Graphics Card question

Revolte - Heavens Tear
Revolte - Heavens Tear Posts: 314 Arc User
edited May 2009 in Support Desk
I dont believe I am using an nvidia card, however there are downloads for it from hp for my model, as well as one for Mobile Intel(R) 965 Express Chipset Family, wich is the one I have. I am wondering if anyone knows if I would have to buy a new card all together to get better gaming graphics or not.

I pretty much do fine unless there are alot of people in one spot and at that point i can just turn off shadows, but other then that i can have one of two choices.

1. distance on low and water on high

2. water on high and distance on low

Its not a HUGE deal but i wouldnt mind having a way to better how my pc handles the graphics, wich will allow me to play faster as well.
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Post edited by Revolte - Heavens Tear on

Comments

  • Xenaaah - Heavens Tear
    Xenaaah - Heavens Tear Posts: 534 Arc User
    edited May 2009
    Get a card. I've been using a PC with a video chip. A card will make the game play better. You can get a decent one for a good price. Get more ram too if you need it.
  • Kurimao - Lost City
    Kurimao - Lost City Posts: 17 Arc User
    edited May 2009
    if you are using an onboard graphics card that will really happen even if u add more rams to you rig...

    adding a Graphics card would certainly enhance gaming experiences as it will have a dedicated GPU to handle your graphic...
    i would recomend an NVdia 8 series or ATI 4000 series or higher.

    im using and NVdia 8600GT but still lags in archo at very high details...
    turning off v-sync will help too a lot
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  • Alariciz - Dreamweaver
    Alariciz - Dreamweaver Posts: 10 Arc User
    edited May 2009
    drivers wont help with those issues, drivers only really help if you are having compatibility problems. Getting a new card will help a lot, espcially if your using onboard graphics. You can get a big improvement relativly cheaply say 50-100$, checks out newegg.com for good deals, also make sure what kind of gpu slot you have, newer computer probably pci-express, system more then 1-2 years old probably agp type slot. memory will improve overall smoothness of game and speed, if i had choice id get the gpu though, since the newer ones have onboard memory which will cover both ends espcially as it is dedicated, if ur running other background programs however get both ram and gpu
  • Revolte - Heavens Tear
    Revolte - Heavens Tear Posts: 314 Arc User
    edited May 2009
    mmk good to know. I have no money for that yet but im looking for a job tommarrow. Like i said though its not a huge problem, im just always looking for a way to make things a little better. But good to know. Id get one for my birthday but im ganna get a ps3 :)
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  • Alariciz - Dreamweaver
    Alariciz - Dreamweaver Posts: 10 Arc User
    edited May 2009
    if the problems not that bad, i would just wait and get a new comp when u can instead of dumping money for a graphics card alone, for $300-400 you can a really smooth system..keep in mind ur graphics will only really be as good as you monitor as well, so best to look for a pretty basic system with a decent graphics card, and really nice monitor...
  • Kurimao - Lost City
    Kurimao - Lost City Posts: 17 Arc User
    edited May 2009
    Actually playing games gives the stress to the graphics card... monitor has nothing to do with gaming performance of the rig.
    as for the monitor, the bigger the monitor the more powerful your Graphics card must be just so to support the native resolution.
    Adding a Graphics card to an old rig is much cheaper and practical than getting a whole system, unless you have the monies to spare or an enthusiast. (as long as your using a PCI-E)
    updating the driver certainly help with the performance as it has new sets of instructions and bug fixes.
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  • Alariciz - Dreamweaver
    Alariciz - Dreamweaver Posts: 10 Arc User
    edited May 2009
    Actually playing games gives the stress to the graphics card... monitor has nothing to do with gaming performance of the rig.
    as for the monitor, the bigger the monitor the more powerful your Graphics card must be just so to support the native resolution.
    Adding a Graphics card to an old rig is much cheaper and practical than getting a whole system, unless you have the monies to spare or an enthusiast. (as long as your using a PCI-E)
    updating the driver certainly help with the performance as it has new sets of instructions and bug fixes.


    yeah i didnt mean monitor improves performance, but imo having a good graphics card and crappy little monitor is a waste of money, yes i 50$ gpu will improve your performance a lot, but for 350$ u can get a whle new system with 17-20 inch flat screen is a much better value..drivers will help a lot if u have a newer/after market gpu, but for imbedded/system graphics they dont really update them and they wont really improve performance much if there is one, they may fix bugs/comptability as i said, but they certainly wont address his problem of lag when theres a lot players onscreen..just trying to say that rather then spend 50-100$ on a new gpu for a older system (dont know if this was case here) it makes more sense to save a little and update the whole system espcially as older/weak systems are rapidly becoming obselete to the newer games
  • surtr
    surtr Posts: 3,378 Perfect World Employee
    edited May 2009
    A lot of times, actually, adding more RAM can provide an even bigger boost in power for less money. This is especially true if the only time you have lag is when there are a lot of characters around.
    ==/Senior QA Lead/==

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    The gods' swords shine in the darkness, like stars in the night
    Mountains collapse into rubble and fiends shall fall
    Man walks the road to ruin as the sky splits in two

  • Revolte - Heavens Tear
    Revolte - Heavens Tear Posts: 314 Arc User
    edited May 2009
    Surtr wrote: »
    A lot of times, actually, adding more RAM can provide an even bigger boost in power for less money. This is especially true if the only time you have lag is when there are a lot of characters around.

    also good to know lol.

    It seems to me that its a textural issue more so then it is an amount of people issue, wich might be obvious but idk lol.
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  • Alariciz - Dreamweaver
    Alariciz - Dreamweaver Posts: 10 Arc User
    edited May 2009
    Surtr wrote: »
    A lot of times, actually, adding more RAM can provide an even bigger boost in power for less money. This is especially true if the only time you have lag is when there are a lot of characters around.

    yes it depends really on where his system is lacking most and where his bottlenecks are. in the casr where someone has embedded graphics though, id say get the card as hed probably still be bottlenecked even with additional ram becuase of the embedded graphics, and most card today have at least 256 dedicated gpu memory

    i thoought he said he had issues when a lot of ppl are around and then he has to turn off shadows or turn down distance settings, which would indicate to me a lack of gpu processing power..point is with embedded graphics which have no dedicated memory and run the off comps processor u will mostly have to run a minimum settings depending on the build of the rest of your system...adding ram will help but not as much as a after market card in this case..
  • Revolte - Heavens Tear
    Revolte - Heavens Tear Posts: 314 Arc User
    edited May 2009
    if it helps i have NO issue with eather saga with full graphics.
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  • Alariciz - Dreamweaver
    Alariciz - Dreamweaver Posts: 10 Arc User
    edited May 2009
    you could try running task manager and shut down any non system programs to free up memory, anti virus is usualy a system hog.....what are ur system specs..i dont play ether saga but i think its more cartoonish? probably is less demanding graphically then pw
  • surtr
    surtr Posts: 3,378 Perfect World Employee
    edited May 2009
    Both games run off the same engine and have about the same system requirements.
    ==/Senior QA Lead/==

    Surtr from the south wielding fire
    The gods' swords shine in the darkness, like stars in the night
    Mountains collapse into rubble and fiends shall fall
    Man walks the road to ruin as the sky splits in two

  • darthpanda16
    darthpanda16 Posts: 9,471 Arc User
    edited May 2009
    That OTHER game of ours does use less geometry and less detailed textures then PWI in most areas of the game.

    Running on minimum settings with an integrated video chipset (ESPECIALLY INTEL ONES, IMHO) may have to be your only choice.
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  • FuRiouS_One - Sanctuary
    FuRiouS_One - Sanctuary Posts: 39 Arc User
    edited May 2009
    You can run this game on an on board graphics card just fine, the problem is this game only uses a single core on the processor and most of us now days have a dual core or better but yet the game will only use 1 core. This is where you lag is coming from when multiple players are around expesualy in arch.

    For those that still runa single core processor they will benifit more having no lag as every bit of the processor is being used to run the game. For those running dual cores or better if it isnt a 3.0 gig or better you will suffer in heavy populater areas as the game will only be using 1.0 gig of processing speed or lower depending on what processor you have.

    The funny thing is i use to play lord of the rings online and age of conan both of which are 10 times better in graphics quality then this game and both ran a lot smoother cause they utilized the full potential of the processors power.

    my rig isnt the greatest but still able to run DX10 games just fine
    AMD athalon 64 X2 4400+ 2.3 gig
    9800GT 512 meg Nvidia
    3gig DDR2 Ram

    LOTRO - DX10 max graphics - 30-45 FPS (frame per second)
    Age of Conan - DX10 max graphics - 25-40 FPS
    Perfect World - DX8 max graphics 5 (in arch)- 40 (non arch) FPS

    So with that said if you want to try and reduce lag dont bother upgrading your video card as it wont help much. Invest in a better processor such as 3.0 gig or higher dual core or just revert back to a single core 2.6+ if you only play this game.
  • Revolte - Heavens Tear
    Revolte - Heavens Tear Posts: 314 Arc User
    edited May 2009
    That OTHER game of ours does use less geometry and less detailed textures then PWI in most areas of the game.

    Running on minimum settings with an integrated video chipset (ESPECIALLY INTEL ONES, IMHO) may have to be your only choice.

    only for water and distance though and i still have a choice on having one of the two on high and the other on low everything else is on high, the only two things i keep off is warping and defraction(god i hope thats the right name lol ) oh and vsync
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  • Alariciz - Dreamweaver
    Alariciz - Dreamweaver Posts: 10 Arc User
    edited May 2009
    i think it is bad advice to say he needs a new cpu verse gpu, if he has embedded graphics his first bottle neck is at the gpu, any decent gpu say like a 9500gt---->9800gt has its own cpu dedicated for games and its own ram dedicated for games which will take the load of his cpu..any system which has embedded grapihcs is probably not running dual core cpu so i doubt this is the problem..yes you can run the game relatively well with onboard graphics with all settings down, but if want performance & more detailed graphics higher resolutions you need a graphics card, buying a cpu will help performance but a gpu is dedicated and has the specific architecture for processing graphics data which a cpu does not have...this is why u can not run a monitor without some form of either onboard or slot based graphics, a cpu can not efficiently process this type of information. now if u have a great graphics card and crappy cpu and want to really get the best performance, then ur bottleneck would be the processor and u would want to get a better cpu to further improve performance by better processing non graphical data from the game, but i dont think this is his issue..after that u may want better loading times so u would get a faster hard drive..but with games, ur best performance boost if ur talking about system with onbaord graphics would be first to get a dedicated gpu..he said he has and HP, my guess is its probably a single core 2.4-3.0, with 512-1gig ram, and the onboard graphics, definately want new gpu as rest of specs are just fine for this game
  • FuRiouS_One - Sanctuary
    FuRiouS_One - Sanctuary Posts: 39 Arc User
    edited May 2009
    onboard graphics are not good for this game, the whole point of his question was that he was getting lag in crowded areas and had to turn down other settings, i myself sometimes play on a laptop at work with onboard graphics, and i need everything tuned all the way down for smooth game play, in crowded areas it lags. so if he wants to clear up this problem he needs a dedicated gpu, but yes u can run a relatively decent game with onboard graphics, maybe even turn a few settings up, but ur fps will be crappy, and lag when theres lots of magic or ppl around no matter what u do. If u have a decent gpu i dont think having dual cores will really hurt you( most dual core system will have at least a 9500 gt which is more then adequate for this game regardless of prcoessor speed as gpu will handle threads), if u have dual cores and embedded graphics id shoot whoever designed ur system becuase they are **** and get a after market card

    Did you not read my post?

    This games graphics are not the issue when it comes to lag. Heavy crowded areas is putting a strain on the CPU not the GPU and for those running dual or quad cores are the one suffering as this game only uses 1 core regardless what GPU you have.

    Also most MMOs are CPU dependent as they are all masive open world game needing to process so much at any given time, this game being built with DX8 barely touches the GPU in requesting graphics to be displayed.
  • Alariciz - Dreamweaver
    Alariciz - Dreamweaver Posts: 10 Arc User
    edited May 2009
    Well as i said i dont think hes running a dual core, as his system has onboard graphics its probably a low end, somewhat older system...i dont want this to be flame thread, i would just ask a admins opinion on this...if you have onboard graphics and say a p4 2.4ghz(or a dual core 2.4 for that matter), and are getting game lag issues in crowded areas should you upgrade cpu and stay with onboard graphics, or upgrade to a say 9800gt and keep the cpu, for best improved performance in this game?? if im wrong fine i will accept and we can finish this thread..ive been building gaming rigs for years and just find it very hard to swallow that you would upgrade a cpu before getting a gpu for any game issues when u are stuck with embedded graphics, unless u have lika p3 something. maybe darthpanda can clear this up for us or someone associated with the game can clear this up for us as ill amidt im not a real expert on this particular game but sticking with onboard graphics and upgrading cpu really doesnt make sense to me at all...also you can set the affinity i think to help the dual core run the game more effficiently.


    btw for original poster here a couple tricks i learned if u have low end system and want to maximize performance:

    click start, click run, type msconfig, go to startup tab, uncheck all tabs, apply restart.

    also this ones good will free up like 25% of ur system resources but after game u will need restart computer to function normally. this invloves shutting down explorer and just running game. open game in windowed mode, open task manager, find explorer.exe (note not iexplorer.exe, but explorer.exe) right click, end. switch back to game, take off windowed mode.

    you can also press ctrl+f9 in game before u get to city to automatically optimize setting for less lag and not have to go in and manually chan ge settings, then just press it again when u leave to return to previous settings
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