What Graphic card allows 60+FPS At all times?

My system:
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Amd64 3200+ (venice core) Oc'ed to 2.71ghz
ULi Dual Sata2 (AGP/Pci-express x16 both included)
2 x 512mb Corsair XMS
80gig Sata Maxtor
Radeon 9700pro oc'ed to 370core/640mem
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My problem is that in town and in heavy fights my fps dips to about 20fps which is totally unacceptable to me. In instanced areas while looking at my character and not doing anything I get about 60fps. I have everything turned on high and aa on 4x. I know that if i disable aa I get 60fps constantly, so that means I'm gfx card limited. I'm looking to spend about $100-$180 on a new gfx card that would allow me to MAX all settings on gw and ensures 60+ Fps at all times. AGP or express is fine since my mobo can do both. But remeber I need to max GW setting with all the fancy effects with 60+fps.

I been considering 6800nu and unlocking it, but that seems risky if i get a bad one. Then I considered x800gt but that seems to be near a 6600gt in performance. x800pro/x800xl is a little bit too expensive at $200+.

6600gt seems to be the best for undder 200$, but dont ask me i can barely tomb with my gfx card, a crappy 5700 le

how do you get GW to show FPS?

i would also like to know the answer to katches question.
if i know how to show fps i can tell u wat an x800 pro gets for gw

i have a good 6600 GT and it is the best bang for the buck.

will you get your 60 FPS at all times with everything to the max?

NO

will you even notice a huge difference .....MAYBE

best advice is to wait a few months for the budget 7800 budget card to drive the 6800 GT card down below 200 dollars and get that.

performance or money is always the tradeoff you have to make.

the card i have does a beautiful job for me but not the FPS at all times you consider the minimum

so how do we get to see how many fps our gw runs at?

Use fraps ( a gameplay video recorder) and it will display you the frames per seconds.

thanks for letting me know

ok i did the fps thingy using fraps. i played gw on max settings and my fps was between 58 and 69.
i use a 3.2ghz p4,1gb ram,x800 pro and some cheap $40 (US dollars) motherboard.
it went down to 34 fps a few times when i just entered a busy town (lions arch dis 1)
but then it went bak up to around 62.

You can simply put "-perf" (without the quotes) behind the target name in your Windows shortcut to Guild Wars. You will then see the framerate (FPS) constantly displayed at the top of your screen.

kool thanks. it looks better this way

Is it overclocked x800pro or running at stock? Also since I just got the game awhile back how does that town compare to Ascalon (post searing) in terms to # of people. How many fps do you get running in post searing Ascalon?

I have a 6600GT. The information added by the -perf option shows it has not being able to consistently stay above or near 60FPS.

Just FYI.

Just for your info, the X800XL ATI card is pretty darn good too. Very simular to the 6800GT. It is also a little cheaper. I am pretty happy with the frame rates on this card. I get over 30fps by quite a bit. I run it on everything set to high and 4xAA. It will hold me until the 7800GTX or the equivalent is at a more reasonable price.

Hmmm I thought an x800xl will get 60fps constantly, what are your system specs? Btw maybe i'll wait, it looks like the x1k is comming in a week. www.ati.com Turn your clock forward to october 6th and you can see it

its not overclocked coz i dont know how to overclock anything on the computer properly ( last time i overclocked my old pc, the motherboard blew)
and i went to ascalon post searing in dis 1, the fps was around 52 and 60.
so it stays pretty constant. the only time it drops to below 50 is right after i enter a place and everything has to load, that takes about 5 seconds then its all good.

I haven't heard good things about the newer ATI cards. As for my system specs: 3.4Ghz 800FSB 2meg L2 cache, 2GB Pc-4200 ram. Couple of SATA Hard Drives..etc. It is a fast little Dell Dimension 5100. But I liked the processor. It was the best you can get for the Dim 5100 and it the only one of the HT 800 FSB one with a 2meg L2 cache available.

This X800XL has run smoothly too. No crashes...no gliches. It also is NOT a overclock vid card. It is maxed out as a stock card on core speed. That doesn't bother me because I do not overclock anything anymore. I see no need to do so.

EDIT: I should also add that this X800XL is the most quiet vid card I have ever had.

when would be a good time to get a new pc?
i can spend about $5000 (australian dollars: 1 aus dollar= 74 US cents)
i want to get something that would be very good for games and would prefer a geforce gfx card, and a dual core processor.

That quite a lot of money there, comes to about $3700 USD.
M2 is comming next year Q2 or Q3

As to right now, I think the best bet is the following:

AMD 64 X2 4400+ or 4800+ (the 4400+ can easily reach 4800+ with OC and much cheaper)
DFI Ultra-D SLI (Overclocker dream here)
2 sticks of 1 gig ram, perferably G.Skill or ones with TCCD/BH5 chips (1 gig sticks because 4 slots will cause the system to run at 2T instead of 1T, also make sure its low timming, the k8 seems sensitive to it)
Thermalright XP-90 for cooling the cpu (Throw in panaflo fan for better flow)
PC P&C 510 Express/SLI PSU (VERY Nice PSU that wont blow your system up and can supply clean power)
2x 7800gtx or 2x x1800xt when it comes out (But you need a crossfire board)
Whatever case strike your fancy
2005 DELL LCD forgot the exact model but with 2005 in it, very good lcd with good refresh rate.

The below is rough estimate, some I over estimated for nice round numbers
$600(CPU) + $200(MOBO) + $400(RAM) + $1000(2x 7800gtx) + $200(PSU) + $400 (MISC) + $500? (monitor) = $3300

The only thing that seems odd is the # of pipes they have is still 16 same as last gen, and their clock speed is boosted to 600mhz to compete with a 24 piper with 425mhz speed. I wonder if the internal 512bit interface will help though. As to your system its very nice. But I have a friend who owns a dell 4000 series with one of those old p4 prescotts with an x800xl. When I go into his room its like an oven, You can almost scramble eggs on his case. Thats what really turns me off on buying Intel products until they can port their Dothans to desktops

Well my little Dell Dim 5100 runs real cool! It is a BTX PSU. It pulls air through the front and out the back. I like the new case design by Dell on these 5100 & 9100 systems. My Dim 4600 is a bit noisier. A little warmer, but it is two years old and still runs fine!

Yes I read that about the new ATI cards that they left them at 16 pipes instead of 24. Probably the next upgrade will have the extra pipelines. I just know that my X800XL is enough card for at least two years for ME! It doesnt require all that much power and it is QUIET! Even when I am running it hard like in GW with everything turn up to the max!

thanks acidic

Nvidia GeForce 7800 GT - dont think its 200 dollars or under though.. lol

Good Lord no it is not! It also takes up allot more power. Make sure you have enough PSU for it!

If money is no objective, then you will want a mother board with (2) 16x PCI Express slots and pick up two Nvidia Geforce 78xx and run them in SLI mode. Amd dual core is far better implemented then Intel at least at the time being. So I would go with an AMD Dual core cpu.

At the moment Nvidia has the speed crown and has better SLI (running two card together). Now the speed crown has switch times. In the future a leap frog by Ati is easily possible, remember tech is just a snapshot in time.

In the near future mother boards with more then two pci express slots will come out for the possibility of more then two? cards plus say future PhysicX (think how it's spelled) card for off loading physics processing for games that support it, and future gen sound cards...

To be honest, if you want the best bang for your buck, go with the previous best gen tech.. Reason being if you buy the best it's going to cost you an arm and a leg... and it will be outdated quickly. Or buy "previous" best gen, very affordable and still be outdated quickly.

Example, my system is a AMD Athlon64 3400+ (754 pin single channel memory), 1 gig DDR of memory, and an Nvidia Geforce FX 5700 ultra (agp). I run guild wars with 4x Anti-Aliasing, 75 mhz in 1024x768 refresh rate and the quality slider 2/3 toward the max end. The result is it looks and plays great.

When I upgrade to a new system it will be Amd Athlon64 (dual core), 1gig of DDR2 or DDR 3 (which ever is the standard, DDR 2 may have short life span with AMD since they are jumping on DDR3) or great, have at least an Nvidia 7x card (assuming 8x will be out) possible two for SLI and the mother board that has the fastest chipset (nvidia, ati, sis, via) at the time of purchase. I will sink the most money in to the power supply (if I have to replace) and the mother board for max stabilty and upgrade ability. The cpu cost will be geared towards the low or middle end of the dual cores so I can upgrade latter as an intrem step if I do. This will be next year maybe? or the following. Depends on money and what games I will be playing and how well they will run. I am looking towards Elder Scrolls 4 - Oblivion and will keep an eye for next gen FPS like quake 4, the next unreal using the currently being developed newer engine.

I personally never overclock anything there are stuff out there that don't run well with OC and you have to compensate the additional heat. OC (IMHO) great to tweak an older system to get a boost.

Almost forgot, Microsoft is exerting is control for windows vista over hardware. New features are going to be dicated by Microsoft via Direct X standards and ATI and Nvida will be competing to produce a card with the same features but for chip that runs it better... MS will have a far greater leash on video and audio. Give you another hint, Vista does not support / allow hardware accelaration of sound functions so sound is also going to get a bit intresting. An example of the influence if ms stalls on a new update or feature for Direct X for example, Ati & Nvidia will not be introducing a new card with new features until MS has created it... So MS could break the 6 month new video card cycle...

Unless that is Ati and nVidia both tell Microshaft where to shove their Vista and concentrate on better products for us Linux and Mac users

Is there any particular reason that you want a static 60+ frames per second?, The reason I ask this, is that your brain/eyes will not be able to tell the difference between say 30 and 60 fps.

The way the game looks at 30 or 60+ frames is irellevant because your can't see the difference, as long as your getting about 30 fps with all the eye candy turned on it's fine. And yes a 6600gt will do you just fine. I have an x800xl and a 6800gt, and they're good for a few years yet.

my command line:
"H:\GUILD WARS\Gw.exe" -perf display fps

I can tell though, if I look from the bird eye view everything is silk smooth at 60fps, but if i switch to battling with the horizon view it gets pretty skippy

Nope i'm sorry I do not believe you can tell the difference between the frame rates unless they were really bad frame rates, it's impossible to tell between static frame rates, as I said the normal brain cannot distinguish frame rates that high. If your getting 30 fps at max settings and 60 fps at max settings you cannot tell the difference. The higher the frame rate the faster it refreshes and it cannot be seen.

As you said above, the "skippines" you see is from the settings you have set the game at, i.e high settings means your graphics card is going to struggle, and thats why you can notice it. 60 fps is not needed if your graphics card can handle max settings, and you will get 60 and more with a better graphics card. But I stand by what I said if your gameplay is smooth(with a better card) you cannot see the difference above 30 frames per second..

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...2E16814122209R

Seems good eh? Only thing that troubles me is that its refurb'ed.... I'll see i can wait for 10 days for x1k to come out and hop that price drop, god its hard doing without gw for another week

Here is a very good review of the new Ati Crossfire vs Nvidia SLI (dual card support)

http://techreport.com/reviews/2005q3...e/index.x?pg=1

ATI dual card support is just coming out now where Nvidia has had a 1 year jump and was planning there cards from the 6x in the very design. Side note, at the moment Guild Wars runs slower with ATI Dual then single cards.... I have no doubt this will be fixed quickly after the review hits the web.

They also tested the current generation mother boards feature the more current ati / nvidia chipsets.

Well, to bring this back towards the original post, my X800XL gets 60 consistantly (59-62, to be exact) including Ascalon city.

My tester 6200 AGP (new version with NO HSI chip, tis badass) can handle 60 FPS. Test system is a 3200+ AMP XP, 512 DDR400, on a Chaintech Zenith Socket A board. DDR settings are all stock, CAS 2.5-4-4-6, there is no OC and this is taken under full load. Operating system is Windows XP SP2, all critical patches.

Have been beta testing this card for a bit, and am INCREDIBLY impressed. In many ways it is just as capable as a 6600, and on the AGP interface, with 128 framebuffer to boot, it just screams. It is just as fast as my 9700 hard-mod card was, and I'll run them side by side if I must, but I can safely say that if you're not looking for EVERY detail up (I can run full detail including postprocessing, but my 512 of RAM hold me up) this is an awesome bet.

PNY should have the card available in retail now, and it's dirt cheap...

I can tell the frame rates also. Don't know about guild wars, but back in the day while playing counter-strike, i used to get around 30 fps on a cheap 3dfx voodoo card. Then I decided to upgrade to a lower end geforce card, and got 60-70 fps. Boy what a difference!

I use to have 2 voodoo 2 cards sli, Aureal Sq-2500, k6-3 500 mhz... UT (orginal) was the bomb

In FPS's the min you want is 60 fps, it's not a matter of the eye per say but it's due to the accurate positioning of the target and firing weapons with high speeds as well as constant jumping motion.

Guild Wars and other games such as Tomb Raider "style" game, rpg's / mmorph's such as morrowind and Final Fantasy XI need 30-45 fps too look perfect. You don't have the extremly fast movement as FPS.

Since the OP wants to run games (besides GW) at 60 fps including you will need some nice hardare but the high end truly get insane at 120 fps.. in that article I mentioned Doom 3 on the Nvidia 7800 SLI at max quality maz aa was pushing this.

With my current hardware I get about avg 38fps in Ascalon 25-24 fps. I do get some stuttering in Acalon. It's very playable / not distracting and I will like when I upgrade down the road to get a solid 60+ for perfect rendering

Guild Wars seems to be very CPU dependant if you want high frame rates all the time with maximum graphics quality. I have noticed low frame rates (below 30 fps) mainly at very busy towns where people are packed in small area or in large battles when it is snowing or at tombs if almost everyone has pets and fighting happens in Capture The Altar map.

First I dropped Anti-Aliasing but it had no effect to frame rates although I'm using 1024x768 resolution. Then I dropped graphics quality from maximum to minimum and gain only few frames per second. So I guess CPU matters more in this case.

I'm using this setup:

Athlon Barton 3200+
Abit NF7-S rev 2.0, nForce2
1.5 GiB PC3200
Radeon X800 XL
160 GB Samsung SP80 SATA

did you have any problems with that board? (Abit NF7-S rev 2.0, nForce2)

i gor 2 RMAs on mine and it never worked properly with any cpu i had from a thunderbird 1.4 to a barton 2500+

a budget Asus solved every problem first try.

North bridge chip fan broke after two weeks usage and I replaced it with passive heatsink. Motherboard has been in use for about two years and no other problems have appeared.