LOTRO graphics card

Reply to message from Peter Huebner < 03:02:44) about "Re: LOTRO graphics card":

PH PH
PH PH PH
She said PCI! The 4200i is AGP already.

PH PH PH PH PH
PH
PH PH PH PH
Bye
Dirk Pfeiffer <

Reality is something for noobs that can't handle Computergames!

Posted with Qusnetsoft NewsReader 2.2.0.8

...
| My sister has been playing LOTRO on her Dell 2400 but has got to the
| point that when she is in Bree she absolutely can't move. Her computer
| has online graphics only and 512 memory and she says she has everything
| turned down as far as it will go graphics wise. She doesn't have a lot
| to choose from as far as graphic cards go because her computer will only
| take a PCI. Would an ATI Radeon 9250 256MB 256 MB PCI be good for
| LOTRO? I thought maybe this and a little more memory might make it work
| better for her. Or any other suggestions? She can play the game as
| long as she stays out of Bree.
|

Well, if it helps any, I can speak from actual experience in this case...
My son has an old Dimension 2450, and he was having graphics issues playing
some of his older games such as KOTOR and Morrowind. I got him a PCI
version of the ATI Radeon 9250, which we put in and promptly found that the
original Dell power supply was not nearly enough to drive it, so I ended up
getting a 400W power supply to pop in there too (had it left over from my
old system when I upgraded it). With that in place, we loaded the drivers,
went through some interesting flipping back and forth to finally get the
integrated video to shut off and not default in, then he was up and
running...

On the older games, the performance jumped quite a bit. We had doubled his
memory to 1 Gig prior to this, which made some improvements, but the
addition of the graphics card had much higher results. He was able to bump
up textures and details and not get too much lag. So it helped on older
games, that's the good news.

Now for the bad news... It still sucks for newer games (which we knew it
would from the start). We tried a few newer titles like Guild Wars and City
of Heroes, and while it did make a minor improvement in playing speed, it
still was well below par for playability. The problem is that the PCI bus
is just not optimized for the intense data flow required for graphics
crunching. Add to that the pretty crappy CPU on the motherboard, and you
have some hardcore issues keeping up with today's graphics-intensive stuff.
Don't get me wrong, he could still play those games to a degree, but at
pretty low resolutions with little to no detail. Sometimes they worked just
fine at higher levels/resolutions, but running into a busy environment with
other players/NPCs/enemies/etc. just brought the poor little machine to its
knees.

The verdict? Well, I'd try RAM first, if you can find some cheap stuff...
It will make that 2400 run alot faster in almost everything, not just the
games... If you've got a store with a good return policy, you can try the
PCI video to see if it helps beyond that - it's relatively inexpensive, and
can make a decent "make it work a little longer till we replace it" upgrade.
If you are buying it at an electronics shop, though, don't let them talk you
into the newer ATI (the X1550 I think?). I went through it with the
salesman, and his pitch was "it's the only PCI card using the newer ATI
engine, and is Vista compatible" or something along those lines. At 3 times
the price of the 9250, I couldn't see investing in a card that would still
be throttled by a slow CPU/motherboard, and the salesman even admitted it
will never play the newer games well. Pretty much reminded me of paying
lots of money for the best speedboat on the market, then sticking it in a
tiny little pond...

And just something else to consider - I just put a new motherboard, CPU,
RAM, and PCI-express video card into a friend's old Dell 2400, with a total
cost of about $250, and it has about 1000% performance boost. Used base to
middle-of-the-road AMD processor and nvidia graphics card, nothing special,
but it screams compared to what the 2400 could do... My son's computer is
next for the same treatment... Oh, and now those computers are actually
upgradable!

Thus ends my tale of Dell upgrades... We now return you to your regularly
scheduled programming...

CoinSpin

Cringe! I assume this is a "Dell Dimension 2400" then? Someone should
be burnt at a stake for manufacturing a machine without AGP or PCI-E
x16 slot :-)

That narrows down the choices a LOT, but I see there's a couple X1550
256MB PCI cards out there. Not a high-end card by any means, but at
least it's not a total loss like the 9250 (X1550 is *two* generations
newer and even when both were new it was positioned slightly higher!).
The PCI bus will limit the X1550 a bit but still.

The X1550 PCI cards I found does have a fan though which the 9250
don't, apparently there are fanless X1550 AGP/PCI-E cards so it can't
use that much power.

And get the machine up to at least 1 GB, Dell says it only handles up
to 512MB stick but the chipset and memory manufacturer says 1GB
(PC2700/PC3200) sticks will also work and they're a LOT more reliable
on this.

So if the machines only has one 512MB stick I probably would have
bought a 1GB stick (for 1.5GB), if it has 2x256MB the choice between
2x512MB, 1x1GB (plus one of the original 256MB) and 2x1GB gets a lot
harder.

Do remember running memtest86 for a few hours or a night after
adding/changing memory, and if you get failures swap slots and try
again! (A few motherboard BIOS pick "timing" from the first or last
stick, and you want it to pick the slower of the two to avoid errors).

Getting the memory up to AT LEAST 1 GB is probably more important than
the graphics card!, though usually one can get a hint on which is
important for a give game by listening on the hard disk.

It depends on the budget, the X1550 adds a bit ($40-$50) to the
upgrade. 1GB extra plus 9250 is probably better than X1550 without the
memory upgrade (and similar in price).

I can't comment on exactly how LotRO will play afterwards but it
should be a LOT better, perhaps someone who have played it on a
lower-end machine can comment. Even after the memory+X1550 upgrades
it's NOT a high-end PC, it's just as far as you can reasonably get
without replacing the machine.

I didn't know the floaty names would make a differende and I didn't know
about the setting to control how the game does in crowds. We'll try
those things. Thanks for the suggestions!

Paula

Did she try turning down the setting that controls how the game does
crowds? How about hitting N to disable all floating names while she's in
Bree?
--
Michael Cecil aka Turos [Elendilmir]
#
#
#