A Little Advice

[BentonGrey]

Howdy guys, this time I'm actually not writing in frustration or fear, but out of curiosity.  I am thinking about upgrading my PC.  I'd REALLY love to do away with those pink textures in rumble room, and quite having to turn the resolution down.  I think my best option is to buy a new video card, but I thought I'd get a little advice from the tech gurus on the forum before I spent any money.  Here's my systems specs.  Well I get the best bang for my buck with a new card, or with something else?

Windows XP: SP2
Processor: AMD Athlon XP 3000+ 2.1 GHz
1 gig of Ram
Radeon 9600 256megs.

Well, what do y'all think?  Thanks!

[Lunarman]

Is it related to the Graphics Card you get?

I have a top of range, tank of a graphics card with DX10, 512mb and I still get pink textures. I have a feeling it's not something you can sort out.

Obviously you're on a budget, but it's not bad. If you play games though I'd suggest doubling your Ram, it's not too expensive to do so.

[Indigo]

I suggest Geforce, anything that's 512 megs.  I would avoid Radeon if I were you because some games (GOOD games like CnC3) have a penchant for not running those in good quality.

[BentonGrey]

Thanks for the responses guys! 

Yeah, I've had several problems with the Radeon, and even though they are about ten dollars cheaper, I'm set on getting a Geforce.  So, I'm hearing that I could do with 2 gigs of Ram, huh?  I've heard that its not good to mix different kinds of Ram, is that true?

Also, as I understood it, the pink texture thing was caused by a lack of power, is that not so?

[stumpy]

I am hesitant to reply, since I don't have near the variety of meshes that some here do, so maybe I am just not seeing the problems people are having.

But, I will say that I am running on a nearly four-year-old laptop with one gig of RAM and a 64 MB nVidea GeForce4 4200 graphics system. I am having no problems with pink mesh parts, etc. and general performance is fine (though there is some slowdown during dust cloud effects, as when a building is damaged).

I only mention it because a theme I see sometimes when discussing this sort of topic is that getting the latest and greatest whiz-bang thing will get rid of problems, yet I don't know of any evidence of that and we still get people posting problems who have pretty new/pricey hardware. Meanwhile, I am doing fine with a system that was decent for a laptop when I bought it but is really bottom rung by today's standards. I would be more inclined to trust specific recommendations of the "I am using X hardware and not seeing any trouble" variety.

If I were getting a new system, I would go for the nicer hardware (although 256 MB video has got to be plenty unless you do a lot of non-FF gaming), but I wouldn't really expect that the newer stuff fixes more problems. Much of the trouble has seemed very driver specific and we have on more than one occasion seen the advice to roll back to a previous version of the drivers. I am not sure there will be better FF compatibility from newer hardware.

[BentonGrey]

Thanks for the feedback Stumpy, you make a very good point.  I am hoping that, because it's a Geforce, I'll have less problems, but I suppose more power may not be the answer.  However, I am also hoping to pick up Supreme Commander and Bioshock one of these days.

[Epimethee]

Since FFvsTTR is branded ATI (remember the loading intro?), it should work correctly; as a matter of fact, I'm using an ATI 9600 128 MB, and had much less problems than with my older Geforce (yeah, I'm due for a new computer... in the next few weeks). I guess the card's RAM might be an important factor for these texture issues.

The 9600 should be among the most affordable graphic cards worth cpnsidering, but unless you're stuck with AGP, there could be better PCI Express cards for available almost the same price.