Video Card / System Specs Recommendations

hammer2k2 · Post by **hammer2k2** » Thu Aug 03, 2006 5:47 pm

Hi everyone,

Here's my current situation:

I'm playing at 800x600 Resolution Medium Settings and Bloom Effect is Off

If possible i would like to:

Play with 1024x768 Resolution Medium Settings and Bloom Effect is On

Current System Specs:

Geforce FX5200 64-bit 128MB video card (my AGP slot is 4x only)
Athlon XP 1700+ processor
768MB DDR RAM memory
160Gig IDE Hard drive

I can play at 1024 by 768 but the performance is noticably degraded. Do you think changing my video card to a mid-range card like the nVidia 6600GT 128MB would greatly improve the performance such that I could play in 1024x768 resolution with Bloom effect on? Is it my system? I already installed the updated nVidia drivers on my system.

I would like to know your system specs and the settings (e.g. resolution and detail level, bloom effect is on..) that you're using when playing SRO as well for reference when buying my next PC.

Thanks in advance!

MapleShilc · Post by **MapleShilc** » Fri Aug 04, 2006 1:30 am

no, if u really need to change u need to change a set, video card, cpu, mother board, and ram....

if u ever tried 3dmark before you will know the mark is only depending on your video card performance, but from 2005 and 2006, they added a cpu's mark in there, cpu greatly affect your game speed and graphic, espically on massive online games like SRO, your computer recieves hundreds of packet every second, your cpu needs to process those packets so that your gpu knows where like i am, where that npc is, what effect is this, video card is increase detail graphicly, so that because you need a cpu, and gpu your chipset must be fabulous, depend on if u want what kind of video card and cpu, then there comes ram, yes do depend on the size of it, but more depend on ram's "speed" like 667Mhrz, 400Mhrz

if you only want to change a gpu, yours is pretty good for a 4x agp, nothing much to change.... well i can give you recommandations if you wanna get a new comp, depend on wut u use it for, and how much u willing to spend....

here is my specs:
Pentium D 920 2.8Ghrz (under clock during summer, over clock during winter)
mushkin ram 1G 667Mhrz
intel 975x chip set on GA-G1975X mother board
and Ati Radeon 1900XT

even with my specs, when i run at 1600x1200 with full graphic when i enter like busy area like town i still lags, not that my video card isnt good, its jut my cpu cant keep up with it lol...

well intel's new cpu Conroe is sorta out, u can buy that, it tested says really good

Nace · Post by **Nace** » Fri Aug 04, 2006 4:57 am

i would suggest having at least 1gb for bloom effect, with a video card of 512 or greater

MapleShilc · Post by **MapleShilc** » Fri Aug 04, 2006 5:35 am

Nace wrote:i would suggest having at least 1gb for bloom effect, with a video card of 512 or greater

thats wut i have =D, looks soo good =)

my bro can use my comp to play quake wif high quility, even this spec cant run ultimate... i sigh

beav · Post by **beav** » Fri Aug 04, 2006 6:55 pm

uhh sorry for a stupid question, but wat is bloom effect?

bakaro · Post by **bakaro** » Fri Aug 04, 2006 6:59 pm

beav wrote:uhh sorry for a stupid question, but wat is bloom effect?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloom_%28shader_effect%29

Nyumetsu · Post by **Nyumetsu** » Sat Aug 05, 2006 7:23 pm

bloom in this game isn't actual bloom. it's just a blurry overlighted shader. I can switch it on and off within a second with a 9600SE 128MB and mixed 768 ram.

for some reason, with this game, shadows take up the most memory. set shadows to circle and it makes a huge difference. You can cut down on view distance, too.

hammer2k2 · Post by **hammer2k2** » Sat Aug 05, 2006 9:58 pm

Nyumetsu wrote:bloom in this game isn't actual bloom. it's just a blurry overlighted shader. I can switch it on and off within a second with a 9600SE 128MB and mixed 768 ram.

for some reason, with this game, shadows take up the most memory. set shadows to circle and it makes a huge difference. You can cut down on view distance, too.

My shadows are set to circle as well. Isn't it dangerous to cut down the view distance especially when doing trade runs since a thief could spot you and you wouldn't know it?

With regard to your 9600SE 128MB videocard, can you play at 1024x768 resolution with bloom on and with medium graphics settings? Is the performance hit unnoticable?

Thanks again everyone for the replies.

CrimsonNuker · Post by **CrimsonNuker** » Mon Aug 07, 2006 7:01 pm

i dont know if this will help you but who cares

My Spex..they're pretty crappy i know, my computer is almost 4 years old but it has a whole bunch of bootlegged stuff lmao

AMD Anthlon Processor
1.15 GHz
256 Mb of RAM
GeForce2 MX/MX 400 - 64 Mb :oops:

5.1 Speakers....PRETTY DAMN GOOOD (the .1 is my massive subwoofer)

and i play in...1024x768 with 32bit Colour Quality..

Silkroad works just fine for me except sometimes when i go into the town i get lagged but not that much

hammer2k2 · Post by **hammer2k2** » Fri Aug 18, 2006 6:38 pm

Thanks for the replies everyone. I recently purchased an nVidia 6600 GT 256MB card and I was pleased with the results. I'm now playing the game at 1024x768 w/ everything set to high with bloom effect on. The shadows I still use the circle though since it doesn't render shadows very well. I was reading some posts about this and it seems that nobody has successully played the game using the max shadow settings.

I'm playing on a 3 year old machine so seeing my system performing very well with this game is great. I also replaced the powersupply to 460 watts though since the card needs a lot of power to run.

TERRORISTsam · Post by **TERRORISTsam** » Fri Aug 18, 2006 10:09 pm

tbh i dont think ur old graphics card was a issue, i play on a geforce 2 ultra and have no ploblems at 1024*768 with bloom on.

Sam

hammer2k2 · Post by **hammer2k2** » Wed Aug 23, 2006 4:27 am

I can play with bloom on as well on my old card but the performance was not tolerable.

Rockshmo · Post by **Rockshmo** » Wed Aug 23, 2006 1:11 pm

Well you could do without bloom in SRO, i think.. so if you turned that off you'd get much better performance.

Also you could try going into your driver control panel and setting the card to performance, you'll lose some quality but not a very noticable amount.

my specs:
amd athlon 3200+
ati radeon 9800pro (burnt out the heatsink fan so it performs like shit now)
1gb ram (2x 512)
40gb hdd / 300gb hdd

I used to be able to play with full settings but now since my videocard took a shit I have to play on low settings, without sound, no bloom effect, 1024x768 res windowed. :banghead: