A geforce 4 can only make it look better.

What are your system specs?

Does the game run smoothly other than the graphical anomolies?

Me no gun

Definately get at least a gf4 Ti4200... It will look much better...

Im runnin a Dell XPS T500, 128 mb ram. Yeah though, the game runs perfectly smooth, inspite of the anomolies, its really weird. Another thing that doesnt show up is the stays on the space stations, you know the wires on stations. I also think that when im really close to a planet the geography is very blury compared to what a 32 card user might see. I can barley make out the continents and stuff.

get the geforce4, i dont understand how the guy at eb wouldnt know it would make it better.

I have a gf4 ti4200 and it looks great.

Are you running in 32 bit color? There is a big diffirence in the graphics when your running in 32 bit color vs. 16 bit color. A cheap Geforce4 would be a huge stepup for your system.

I'd suggest an ATI Radeon 9500 or an NVIDIA GeForce4 Ti4200 - you'll be amazed at how beautiful the game looks compared to your old card. Although, that old card of yours was an excellent card for its time! =)

Turn on Ansiostropic Filtering and Full-Screen Antialiasing.... RAPTURE!! The game looks great!

I have a Radeon 8500 and it runs almost flawlessly. 1600x1200 w/ everything turned on. The only slowdown I've noticed is when fighting in particular nebulae... only one, in fact-- the one around Willard Stations. *shrug*

Edited by - Rikaelus on 12-03-2003 00:10:30

FL runs pretty well on surprisingly low-end machines. I run it at my apartment on my XP 1700+ with a 9700 Pro flawlessly, and here at my parents' house I run it on a Duron 700 and a Kyro 2 at lower detail but still rock-steady framerate.

Between the 4200 and 9500 Pro, go with the 9500 Pro if you can afford it. You'll definitely be pleased with either, but imo, the 9500 Pro offers more bang for the buck when turning on all eye-candy.

most of you guys missed my question. Im just wondering if itll put extra strain on my cpu...AKA slowdown. Is all that data going to be run through my Gcard only or will more strain be put on my 500mhz cpu cause of the new card

Oh, I didn't even pay attention to that. Sorry!

Your CPU will definitely be the bottleneck. Better video card will take load off of it, but there are certain aspects of games that utilize the CPU, such as enemy AI, and a 500MHz CPU will run out of steam long before a GF4 or 9500 Pro will.

It's not the video card that will put extra strain on the CPU, but the games that will.

You may not notice a significant speed difference until you upgrade your CPU, so don't consider GF4's or the upper-echelon ATI cards unless you're willing to also upgrade your CPU/mobo. You may not see much visual profit in investing in a top-tier GF4 or a 9500 Pro. The 8500 LE, at under $100, is a superb value and will probably give you the best bang for the buck if you stick with that CPU.

EDIT: And the reason for the graininess, as previously mentioned, is likely the difference between running 16-bit and 32-bit color and textures. If your existing card can't handle it, a video card upgrade will solve it.

Edited by - Marco on 12-03-2003 01:47:48

I have a geforce mx 440 and the video does get choppy at 1024 x 748 res at highest performance when there are multiple bogies and such.

but other that that, its great

I'd concur that you will suffer some from the low end cpu in the area of how much AI type work the cpu needs to do.

But getting a GF4 or ATI 9000 series will only improve your overall gaming experience. What you have is so out of date it's not funny. it's almost as bad as my friends who still have TNT2's but not quite that bad hehe

If you don't have plans to upgrade to a 1.7GHz or higher CPU, just stick with the low end cards. Heck, a GF2 PRO can probably be had for $75 and it'll run cirlces around what you have now. Plus, and I'm not sure FL takes advantage, but the GF series cards and the ATI 8500 up (I think that's where they start) all have hardware T&L engines for games with that support. What does that mean to you? For games that need T&L on the video card, you can play those games, and for those that support T&L, it takes load off the cpu


regards,

RogueOne

Here's my 2 cents:

Since you didn't give us your processor/ram specs it's kinda hard to recommend anything to you. I don't even know if you have a PCI or AGP version of the Voodoo 3!

I went from an AGP Voodoo3 to an ATI RADEON 64 on a P3 900 and it plays FL beautifully - pretty cheap card too. However it does not have pixel shaders - you're gonna want those pretty soon.

If you will be upgrading to anything over 2.5 GZ with a min 4XAGP in the immediate future, I wholly recommend an ATI 9000 PRO. Don't go all out and buy a 9700 PRO - the price for this model will drop significantly between the 3rd and 4th quarter of 2003 with the release of the new ATI models in April. (I'm partially to ATI - I'm sure someone else can recommend the matching Nvidia models).

If you don't plan on upgrading for a while - first see if you have an AGP slot. If you do, it's probably a 2X and won't be able to take proper advantage of the newer cards. Try the ATI Radeon 64 - it's a great card and can be picked up for a good price. For a little more bucks - you can also look at he Radeon 8500 but I wouldn't go any higher than that.

Good luck.

PS - no matter what card you buy, it will take some load off your CPU. Your computer will not slow down.


WHOOPS - just saw your Dell XPS T500, 128 mb ram specs in your other post. Go with the Radeon 8500 or 900O PRO

Edited by - Brother Dirge on 12-03-2003 02:28:30