Radeon x600 Pro

[Butters]

I'v got a Radeon x600 Pro 256mb in my new PC.

Now I thought that it's a pretty good card, better than the 9800 XT Pro I have in my home PC but i'v found that the 9800 will run games like BF2 and San Andreas better than the x600. On the x600 I can't get BF2 running really smoothly on even the medium settings, especially when playing the Special Forces expansion. San Andreas can be slightly laggy/juttery even on medium settings.

Anyone know why this is? I don't want to buy a new card, I can't afford it, but is there a way to perhaps squeeze some more juce out of it?

[BoonDock]

Make sure you have all the updated drivers for the game/pc ... that normally has a lot to do with it, also if there is a diagnostic for the game run that to maybe find out what you are missing or what settings you need...as well as running and making sure you have the newest version of direct x

[squireglig]

Sorry I do not have an answer as to how you could squeeze more power out of it...

However, from what I understand, the x300 is basically a 9600 in PCI-E. I believe the x600 is just the 256MB version of that card. I could be wrong tho. What I do know is that the 9800XT will destroy the x300, so if the above is true, that would be the reason.

[Butters]

I thought the x600 was a much newer product than the 9800XT tho?

I dont have ATI Catalyst 6.2 installed, i'm downloading it now, perhaps it will help?

[sed|thh]

I've got eax700 256megs

it's supposed to be better than 9800 etc
the reason some games run slower that they were optimized for older series

[squireglig]

The x600 is newer, but not necessarily better. You have to keep in mind that ATI needed to populate the 'value' side of the PCI-E line. I believe this is why there are similar prices for 9600s and x300s, and 9800s and x550s and x600s.

I know my friend's x300 performs about the same as a 9600 on similar systems, on newer gen games.

I think a similar comparison would be to think of it the same way as the FX line from nVidia. The Geforce 4 MX series performed almost as well as the lower end FX line, and the GF4 Ti would have similar performace to the FX line (maybe not the 5900...), despite FX being newer.

You may have some new shaders and such which would allow newer games to run better than on older cards, but this only counts for games that really use this optimization.

Doing a quick search i came across this chart:

http://www.pcvsconsole.com/features/video/

You can see the clock speed of the 9800XT is higher than an x600Pro.

I might be wrong here, so feel free to correct me anyone, as i haven't really kept up with newer vid card technology :)

[Butters]

Yeah I guess, but even so, surely a 256mb card should be able to handle Battlefield 2 on at least medium settings...

[squireglig]

Hmmmm.. I just thought of something. It may not even be your video card, it might be RAM or something similar. I know usually juttery lag means that.

If you bought your computer pre-built (like Dell), it may have come with a bunch of unnecessary stuff installed and running on startup. You could try shutting down all those processes and also stopping any unnecessary windows services to get that max out of your machine.

I know I've done this when playing world of warcraft on my old PC, and it's made a slight difference. But who knows, if it's a machine like a dell, there might be lots of programs running, and you could free up alot of resources by shutting them off.

[Willofdarkness]

after owning a Rage Fury MAXX, a first gen Radeon, a radeon 7000 series and a Radeon 9800 Pro, i've come to this conclusion: don't get an ATI... ive run into so many problems with them...

i have a GeForce 7800 GT and i'm loving every minute it.


but, when i did have those cards, it helped to test multiple sets of drivers... i found that the Omega Catalysts were the best in my system.

[blindart]

don't get an ATI... ive run into so many problems with them...

After switching from Nvidia to Ati last year, I can COMPLETELY agree with this one. I've got an Ati x800 which has given me no end of problems! For anyone interested though, check this softmod out...

http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?t=227800

I'm a 3D artist by day, so wanted the functionality of a fireGL. This mod turned my x800 into a fireGL X3! Well, as close as you can get when you're only modding drivers! In my specific case though, it made the card a bit unstable for games playing (specifically BF2) so I ended up swapping it back to an x800.