[bored]

Half life 2 comes out at the end of this month and it looks brilliant but I need a new graphics so what is the best and not too expensive graphics card

[Hollywood]

You can get an ATI Radeon 9800 for under $200.00 and overclock it to the specs of a 9800 pro. It is definitely your best bet right now for that price, because the GeForce FX cards are very suspect as of late.

[ED!]

Or save yourself the trouble and just get a GeForce4 4600 128ddr. Will more than handle HL2.

[ShagNasty]

[quote:b88bc]Or save yourself the trouble and just get a GeForce4 4600 128ddr. Will more than handle HL2[/quote:b88bc]


I have a gforce4 ti 4200 128ddr. and it seems to hadle all my games just fine. that includes star wars galaxies. my friend has a ati 9600 and we get the same fps.

[Hollywood]

[quote="ED!":9a871]Or save yourself the trouble and just get a GeForce4 4600 128ddr. Will more than handle HL2.[/quote:9a871]

ED the ti4600 is not a DirectX 9 supported card. Try running mad onion 3dmark03 on it with DirectX 9 installed and check the FPS when the DX9 demos start. I had a 4600 and the FPS were in the 5-10 range, when I switched to the 9700 pro the FPS went up to around 30 at 1024x768.

I would go with at least an ATI 9700/pro if you want to play HL2.

[ShagNasty]

I have dirx 9.1 or what ever it works fine. maybe you needed new nvidea drivers.

[Hollywood]

Yes it works with DX 9, but the GeForce cards before the FX series do not support the code. Therefore any game written for DirectX 9 will not be supported. How would you know if it works unless you haven't played any games written for DX 9? Try playing some of the upcoming games and see what kind of performance you get.

[1080jibber]

9700 pro is the way too go, plus the price is allright

[ED!]

Midnight Club 2 etc works fine.

[Hollywood]

[quote="ED!":0846c]Midnight Club 2 etc works fine.[/quote:0846c]

I'm not sure if that game was written strictly for Dx9, but unfortunately Nvidia owners that own any of the"older" cards, and even the ti4600 is considered old now compared to the newer technology, are going to see some pretty poor performance from the newer games because of the lack of DX9 compatibility. The games will run though, but try benchmarking a ti4600 against a 9700 pro and increase the resolution. The ti4600 will decrease in performance by about half and the 9700 pro's performance will stay the same.

The reason behind this is the Hyperz III, which decreases the load on memory bandwidth.

"The technology uses the depth, or Z dimension, of components in a 3D image to ensure objects to the front of the image get priority. Hidden or occluded pixels won't be seen, so they need to be identified and then ignored."

I believe the FX series cards use a similar technology which really increases performance when trying to increase your graphics settings. This coupled with lack of DirectX 9 support is going to result in many Nvidia owners complaining in the coming months because their cards are going to be showing poor performance.

[ED!]

MC2 was written for dx9. It wont install without it. Granted HL2 will be more graphically intensive, but before rushing out to plunk down for a 200-300 dollar card, I'll see what my 4600 can do.

[ninty]

[quote:7c32a]The minimum system specs are currently targeted at a 700 MHz PC with 128 MB RAM and a DX6-level video card TNT2 etc, meaning you won't need a supercomputer to run Half-Life 2.

But on the machine above don't expect to see reflective water,dynamic shadows and bump-mapped textures. The game running at maximum detail 50/60 fps, machine required for this is approx 1600Mhz cpu, 256 mb ram, GeForce4 Ti card.

In real life you need the best from a new game so I would recommend a 2000 cpu, 512 mb ram, GeForce4 Ti4800 128 ddr or ATI Radeon equivalent.
The more power the better but not essential with this game.



[/quote:7c32a]

[Cool Fool]

You can still run Half Life 2 with a GF4 TI4600, but you'll have to turn the DirectX 9 video card setting off