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#1 Dec 06 2005 at 6:41 AM Rating: Decent

(I hope to get a new graphics card so I can run it on my machine, and my parents will only let me install the demo on thier comp) That leads me to my next question, will the geforce 6600 gt agp 256mb ($219) or the geforce fx 5700 ultra 128mb ($89) be a better deal for my money.

All my other comps parts are fine, 512 ram/2000mb processor; however my current graphics card, ad Geforce 4 mx 440 is not sufficent. Will the fx ultra be enough to run the game on high graphics (not ballenced) without that much lag? Or should I cash out on the 6600 which Im sure will be fine, plus it has 256 ram.

Thanks for the help
Rahmae (server: Luclen delare (sp))
#2 Dec 06 2005 at 7:39 AM Rating: Decent
i would definetly go with the 6600, thats what i run on my rig and if you were to upgrade to say...1 and a half gigs of ram you would never lag, i haven't yet since i did it.. :)
#3 Dec 06 2005 at 9:15 AM Rating: Decent
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I hope you mean 2.0MHZ for your processor speed. Even though that may be minimal, you will want a faster processor. This game is graphic intensive.

The RAM won't cut it, you'll need more as Cerdnee said.
#4 Dec 06 2005 at 9:40 AM Rating: Decent
yup....i looked and at normal processing speed this game runs at about 712 megs, so at 512 on your harddrive and the 66oo you wont do to badly, but you will lag and your load times will prolly suck. strongly recomend going to atleast a gig on your hardrive, and with prices of stuff right now it's the best time to do it, or be like me...i'm about to go to 4 gigs :)))))
#5 Dec 06 2005 at 1:45 PM Rating: Default
The second graphics card you listed was a 128. If I remember correctly eq2 requires 256 minimum. Also I would recommend a minimum of 1Ghz ram. I have seen this game played on a 512 and it ain't pretty.
#6 Dec 06 2005 at 2:09 PM Rating: Decent
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I have the NVidea 128MB graphics card, 1.7MHZ, 760MB RAM.

That POS system with the SUX upgrade limits me to playing on extreme performance.
#7 Dec 06 2005 at 8:05 PM Rating: Decent
Wow...So the ram really is worth the upgrade. Will my lag/loading time be okay if I have at least a gig of ram and the 6600? I dont have the option to get a new comp, however I can upgrade. More opinons would be nice. Thanks everyone. BTW, the one w/ 128 ram is supported by EQII.
#8 Dec 07 2005 at 10:55 AM Rating: Good
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Hello:

I can state absolutely that 128 MB video RAM works, BUT you must twiddle the video settings in game under EQII button: Options: Graphics Options: (working off memory here)
texture resolutions: MEDIUM or LOW but *NOT* HIGH
else there will be excessive swap from system RAM to video card RAM, and performance will be cut around 66%.

Second, you will lag heavily with 512 MB system RAM; you can reduce this partially by setting all the textures per above to lowest detail, which leaves a WOW-like cartoon effect. Setting game performance to "high" won't work at all for your system, both due to processor bandwidth issues (implicitly you're a 400 Mhz Front Side Bus if thats an Intel 1.7 Ghz CPU) and the low RAM. Remember, with low RAM, the game will attempt to use the system swap file as virtual RAM, which means the essentially mechanical disk replaces the purely semiconductor system memory for whatever didn't fit in RAM, a 1000:1 slowdown. !!! Yes!

So, number 1, upgrade RAM to > 512 MB.
Number 2, minimum 128 MB RAM video RAM, and with that you can't load high resolution textures, meaning you can't set performance to "high", but have to hand massage your settings.
At 64 MB video RAM the game is nearly unplayable, and you must resort to "extreme performance" and hand tuning the video settings. The FX 5700 video card would need to be ran at High Performance mode and ideally with the options for bloom effect, water effects,and all shadows DISABLED.

You may have DDR system RAM with a 1.7 GHz motherboard, but you won't have dual channel support on the motherboard. You know, a $59 motherboard like ASUS P4S800D-X with a $75 CPU like Celeron-D 2.4 Ghz (or faster) would be nearly 4 TIMES the processor bandwidth as your current rig:
[1.7 Ghz] * [400 Mhz FSB] * [4 bytes/RAM access]
vs
[2.4 Ghz] * [533 Mhz FSB] * [8 bytes/RAM access] ==>

[1.41] * [1.33] * [2] ==> 3.75

Purists will take me to task for condensing the dual channel effect to 2 concurrent accesses during the same time; its a little more complex, in that the speedup happens when reading from within a memory page, as happens during block moves. But EQ2 uses extensive blockmoves, or rather the MS DirectX 9.0c functions are making extensive block moves of textures and objects from conventional RAM to video RAM, and thence the objects remain in the video card's memory until you move and new objects need to be loaded or unloaded.

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Ok, so lets assume youre really cheap, and don't have 21 years exp as a systems engineer. I've seen Gforce 6800 128 MB selling for around $130; you dont HAVE to spend $220 on a video card, although the GT flavor has fast transfer within the video card (that is, much faster video RAM) than the non-GT cards.

OK, you wanted another opinion. Have to go
#9 Dec 07 2005 at 3:36 PM Rating: Decent
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My friend runs the game fine on a Amd athlon 1700 (1100megahertz) with 512 megs of the old pc133 memory, and a dial up connection. He does have a decent video card. Of course the settings are not full power, but it really looks pretty good still.

In any case it just depends on what you really want. If your wanting it to run full power you will need some massive upgrades. If you can handle medium quality though the 5700 will be fine. I am not sure what the actual speeds are on the 5700, but you can get a geforce fx 5600 with 256 megs of ram for the same price as that one with 128 megs of ram. Eq2 claims it uses every bit of video memory you give it.

When you say 2000 do you mean that is the actual processor speed, or are you talking about say a amd athlon 2000, which in fact probably only runs at around 1300? Like my cpu is a athlon 64 3000+ but the actual speed is I think 1800. And I don't think CPU makes a massive difference. I upgraded my whole motherboard from a nforce 2 to a nforce 3. When I did that I also got the new athlon 64 and it went from a athlon 1800 to a athlon 3000+. When I loaded up the game it really didn't seem to run any better.
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Hi
#10 Dec 07 2005 at 5:17 PM Rating: Decent
Sorry for some miss iterpritations, here is what I currently have:

Pentium four 2000Ghz processor

Two sticks of 256mb ram

radeon x300 graphics card 128mb


Here is what I want to have (currently):

Pentium four 2000hz procesor

two sticks of 256mb ram, plus one stick of 512mb (can I do that? and how expensive is ram. BTW, I got my comp from gatway in 03')

6800 nvdiea graphics card, agp gt 256mb of ram ($276!!)
#11 Dec 13 2005 at 10:53 AM Rating: Decent
newegg.com is your friend


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