"FAR CRY" went from 27 to 200 fps, just upgrading from "LE" to "GT"
Written: Nov 16 '07 (Updated Nov 17 '07)
|
Product Rating:
|
|
|
Pros: Incredible color and contrast, fanless, 512MB memory. Inexpensive. PCI-e x16, "Golden Finger"
Cons: Software SLI. Stopping games & pictures long enough to do some actual work.
The Bottom Line: Forget upgrading to a DVI LCD or faster processor--just upgrade to this card!
|
|
|
| kengland4's Full Review: Pine Technology XFX Geforce® 7300 GT, (512 MB... |
My original reason for upgrading was to get better frame rates in the game, "Far Cry." I'm not a "gamer," in the classic sense of the word-I spend too much time building and fixing other peoples' computers to get to use many applications myself-but I do "collect" them (along with the dust). However, after seeing a few of my old pictures with this card, it revived my faith and interest in digital photography, and I no longer even CARED about "FAR CRY," or ANY game!
Booting up the pc for the first time, I looked through my "My Pictures" folder. The difference was noticeable right away--Colors POPPED and SIZZLED; blacks looked deeper, and the contrast was much improved. I changed my desktop background to a picture of the horizon, driving on highway 15 from L.A. to Vegas, and I was BLOWN AWAY!!! Looking at the screen, I felt almost as if I had been given the gift of SIGHT, after a period of blindness, or as if I had opened my eyes for the first time! The screen looked like an OIL PAINTING, and it actually made me want to PRINT IT. The photo in question is an 8-megapixel gem taken with a Canon A630. And, needless to say, I was MESMERIZED by the screen, which could now be thought of as a very large digital picture frame.
I tried playing a movie, and the deepened contrast (and real black) was immediately apparent. One could now actually WATCH the screen, and forget that you’re looking at a flat screen, and not a CRT. Prior to this, images had a characteristic “flat” appearance, although “streaking” has never been a problem or issue, in movies or games, with this monitor and the last video card. My review of the HP L1906 can be seen here– http://www.epinions.com/content_286420209284
Switching to this card was similar to using the S-Video output from my first pc (connected to my 27-inch TV), instead of using the monitor with the standard cable--it's AT LEAST that dramatic of a difference. It could also compare to going to DVD, from standard broadcast TV, and I’m now no longer intensely curious or interested in getting an LCD monitor with a “digital” (DVI) input (the L1906 only has a regular monitor input). I also am less interested in upgrading to a faster, dual-core processor any time soon, as the entire computer moves along about 30% quicker.
I upgraded from the 7300LE version of this card, which had 128MB of memory, but dynamically used up to an additional 128Mb of system memory to reach up to 256mb. That was adequate to run "Aero" under Windows Vista Home Premium, and "Far Cry" at about 27fps. This, in a system with an AMD64 3400+ processor(the rare "socket 939," made only for OEM's), 1.5Gb of PC3200 RAM, and an HP L1906 (19") LCD monitor. Now, the fps hovers around 175, peaking at around 225, with no other change–an up to 800% increase!. In fact, with the Firefox browser open, with 11 active tabs (as well as a pesky Internet Explorer “pop-up”) in the background, I’m getting 75 fps in full screen–totally playable. This is with just a bit of the “eye candy” turned on- 4x anti-aliasing, and no anisotropic filtering-in both cases, and at 1024X768X32 resolution. Auto-detecting with Far Cry, it set everything to "high" (was auto-set to "low" with the prior card), with trilinear texture filtering, and 1X anisotropic filtering. I experienced no lag at all, and averaged 44 fps, with a high of 60. The environment was extremely lush.
The card itself is well-designed. It has a PCI-e x16 interface, and a meaty, but not oversized, heatsink, and no fan, making it noiseless, as far as I can tell. It has 512MB of GDDR2 memory, 1 standard VGA monitor output, a DVI output, and an S-video/”HDTV” output (NOTE--my product is identical to Epinions's description, right down to the box, but does NOT have 2 DVI outputs, although you could buy an adaptor to make it so). It comes with an S-video cable, simple documentation in several languages, as well as the driver CD. An insert recommends that you check their website for the latest driver. I was able to use my existing driver, being in the Nvidia family, with their unified architecture, but did later upgrade to a slightly more recent version.
-----------------More Technical Details---------------------
It has a maximum resolution of 2560 X 1600 (digital); 1920 X 1080 (HDTV/1080i); and 2048 X 1536 (analog). The core clock is 533 MHz, and it has a dual RAMDAC of 400 MHz, as well as a 128-bit memory bus. It is DirectX 9 (shader model 3.0)-certified, and supports true HDR ("High Dynamic Range) lighting (64-bit). HDR is a technique in which, typically, under- and overexposed photos of a single subject are merged into one, creating a stunning effect in photos, videos, and games. Here's an excellent example--http://www.bradywhealonphotography.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2007/04/untitled-hdr-00.jpg
And here's a primer on HDR--http://www.dphotojournal.com/hdr-photos/
How does it do Vista Aero? I will update this later, but I don’t have an active Vista partition to test this on right now. In the meantime, check out my Vista review at http://www.epinions.com/content_379836927620, which was evaluated using the "LE" version. And judging from the other performance increases, it should do very nicely. This is a Direct X-9 card, however, and isn't capable of DX-10. It IS SLI-capable, however--you can connect 2 of these cards on a motherboard that supports it, using the much-ballyhooed "Golden Finger" connector, and get up to twice the performance. This is software-supported here, so look elsewhere for cards that support it "in hardware," if this is important to you.
---------------------What Else------------------------------
Photoshop 7.0 opens with an 8MP image in 10 seconds--at least 70% faster than before. I haven't taken any measurements, but image processing should be faster, as well. Encoding of a 2 1/2-hour mpg file with Nero 6.6 Ultra's "Vision Express," to a dual-layer DVD format (7.4 GB), took about 2 hours; the same process took 1:15 for a single-layer format. Web browsing in both Internet Explorer and Firefox seem faster, as well.
-----------------------Summary------------------------------
This is quite an impressive card--especially when you can catch the $20 rebate (from http://www.tigerdirect.com). Matched with quality, dual-channel memory (which I haven't) and a fast processor, this should handle "average" to "above-average" gaming, any video tasks, and most digital photography chores.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 79-20 rebate
|
|
|
|
Epinions.com ID:
kengland4
|
|
Member: Kevin England
Location: Signal Hill, CA USA
Reviews written: 98
Trusted by: 40 members
About Me:
HAPPY B'DAY TO ME!BLACK FRIDAY!In lieu of a gift, read & rate a review--comments!
|
|
|
- Add to My Yahoo!: 
- Add to Google Homepage: 
© 1999-2009 Shopping.com, Inc.