What's the best low-graphics FPS right now? [Archive]

AngryCola

10-03-2005, 06:51 PM

Buster and Larimani gave you pretty much the best answers that you're going to get. However, you might also try one of the Unreal Tournament games.

Also, if you're looking for an older first-person game which doesn't exactly conform to one particular genre, I highly recommend System Shock 2. Even though it's been more than a few years since its release, it is still one of the best games I have ever played. You can probably find it for an insanely cheap price.

WackityWhiz

10-03-2005, 06:54 PM

There's a game called Blood that is pretty entertaining. It's been about 6 years since i've played, I'm sure you could just download it at this point.

In the unreal tournament games, I've only played 2003 and I like it a lot.

AngryCola

10-03-2005, 06:55 PM

[ QUOTE ]
you can pick up a decent graphics card for under $100 so my vote is for far cry and a vid card.

[/ QUOTE ]

Umm... no vid. card under $100 is going to run Far Cry all that well, or be at all worth the investment. If you're going to buy a new card, try to look for the models ~$200. The GeForce 6600 GTs aren't too bad for that price range.

One of the problems with suggesting a new card is that it may not speed up his gaming in a significant way. Sure, games will usually look better, but they may end up running just as poorly. Often times a new card just highlights all the bottlenecks in older systems.

astroglide

10-03-2005, 07:19 PM

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814102595 is the play if you're floating around $200.

a simple bios flash will open up all 16 pipelines, and it easily runs at 850 speeds.

joshman1204

10-03-2005, 07:20 PM

Please do not buy an ATI card, this will be the worst money you ever spend!

ucfryan

10-03-2005, 08:08 PM

CS.

exist

10-03-2005, 08:24 PM

Far Cry.

chisness

10-03-2005, 08:33 PM

cs cs cs

stabn

10-03-2005, 08:33 PM

[ QUOTE ]
Far Cry.

[/ QUOTE ]

Dude...

Blarg

10-03-2005, 08:51 PM

Couldn't possibly be further from the truth. This is an example of either small sample size or fanboi talk.

ATI's have been very well regarded for many years, and in fact until the new Nvidia's came out, were in fact at the top of virtually every magazine and web site's choices for best cards, nearly always beating Nvidia.

The truth is, both companies make great cards. But you do have some weirdness attached, like how Mac enthusiasts sometimes think not having a PC is almost a religious or moral choice or something, and say all PC's suck.

stabn

10-03-2005, 08:57 PM

[ QUOTE ]
Couldn't possibly be further from the truth. This is an example of either small sample size or fanboi talk.

ATI's have been very well regarded for many years, and in fact until the new Nvidia's came out, were in fact at the top of virtually every magazine and web site's choices for best cards, nearly always beating Nvidia.

The truth is, both companies make great cards. But you do have some weirdness attached, like how Mac enthusiasts sometimes think not having a PC is almost a religious or moral choice or something, and say all PC's suck.

[/ QUOTE ]

I agree with most of this except for the fact that ATI's drivers blow. They have gotten better, but specifially most of the 8x and 9x drivers were horrible.

AngryCola

10-03-2005, 09:09 PM

[ QUOTE ]
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814102595 is the play if you're floating around $200.

[/ QUOTE ]

I disagree with this, but one could do a lot worse than the card you are suggesting. It should also be mentioned that the OP probably doesn't have PCI Express.

Oh, and Stabn is right about ATI's drivers. Yeah, they have gotten better, but I still trust Nvidia to deal with drivers in a much better way than ATI.

astroglide

10-03-2005, 09:28 PM

i like nvidia's drivers better too. i'm typing this on a 6600GT, but my work system has a 9800PRO and it's fine.

as far as 'disagreeing with this', what does nvidia have that's close to an X850 XT PE for $230? the 6800GT is $300.

if you google 'x800gto2' you'll see all the discussions about it.

Blarg

10-03-2005, 09:54 PM

I haven't had any driver problems with my ATI 9800 Pro. My system has been very stable and seems to look good to me, though it's a couple generations behind by now.

I've owned mostly Nvidia's up until now, and liked them too.

I've read Boot magazine saying that the best bargains was one of the new NVidia's, a bit below their top end.

astroglide

10-05-2005, 01:56 PM

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814102595

it's down to $199 now

10-05-2005, 02:07 PM

Have to go the old DOOM wads (Doom II, Evilution, Plutonia) with the Doomsday Engine (http://www.doomsdayhq.com/jdoom.php). Basically make the old game look great, not too GPU intensive.

10-05-2005, 02:10 PM

BF 1942. Load up the jeep with dynamite and step on the gas.

krimson

10-05-2005, 02:29 PM

[ QUOTE ]
Have to go the old DOOM wads (Doom II, Evilution, Plutonia) with the Doomsday Engine (http://www.doomsdayhq.com/jdoom.php). Basically make the old game look great, not too GPU intensive.

[/ QUOTE ]

In the original doom you couldn't use the mouse to look up and down, does the mouse/keyboard work like standard games in this engine?

10-05-2005, 02:49 PM

Yes. It's got every mod imaginable, including jumping.

In the graphics department, balls of fire cast 3D rendered light onto onto walls as they move along, lamps glow, blood splatters according a 3D particle model (rockets are great), slime glows, etc. The graphics and textures are more detailed and smoother, sounds are in 3D.

handsome

10-05-2005, 03:53 PM

UPDATE: I started playing CS yesterday... I suck balls and it got boring real quick. I'll give HL2 a shot later.

AngryCola

10-05-2005, 04:27 PM

[ QUOTE ]
I'll give HL2 a shot later.

[/ QUOTE ]

HL2? You couldn't mean anything other than Half-Life:2, right?
I thought you were looking for "low-graphics FPS" games. /images/graemlins/confused.gif

stabn

10-05-2005, 04:31 PM

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
I'll give HL2 a shot later.

[/ QUOTE ]

HL2? You couldn't mean anything other than Half-Life:2, right?
I thought you were looking for "low-graphics FPS" games. /images/graemlins/confused.gif

[/ QUOTE ]

It will never load for him anyway...

Matt Flynn

10-05-2005, 04:31 PM

once upon a time i invested in graphics card companies. so when the nVidia card the OP posted about hit the market yielding an unreal trillion triangles a second, i drove over to CompUsa and got one. even had them put it in, which is about the biggest waste of $10 ever.

on the drive home, i realized i no longer play video games and had nothing that could remotely demonstrate the thing. so i went back and got Far Cry. at the checkout counter, i was thinking about that semester i lost to Civilization: Call to Power and decide my life could not afford another addiction, so i put Far Cry back and went home empty-handed. still have no clue how good the card is.

BUT, i am now thinking about getting a 4-chip commercial board with 4 or 8 gigs of memory for database crunching. if i get that i have to get Far Cry, because with the 256meg GeForce4 i would have the best private gaming system in Raleigh.

i will miss my wife.

AngryCola

10-05-2005, 04:32 PM

[ QUOTE ]
as far as 'disagreeing with this', what does nvidia have that's close to an X850 XT PE for $230? the 6800GT is $300.

[/ QUOTE ]

Well, to be honest, I just don't like ATI all that much. /images/graemlins/smirk.gif

You may be right about it being the best value around $200, but I would rather save another $100 for a 6800. Without the extra hundred, I would probably still go with the BFG 6600 GT. Maybe it's silly, but I've had a few bad experiences with ATI.

astroglide

10-05-2005, 04:47 PM

[ QUOTE ]
even had them put it in, which is about the biggest waste of $10 ever

[/ QUOTE ]

how did you get compusa to do an install for $10?

[ QUOTE ]
BUT, i am now thinking about getting a 4-chip commercial board with 4 or 8 gigs of memory for database crunching. if i get that i have to get Far Cry, because with the 256meg GeForce4 i would have the best private gaming system in Raleigh.

[/ QUOTE ]

99.99% of games are single-threaded, so they won't benefit at all from multiple cpus/cores/hyperthreading. the extra ram won't improve the experience either, unless you're doing something like installing it to a ramdrive just to speed up level loads. above-standard amounts of video ram isn't a material factor in performance, either, it's a property of the gpu. somebody with a single identical cpu, 512MB of ram, and a 128MB video card with a faster gpu will generally do better.

now that that's settled, when can i expect a thank you card from your wife?

astroglide

10-05-2005, 04:52 PM

[ QUOTE ]
You may be right about it being the best value around $200, but I would rather save another $100 for a 6800.

[/ QUOTE ]

a straight 6800? that would be crazy.

Freakin

10-05-2005, 04:59 PM

Return to Castle Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory

AngryCola

10-05-2005, 05:04 PM

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
You may be right about it being the best value around $200, but I would rather save another $100 for a 6800.

[/ QUOTE ]

a straight 6800? that would be crazy.

[/ QUOTE ]

Well, although I only wrote it as a "6800," I actually meant the GT.

astroglide

10-05-2005, 05:36 PM

you're still looking at parity on doom 3 engine games (it doesn't look like it's going to be a popular engine), and x850 domination on the others. it's not close between the two at the same price, but at a 50% markup it's a really bad decision unless ati is responsible for the death of your family.

AngryCola

10-05-2005, 05:40 PM

[ QUOTE ]
x850 domination on the others.

[/ QUOTE ]

Since I'm obviously soomewhat out of touch when it comes to current ATI cards, could you enlighten me as to whether or not the x850 supports shader 3? That's been one of my problems with the last generation or so of ATI cards.

Nvidia cards saw a massive improvement in Far Cry when the game's devs put out a patch to take advantage of shader 3. Me thinks that won't be the last time the shader 3 advantage is used by devs.

[ QUOTE ]
unless ati is responsible for the death of your family.

[/ QUOTE ]

I don't like to talk about that.

astroglide

10-05-2005, 05:46 PM

[ QUOTE ]
Since I'm obviously soomewhat out of touch when it comes to current cards, could you enlighten me as to whether or not the x850 supports shader 3?

[/ QUOTE ]

no it doesn't. nvidia has been going apeshit about shader 3 for a long time and there still really aren't any games that are really using it. people aren't going to write themselves out of a market by crippling games on a huge percentage of the cards out there and they generally don't waste their time with vendor-specific (for the time being with mass market cards) optimizations unless they have a formal partnership with them.

it's the same reason video ram never really matters in the present tense because people will still keep low-volume compressed textures in order to remain playable on all of the cards. when all the cards are 64MB, 128MB doesn't help. when all the cards are 128MB, 256MB doesn't help, etc. the difference is usually marginal.

astroglide

10-05-2005, 05:50 PM

far cry gives a crap because crytek is still considered small potatoes in the fps engine market (compared to id and valve). they want to be known for cutting-edge everything, used in every benchmark, etc so with every feature added to a video card they produce a patch to support it. they're basically alone in this regard.

AngryCola

10-05-2005, 05:52 PM

[ QUOTE ]

no it doesn't.

[/ QUOTE ]

Well, that's another thing I don't like then. I concede that you may be completely right about everything discussed in this thread, but I do believe that shader 3 will matter more in the next couple of years than you think. As I said, Far Cry has already shown a big improvement on Nvidia cards using shader 3. Whether they're currently "alone" doesn't much matter to me here. It's the actual improvement shown that makes me a believer.

If I'm wrong, well, I can live with that. /images/graemlins/grin.gif

[ QUOTE ]
it's the same reason video ram never really matters in the present tense because people will still keep low-volume compressed textures in order to remain playable on all of the cards.

[/ QUOTE ]

Yeah, I'm aware of this. That's one of the reasons I saw no problem with recommending the BFG 6600 GT OC.

astroglide

10-05-2005, 06:07 PM

the big effect of ps3.0 is performance optimization, not enhanced visual quality. the 850 is a faster card and costs $100 less, so even on a ps3.0-supporting game it's going to render the same detail using ps2.0 extremely quick.

are you thinking about those side-by-side far cry pictures of "2.0 vs 3.0" that were put out?

all modern games will eventually use 3.0, it doesn't make a difference in what you buy today unless you plan on using the same video card for 3 years or something. and that would be in an apples-to-apples situation where one card is as fast as the other, costs the same, and one supports ps3.0 and the other doesn't. in this case the 850 is way cheaper and faster, it's not a remotely close decision. "i'll pay $100 more so everything will be slower today, but maybe in a year or so this card might be as fast on new games?"

astroglide

10-05-2005, 06:11 PM

here's the interview: http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=36&type=expert

7) What aspects of the screenshots seen at the launch event are specific examples of the flexibility and power of Shader 3.0?

In current engine there are no visible difference between PS2.0 and PS3.0. PS3.0 is used automatically for per-pixel lighting depending on some conditions to improve speed of rendering.

Matt Flynn

10-05-2005, 06:43 PM

[ QUOTE ]
how did you get compusa to do an install for $10?

[/ QUOTE ]

affable intimidation.

[ QUOTE ]
99.99% of games are single-threaded, so they won't benefit at all from multiple cpus/cores/hyperthreading. the extra ram won't improve the experience either, unless you're doing something like installing it to a ramdrive just to speed up level loads. above-standard amounts of video ram isn't a material factor in performance, either, it's a property of the gpu. somebody with a single identical cpu, 512MB of ram, and a 128MB video card with a faster gpu will generally do better.

now that that's settled, when can i expect a thank you card from your wife?

[/ QUOTE ]

there go my plans for world domination. back to overclocking.

p.s. the wife says THANKS.