doom 3 graphics and game purchase advice.

[scotteeeG]

Hi there. I have a copy of doom 3 that I purchased about 6 months ago. I massively enjoyed it and then I blew my mobo. Not wanting to live in the dark ages anymore I went from agp graphics card to Pci-e. The only problem is that it will only work on ati or nvidia graphics. All I really want to know if there is a way around that. I know my onboard graphics will play the game well but after I install when I try to run it it gives me an error about display adapter driver combo is not suitable. The onboard graphics can play call of duty 4 easy its just the ati nvidia thing for doom. For my system specs see NEED For SPEED Most Wanted: Crashes to Desktop: Please Help you will also find my plans for graphics there. I have finished cod 4, leisure suit larry: magna cum laude, NFSU2, hitman 2, left for dead 1 & 2 and am bored with quake 4, age of empires, that rome battle game, battlefield 2, sims and monsters inc and chicken little are not my kind of game at all. All that really leaves me with is my copy of doom 3. Not wanting to play lemmings etc. Also any game reccomendations would be appreciated. You can see by the list what style of game I am into.

[scotteeeG]

As you can see I live for games and am having withdrawals.

[nemowolf]

As you can see I live for games and am having withdrawals.

download steam and start getting more games. When you save up enough for a real GPU, that will solve your problem.

[evansj]

Steam just had a huge load of sales

[scotteeeG]

I refuse to purchase anything over the internet. Had a bad experience and never again.

[evansj]

If you say so. I've invested hundreds of dollars into Steam. Can install/uninstall games whenever I please and download them straight from Steams server- no video game store hassle, losing CD's or CD keys. Of course, with any vital information you enter online, you run the risk of exposing it.

[scotteeeG]

Now that's the problem I had. Put trust into a site and ended up being scammed. Might consider it though that I have heard a genuine person saying its ok. Not one of those automated "virtual support person"things. Thanks.

[evansj]

Yeah, that's something you always have to be careful about. I try to stick with big name companies online like Amazon, TigerDirect, Paypal. Most sites integrate Pay by Paypal, so if you sign up for Paypal you can pay for things by simply using your Paypal email and confirming the payment on Paypal's website. Not sure if Steam does that or not.

[thephilosophizer]

Steam is a pretty big operation, the biggest of its type, not likely to have much trouble with them. Kinda foolish really to write something off because of 1 experience, plus their sale prices are better than anything.
Also, you mention the possibility of getting a graphics card, you can get a pretty good card, enough to adequately handle any current games for less than $100. So I would say, that if you really are that interested in gaming, get a card before you do anything else. For $80 you can get a GT 240, that has a power draw low enough that it doesn't require a separate power cable. Also, check out Tom's best graphics card for the money list, they just released July updates.
I'm not sure about this, but as far as doom goes, it may be that the game was never meant to be played on onboard graphics, and so your system doesn't register as meeting the minimum specs.

[nemowolf]

I refuse to purchase anything over the internet. Had a bad experience and never again.

I had a bad experience with a human once, never again will i talk to one ...

Steam is a pretty big operation, the biggest of its type, not likely to have much trouble with them. Kinda foolish really to write something off because of 1 experience, plus their sale prices are better than anything.
Also, you mention the possibility of getting a graphics card, you can get a pretty good card, enough to adequately handle any current games for less than $100. So I would say, that if you really are that interested in gaming, get a card before you do anything else. For $80 you can get a GT 240, that has a power draw low enough that it doesn't require a separate power cable. Also, check out Tom's best graphics card for the money list, they just released July updates.
I'm not sure about this, but as far as doom goes, it may be that the game was never meant to be played on onboard graphics, and so your system doesn't register as meeting the minimum specs.

Seriously. Steam has developed into THE powerhouse of online sales and gaming. You can find most anything from them and as mentioned you download on demand and delete when you want. One login to control all your library of content, so you dont need to remember every games user pass combo. You have to download sure, but most of us here have broadband of some type and that becomes moot when you can purchase at night and play the next day. Sure as hell easier to shop from them then going into a store and rolling the dice to see what you can find.

Get your video card and then worry about other stuff.

[ShyguyXPC]

Besides Steam, also check in to Impulse, Impulse Driven : Home : Digital Download Store, Latest Gaming News (If your familiar with the Company Stardock, this is their Service similar to Steam) they usually have some good sales as well, Bought Mass Effect for $10, and have been enjoying it on and off again over the last few months, have bought some other games off of Impulse as well, besides Steam.

but what I don't understand is how your not able to Run Doom 3, but you were able to run Quake 4, they both use the same Game Engine, just that Q4 is based off of D3, with some enhancements.

I'm guessing you have onboard Intel Graphics, since you keep referencing needing Nvidia or ATI to run Doom 3.

[sweeper2]

yeah..... my question is... did you get a NEW graphics card ? or are you using ONBOARD video... Doom 3 is a pretty old game... so i would assume if you have a NEW motherboard... the onboard graphics should play it....
Also.. do you have the right "drivers" for your graphics installed... ? what is the model # of your MB .. ??

[ShyguyXPC]

From their other thread linked in a post above

My system is as follows.
Pentium dual core 2.7 E5400
2gig kingston DDR3 800mhz
Ecs mobo (g41t)
Onboard graphics for now (intel G41 express chipset 128 shared)
320gig seagate HDD + 80gig western digital
Gamexpert gs-320 steering wheel and playstation style gamepad
Windows 7 x86 build 7600
I installed nfs mw and it crashed to the desktop everytime it tried to load any races. 1 second police lights then crash.
I tried the regedit thing to no avail and the DEP thing. I also tried removing my graphics driver in favour of the windows standard one.
I have run the game in compatibility mode for win xp sp3, xp sp2, 98, 2000 and all made no diff.
There was a period that it all worked fine. After my first install it did not work, It then somehow started loading and working and then sadly I had to reinstall windows in favour of a genuine version.
After windows it did not work again. They are original disks, pre patched to 1.3. Never worked on my x64 ultimate windows at all. That was patched windows gamer edition though.
I am at a loss. Have run it in admin mode, disabled visual themes and tried applying a no cd patch too. The only time it worked previously was on the windows display adapter, in xp sp2 mode as admin with game quality set full in 640x480 as per in game settings. So all that aside if someone could suggest something I have not yet tried I will fly across the world to kiss your feet.
Same thing happened when I installed it on my moms 3.0 p4 1.5 ram 256 ati graphics gigabyte mobo. But her pc is a bit worn out.

[scotteeeG]

decided trying to get it all to work probably won't happen. Gonna go get a temporary graphics cars tomorrow. Will just get a gt220. Upgrade when I get the i7. Got 15000 rand saved so far. For the system I want its gonna cost 47000 rand. Got a few months yet. Guess I can sell my current stuff at the time to make up a difference. Lol thanks anyway guys. Hopefully my nfs:mw will work with the new card too. Still gonna checkout steam tho. And impulse. Only join one so gonns watch the two sites for offers and then decide which to go with. Really want to try get halo again, like my alltime fav game. Kid broke disk and hdd crashed.. There went my back up. Lol.

[ShyguyXPC]

crap, hell yeah, GT 220 shouldn't have ANY problem running Doom 3, I don't know if it will run the game at max settings, but you should certainly have no problem running the game at GOOD settings and playable frame rates.

they don't cost much, low heat and power output/draw.

and will certainly run ALL of the games you listed in the first post, far better than they do on the onboard video.

[scotteeeG]

Is there a difference between manufacturers though? The one available to me is a zotac. For arguments sake take the old 128 agp 9200. Would there have been a difference between say the msi or gigabyte nvidia cards? Also is there a difference betewwn a 64bit 1gig ddr3 nvidia and the same in ati?

[scotteeeG]

One of those agp cards I mentioned might have been wrong. I thing one was ati the other nvidia. Coult be another card I am thinking of. Went through so many agp cards its not funny. Yet still the best one I had was my radeon 9600 pro. Or was it 5600 pro? Hmmm.. Think it was 5600.got that one when it was new on the market. Was so cool coz it had a fan. Was still the second best card they had if I remember right. Was 3 week wait for the 9800. Or 5800... Hmm. Still got my 80 gig hdd at the same time. And that was a big drive. Makes me think back to thae days of 32mb ram and a 2gig IBM HDD. Running windows 3.11! I was so cool!!!
Good old pentium 100.......

[ShyguyXPC]

comparing ATI to Nvidia is like comparing apples to oranges, they're both good, but yet because they are made differently, its hard to compare them exactly.

right now in the market, ATI has the upper hand in performance for lower budget cards, and even on the higher end, their price to performance is better than Nvidia, but for higher end cards, Nvidia takes the crown still for raw performance, just barely.

as to the cards your referring to in your 2nd reply there, had to be 9600 and 9800, Radeon 5000 series is the current ones out, its technically the Radeon HD series, so as to not be confused with the older Radeon series that started with the 7 & 8000 numbers.

which will be interesting to see once they come out with the next generation Radeon series, where they'll go next after the 6000 series, as they'll have come full circle with the number scheme LOL...

unlike Nvidia, that with the FX series started with 5000 series, and has gone up ever since, with the 9000 series, now has transfered to G GT series for lower end cards, and GTX series for the higher end cards, all using 3 digit model names.

Geforce 5600 was really lower end for the Geforce 5 series which was out around the Radeon 9600 series time, and Geforce 5800 was top of the line, but was a failure too, as it was a hot running card, and didn't have the performance they expected to topple the Radeon 9700 Pro of the time.

the 9800 Pro came out, and was merely a rehash of the 9500, 9500 Pro, (the unlockable 9500's to 9700 cards, not the revised models that were based on the 9600 series), 9700, 9700 Pro cards, with minor improvements.

then Nvidia had the FX 5900 cards, still only a minor improvement over the 5800, but cooler running, but COULD NOT defeat the 9800's...

little wait, and the Triumphant ass kicking Geforce 6 series came out... what the FX aka 5 series, SHOULD have been.

Geforce 7 series came out, lower end cards weren't much of a boost, but anything above a Geforce 7600GT got a huge boost in performance...

then the Geforce 8 series changed it all again, even BIGGER boost in performance, plus ushered in the era of fully programmable Shader processors, etc, ditching the whole old era of vertex, pixel, etc Pipelines, etc that was the big thing of the prior generations.

ATI had already started on that a little with the X1800 and 1900 series cards, but Geforce 8 really brought it into the mainstream and FULLY in to the cards designs.

took ATI a while to catch up, wasn't until the HD 4000 series they were able to really compete.

HD 2000 series wasn't bad, the 2900 series top end cards, but still not able to topple the might 8800GTX and Ultra cards, Radeon 3850 and 3870's were a bit of a flop, really no better than prior 2900's, but the introduction of the BEAST of a card, the 3870x2... that ushered in a new top end category (even though Nvidia had done that prior with the 7950GX2 cards, and some companies like Asus and others experimented with Rare Dual GPU SLI cards using 6600GT and 6800GT chips).

but after the 3870x2, we saw the Nvidia 9800GX2, GTX 295, and ATI's 4850x2, and 4870x2 variant cards populate the market on the most upper high end segments, and all of them capable of running with a 2nd card, for a total of 4 GPU's.

anyways, enough rambling, and wandering through the history of GPU's of the last 10 years LOL...






the GT 220 from Zotac should be good, granted it may not be a top end GT 220, Zotac is a well known company, they may not have the known Lifetime warranties of XFX, or Evga's rep for Performance, but their usually solid cards.

Zotac also (along with companies like Foxconn and some others) makes GPU cards for other brands, that rebrand them under their own names.


the GT 220 I have sitting around as a spare right now is an ECS, lesser known for quality boards (motherboards) with a few Gems in the rough that they've been known for, but for the Video cards, ECS in general has some good cards, not top of the line, but they're good, I used to have an ECS 8800GTS 512MB card, thats now in a friends system I built for them.

but the Zotac should be fine.

I current have a Zotac Mini ITX motherboard I'm using... and plan on when I have enough, buying a Zotac Nvdia ION based PCI Express x1 Graphics card to fit in it and use with it, rather than the low end Geforce 7050 graphics chip.



comparing companies, usually the big thing is comparing card features, and company Warranties.

Features, like you pointed out, 64-bit memory over 128-bit memory.

with the GT 220, for gaming your probably going to want a 128-bit version over the 64-bit one.

but because the card is so low end, (a 16 Shader processor G210 or comparable 9400GT, is about as low as you can go now), that the 64-bit difference won't be THAT noticeable.

it'll certainly be better than the onboard video you have now (anything is better than Intels onboard crap for games).

but if you can get the 128-bit version GT 220, do so.



" Also is there a difference betewwn a 64bit 1gig ddr3 nvidia and the same in ati?"

Yes, but its a bit too complicated to explain. ATI currently uses a Great number of Shader Cores, but their more simplistic in design and less flexible in processing than Nvidia's. where as Nvidia's is more complex and more flexible at multiple tasks, which is why they need less of them. in the end the performance is usually close to the same, give or take a bit.

so for example, a Geforce 9600GT has 64 Stream Processors (Shader Processors, aka, Shader Cores, etc etc etc, both ATI and Nvidia keep renaming these damn things, now with Nvidia is CUDA Cores, but they're the same damn things, that were known as Stream Processors back with the Geforce 8 series debuted)

and a Radeon 4670 has 320 SP's.

but the 4670 falls back a tad bit in performance over the 9600GT.

but both cards were in the same performance categories, and prices ranges originally.

also in the same general range was the original Geforce 9600 GSO (based on the 9800GT's G92 core and had 96 SP's, but reduced Clock speeds and Memory bus compared to the 9600GT, if I remember right, resulting in similar if not slightly lesser performance of the 9600GT, but was same price and performance range)



its really hard to exactly compare ATI and Nvidia Cards.

the best means is to read up on reviews of the cards your looking at, and compare Benchmarks of the cards in question.

its about the only way really.

they're 2 different architectures, using similar but not identical technology, and usually results in similar performance ranges as its competing price range opponents.




"Makes me think back to thae days of 32mb ram and a 2gig IBM HDD. Running windows 3.11! I was so cool!!!
Good old pentium 100......."

yep, I remember that, 32MB RAM, PCI 4MB 3DLabs Permedia 2 2D/3D Graphics Card, 4.7GB HDD for me Windows 3.11 to get things running, then upgrade to Windows 95, had a Pentium 120, all built by myself, had everything put together right, but wouldn't run right, would boot up, but had some issues, brought it into the shop, they looked at it and was impressed for a first time builder to do that well ( I think I had some sort of Bios setting set wrong, since I had only dealt with a PC Bios from a 286 and 386 prior to that, was so many new settings LOL).

but with what I had spent on used parts, they told me they were surprised this hodge podge of parts ran and were compatible LOL...

they started to steer me in the right direction for a fully compatible system.

so in 2 weeks, next paycheck, plus what I had already (they gave me nearly 100% trade back value on the parts I bought), and I was able to have them build it, but I pieced it together with their guidance.

went from Pentium 120 to, Cyrix MII 233MHz, 32MB RAM, Newer Socket Motherboard obviously, and a 12MB Voodoo 2 Banshee card.

that sufficed for about 4 to 5 months, then I got an additional Income tax rebate check later in the year, and with another paycheck... UPGRADE TIME!!!!

I was back, over that time period though I had upgraded from the Voodoo 2 Banshee to a 16MB Nvidia TNT card, most of my games I had were DirectX and OpenGL games, and the Banshee had some issues with that, even though I used the OpenGL GLIDE wrapper for the those games, the DirectX ones COULDN'T run right at the time, namely Need For Speed 2, and eventually Need For Speed 3 Hot Pursuit.

but I needed a Faster CPU than the Cyrix for some games...

so I upgraded the motherboard again, and CPU, AND RAM...

AMD K6/2 450MHz Beast, with 64MB of RAM, and the newer Super Socket 7 motherboards. Only CPU faster for AMD at the time was the hard to find and Coveted 500MHz chip. and then shortly down the road, the K6/3 with on Chip L2 Cache, reverting the former motherboard bound L2, to an L3 cache, and the hard to find 550MHz Chips.

ohhhhh, I was in heaven for a good year or so with the 450 though, Half life, Delta Force, Rainbow Six, Need For Speed Hot Pursuit, I had near top end system and was Soooooo happy, before round whatever came about for more upgrades.


next up, AMD Socket A/462, AMD Duron 850MHz, PC 133 RAM, 64MB at first, then upgraded to 128MB.

had the Duron for a month or two, then moved up to a 1.3GHz Thunderbird.

RAM got boosted to 256MB less than a year later, and before I moved to my next system that PC was running 768MB of PC 133 RAM LOL, Geforce 2 GTS 32MB card, Sound Blaster Live!, 10 or 20GB HDD, and 1 DVD Drive and 1 CD Burner, along with a TV Tuner Card, and RAID/Drive Controller card for extra drives.

aside from the GF2 GTS, most of the other accessories I still have, including that Motherboard, CPU, and RAM LOL, along with the case that housed it and the K62 450 system prior to it.

for a short while I tested out a Voodoo 3 3500 Video card with TV In and Out breakout box/cables, on the system, played some games, and got some Massive Overclocks for that card, using the stock passive heatsink, would of been massive overclocks back when the card was first out, but nothing compared to at the time when I did it, If I remember right I had gotten a fairly nice 25% or slightly more Overclock on the Core and memory speeds, I had to throttle back the memory a bit, due to artifacting, but that card heated up a bit, but not TOO bad, not with airflow over the heatsink, and was able to get some kick ass GLIDE GL visuals in Quake 3 Arena on that card, the visuals and colors and over all graphics looked better on that lower end system with the Voodoo 3 than they did on a Geforce 6600GT running OpenGL and DirectX modes, LOL.

along the years I managed to come into Possession of another K62 450 System, upgraded it to a 500 or 550MHz K6/2 (I forget off hand), and a 32MB ATI Rage Fury Video card with built in TV tuner, though it has a measly 32MB of RAM, and small 4GB HDD. never did upgrade those parts on it. was more of a collectors thing with slight upgrade to it.

[scotteeeG]

well on that note thank you very much. it pressed me to find another card and so i can get a HIS radeon 5570 1gig, 128bit ddr3 HIS HD 5570 Fan (DirectX 11/ Full HD 1080p) 1GB (128bit) DDR3 PCIe < HD 5500 Series < Desktop Graphics < Products | HIS Graphic Cards of the same price as the zotac gt220 64bit 1gig ddr2. 1000 rand. great!!

[scotteeeG]

and finally. i am going to buy a graphics card for my mother. also mobo, cpu, ram. she really cant afford to so i will just save an extra month for the i7. will a HIS Radeon HD4350 512mb, 64bit, ddr2 card play gta4. its the most hardcore of her games. if she can play that she can play anything she has. bit sad really. if she tries to play it her pc crashes and it takes her 15 mins to startup. her mobo and cpu is half fried. granted it is i think like 6 or 8 years old.

HIS HD 4350 iFan Native HDMI 512MB (64bit) DDR2 PCIe < HD 4300 Series < Desktop Graphics < Products | HIS Graphic Cards