Halo 1 & 2 for PC
This topic has moved here: Subject: The Buyer's Guide to Graphics Cards
  • Subject: The Buyer's Guide to Graphics Cards
Subject: The Buyer's Guide to Graphics Cards
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What's your current RAM's speed. Do you plan to use it with the new stuff or mix it. Make sure it's the same speed. Otherwise, weird anomalies can happen when running programs and/or your system won't boot up.

  • 01.26.2005 9:39 PM PDT
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Ok well the RAM I want says 400 Mhz and the RAM I have now says:184 pin, DDR1-400 SDRAM

Does the 400 show the speed? And the other guys says it'll work.

  • 01.26.2005 9:56 PM PDT
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Wow. You're saying that AGP is better than PCI-E? Holy crap you're retarded . Look at some benchmarks of the latest games and then re-write this so called "guide". The reason that some games don't differ much between AGP and PCI-E interface is, because there is nothing more to squeeze out of the game itself. Try taking Doom3, using the same exact pc components, minus mobo interface types, i.e. AGP/PCI-E, and compare the benchmarks. Do the same thing with a benchmarking utility and the gap between AGP and PCI-E is astonishing. You don't have take my word for it either. TomsHardware and others agree with me too.

  • 01.26.2005 10:02 PM PDT
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What he's saying is that PCI-E doesn't spec out as appearing to be a great deal faster.

  • 01.26.2005 11:31 PM PDT
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Posted by: Ambidextrous
Wow. You're saying that AGP is better than PCI-E? Holy crap you're retarded . Look at some benchmarks of the latest games and then re-write this so called "guide". The reason that some games don't differ much between AGP and PCI-E interface is, because there is nothing more to squeeze out of the game itself. Try taking Doom3, using the same exact pc components, minus mobo interface types, i.e. AGP/PCI-E, and compare the benchmarks. Do the same thing with a benchmarking utility and the gap between AGP and PCI-E is astonishing. You don't have take my word for it either. TomsHardware and others agree with me too.


Did I ever say that AGP is better than PCI-e? If so, quote me where I say that. In fact, I never said that. You must be the retarded one, because you have no reading comprehension. I'm saying that AGP is a good buy for the price. AGP boards and graphics cards run quite a bit cheaper than PCI-e. For most people that can hardly put up $1000 for a computer, like me, saving $100 is pretty big.

All I'm saying is that the difference is not worth the extra price tag for most people on a budget. Maybe you've got the money to get a new motherboard and $400+ graphics card for your pc. Many people don't. Maybe you've got the money for a new computer with top of the line components. Many people don't. I'm trying to help people buy something that's affordable. Hell, most people won't be buying the X800's and the 6800's right now. They'll be buying the 9800's, simply because of the price.

I said that it was a good investment to get PCI-e if you were going to upgrade in say, one or two years. However, I also said AGP is cheaper and the difference isn't huge except on certain games, like Doom 3. Even then, I'm pretty content with 70 FPS on my AGP board. Sure, you can get 100, but will you actually notice at that point?

I think you need to read my original post again and try to figure out exactly what my point was. You sure missed the mark by a few miles...

  • 01.27.2005 7:32 AM PDT
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Do they still make computers with AGP slots?

  • 01.27.2005 7:39 AM PDT
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Oh, sure they do. Probably 70 percent of new boards still have them.

  • 01.27.2005 8:04 AM PDT
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Not mine, it only had PCI-express.

  • 01.27.2005 12:05 PM PDT
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i bought a radeon 9200 SE and played it with Halo on a 3 gigahertz amd computer. i wasn't very pleased i know that i had a low budget bit it was still a 128 meg card with 400 mhz vpu speed. i had to play the game with every graphic setting down to its lowest and it looked kinda bad so i went back to the xbox. my advice don't waste your time with halo pc, it crashes a lot. even though it has online play. one program that will make halo xbox play online is connectbp and netplay, it alows non xbox live game play on the interent without an account works well.

  • 01.27.2005 5:57 PM PDT
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Well, you got a 9200 series. That is generally not great. The memory speed is low so the core speed really doesn't matter much. Also, the actual chipset is crappy. cards at 300MHz run a lot better than the 9200. also, SE=the stripped down crap edition. It's very bad to get one of those.

You will get crashes if your files are corrupted, and will crash if your card is poor. If you want to play a game with good graphics, be prepared to pay about $130+. for instance, the top of the line cards retail for over $500.

And BTW, HaloPC doesn't crash and has better graphics than XBox, even on my old computer with my 9600XT...

[Edited on 1/27/2005 6:47:25 PM]

  • 01.27.2005 6:46 PM PDT
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Posted by: sexy legs davis

And BTW, HaloPC doesn't crash and has better graphics than XBox, even on my old computer with my 9600XT...


I wouldn't say they're better, just higher resolution. I get the feeling Gearbox didn't add too much by way of better textures/models, etc. I could be wrong, tho'.

  • 01.27.2005 8:50 PM PDT
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Higher resolution still looks better. I didn't care so much for the shadowing stuff it's the resolution that would bother me when I had it at 640x480. *shivers*

  • 01.27.2005 9:12 PM PDT
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I think the shadows and stuff are a bit better. So is the specular. Otherwise, having 1024x768 is better than less than 640x480.

  • 01.28.2005 11:35 AM PDT
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I don't care for the shadows but specular is cool though. I just leave all the settings on.

  • 01.28.2005 6:00 PM PDT
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Posted by: sexy legs davis
I think the shadows and stuff are a bit better. So is the specular. Otherwise, having 1024x768 is better than less than 640x480.


Yeah, but on a TV, you don't notice it, un;ess you get a lot of horizontal lines. I would have preferred some more interesting textures - some of those Forerunner levels are pretty dull.

  • 01.28.2005 6:27 PM PDT
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Uh yeah i have a 9200 and IT WORKS FINE. I have it running at 800X600 and it doesn't lagg and looks really good.

  • 01.28.2005 7:30 PM PDT
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I had a 9250 but I didn't like it.

  • 01.29.2005 9:39 AM PDT
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Yeah, the 9200 series is getting old, but can handle graphics at lower resolutions. It can run Half Life 2 pretty well.


UPDATE: New info added for SLI configurations on the first post!

  • 01.30.2005 12:23 PM PDT
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SLI seems really great except for the fact that you ahve to have a special mother board. My next PC will be sure to have that. Think of the power if you added two x850 XTs together and then over clocked them!

  • 01.30.2005 7:17 PM PDT
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That would be nice...but ATI cards don't support SLI right now :(

Two 6800GT's are pretty darn fast, though.

  • 01.30.2005 8:46 PM PDT
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Sounds like a car though lol, that doesn't mean they're bad it's just kinda funny.

  • 01.30.2005 8:50 PM PDT
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At lucifer109:

How did you manage that?? I have that exact card but I experience alot of slow downs and crashes, sometimes even memory leaks.

Having said that, this is a review that someone wrote on Halo: combat evolved:

This game works best if the graphics hardware supports DX9 functionality. If you don't have that hardware then you are emulating the funtionality which is (in computing terms) an expensive process... which is why some of you are experiencing performance problems.

Despite being 2 years old, Halo's graphics were super advanced and far better than a PC at the time could run! so dont expect you K6II or SX33 to start churning out 1600x1200@32 graphics.

The best thing to get this game working is to patch it to the latest version, update your graphics drivers to the latest version and turn off all progs in the background on windows, turn off all texture/features and then start turning them on till you get a decent balance between performance and graphics.

I am running a 2500 Barton with 512MB on XP Pro with a 9200SE Atlantis and can run this fine on 1024x768. If I turn off a few graphics options I can get even more performance at higher res.

So stop being defeatist, start acting like computer geeks/gamers and tune (or upgrade) your PC into a gaming machine.

If it doesnt work well then, I'll eat my copy of Halo!

[Edited on 1/31/2005 3:27:58 AM]

  • 01.31.2005 3:16 AM PDT
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Heyyo,

They were great graphics for their time yes, but better than a pc? hells no. $box is slower than the average budget pc of today, and the game still runs like junk. The optimizations are very poor on HaloPC. On HaloCE at least they tried to intergrate "fast Shaders" but they still don't seem very efficient.. Half Life 2 has "fast shader" technology, and it works much better, I think I only lose like 5F/S with specular lighting on, on the "video stress test" (benchmark) to 69.48F/S, on HaloPC? I lose over 25F/S turning on specular lighting on, and my score is like 10F/S... uber-weak.

One thing I'm pretty upset aboot is how gearbox diddn't upgrade the texture quality. Master Cheif looks really fugly. And no it's not my pc that's causing it, it's the low res $box textures that were straight ported. I bet for that "Chronicles of Riddick" game they remade almost all the textures... I really need to find a custom skin to replace the current MC one...

Here's your proof, Project Torlan, BEFORE the made the custom high-quality skins that replacd the low-quality $box ones. This's MC, ported straight into UT2k4:
http://torlan.forerunners.org/images/screenshots/buffy2/HaloU T19.jpg

and another screenie:
http://torlan.forerunners.org/images/screenshots/buffy2/HaloU T21.jpg

just LOOK how sharp those high-rez pc textures look compared to the ones on MC..

Check out this mod, when it's done it's gonna pwn.
http://torlan.forerunners.org/index.php

Gearbox did remake some textures, most are just landscape, none for the mdoels.. one example is on the bridge for that level "Space Cowboy" (or something like that) just after the pod crashes and you need to cross the waterfall.

Man, there's soo many probs with this game, and somehow I doupt they're ever gonna fix any of them..

  • 01.31.2005 10:16 AM PDT
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Doesn't the xbox have something like 700+ MB of video RAM or something? I think that's what I read in Readers digest....

  • 01.31.2005 7:26 PM PDT
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Uhh...no. It has a 128MB (could be 64) card and 128MB SDRAM.

  • 01.31.2005 7:44 PM PDT