NVIDIA 7600 and Trainz

You might like to try uninstalling the old card's driver/software, then put the new card in. It should work ok for text applications without any driver. If so, then try installing the new card's driver/software and see how it goes with 3D programs.

Sometimes there can be problems if the old software is still present but as I understand it that's more likely when you change video card manufacturers.

Sorry to ask the blindingly obvious - you are taking anti-static precautions aren't you? Disconnecting everything from the mains power outlet and phone lines, and wearing a wriststrap?

John
 
Hi JimDep,

You will probably find that your 6800 is a better graphics card anyway as it is faster then the 7600 GS.

Go to the nVidia website and download the newest drivers, you will find that they are the same for the 6800 and the 7600, once downloaded and saved, you should now uninstall the drivers from the old video card first, then turn your system off and remove the old card, now put in your new card and start your system, windows should detect a new card and ask for drivers.

You can cancel out of the 'add new hardware wizard' and just run the drivers that you downloaded earlier.
 
I am trying to decide today on whether or not I will return the 7600 GS.

I believe you are right about the 6800 being a faster card.
Does the increase in card memory - 128 to 512- justify this as an upgrade, especially for Trainz?

I'm really upset being that when I reinstalled my old card with...... I think...sigh.....with the original drivers, that the stereo drivers I have used for the last couple years no longer work. No stereo drivers are working on the new card either. This video card "upgrade" adventure has been a trainzwreck.
 
Here's a direct comparison of the nVidia 6800 AGP and the nVidia 7600 GS AGP
http://www.gpureview.com/show_cards.php?card1=434&card2=178

In the "At a Glance" the areas highlighted in BOLD are the areas where each card is faster.
Between the two they're around the same performance. The only difference being really the RAM size (128MB v 512MB). The amount of RAM on a video card i going to do squat if the GPU can't move the data around fast enough.You can have heck 1GB and it still won't do much good if the core can't move that data out.

Just for comparison:
nVidia 7600 GS AGP vs. 7600 GT AGP
http://www.gpureview.com/show_cards.php?card1=435&card2=434
nVidia 6800 AGP v 7600 GT AGP
http://www.gpureview.com/show_cards.php?card1=435&card2=178

Overall you won't see much of a performance difference till you hit the 7800 series.
 
Hi John,

Yes, those are the ones. The latest driver they show is one that I already tried. It's not working on either my old or new card.

I use 3D Stereo Anaglyph Glasses which are made of paper frames and extremely cheap. They work well for Trainz. I especially like them in tight spots and going under overpasses : )
 
Good info! Thanks GP 38-2.

I think my AMD 64 3300+ is the bottleneck and the extra on board memory
won't make a difference in performance.

The 6800 had 4 extra pipelines unlocked (16 total) using Rivatuner. I'm thinking now that the 7600 is not an upgrade, givin the GPU limitation.
 
If it's a true Athlon 64 3300 (you sure it's not a Sempron? Don't remember seeing an Athlon 64 3300+)
Then it's not really a bottleneck, the video card would still be slowing the system down.

Like I said you won;t be seeing a big performance difference till you hit the 7800 range.

How much RAM do you have in the system?

Ideally a good Trainz system with no bottlenecks based off your system would probably be something like the Athlon 64 3300+, 2GB DDR400, nVidia 7900 GS or something to that end. A 6800 will be a bottleneck, with a decent CPu like the 3300.
 
It's a true Athlon 64 3300+. It came on a HP I bought a couple years ago. Slot 754.

Here's the specs off of DXDIAG:

Operating System: Windows XP Home Edition (5.1, Build 2600) Service Pack 2 (2600.xpsp_sp2_gdr.070227-2254)

System Manufacturer: HP Pavilion 061
System Model: PP164AA-ABA a810n
BIOS: Phoenix - Award BIOS v6.00P Processor: AMD Athlon(tm) 64 Processor 3300+, MMX, 3DNow, ~2.4GHz
Memory: 1024MB RAM
Page File: 315MB used, 1377MB available
DirectX Version: DirectX 9.0c (4.09.0000.0904)


I've only got a gig memory of 3200 DDR SD ram.
How good of a card can I still get for AGP?
 
Ah ok it's one of the short lived socket 754's, never did pay much attention to that series. Ok

1GB of DDR400 (PC-3200) is fine, though it is an upgrade for the future perhaps.

You can actually get some very nice (and powerful) AGP cards even today with PCI-e 2.0 out.
nVidia:
7800 GS
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=1786748&CatId=318
There were 7900 GS's, and 7950 GT's, but I can't find any now.
ATI:
HD 3850
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814102730
X1950 Pro
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=2918625&CatId=318

Any of those three will have plenty of power. AGP though is a bit of a dying breed as it goes, so finding parts is getting tough.
 
Thanks GP, I'll keep my eyes out for one of those cards. I'm getting ready to take off now and return this 7600.

I was thinking my current card is a 6800 GT, but when I pull it up on DXDIAG,
it says 6800. When you open up the pipelines to 16, the performance boost
is pretty significant, which appears to work better on my current system than the 7600.
 
A 6800 with all the pipelines enabled runs about the same as a 6800GT, which clocks in about 20 fps faster than the 7600 on average (of course, that'll vary from game to game, sometimes widely). The larger memory on the 7600 will help with large textures, but the 6800's flat-out rendering performance is better. Remember, the 6800 was in the top of the line range of the 6000 series, while the 7600 is the midrange offering of the 7000 series. Every now and then, the lower-end members of a series will have better performance than everything in the older series, but not usually, as performance between card series is usually somewhat incremental, unless you're using higher resolutions or more anti-aliasing.

I'd been hanging on to my old 6800 (with all the pipelines enabled) until my recent system overhaul, I just put in my new 8800GT Thursday night (had been using an ATI x700Pro I had lying around at work), finally a noticeable difference from the 6800, but I had to replace the mobo, processor and ram to get there.
 
Magicland, thanks for the info.

If I understand you right, you're saying that changing to the 8800 GT from
the 6800 wouldn't have been that noticeable of a difference on your system without adding more RAM, faster CPU or upgrading the MB?

What are your main specs?
 
Magicland, thanks for the info.

If I understand you right, you're saying that changing to the 8800 GT from
the 6800 wouldn't have been that noticeable of a difference on your system without adding more RAM, faster CPU or upgrading the MB?

What are your main specs?

No, the difference would have been noticeable no matter what, but as the 8800GT is only available in PCI-E and not AGP, I had to replace all the rest before I could make the graphics card upgrade. The only thing that was actually an "upgrade" rather than a format switch was going from an Athlon 64 X2 3800+ to a 5200+, but even that was made possible by the AM2+ socket on the new Mobo, as opposed to the old 939 (though I suppose the DDR2 ram is a slight upgrade over the old dual-channel DDR)

I'm currently running an Athlon 64 X2 5200+, 2 GB DDR2 800 RAM, with the MSI 8800GT 512MB (factory OC'd to 660 Mhz).

As I was on a tight budget, I bought the parts for the upgrade one at a time, while they were on sale, had a rebate, or both over a period of months (and actually traded my old memory, which we needed for a machine at work, for the new processor). Overall, the upgrade cost me (after rebates) $39 for the RAM, $49 for the Mobo, and $200 for the 8800GT (would have been another $120 for the processor), but moving up to a PCI-E based machine was the only thing that made sense, as the top AGP cards didn't seem like a worthwhile investment. Most were limited to 256MB ram and cost almost as much as I paid for the 8800GT alone.

It was just a matter of me being stuck with a bunch of old tech that needed upgraded all at once. One good thing, the Mobo I got is capable of running a Phenom processor, once AMD gets the bugs in them fixed.

The 8800GT is nice, just about everything except Crysis can be run maxxed out at 1280x1024 (or higher), while with the 6800 I really didn't want to push it past 1024x780 or face a performance penalty.
 
Wow, that looks like a really nice system you put together, that will
be able to handle just about anything in the near future. I'll bet trainz
is running really smooth. What kind of monitor do you have?
 
JimDep,

Apologies if this is totally obvious, but if you opt for a more powerful board make sure your power supply and case ventilation can cope.

John
 
Wow, that looks like a really nice system you put together, that will
be able to handle just about anything in the near future. I'll bet trainz
is running really smooth. What kind of monitor do you have?

I've got a 19" Viewsonic VX924 that I've had for a while. The comment someone else made about having a good power supply is very important. While there are a bunch of cheap "500 watt" power supplies out there, some don't even actually output 500 watts, or don't provide enough power on the 12v rails. I've got a 500w Ultra Xfinity PS, with dual 12v rails, that's SLI ready, I think I paid $9 for it after rebate from radioshack.com (I think it was an $80 or $90 rebate, wasn't a cheap PS). I didn't need it at the time I picked it up, but the price was too good to pass up, and it came in handy down the road.

I could never afford to just go out and buy a system with the specs mine has, which is why I picked it up a piece at a time over a period of several months. I started when my old system started acting flakey, and grabbed deals when I could find them. The last two things I picked up were the processor and the graphics card, as prices are almost always dropping on them, so there's no point on getting them too early, unless it's at an incredible savings.
 
Back
Top