[Preamble]
I was running into a little trouble running World of Warcraft with the latest expansion earlier today. Pretty sure it was just an overheat, so I shut everything down, opened the case, and use a compressed air can to clear out any dust. I’ve let it sit powered off for a little while and I’m confident that should take care of it.
However, once I turned it back on, I wanted to take care of some other things, so while I was doing that I went to Can You RUN It? (an open-source website that scans your system and compares the hardware with the system requirements for a game of your choice) just for the hell of it. Well I clear the recommended requirements for everything but CPU and graphics card, but both clear minimum so it’s not a big deal either way.
[/Preamble]
What I don’t understand is, under the category for graphics card, it lists the specific attributes for the sysreqs, and I clear all of them even on recommended, but it still says mine fails. The only thing I can think of is the speed of the card (not shown). That or it’s just going off the model number.
Here’s my results:
Recommended: 3D graphics processor with Vertex and Pixel Shader capability with 128 MB VRAM (ATI Radeon X1600 or NVIDIA GeForce 7600 GT class card or better)
You Have: NVIDIA GeForce 6800 Series GPU (GeForce 6800 Ultra)[ul]
[li]Video RAM: Required - 128 MB , You have - 256 MB[/li][li]Video Card 3D Acceleration: Required - Yes , You have - Yes[/li][li]Video HW Transform & Lighting: Required - Yes , You have - Yes[/li][li]Vertex Shader Ver.: Required - 3.0 , You have - 3.0[/li][li]Pixel Shader Ver.: Required - 3.0 , You have - 3.0[/li][/ul]
So unless there’s a performance measure not being displayed, I’m not clear what practical difference exists between the recommended card and mine. Any insights?
There’s more to the video card than what features it supports and how much RAM it’s got - things like the clock speed of the GPU, as you noted, the number of pipelines, RAM clock speed and so on may all be different. A 7600GT will be likely be better than a 6800 in those regards. I don’t have a ton of specs onhand, and nVidia cards come in confusing variety of number/letter combinations (IIRC the 7600GT was the top of the line 7-series chipset while the 7600GS was a low-end card and the “plain” 7600 was in the middle), but I took a quick look at what Newegg has instock and here’s some differences between a 7600GS and a 6800XT (both with 256mb of DDR2 RAM):
That’s just a quick example. If you go to www.tomshardware.com and browse their video card comparisons you will get an enormous amount of detail regarding what card types have what capabilities and how they stack up against each other.
FWIW, right now a “low-end” video card that will absolutely smoke your existing card (or a 7600GT for that matter), can be had very, very cheaply - $50 to $80. Nice wrapup from Tom’s:
Yep, you’re several generations behind the current. Is your card a PCI card or an AGP card? If it’s the latter, it’s obsolete but you should still be able to find a Nvidia 7600 GS or 7800 GS or an ATI 3850 on Ebay.
Note that the Geforce 6800XT was the crippled cheap version of the 6800 line; created to use partially defective chips, rather than throw them away. The 6800 Ultra has 16 pixel pipelines, that run at 400 mhz, and RAM that runs at 1.1 Ghz on a 256 bit bus. The 7600 GT has 12 pixel pipes running at 560 mhz, with 700 mhz RAM on a 128 bit bus. Performance-wise, the two cards are about the same.
It should also be said that current cards don’t use pixel pipelines any more; they use stream processors. And you can’t compare cards directly on number of stream processors either; AMD uses large numbers of relatively simple SPs on their cards, while Nvidia uses a smaller number of more complex SPs.
If you have a PCI-Express slot, then there are plenty of very good options. A Radeon 4670 or Geforce 9600 GSO can be had for $80, and either will massively outperform your current card. Or there is a the Radeon 4830, which can be had for just over a $100 after MIR, which is much faster than the cards above. If you have an AGP slot, then your options are much more limited. Though you can get an AGP Radeon 3850 for $125, it will be a bit slower than the $80 Radeon 4670 mentioned above.
Sorry for not replying sooner; The 15th was my dad’s birthday so I was busy that evening, and I pretty much spent all day Sunday playing WoW. Not an excuse, just the reason why.
Wow, thanks for all the info. Also I didn’t realize I could get something reasonable for such a low price. I knew my card was behind, but I don’t play very many PC games and what I have has generally run pretty well. I haven’t really felt any need to max out the graphics settings in WoW or my other games, which has a lot to do with it. Still, I might just need to start shopping for a new Nvidia card now.
My memory’s a little fuzzy on some of my system specs, I’d need to do a little research before I could give you more than very basic info. It’s an Alienware desktop from '05. Not the wisest investment, I know, but it’s been a good computer without any real problems*.
*It overheated once or twice during one weekend over a year back because I had set it up in a spot with bad ventilation until some dopers I was playing CoH with explained what was wrong (hey Dertrihs & Culex!). The recent incident was just because I went too long without dusting, and since my cat’s been up around the desk a lot lately her hair is getting all over everything.
just wanted to reiterate that you really need to determine whether your graphics slot is PCI-E or AGP, as I believe the 6800Ultra came in both versions.
You might want to read your second tomshardware link a little more carefully, as the 7600GT and the 6800ultra are on the same “rung” of the graphics card hierarchy chart
Benchmarks like this one indicate that they perform just a couple frames differently. I seriously doubt that you’re going to be able to notice any visual difference between the two in World of Warcraft.
Is there a way to tell which I have without opening my case? I bought my computer in late 2005, it’s an HP Pavilion a1230n with an AMD 3700 processor and a gig of RAM. I suppose I could google it. I need a new video card. This machine came with a Radeon Express card with 256MB RAM, and it’s a POS.
A quick google reveals that your computer does have a PCI-E slot, so you are in luck. Also, the Radeon Express graphics is comes with is not a card, it is integrated into the motherboard, which is why it is so crappy. Though to be fair, the Radeon Express 200M was the fastest integrated video around in that time frame.
Does that mean that if I simply plug a new card into the PCI slot that it will “override” the integrated one (I’m assuming “integrated” in this sense means I can’t remove it)?
Also, how can I be sure that these cards will work for my computer? I’m not ready to buy a new machine yet but I figure if I get 2 more GB’s of RAM and a new video card, I should be good for a couple more years.
Any thoughts? Worried about that power supply issue. I don’t want to just arbitrarily buy one only to find out I cannot power it or that it won’t work.
You may have to change setting in your bios in order to bypass the integrated in GPU chip. Most BIOS will automatically detect this, but if you find the monitor plugged into the new card is not turning on, simply hook it up to the old VGA port, go into your BIOS (the boot up screen should instruct you on how you can enter the BIOS. It’s usually done by pressing the delete key). The dig around your setting until you find the one that allows you to choose between integrated video or PCI Express.