GeForce 7800 AGP on a PIII.

[Princemercury]

I've become bored and was wondering about this...

I found an old PIII system laying around with a 733Mhz core in it.

The AGP slot is 2x/4x compatible, but it is an AGP v.2.0 slot.

The fastest card to date, available for an AGP 2.0 4x slot is the GeForce 7800OC AGP.

Has anyone attempted to install a 7800 in a p3 machine? And what were the results like?

I already know some of you might say "the card is too fast for the system and it will keep waiting for instructions from the processor", but that's not true.

Just wondering.

(I know it's a long shot, a $280 video card in a $2 system, but I'm curious).

And yeah, I want to benchmark it with FFXI. Just wanted to know if this system was remotly able to handle a card 5 years later its time, just funny to think about it.

 

[Princemercury]

Oh and another quick question. What's better for FFXI? nVidia or ATI?

I know nVidia is a fps whore, while ATI actually cares about image quality at the sacrafice of frames.

But does the FFXI engine even support high end image enhancers like SM3?

 

[rhinegold]

Ehhh... :\ I wouldn't try it. Even though the PIII was introduced during the highpoint of AGP, such a fast card (for AGP lol; I'll keep my SLI~), the internal cache of the PIII would limit to some degree the operating capacity of the card. While it would help, you wouldn't be extracting all the power from the card unless you had a faster processor. The cache and FS bus can only take so much~ lol


Hope this helps~

 

[CmdrFly]

Oh and another quick question. What's better for FFXI? nVidia or ATI?

They're both pretty much the same. FFXI's engine is pretty horrid as far as handling frames goes, so you won't notice much of a difference either way - I'm still seeing some slowdowns in FFXI on a 512mb X1900XTX.

The engine does not support any DX9 features, and I'm leery to say it even supports many DX8 features since the engine was released in 2002.

 

[Princemercury]

Ehhh... :\ I wouldn't try it. Even though the PIII was introduced during the highpoint of AGP, such a fast card (for AGP lol; I'll keep my SLI~), the internal cache of the PIII would limit to some degree the operating capacity of the card. While it would help, you wouldn't be extracting all the power from the card unless you had a faster processor. The cache and FS bus can only take so much~ lol


Hope this helps~

Yeah figured that part out already, but with limitations aside (cache and fsb opposed to a fast card) just wondering what the missed potential was 5 years ago .

Just went out and bought the 7800 AGP with an older FX5500, gonna test both to see what the difference is hehe.

They're both pretty much the same. FFXI's engine is pretty horrid as far as handling frames goes, so you won't notice much of a difference either way - I'm still seeing some slowdowns in FFXI on a 512mb X1900XTX.

The engine does not support any DX9 features, and I'm leery to say it even supports many DX8 features since the engine was released in 2002.

Haha, thought so, I already tested the thing with an x1600, and the quality & frames were... terrible.

 

[masterorion]

Oh and another quick question. What's better for FFXI? nVidia or ATI?

I know nVidia is a fps whore, while ATI actually cares about image quality at the sacrafice of frames.

But does the FFXI engine even support high end image enhancers like SM3?

i have experienced both ati and nvidia for ffxi. although ffxi supports nvidia, i have had a better experience with ati. there are driver issues with nvidia that cause graphic glitches. nothing major, but its annoying. my nvidia card also had driver caused lag when range attack hit a target.
i havent yet had an issue with my ati card tho

 

[Bajaratt]

If you're only going to play FFXI, either card works and you don't need a particularly strong card to play it. If you're going to play other games, I'd say go nVidia; but if you're doing computer modeling/rendering go ATI.

 

[Tagrineth]

Actually, AGP 2x/4x always means AGP 2.0. The AGP 3.0 spec called for 4x/8x, but AGP 8x is pretty much a dead technology, as well as being fairly unstable on many chipsets.

Anyway, on a P3, YES, the graphic card will be "limited". What this really means is that once you reach a certain frame rate, you WILL NOT be able to exceed it no matter how many graphics settings you turn off. Many games will have severe problems running because they'll be so CPU bound - for example, when I first got my Radeon 9500 Pro, it was paired with P3 800MHz and I got terrible frame rates in Unreal Tournament 2004 almost regardless of how I set the game up, and it only got worse if I turned the settings up.

The best thing that can be done with a super high end graphics board, if paired with a super low end CPU, is jack up the anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering. Those functions will tax the hell out of the graphics board almost independently from the CPU.

Sadly, only aniso works in FFXI. FSAA does not. =c

 

[CmdrFly]

The best thing that can be done with a super high end graphics board, if paired with a super low end CPU, is jack up the anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering. Those functions will tax the hell out of the graphics board almost independently from the CPU.

Sadly, only aniso works in FFXI. FSAA does not. =c

Adding to this: though AA is not supported, increasing your texture sizes a la this method has a similar effect (less 'jaggies'). When you get the new card, if you havent already tweaked the texture sizes, I highly recommend it. The difference is night and day.

 

[Skaw]

I've ran this game on a GeForce 3 temporarily. It's not all that graphically intensive, but really, all your in game issues are going to come from such an outdated processor(and most likely memory too,) rather that video output.

 

[Acks]

Don't do it. The AGP slot being used is slow, AGP is dead, and the P3 is too slow to do any gaming especially FFXI since it's more processor intensive than graphics intensive.

 

[Princemercury]

Amazing results...

The FX5500 failed to install. Period. It didn't work. I could get into it, but not worth it.

The 7800 however, with a pIII 600e and 256MB RAM...

Background Resolution @ 2048x2048 (using regedit strings)
Overlay Resolution @ 1600x1200
All Video / Image settings turned uncompressed and / or highest possible setting.
FPS = 53-57 (While in party with BRD spamming songs).

Pretty Cool, A really really really high end card in a crap computer makes a lot of difference =P.

x1600 ATI - Failed.
FX5500 nVidia - Failed.
x1300 ATI - Failed.
GeForce 6800 OC AGP - 10 fps lower than 7800.

-For those who were interested,

-Princemercury.

 

[CmdrFly]

Background Resolution @ 2048x2048 (using regedit strings)
Overlay Resolution @ 1600x1200
All Video / Image settings turned uncompressed and / or highest possible setting.
FPS = 53-57 (While in party with BRD spamming songs).

Huh? Every time I run Fraps, it caps out at ~29-30. Never seen it above 32, on both of my systems. How did you get it to hit 50s?

 

[nofriends]

Amazing results...

The FX5500 failed to install. Period. It didn't work. I could get into it, but not worth it.

The 7800 however, with a pIII 600e and 256MB RAM...

Background Resolution @ 2048x2048 (using regedit strings)
Overlay Resolution @ 1600x1200
All Video / Image settings turned uncompressed and / or highest possible setting.
FPS = 53-57 (While in party with BRD spamming songs).

Pretty Cool, A really really really high end card in a crap computer makes a lot of difference =P.

x1600 ATI - Failed.
FX5500 nVidia - Failed.
x1300 ATI - Failed.
GeForce 6800 OC AGP - 10 fps lower than 7800.

-For those who were interested,

-Princemercury.

No, it didnt.

I have a Athlon64 3700+ OC'd out the wazoo with a PCI-E 16x 7800GTX OC'd and 2gb of ram, and I cant pull those kinds of settings. Bard songs with extreme resolutions KILL my FPS, a P3 system would not be able to sustain anything near what you described.