New video card, will EC work well?

[Jasonleebeck]

Specs:

MBoard - Gigabyte GA-7N400L1
CPU - AMD Athlon XP 3000+ 2.09Ghz (OC'd)
Memory - 3 Gig's Corsair DDR400
HDrive - WD 250GB
OS - WinXP Pro SP3
Main - Sony SDM-HX73 (17") @ 1280x1024
Secondary - WestingHouse L1975NW (19") @ 1440x900

New Card Link: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814150433

XFX HD-465X Radeon HD 4650 1GB 128-bit DDR2 AGP 8X
clock 712
memory 550

 

[IanJames]

I have the same type of card from nvidia, a low cost 1 GB, it made a big difference in the EC for me.

 

[RawHeadRex]

yay for thoroughbred!
what was the old card it's replacing ?

 

[Jasonleebeck]

yay for thoroughbred!
what was the old card it's replacing ?

Thoroughbred?

Any-who, the old card was a decent Radeon 9200 AGP 8x. It had DirectX 8.1 support, 128mb DDR, 1 DVI and 1 VGA out.

Thanks for the input guys, I figure I'd ask before I spend the next 2 days downloading the huge-slow-ass client just to find it wasn't enough.

So you both think it'll be ok eh?

 

[Beer_Cayse]

Thouroughbred was the AMD name for the Athlon XP chips when in development.

I have a PCI Express NVidia 8400 (512MB ram) and it handles EC fine ... then again 4 GB system RAM and a 3 ghz AMD Athlon dual-core CPU make things kind of nice running!

You should be in fine shape.

 

[RawHeadRex]

Thoroughbred?

Any-who, the old card was a decent Radeon 9200 AGP 8x. It had DirectX 8.1 support, 128mb DDR, 1 DVI and 1 VGA out.

Thanks for the input guys, I figure I'd ask before I spend the next 2 days downloading the huge-slow-ass client just to find it wasn't enough.

So you both think it'll be ok eh?

imho... night and day difference.
you should dL the EC and run it with your 92oo see how it looks.
then exchange new for old and see how it looks. I'm guessing shading and texture values will be worth the change.

 

[Jasonleebeck]

The performance difference is definitely noticeable between the two cards, but I still am experiencing 'pauses' when just running around luna. In 2D, I zoom around with no issues but pause every 2-3 houses or so. I'm on Fios and my CPU is now upped to 2.29 ghz. In the EC, I put the sparkles to medium and detail to medium and saw little performance difference.

Is there something else I can do to eliminate the choking in town?

 

[RawHeadRex]

The performance difference is definitely noticeable between the two cards, but I still am experiencing 'pauses' when just running around luna. In 2D, I zoom around with no issues but pause every 2-3 houses or so. I'm on Fios and my CPU is now upped to 2.29 ghz. In the EC, I put the sparkles to medium and detail to medium and saw little performance difference.

Is there something else I can do to eliminate the choking in town?

hmmm Lots of items in Luna too, thinking it could be just item lag. Were you always stuttering in certain places before the card swap ?
I would need more info to better understand what's causing the 'stutter/lag' issue you are experiencing. Something tells me there are too many processes running and the glitch you are seeing is the single core cpu maxing out at 100% at times causing the stutter. While uo is running go to task manager under the process tab and tell us the number of processes running in the far left lower corner. Look under the cpu column and see if any other process is competing with UO for cpu cycles. Once you identify the culprit(s)[eg: office,adobe anything,itunes,yahoo anything,quicktime, etc etc] msconfig them out. Restart and see if it still happens.
Looking at services.msc might help too. easy example is if you're not running a wireless network, no reason WLAN AutoConfig needs to auto start when windows boots, disable it. If you don't happen to have a printer connected to that computer, disable Print Spooler too. Remote Registry, disable it. Fax, disable. ICS, disable. Nvidia (I know you have ati/amd) StereoScopic 3D Driver Service... are you serious ? Disable. Don't disable anything you are uncertain of.
Also are you virus/malware free for certain ?
If you mean 'sparkles' in EC are some sort of video setting, set it to default. Then
set ATI catalyst setting to default and see if stutter still happens.

 

[Tanivar]

I believe the EC updates movement with the Server the same way the CC does, about every three steps. My system is an old AGP video setup with a minimum specification video card for the EC (a Nvidia 6600 GT). When I play using the EC, there is a barely noticable hesitation for a human character every few steps. My gargoyle flys horizontal perhaps an inch across the screen, shifts to an upright hover for a moment, then goes back horizontal and flys another inch, and repeats this.

My system is an early AGP video era 2.6 ghz P4 with 3 gig of DDR ram and a Nvidia 6600GT video card which was above minimum specs last time I looked.

Of course a games minimum specs just usually shows somthing the game will function with, not necessarily be playable with.

 

[RawHeadRex]

I believe the EC updates movement with the Server the same way the CC does, about every three steps. My system is an old AGP video setup with a minimum specification video card for the EC (a Nvidia 6600 GT). When I play using the EC, there is a barely noticable hesitation for a human character every few steps. My gargoyle flys horizontal perhaps an inch across the screen, shifts to an upright hover for a moment, then goes back horizontal and flys another inch, and repeats this.

My system is an early AGP video era 2.6 ghz P4 with 3 gig of DDR ram and a Nvidia 6600GT video card which was above minimum specs last time I looked.

Of course a games minimum specs just usually shows somthing the game will function with, not necessarily be playable with.

the first thing I thought of when I saw this was, "is it (cpu) a 400 or 800 fsb northwood ? " basically does it have hyperthreading or not. IMHO you are suffering from the same thing, maxed out single core showing itself. I hope I'm wrong and you do indeed have the 800fsb wood, if you do, is systray overloaded and/or processes above ...47ish ? could be a dsl issue too.

 

[Tanivar]

the first thing I thought of when I saw this was, "is it (cpu) a 400 or 800 fsb northwood ? " basically does it have hyperthreading or not. IMHO you are suffering from the same thing, maxed out single core showing itself. I hope I'm wrong and you do indeed have the 800fsb wood, if you do, is systray overloaded and/or processes above ...47ish ? could be a dsl issue too.

It's probably the maxed out single core situation. This computer was fairly high-end when I built it, but it is only a single core processor. I suspect getting a newer motherboard, a dual-core processor, and a PCI Express video card would do wonders. I've kind of made this thing a work in progress and the motherboard/Processor/video card are looking to be the next new componets.

I'll have to browse the latest games and see what their recommended hardware specs are and do the six-million dollar man routine on it.

 

[RawHeadRex]

It's probably the maxed out single core situation. This computer was fairly high-end when I built it, but it is only a single core processor. I suspect getting a newer motherboard, a dual-core processor, and a PCI Express video card would do wonders. I've kind of made this thing a work in progress and the motherboard/Processor/video card are looking to be the next new componets.

I'll have to browse the latest games and see what their recommended hardware specs are and do the six-million dollar man routine on it.

do me a favor and ctrl+alt+delete / task manager / performance tab. do you see one or two 'cpu usage history' graphs ?

 

[Tanivar]

do me a favor and ctrl+alt+delete / task manager / performance tab. do you see one or two 'cpu usage history' graphs ?

Just one. Duo-core processors came along after I built this system.

 

[RawHeadRex]

Just one. Duo-core processors came along after I built this system.

ya i was hoping you had a hyperthreaded 800 fsb northwood P4 (prior to prescott)which would mean you had hyperthreading (software dual core).