Widescreen Gaming Forum

Thanks guys. What do you think about the Nvidia 7950GT? Since my ATI card doesn't work well with the TH2Go I should probably get a card that does.

My system is a little old and has AGP, not PCI-E. Because of that I think I cannot get an 8800 card (PCI-E only). I have been looking at 7950 cards since they look like the best Nvidia card for AGP. I found this card (XFX PVT71AYDF3 GeForce 7950GT 512MB 256-bit GDDR3 AGP 4X/8X Video Card) at Newegg for $269.99. Any thoughts on that?

I have been drooling over Paddy's GRAW screenshots and am hoping this will make it possible on my system. Let me know what you think. Thanks.

Hello ...

Sure that card will help ... but ... from one of my earlier posts ...

With my Dual Sli system ... very well ... 3840x1024 - 50-60 fps
With my Quad system... not so good at the moment ... bad drivers ... :roll: ... 3840x1024 - 10-20 fps ... :cry:

The SLi system was with 7900's ...
The Quad system was with 7950's ... I don't have this system any more.

Since then (that was a year ago) ... I am sure the frame rates improved with new drivers and the patches but ...
Now this is just my feeling ...
Even if one 7950 is now faster than one 7900 and taking into account that drivers and patches may have improved things too ... I think GRAW may still struggle with the fps at 3840x1024 with just one AGP card ...

Hopefully I am wrong ...

Just trying to give you a realistic picture before you spend ... expecting it to fly along ...

Thanks for the heads up, Paddy.

What do you suggest for my system (Dell computer with Intel Pentium 4 3.2 ghz, 2 MB RAM, ATI Radeon 9800 XT AGP card) to run GRAW in the Triplehead2Go mode? Is it possible to get a new (AGP) card or cards that will allow GRAW to work at high resolution and high FPS? I am not a computer guru so speak slowly...(you could probably figure that out when I wrote that I have a Dell).

Is this issue (low res, bad framerates) just with GRAW or will it affect all games in TH2Go?

Also, JKeefe seemed to have good luck with his cards ("I have a 7900GT which works just fine") and it looks like his computer was only 2.85 Ghz...

Thanks again!

I'm not saying it won't work ... for many games it will be fine ...
I was mostly talking about GRAW ...
You should ... for instance ... have no real problems with HL2/CSS ... Doom 3 ... MotoGP 2 & 3 ... and many more ...

At 3840x1024 ...
GRAW will struggle
Oblivion requires a lot too ...
R6 Vegas will also struggle ...
Not sure about FEAR ... may be with some graphics settings turned down ...
STALKER might be ok if you turn down the graphics settings ...

Basically most newer games are going to struggle at 3840x1024 with all the graphics settings turned up ...
You could maybe run GRAW and the newer games at 3072x768 ... or 2400x600 although it would look a bit jaggy at 2400x600 with out AA.
GRAW only has edge blurring no real AA ... and if you turn it on in the NVIDIA control panel it will slow the game down without adding the AA.

Take a look at what games you have ... running them at 800x600 or 1024x768 ... see what you think to the res etc ...

As far as I know the 7950 is probably as good as it gets for AGP and TH ... I could be wrong though.

Kimmelator,

Bluntly put, you are pushing a whole hell of a lot of pixels at high triplehead resolutions. This will cause slowdowns on less-than-capable systems, there's no way around it.

I am a simmer (flight sims and racing sims), so I play very different games from Paddy (who seems to focus more on shooter-type games). Shooters are by definition heavier on the GPU than a sim is, because sims demand much more from the CPU than most other games. When you throw in a triplehead resolution, you automatically triple the GPU's needed work while leaving the necessary CPU horsepower unchanged. With my sims, I am primarily focused on immersion, which means for flight sims framrate isn't that important - usually 20 or 30 FPS will do. For racing you need a bit more to control the car (40-60 FPS) but 40 is about the bare minimum you need for a fast-paced shooter like GRAW. As such, this type of game will need a faster GPU for a given acceptable level of gameplay.

As Paddy says, a 7950GT is the best you can do with AGP. It's also the best you can do without spending a lot of money. However, if you want the best triplehead experience it seems like a mistake not to get at least an 8800GTS at this point. For you that means pretty much a whole new system, but if you built it yourself should cost around $1500 if you resuse monitors. It's perhaps more than you were looking to spend at this point, but it might be best to wait and stick with your 9800 right now and do the big upgrade in the future, instead of buying a 7950 that you know won't be able to be used in a new system (since it's AGP) and that you know is already 1 generation old in terms of GPU technology.

As far as my 2.85 GHz CPU goes, it is an AMD Opteron processor and does much more per clock cycle than a Pentium 4. As such, my 2.85 GHz CPU is significantly faster than your 3.2 GHz CPU. CPU capability is not all about clockspeed, as even the slowest Core 2 Duo CPU available right now (1.83 GHz) is faster than your 3.2 GHz P4.

It was my impression that I have a satisfying framerate in GRAW, just checked now and I discovered that I have only like 30 fps.

However this is @ 3840x1024x32, all video settings @ high, dynamic shadows and lighting high/on and 4x anisotropic filtering.

For me, I don't care about 30 or 60 fps as long as the game plays fine, and this game is f***ing amazing! The parachute jump at the beginning of the first mission is just awesome!!! When I first saw this I thought it was rendered ... :D

Gosh games look like so much fun in triple head but are so killer performance wise :( and so expensive though when you think about it its about 800 bucks or so so about 200 more than a 23/24" monitor but then you need just a bit of extra graphics power

Hehe, the Triplehead2Go is not cheap, but it's just little money compared to what you need to drive 3 displays at max. resolution and max. settings.

However, before that I had a 6600GT and I was able to play the FEAR demo in at least in 3072x768 as well as Area51. Only volumetric fog slowed it down and of course graphics settings only @ medium positions. AA, AF and dynamic lights off. Could also play Lock-On @ 20fps, not too bad for such a dated card.

It seems to me that GPU power is not THE most important thing to play in triple head but the amount of video memory, available system RAM and the bus in between (PCIe). That's why I went for the 640MB 8800GTS and not the cheaper 320MB, would have been saved money at the worst possible spot!!

Somebody also said that the card has to render 3 times more in triplehead but this is not true and this has been proven many times (the actual ratio is about 2 - 2.5 more). So if you have a framerate of 60fps it won't drop to 20 in triple but rather something like 25 to 28.

But then again, fps is secondary for me, playability and visual impression comes first.

Those widescreen view are awesome!

However, in a way, it gives such players an unfair advantage over the non-widescreen players. MOST players can not afford this advanced and expensive equipment.

OMG, not that discussion again. :roll: :roll: