Computer ordered

[robotech_master]

The order is away!

I ended up making a few minor changes to the wish list. For $22 more I upgraded to a 4600 Dual Core instead of a 4500; a little faster plus double the L1 cache size. Got a slightly different case, too, and ended up with a 400 watt power supply instead of a 350—not out of concern that it wouldn't be big enough, as after checking the numbers myself I was satisfied that my chosen card + the CPU would together pull only about half of that, but because the 350 didn't have a PCI Express connector and the 400 did.

The card I ended up going with was an ATi Radeon X600XT 128MB PCI Express, for $30 + $15 3-day shipping from Geeks.com. Given that the card is going for $80-90 on eBay, that's not such a bad deal at all.

I hope everything will arrive before Thanksgiving.

Comments

[ninjarat.livejournal.com]

The card I ended up going with was an ATi Radeon X600XT 128MB PCI Express, for $30 + $15 3-day shipping from Geeks.com. Given that the card is going for $80-90 on eBay, that's not such a bad deal at all.

Prepare yourself for a less than spectacular CoH experience with that card. Cryptic's support of ATi is... I hesitate to say nonexistent... but... no, I don't. They only fix ATi crash bugs.

Dig up the ATi tuning guide in the forums because you're gonna need the info there to get CoH running reasonably.

[robotech-master.livejournal.com]

I actually discussed that with the hardware guru friend who found the card for me. He knows my preference for nVidia overall, and as I said before, this is just a temporary card. I'm actually planning to get an 8800GT, or at the least, an 8600GTS. But right now isn't the best time to invest in a costly card, with ATI's new new thing on the cusp of hitting the market and driving prices of everything else down. So the plan was to find a good temporary card that I could keep for a few weeks until such time as the prices on those monsters come down a touch.

And my friend, a City of Heroes player himself, tells me that the card is at least two notches better overall than any equivalent nVidia I could get for the same price, and that I'll probably get 20 fps out of CoH at 1280x1064 with it. I'm so used to playing on an nVidia 5600FX that any improvement will make me happy, and this way I get to be even happier when I get the top-notch nVidia. (Plus, I suspect the card will likely resell for at least most of what I paid for it when I'm ready to change up.)

And I know that I'll be able to guilt trip him into helping me if the card barfs all over City of Heroes, since he's the one who talked me into buying it. :)

[ninjarat.livejournal.com]

Up until about 3 months ago I was playing on a 512MB Radeon X1900XT. That was ATi's bleeding-edge card two years ago. Yes, it can run the game beautifully at 1600x1050 -- where "beautifully" means:

Particle count cut to 25050
FSAA OFF
Shadows OFF
Anisotropic filtering OFF
Water Effects LOW/OFF
Depth of Field OFF (I have it off anyway because I hate it)
Bloom Effects OFF

Setting FSAA and Anisotropic filtering ON in Catalyst Control Panel doesn't actually do anything with CoH.

Here's the settings guide:
http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthreaded.php?Number=5578813

[liralen.livejournal.com]

Woooo!! Yay for good deals!!