New Video Card!

[Dollan]

Hey folks...

We bought a new system today! A Pro Series XP 10/2006 Intel Pentium D 3.4GHz with 1GB of RAM.

The video card is a Radeon X1600 Series with 256MB of memory. I'm not going to have time to check it tonight (I have a ton of software to reinstall), so I thought I'd ask... what can I expect, as far as Celestia goes? Obviously it will run a lot better. But I know there are always issues with different video cards. How does the Radeon perform with Celestia?

...John...

[Dollan]

Okay, I got impatient and went ahead and installed Celestia. My goodness.... I'm in awe. This is, suddenly, a whole new program! I'm probably going to end up staying awake way too long as I go through the Motherlode and download add-ons that I've never before been able to properly appreciate!

Wow....

...John...

[Johaen]

Congratulations on your new PC! Out of curiosity, what did you have before?

[buggs_moran]

I have a 9600XT, everything works well except cloud shadows.

[Dollan]

I don't recall the specifics, but it was a Gateway Pentium III, with a CPU speed rated just below 1 GHz. The video card was an old TNT2 Nvidia, with 30MB of RAM. If I recall, the RAM for the whole machine was supposed to be 256MB, but one of the chips had a problem, so it was actually somewhat less than that.

It was a machine that I managed to bring to life after it had been abandoned by our ITS department, and it still works well... but is far inferior to our needs (especially my wife, who is a graphic designer). This new system should see us through for some time!

...John...

[Fightspit]

I also get a new PC recently, look at my signature

[t00fri]

I also get a new PC recently, look at my signature

That looks like a neat configuration! Congratulations...

How noisy is your 8800GTX card in 2D and 3D operation, respectively? Which brand?

Bye Fridger

[Fightspit]

It is a Club3D video card:
http://www.materiel.net/details_CGNX-X8868.html

In 2D application, I can hardly hear it which can be confused with the fan of CPU, that is cool.
In 3D application, I notice more noisy but other fans (cpu and power source) run also and it is difficult to know who is doing more noise .
In conclusion, the fan of graphic card work fine without a bad noise

[Boux]

I also get a new PC recently, look at my signature

Congrats and enjoy. That's a pretty good rig for sure.
Now, you should rise the fsb so that the CPU runs somewhere between 3.4 and 3.6GHz.
Most chips will do.
My A-Data PC8000 will do well over 420MHz fsb but the CPU wants more juice above 3.4GHz (it is running at stock voltage right now).
More juice means more cooling and more noise on air.
Need to watercool this baby!

[selden]

Warning: overclocking can be fraught with peril. Inaccurate numerical results, overheating and intermittent errors are among the problems to be overcome.

My personal opinion is that the 10-20% performance improvement isn't worth the effort. Other people disagree and find it to be a fascinating challenge.

[Boux]

Warning: overclocking can be fraught with peril. Inaccurate numerical results, overheating and intermittent errors are among the problems to be overcome.

My personal opinion is that the 10-20% performance improvement isn't worth the effort. Other people disagree and find it to be a fascinating challenge.

You are joking I hope.
We are talking about 50% overclocks minimum.
That is for the CPU only.
Now, what about the memory bandwidth which is still more important for performance (from 266 to 420 MHz fsb here).
You have to select top quality components of course.

[selden]

No, I'm quite serious.

Most overclockings I've read about top out with improvements of no more than about 15% in overall performance. Only a very few manage to do better than that.

Finding a CPU chip, memory interface chip and memory chips that all can do much better than than their rated values can be quite expensive, with failures along the way. The chips all have to be "hand selected." It's the variations in the manufacturing process (e.g. relative alignments among the multiple layers of semiconductors) which allow selected chips to do much better than their guaranteed performance levels. If they could be guaranteed to do much better, you can be sure that the chip manufacturers would have given them a higher rating and a higher price.

Some performance improvements can be assisted by exotic cooling systems that can remove the additional heat that's generated by the transistors switching at higher frequencies. High performance cooling systems have their own specialized problems, too, usually related to water getting where it must not: whether from leaks in water pipes or frost on refrigeration systems.

I'm not saying it can't be done, just that it's not easy, and shouldn't be attempted by someone who can't afford to let the magic smoke escape.

[Boux]

Sorry, but all your statements are mostly wrong.
Well this is not a performance computing board, so I will not elaborate further.

[ANDREA]

Well, I'm not so introduced in benchmarks and so on, so here is my problem:
I have the possibility to buy at 350 Euro an used (but it's of a friend of mine, I know very well how he uses the PC, so it's like new) Athlon 7900 GTX SLI-E 512 MB card, just like mine.
The question: is it worth buying it and use the couple of 7900 in SLI mode, or is it better to sell my own 7900 and buy an 8800 card?
I can't find information on how the SLI configuration performs with Celestia, so this is my doubt.
BTW, my main need of graphic power is for Celestia.
Thank you for your reply.
Bye

Andrea

[Johaen]

Well, I'm not so introduced in benchmarks and so on, so here is my problem:
I have the possibility to buy at 350 Euro an used (but it's of a friend of mine, I know very well how he uses the PC, so it's like new) Athlon 7900 GTX SLI-E 512 MB card, just like mine.
The question: is it worth buying it and use the couple of 7900 in SLI mode, or is it better to sell my own 7900 and buy an 8800 card?
I can't find information on how the SLI configuration performs with Celestia, so this is my doubt.
BTW, my main need of graphic power is for Celestia.
Thank you for your reply.
Bye

Andrea

8800 GTX for sure. SLI 7900 GTX 3DMark06 scores are in the 9000+ range, while single 8800 GTX 3DMark06 scores are in the 10000+ range. Plus it's DX10 compatable, and has all the extra fancy features. I sure wish I had the money to spare for a 8800 GTX. I wonder how much I could get for my 7900GT on ebay...

[Grumpsta]

Hi

I am new to this forum but not to celestia. My recent laptop died recently and it was not as good as my new one (see signature), but ran celestia better. The reason I found out was that the new one didnt have any Open GL software in it. So I tried to search for a place to download or buy, but never found one. Can anyone help?

[selden]

What do you mean by "OpenGL software"?

OpenGL graphics routines are included in the driver libraries (DLLs) installed for your graphics card. They're used by Celestia, games and other programs. If they weren't there, Celestia and other programs that use OpenGL wouldn't run at all.

Obsolete graphics libraries would have been installed on your system when you bought it, so you do have to download updated libraries from the Web site of the manufacturer of your laptop. Laptop manufacturers usually use proprietary designs to support the graphics chips, so the generic drivers on ATI's Web site might or might not work for you.


Graphics software development kits for both DirectX and OpenGL are available for free for downloading from the site of the manufacturer of your graphics chipset.

Since your laptop uses ATI graphics chips, that would be AMD's web site at
http://ati.amd.com/developer/

[Grumpsta]

I know absolutely nothing about OpenGL sorry.

But the problems fixed. I simply had to update my ATI catalyst program.

THanx Seldon.