Graphic card question

[Redliner]

I have a tricky question.
I have a 2GHz Pentium4 with 512Mb RAM BUT I don?t have a graphics card. The one I use is the on-board card from my Intel D845GVSR motherboard, so I get a crappy quality playing Live for Speed. I get around 20FPS playing with the outside camera.
My question is: If I install a 128Mb GE Force FX 5200 (the best I could find that will fit in the PCI slot) will I get enough "power" to get decent FPS? Or I won?t see a significant increase?
Sorry to bother you guys, but I don?t have enough knowledge about this to make a decision by myself.
Thanks in advance.

 

[ESPNSTI]

I have a P4 1.8, 1GB ram (Intel D845BGSE mobo) with a Geforce Ti4400 gfx card.
If I'm hot lapping or doing a single race, I get 30-40fps in in-car view (depending on the track of course).
If I do a single race with AI cars, or an online race, it can drop down to 15fps or lower at times (in-car view), but most of the time I get between 20-30fps @ 1152x864x32.

It seems to me, whatever graphics options I pick don't seem to have much of an effect on fps for me (32 bit vs 16 bit seems to make no difference at all for example).
This leads me to believe that LFS is largely dependent on the processor. (or maybe that's just me).

 

[andyhui01]

well I basically play on a fujitsu 1.6centrino laptop and I get <20fps... whereas on my girlfriends AMD 64 3800+ x2 with a ATI X800 at 1280x1024 32bit resolution I get about 70fps which is pretty good with everything set to max... but I can easily play with 20fps

 

[jeffy777]

Re: Graphic card question

I have a tricky question.
I have a 2GHz Pentium4 with 512Mb RAM BUT I don?t have a graphics card. The one I use is the on-board card from my Intel D845GVSR motherboard, so I get a crappy quality playing Live for Speed. I get around 20FPS playing with the outside camera.
My question is: If I install a 128Mb GE Force FX 5200 (the best I could find that will fit in the PCI slot) will I get enough "power" to get decent FPS? Or I won?t see a significant increase?
Sorry to bother you guys, but I don?t have enough knowledge about this to make a decision by myself.
Thanks in advance.

Yes I think you will get decent FPS. My brother used to have that exact same graphics card and he could play games that are more demanding than LFS and He had decent results. It's certainly going to be better than what you have now.

 

[pdanev]

You definitely will get decent fps. I'm playing on a laptop (mobile AMD Athlon XP 2500+, 1GB Ram), with a 64mb ati card. 1024x768x16, no problem whatsoever. (on 32bit it starts lagging a bit with 5+ people, but 16bit is jut fine imo for a race)

 

[geeman]

There are also Geforce FX5500 and Radeon 9250 available for PCI. The Radeon is the fastest. But it does not matter much which one of those you get, because the PCI slot makes them all equally slow. Still you will get a a big performance boost compared to that onboard card.

 

[Redliner]

Thanks guys!

It seems to me, whatever graphics options I pick don't seem to have much of an effect on fps for me (32 bit vs 16 bit seems to make no difference at all for example).
This leads me to believe that LFS is largely dependent on the processor. (or maybe that's just me).

That?s EXACTLY why I was having doubts about the graphics card. If I choose 640x480 16 bit or 1280x1024 32 bit the difference is little. This (mis?)lead me to think I would be focusing in the wrong area if I changed the graphics card.

 

[andyhui01]

There are also Geforce FX5500 and Radeon 9250 available for PCI. The Radeon is the fastest. But it does not matter much which one of those you get, because the PCI slot makes them all equally slow. Still you will get a a big performance boost compared to that onboard card.

yup... I used to have a Onboard graphics card on my old desktop... when I played Counter-Strike 1.3/1.5... I was getting ~20fps.... I bought an ATI Radeon 9200 (PCI slot) and my fps shot up to the mid 40's which made it so much better

 

[ESPNSTI]

Thanks guys!

It seems to me, whatever graphics options I pick don't seem to have much of an effect on fps for me (32 bit vs 16 bit seems to make no difference at all for example).
This leads me to believe that LFS is largely dependent on the processor. (or maybe that's just me).

That?s EXACTLY why I was having doubts about the graphics card. If I choose 640x480 16 bit or 1280x1024 32 bit the difference is little. This (mis?)lead me to think I would be focusing in the wrong area if I changed the graphics card.

Well that's my experience already with a decent graphics card, and onboard graphics chips are usually really bad, so maybe it will still help.
It's also the cheapest thing to try (since addiing memory isn't going to help).
If you know someone that has a graphics card, maybe you can convince them to loan it to you to give it a test run.

 

[jeffy777]

I have a P4 1.8, 1GB ram (Intel D845BGSE mobo) with a Geforce Ti4400 gfx card.
If I'm hot lapping or doing a single race, I get 30-40fps in in-car view (depending on the track of course).
If I do a single race with AI cars, or an online race, it can drop down to 15fps or lower at times (in-car view), but most of the time I get between 20-30fps @ 1152x864x32.

ESPNSTI: I'm pretty confident you would see improvement as well. The Geforce Ti4400 is an outdated card. Slap something like even a 9800 Pro in there (not the latest and greatest, but still good) and you would see probably like 70fps. My brother was running a 9800 pro and a 1.0 duron and that was his results, and your processor is quite a bit better than that.

 

[bihus]

I saw 70fps yesterday, don't know what were the numbers during the race, but I don't think they went under 40, and I only have a Ti4200.

 

[ESPNSTI]

I saw 70fps yesterday, don't know what were the numbers during the race, but I don't think they went under 40, and I only have a Ti4200.

How fast is your cpu?

 

[pdanev]

I get 70+ in single player/hot lapping as well, but my bet is around 30ish during race.

 

[bihus]

Athlon XP 2.4+