Matrix Games Forums

I am trying to upgrade my system so I can run this game I need help with video cards

any ideas? any Problems with ATI or nvidia cards

I've exclusively played SS on various ATI cards (7500 and regular and mobile 9700's) and I've had no problems that were caused by the video card. Had some toubles a version or two ago with my widescreen monitor but milo fixed that right up.

I don't know if you even can get a card nowadays that's not DX9 compliant, but make sure it is, milo's tinkering furiously on a new sweet DX9 based engine for SS.

Some old computers that were upgraded with recent hardware had some problems with DirectX updates, as SS was conceived to work from DirectX 7.
A friend of mine was in this particular case, as he has an old machine that he boosted with memory and new hardware. He has a recent graphics card and blah, blah but the game only worked on the "software" (not on the 3D) option, wich lagged consideratly.

The solution he found was simply removing DirectX 9 (or whatever current version he had installed) from his computer, install DirectX 7 and then update it to the current directX version via Windows update.
Suddenly the 3D was working for him.

Needless to say his card pilots were all up to date.

Let me know if this worked out for you... [;)]

=S=

I've had no problems with both Nvidia and ATI cards, nor have we had any card-related problems reported that weren't generally related to out of date drivers or other issues. You should be fine, whichever one you buy.

For an inexpensive Starshatter-friendly card, you might try the ATI Radeon 9200 or for a bit more, the Radeon 9600 Pro. For more advice than that, you'll have to post your current system specs. Also, a good place to buy hardware piece by piece is www.newegg.com. For reviews and advice, check www.tomshardware.com and www.anandtech.com.

Regards,

- Erik

my system specs are

P III 933
512 ram PC 133
2 (80gb HDs)
Win XP pro service pack 2
Intel chipset 82815 graphics controller 32 mb is my current video adapter (internal)
Monitor EV 700 at 60hertz 1280 by 1024 resolution
this was my old work box
I work for an Autodesk Reseller and had it set for CAD systems (AutoCad MAP ESRI ArcINFO) I develop GIS systems for cities
I know i will need a better video card because high end rendering was very slow on this box

thank you for the help

ORIGINAL: Catphish

Monitor EV 700 at 60hertz 1280 by 1024 resolution

Ouch! Increase refresh rate a little! 60 Hz refresh rate is the reason I hate playing M.A.X. I get headache even from 75 Hz! 85 Hz recommended.

What comes to video card, cheap junk should do. I recommend Radeon 9200SE or something similar. I had beta tested Starshatter with 400 MHz K6-2 processor and ATI RAGE FURY MAXX (2 Rage 128 Pro chips, 64 MB RAM). Campaign was playable most of the time with minimal detals. But when on the screen was entire destroyer squadron and couple fighter elments shooting around... yeah, it killed frame rate.

I just bought an Nvidia 6600GT 128mb RAM (from XFX), performs great and is at a reasonable price for a DirectX 9 card.

If you upgrade now you should really look that the card supports all the new DirectX 9 stuff, otherwise it´s wasted money and you end up upgrading again in the near future.

Looking at your sys specs above I recommend buying a complete new rig, also pays of with the CAD and GIS stuff (I did that CAD/GIS stuff myself a few years ago btw.) [;)]