ATI Radeon 9600 Pro vs. Nvidia Geforce 7800 GS

[Spartos]

Like so many others, I've been doing a lot of research into diferent ways to make Medieval 2 run smoother on top end graphics. Unfortunately, for people like me who got hosed into buying out-dated AGP systems instead of the latest PCIe ones, there's only so much we can do to improve performance. I've read a lot about the Nvidia Geforce 7800 GS, which claims to be the best AGP card out there. So my question is for anyone who has the 7800 GS and can tell me about the performance benefits, or someone who is knowledgable in regards to video cards and can tell me how much of a boost I'll get (if any at all). Would it just be better to upgrade to a motherboard with PCIe slot (or a brand new system)?

System specs as follows...

OS: Windows XP Home
Processor: Intel Pentium 4 3.2 GHZ
1 GIG DDR RAM
ATI Radeon 9600 pro (AGP) 256 MB

Thanks for the help.

[Boudicca]

I have the 7800 GS XFX with 256 MB and I had an ATI 9600XT before. It was a change from 5600 3DMark2003 to 13200 3DMarks 2003.

MTW 2 runs like a baby for me. I can run it on 1280x1024 with all settings maxed out. But I may only use Anti Aliasing 2x.

Oblivion runs smoothly on highest settings. It ran on lowest settings with my 9600XT and is now auto detected ultra high.

So it was quite a change for me. The card is worth the money if you ask me. I use the XFX for a little extra speed.

I have an
AMD 64 3400+
1024 MB Ram (DDR 400)
Windows XP Home

P. S.: I recently added another GB of Ram (just a week ago). It made things smoother once again. But I think that the bottleneck of my PC really is my processor at the moment. Unfortunately for my board (Asus K8V SE Deluxe) I am maxed out...

P. P. S. Welcome to TWC. I hope you'll like it here.

[Spartos]

Thanks a lot for the quick response, I'm very pleased to here that the card makes that much of a difference. I'll definetely be ordering it soon. Although my proccessor and ram isn't quite up to par with yours, I believe my motherboard will support other upgrades, so Ishould soon have a M2:TW running brilliantly. Again, thanks for the help.

[MunichRules]

I have the 7800 GS XFX with 256 MB and I had an ATI 9600XT before. It was a change from 5600 3DMark2003 to 13200 3DMarks 2003.

so this shows that 3DMarks results are also very dependent on the cpu you have !!!!
I have a AMD XP 3000+ and 1 GB DDR 400 Ram with a ATI 9600 Pro and i reach 3614 at the default 3DMarks2003 results !! The performance difference of Pro to XT is not more than 15%. So the rest is all cpu !!!!!

So you can only compare graphic performance under same cpu and Ram condition !!!!!!

[garion333]

^^^ Good point. Boudicca has a slightly better CPU than you do, but not by much.

In the long run, you may be better off just building a new rig now. RAM is expensive and so is the card you're talking about. You could easily spend $400 and get minimal results.

If your CPU is bottlenecking you, an upgrade at the videocard and RAM level isn't going to do as much in M2:TW as in, say, Quake 4. M2 is graphic intense, but it puts a heavy load on everything else.

Oh, and there is the ever-present "Do I have enough power to run everything" that you may run in to.