics cards.
 
Gladly. Here's a screenshot of the settings used. Note that this is Crysis Warhead and it's not on my PC (I'm on vacation):


And here's one from the game using the above settings from the level 'Adapt or Perish':


This is running on a system with an E8400, 4GB of RAM and an 8800GTS 512MB video card. Resolution used is 1152x864.

And just in case, here's a shot with all the detail settings at 'Minimum':
 
FusilliJerry82 said:
I'm curious; how much do you plan to pay for the 4670 you plan to get?
Click to expand...
The Diamond PCIE 4670 1GB card i am only paying 80 dollars for it. I am going to buy it the same day i pick up the Albatron 8600GT PCI. But before any of that, my next computer buy is the BFG 8400GS for my pentium 3, or the albatron 8400gs. Or the sparkle 8400gs, just trying to get one with a fan of course. Then i will buy my new rig, secondary one, then buy the 2 video cards and use the 8600GT, and have the 4670 for backup, as a ati card.

PCIGamer said:
But whats interesting here is if you read through this thread is how The General initially found out his performance was poor on his rig with his 2400HD, now he gets higher fps and he can game just fine
Click to expand...

Um yea the 2400HD card was performaning poor, notice the word " was ", as in past. But my computer has been bottleneck free for a few days now, and the 2400HD is one amazing card, and game performance is up 60%.

You may need read that thread which i have posted about my external hd, because my computer is bottleneck free now. I really have no more trouble with games anymore lol, my computer and cards are running a full now.

Anyways, you guys can game with whatever, i am going to play games like i want and buy whatever i want.

peace :)
 
I still don't know why you would relegate a 4670 to "backup" duty behind an 8600GT of ANY flavor. The former kills the latter. And why do you keep so many cards as spares like they're fuses?
 
In case everyone has lost track of the topic, it is about PCI, not PCI-e or better. You may want to go back and read the starting post again. You are all doing just as the starter predicted.
 
FusilliJerry82 said:
And why do you keep so many cards as spares like they're fuses?
Click to expand...
I only have 2 PCI cards in my house now. The 2400HD which i am using now, and i have 1 backup geforce card, the bfg 0c 6200 pci card. Plan to keep that, and buy a backup radeon card , the HIS X1550. My next video cards, for this rig is the 8400GS card. So i will only 3 pci cards, well 4 because i also buying the 8500gt or 8600gt for my next rig, along with a 4670 pcie 1gb.

peace
 
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