Graphics Card Question

So I have been looking in to getting Rift, but I'm not sure I meet the system requirements. Everything but the video card seems to be okay but I have no idea how to tell if my card is better than the requirements.

I have a GeForce 7300 LE. The minimum requirement is a GeForce FX 5900 and the recommended is a GeForce GTS 250. Now I have no idea how to compare cards of different series. Do I need a better video card to play Rift with at least the minimum requirements or am I able to play as is (disregarding how well it will play)?

I don't remember the strength of the 7300 LE, but it's a pretty weak card. It's the entry level of a 6 year old graphic card series.
You can buy some really cheap new ones and have a huge upgrade. If the minimum is FX 5900, then your card is too slow and old for Rift.

Here's a nice guide (at the hierarchy char you can see the 7300 LE 4 steps down from 5900):
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/rad ... ,2857.html

In any case, a 50$ card will net you a significant upgrade, and from there's it's all upwards. In any case, a newer card will upgrade your computer by simply being able to decode HD video with better quality and less strain on your CPU.

FYI, there is a Tech Stuff forum now.

Skye1013 wrote:FYI, there is a Tech Stuff forum now.

Indeed, I've gone ahead and moved it to the proper forum.

I would recommend that you stick with an Nvidia card. Some AMD cards (not all) have struggled with Rift, including the newer, higher-end models. Hopefully there will be some sort of update to fix this problem eventually.

Currently, the newer cards follow a pretty easy naming pattern


480 for example. The 4 is the series number, so 5 is better than 4 etc. 8 is always their top end card of the series. if its a 9 there, it means its a dual GPU setup, as in, two GPU cores in 1 card. These are super expensive too :p. Thats the nVidia naming scheme.

Radeon on the other hand names their cards in a general pattern, with small changes to confuse people every now and again.

Their current best series is the 6xxx
6850 is the entry card,
6870 a step higher
6970 the best single core card
6990 dual core card

If you can go for it, a GTX460 would be a good upgrade for you, but before you do that, please give us all the specifications of your computer. If you're running a 7300LE your PSU might not be up for it, the motherboard might be an AGP instead of PCI-E etc

I'm using a 6yr old Dell Dimension E510:
http://www.pcworld.com/product/28578/de ... ml?p=specs

But with:
2x Pentium4 3Ghz.
2GB RAM
and of course the GeForce 7300 LE graphics card


I'm about to graduate with a degree in graphic design so I have been looking into getting an iMac. If I get a 21.5" iMac it comes with a 3.2GHz Intel Core i3 processor and an ATI Radeon HD 5670 with 512MB video card.

http://store.apple.com/us/browse/home/s ... amily/imac (second from the left)

If I dual-boot Windows 7, do you think it could run Rift okay? Otherwise I guess I should look into upgrading my Dell.

isiz wrote:I'm using a 6yr old Dell Dimension E510:
http://www.pcworld.com/product/28578/de ... ml?p=specs

But with:
2x Pentium4 3Ghz.
2GB RAM
and of course the GeForce 7300 LE graphics card


I'm about to graduate with a degree in graphic design so I have been looking into getting an iMac. If I get a 21.5" iMac it comes with a 3.2GHz Intel Core i3 processor and an ATI Radeon HD 5670 with 512MB video card.

http://store.apple.com/us/browse/home/s ... amily/imac (second from the left)

If I dual-boot Windows 7, do you think it could run Rift okay? Otherwise I guess I should look into upgrading my Dell.

You'd probably want 1 GB of memory on your graphics card in order to get better performance. The build isn't terrible, but you could build a much better PC for the same price. It depends how well you want your computer to run games versus how much you want a Mac for graphic design (and your comfort level with building a PC).

Okay seriously, I object heartily to most mac users. Sure back when macs had RISK based processors, they might have been better at graphic design. But right now, with so many OS X ports, and 2x performance for the same bucks, why on earth would you go for a mac? Is the program you're using 100% mac exclusive? I don't get it

I made this comparison between a 2 thousand pounds iMac with my new rig. Mine was an i7 2600k, 570 GPU, 64gb SSD, 8 gigabyte of RAM which costed around 1800 quid, including the screen and everything else. The iMac was 2050 pounds, with an 1st generation i5, 6 gigs of ram, an 5750 and no ssd. Still people bought the mac, I just don't see it, whats the connection, how much of a difference does a mac give or a normal PC? I know that there is absolutely no hardware level difference right now, and I'm pretty sure that the OS X port that allows me to use OS X in windows would work on any application so whats the deal? Are you willing to shell out 50% of the pricetag just to have an apple in the back and a white color on your pc?

isiz wrote:I'm about to graduate with a degree in graphic design so I have been looking into getting an iMac. If I get a 21.5" iMac it comes with a 3.2GHz Intel Core i3 processor and an ATI Radeon HD 5670 with 512MB video card.

http://store.apple.com/us/browse/home/s ... amily/imac (second from the left)

If I dual-boot Windows 7, do you think it could run Rift okay? Otherwise I guess I should look into upgrading my Dell.

Not to be a Mac hater, but buying a Mac and then dual-booting is a pretty good way to minimize the bang you get for your buck. You are already paying a hefty premium for the form factor and polished user experience and then you have to pay a bunch more money for a Windows 7 license? Apple also backs it all up with fairly low-end hardware. Core i3? 4GB RAM? 2nd/3rd tier graphics card?

For the same money, you could build a PC that crushes the life out of two iMacs working together. Using an SSD, your PC could boot up twice or thrice in the time it takes those iMacs to boot up once.

Also, are you likely to have to do a lot of higher quality rendering? If so, I redirect your attention to the face-melting power/cost ratio of a PC vesus that of a Mac.

laterna wrote:Okay seriously, I object heartily to most mac users. Sure back when macs had RISK based processors, they might have been better at graphic design. But right now, with so many OS X ports, and 2x performance for the same bucks, why on earth would you go for a mac? Is the program you're using 100% mac exclusive? I don't get it

I've always figured it was a combination of butt-hurt over BSoDs in 3.11-ME, non-power users who cling to the clean interface, and raw hipster-ism. What really confuses me are all the IT sector people who fall all over themselves running to hug their Macs.

laterna wrote:I made this comparison between a 2 thousand pounds iMac with my new rig. Mine was an i7 2600k, 570 GPU, 64gb SSD, 8 gigabyte of RAM which costed around 1800 quid, including the screen and everything else. The iMac was 2050 pounds, with an 1st generation i5, 6 gigs of ram, an 5750 and no ssd. Still people bought the mac, I just don't see it, whats the connection, how much of a difference does a mac give or a normal PC? I know that there is absolutely no hardware level difference right now, and I'm pretty sure that the OS X port that allows me to use OS X in windows would work on any application so whats the deal? Are you willing to shell out 50% of the pricetag just to have an apple in the back and a white color on your pc?

The comparison is a lot closer once you add in a proper (IPS; dell Ultrasharp or equivalent) monitor. Still get a price premium over building it yourself, but the difference is minor.

For example: The 27" imac (top-end, i5-760, radeon 5750, etc) is US$1999. Just the screen on it's own (Mac Cinema display) is $999; a Dell U2711 (fairly comparable screen) is $1099. That means you're only really paying about a grand for the computer. You could build a better computer than that imac for a grand, probably, but the difference would be fairly minor.

Of course, a lot of people don't care about monitor quality, and would rather some cheap and nasty TN panel with 6-bit colour. But good IPS panels are expensive, and the imacs come with one built in.

gibborim wrote:What really confuses me are all the IT sector people who fall all over themselves running to hug their Macs.

Yeah, it's like utterly inexplicable why so many long-term computing experts are switching to OS X.... It's like they must have some weird special expertise that tells them that buying quality makes sense...

/endsarcasm

PCs are only cheaper than Macs if you value your time at $0 per hour.

The real issues with being a Mac user are:

• Dealing with idiots calling you a cultist...
• No "Cheap Expandable Tower" option.
• Not a great gaming platform
• No crapbook Netbook. OMG, get an iPad FFS
• iMacs have very high-end screens built in.
• Mac Pros are workstations not desktops, and (competitively) priced to suit that market. IE: expensive.
• Mac Minis are kinda gutless, especially on the GPU front

The only "standard price mass market" option they make is their laptop range. These are cheaper that equivalent alternatives. Yes, FFS, cheaper. I know of a large corporation that is switching to Apples running Windows for their laptop fleet because it gives better bang-per-buck that Dell/HP (once you include maintenance costs for a large fleet of shitty WinTel laptops).

The standard "PC Gamer has the following criteria:

• Thinks he's a PC expert.
• Thinks spending hours debugging driver/OS issues is "Fun"
• Like to overclock/abuse/break/hack his hardware.
• Wants to pick the GPU that came out 15 seconds ago.
• Is fine with using a shitty 6-bit display, so long as it's huge (Inches > Quality....)
• Can't afford / doesn't need a workstation (WTF is he going to do with 12 cores? Crysis uses what... 2?)
• Wants to play Windows only games

Guess, what, if that's your criteria, then Macs look like snake oil.

Here's my criteria:

• Powerful
• Reliable
• Runs MS Office (this one is fading fast, I haven't used office at home in a couple of years)
• Requires zero minutes a year of maintenance. Pressing "Next -> OK" on an "Upgrade you OS" popup doesn't count. In ten years as a Mac user I've had zero hardware failures and no significant software problems.

PS: That entire "PC Gamer" list applied to me for the whole of the 1990s. I know you because I was you!

PPS: I've been a "Personal Computer" user since 1982. I've seen a lot of platforms come and go.

Does thinking OSX is stupid count as a legitimate reason to use PC? I mean sure I could bootcamp a mac, but that kills one of the pros you listed of no maintenance and tinkering.

PS Fuck OSX.

Levantine wrote:Does thinking OSX is stupid count as a legitimate reason to use PC? I mean sure I could bootcamp a mac, but that kills one of the pros you listed of no maintenance and tinkering.

PS Fuck OSX.

About as valid as my Fucking god I'm fucking sick of fucking Windoze.

IE: No, not really.

Interestingly, I've been using an XP box at work for the last two years and it's never blue-screened. Fucking record.

Stupid thing dies in the goddamn arse every time it goes into hibernate with Outlook or Office running, however, so I either have to shut down every single program or reboot the fucker every morning or log off every night.

PS: Stupid PoS takes 10 mins to load profile. My god our AD is a PoS.

I never understood the trouble people have with blue screens due to their Windows. Mine's only ever died when I did something dumb like not notice the fan on my graphics card breaking because it was ancient. Never had an actual problem with it like I have with OSX. Maybe it's just the Uni macs themselves being fucked. My home computer is better for all the design stuff I do except for the average screen which I'm just too lazy to replace.

My guess is they must have fixed the BlueScreen shit in the last ten years, which what, roughly the period you've been out of short pants?

This crap used to be so bad that Bill himself got a bluescreen one time doing a presentation at MicrosoftWorld or WTF the call their annual show.

No idea what your Uni macs are crap. Uni students, probably.

They're supposed to be brand new, but yet, they're still shit. D:

Give me some credit, it's been at least 12 years.

BSOD's had stopped after XP came out, unless you are doing something tricky. The only time I get BSOD'd now , is if I overclock wrongly.

I picked up my XP box at the end of 2002. Its now 2011 and it still runs, at my parents house, with no issues at all. My laptop, on vista has never ever done a BSOD. My current rig, gave me a BSOD when I set my processor to boot at 8ghz. Thats all. No bsod's for the past 9 years. I still feel macs don't justify the price tags they cover.

The 27.5 inch apple is 1700quid. The respective dell ultrasharp screen is 700 quid. That leaves me 1000 pounds to make up for a computer better than a i5 2.8ghz, with 1333Mhz 4 GB RAM and 1 terra drive. I'm pretty sure its not as small as a difference you make it to be. Hell, I can make you an i5 2500k, UD5, 560 8gig ram rig for that much propably.

What I'm saying, I can understand certain people going for macs because they feel that it is absolutely needed for their job. Those people are 0.05% of the apple buyer base. The rest are simply people who fall to marketing trends....

http://scoopertino.com/wp-content/uploa ... r_page.jpg

knaughty wrote:Interestingly, I've been using an XP box at work for the last two years and it's never blue-screened. Fucking record.

I have not seen a software based BSoD since ME. The only hardware based ones I've seen were a bricked harddrive and a graphics card with multiple bad bits in its ram.

So the reasons I would like to go with a Mac are:

1. Can buy W7 for $15 w/ student discount, so dual-booting is cheap.

2. I'm not a comp-sci major and have no idea what I'm doing when I install new hardware (but I do have a couple of comp-sci friends and my dad works on designing circuit-boards, could always ask for help).

3. Been using a Mac for the last 4 years, haven't used any Windows OS since XP. When I go to the library to print, the W7 interface kinda confuses me (Where's the damn "my computer" button?!).

4. My current back-up external HD does not work with Windows. I use it as a TimeMachine device, which is very helpful, and I don't know of any (cheap) Windows alternatives to TimeMachine.

5. Mac OS is just more user friendly imo. It pretty much hand-holds me through updates and installs (which I definitely need). I also really like the interface (Can't live without Spaces. Does W7 have Spaces?) I also like not really having to worry about viruses.

6. I do have some (sort of non-essential) programs that are Mac only.



Now this summer I go on internship and then after that I graduate. The internship site provides me with a Mac Pro (the desktop, not the laptop) to work with and if they do end up hiring me they supply all their designers with a Macbook Pro. The laptop is plenty good enough for design work.

I suppose I could just get a Windows machine for home. Are there any good ones out there that can play stuff like Rift that are under $700-$800? I don't want to have to put one together (other than maybe installing a better graphics card) because then it just turns into a big hassle for me to make it all work together.

edit: I already have an LG Flatron W2240 monitor, so I'm just talking about the tower.

laterna wrote:What I'm saying, I can understand certain people going for macs because they feel that it is absolutely needed for their job. Those people are 0.05% of the apple buyer base. The rest are simply people who fall to marketing trends....

This is a common statement from PC nerds and WinTel commentators, I think it misses the point.

For a "normal person" every PC you can buy (other than a NetBook) is fast enough. Every Mac comes with "enough" RAM and "enough" HDD space.

The vast majority of the marketplace are no longer buying their computers based on $/MHz.

I'll use a car analogy: Here's what the PC Industry sell:





When you look at price vs performance, all of these cars are unbeatable. The Caterham 7 you can even buy as a kit and build yourself.

Here's what people actually buy:








Arguing that your WinTel PC is better price-performance entirely misses the point

Go look at car ads. They're not sold on 0-60 times. They're sold on features, safety, comfort and value (not the same thing as cheap, or people would buy a hell of a lot more Chinese cars).

PC "enthusiasts" are Ricers/Drag-racers arguing about which Turbo is best in their drift car. No one outside the "scene" goddamn cares, they want a reliable hatchback/sedan/SUV with comfy seats, lots of airbags and cruise control.

Poor analogy knaughty, because unlike cars, the applications on computers require more processing power over time. Whereas roads, not so much :p

Also, look at it the other way. Even now, when I'm still an undergraduate engineer, using the uni computers to work with solidedge, matlab, etc it takes a while to calculate some stuff. Running an electromagnetic model with extreme amounts of precision based on triangles/surface, the computer literaly crashes outright. It takes me 10 seconds to run the same calculations on my main rig.

And yet again, you are right in the essense that I'm comparing a top of the line, to an apple. Still, can you not get a similar computer for less money? And trust me, there are so many people out there who just want a pc that is the best for their budget. Its just how things work. If you, as a father of a 15 year old say, "ok I'll put aside 1000 quid for my sons computer" you want to walk in a store and buy the most kickass pc your 1000 pounds can get you. How do you think you're going to feel if you buy a 1000 pounds mac ( do those even exist ?) and a year down the line, your son can't play a game he wants, or he tries to run something that takes horsepower and the mac just outright fails?

Worst case scenario, why don't you just build a PC, partition the drive and knock an OS X on one, and W7 on the other one? still cheaper, you get all the features, without the $$$ premium

laterna wrote:Poor analogy knaughty, because unlike cars, the applications on computers require more processing power over time. Whereas roads, not so much :p

You're looking at the wrong era.

Back in the 20's and 30's the roads were getting better - sealed surfaces, more lanes, eventually highways. Cars advanced & improved, taking advantage of the improved conditions. Now we're at the point where every new car can easily break the national speed limit in any country that has one. Performance is no longer important other than to enthusiasts.

I've driven two of the world's fastest cars from 1931: A Speed Six Bentley and a Bugatti Type 51. Both are substantially faster than you need on modern roads despite being 80 years old.

We are rapidly approaching the same point for desktops. I used to buy multi-million dollar computers. That stuff is now mostly done by stuff that costs tens of thousands (cluster computing on virtual hardware on cheap-ass blades vs Super-Computers. Lose a few zeros).

Go look at what people upgrade cycle looks like compared to a decade back. Go look at what Crysis-2 renders in real-time.

Seriously... what do you need more power for? If you need more power than a standard PC, then you're actually in the workstation market.

laterna wrote:Worst case scenario, why don't you just build a PC, partition the drive and knock an OS X on one, and W7 on the other one? still cheaper, you get all the features, without the $$$ premium

(1) It's not legal
(2) It's not supported
(3) What parts of "I want something that just works" and "I value my time at more than $0/hr" are you not getting?

2. I'm not a comp-sci major and have no idea what I'm doing when I install new hardware (but I do have a couple of comp-sci friends and my dad works on designing circuit-boards, could always ask for help).

Most CompSci has nothing to do with hardware, so being a CS major isn't really a magic, computer building bullet. Your dad sounds like an Electrical Engineer, he could probably handle it.