It turns out there *are* computers that can't handle Allegiance

[lared]

I present my rig:

1.3 ghz Celeron
384 MB PC100 RAM
Riva TNT (16 MB)

While at my parent's house I dug our 9-year-old computer out of closet and hooked it up to their WS TV. My dad really wanted to get internet in the living room for some reason. Anyway, once I it set up I thought to myself hmm... widescreen Allegiance. After working out some kinks thanks to the nice folks at the helpline, I got Allegiance running at beautiful 1280x720 resolution on a nice Sony Bravia TV.

Except it doesn't really run very well. I was shocked because by now I'm used to throwing allegiance on any old machine and watching it run like a charm, but as it turns out my ancient Riva TNT graphics card can't quite handle the game at 1280x720, even with all the options turned down. I tried playing in the zone game today and... ugh. (Sorry about that to my team, btw. /tongue.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":P" border="0" alt="tongue.gif" />) Slideshow-level framerates.

So here's my question: I'm thinking of throwing in a quick graphics card upgrade to improve allegiance's performance. It needs to be an AGP graphics card, because this is an old board, and it preferably have passive cooling, because right now its a fairly quiet living room computer. I'm looking at a Radeon 9200 or Geforce 6200 for $40 right now, but the Geforce 7600 GS also has passive cooling and would be much faster at $100. Based on your experiences, how decent of a graphics card do I need to get in order to have Allegance run acceptably on this computer?

[FIZ]

I think you need to watch out for the speed rate that the AGP slot is capable of. Its been a while since I've messed with videocard upgrades, but I believe the speeds of the era were 1x, 2x, 4x, and 8x. I'm not sure what happens if you plug an 8x card into a board that can only handle 4x speeds, but it just turn out to be a waste of money. Or I could be completely wrong. I also believe their are cards that are better suited to widescreen setups. I run a ti4200 with DVI out back home, and it works great on the TV there. Not so great on new games tho lol.

[DasSmiter]

if you put an 8x AGP card into a 4x slot it will just run at the max slot speed /smile.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":)" border="0" alt="smile.gif" /> its nice because the older cards are more expensive than the 8x cards

i've got the 7600GS and i'll tell you its way too much for alleg, i can play Bioshock with this thing

the 6000s are nice, and should give you a good output for cash, though go with the 5200FX if you need a super cheapy that will run alleg

[Adaven]

What OS is the computer running?
Also, you might check the graphics card's settings in your display properties outside of alleg. I'm not sure what options the older cards have, but I know that if Anti-Aliasing is turned on for even the newest, greatest cards on the market, that Alleg's framerate will drop through the floor.

[lared]

QUOTE (Adaven @ Feb 24 2008, 01:30 PM) What OS is the computer running?
Also, you might check the graphics card's settings in your display properties outside of alleg. I'm not sure what options the older cards have, but I know that if Anti-Aliasing is turned on for even the newest, greatest cards on the market, that Alleg's framerate will drop through the floor.

Running XP home. AA is turned off. Keep in mind that this card is so old it has a big of lag just drawing windows UI elements at 1920x1080 resolution.

Right now I'm looking at these three cards:

Radeon 9550
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx...N82E16814161199

Radeon 9250
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx...N82E16814161213

GeForce 6200
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx...N82E16814127203

[Psychosis]

also consider that the card/ machine may be suffering from old age and is being cranky, please see the nearest availible ace member for their old age remedies.

[Duckwarrior]

PIII 450

8 MB ATI Rage Pro

96Mb RAM

Ran Allegiance beautifully. It continued to run it beautifully after I added a Radeon 7500 and 128 MB of PC100. Eventually it was paid off and relegated to the attic. I tried Allegiance on the same machine about a year ago and I was getting 2 FPS.

[Ceasar]

Dude just buy your parents a new pc and throw that 1 away:)

[Cadillac]

800 MHz

512MB RAM

32MB Video

Works like a charm.

(XP home).

[Raveen]

Getting a Dx 9 card isn't a bad idea for a living room pc anyway. Most media centre software uses Dx 9 calls to run on screen overlays (now/next boxes or whatever).

The Radeon 9550 is a cheap and capable card and you can overclock the tits off it if you're that way inclined.