Quote from anttt69 :

If ur interested I have a X1950pro for sale

CHECK IT OUT

Thanks, I may consider this , however I want to wait and see how much the 4670 will be from my local store.

Quote from shiny_red_cobra :

Bottom line: any card you get will be FAR better than the onboard one you're currently using. I simply suggested the Radeon 4670 as it is a current generation card, whereas the Geforce 8600 is 2 generations old and Radeon x1950 is 3 generations old. I was just thinking you might want a current card, but any of them will be better than what you currently have.

That was my thought as well. It seems to me it would be better to get the best performing card from the current generation to future proof any features that are implemented later. When you look at the spec of some of those cards, they don't all match e.g. some don't have Shader 4.0/4.1 or support DX10.1 like the 4670 supports.

OK, the 4670 isn't going to perform at the same speed and resolution as higher end cards, but it does seem to cover all the bases with regard to features.

I think I'll do some more digging into UK sites selling the 4670 and then compare price and performance/features to older cards.

Great feedback though - thanks very much to everyone for posting...

Quote from DaveWS :

Just get the X1950 Pro that I linked to earlier. It's faster than both the 8600GT and the 9400GT, since it has 256 bit memory rather than 128.

Do you think this would be better than the 4670 suggested by cobra?

I realise that at the end of the day, whatever card I get it's going to be a huge step forward over the onboard card I have, although I may as well at least try to get the best price/performance card that's on the market.

Quote from shiny_red_cobra :

LOL Duke Nukem 3D and Midtown Madness don't count! We're talking about CURRENT games!

Anyway, to the op, ATI's numbering scheme is not that hard to comprehend, and in fact it's no different than Nvidia's.

ATI | Nvidia
2600s | 7600s
2900s | 7900s

3600s | 8600s
3800s | 8800s

4600s | 9600s
4800s | GTX 280, 260, Geforce 9800s

That is very useful to know - it now makes more sense, thanks. Where would the X series cards that DaveWS suggested fit into this?

Quote from shiny_red_cobra :

If I were in your position I would wait a couple weeks and pick up an ATI Radeon 4670, as it will be a very good card for that the price. The GeForce 8600 is a piece of crap, don't go for it. The 9400 would do fine, but have you looked at the 9500? It might be better.

Thanks very much for the advice. I don't know about you but I've always found the ATI numbering scheme to be difficult to grasp as the numbers don't seem to mean much. At least with the Nvidia cards they are sequencial whole numbers and the bigger the number the better the card! Maybe it's just me though!!

I was looking at this 9400 card: http://www.novatech.co.uk/novatech/specpage.html?NOV-94GT5

And this is the 9500 card: http://www.novatech.co.uk/novatech/specpage.html?NOV-95GT5

Quote from SpyDa-LV :

i agree, that the 8600gt is a piece of crap. never buy it, i agree with cobra, you should wait for some new cards to come out.

Interesting that you both agree that the 8600GT is crap as some other posts I've seen seem to indicate the opposite.

I can wait a few weeks if it means getting the best card for the money I have.

Thanks.

More upgrade advice I'm afraid!

My budget is very limited - £40 (£50 at a push) and I need to upgrade from the onboard Nv6150 card. Mainly play most of the racing sims and the onboard just isn't coping well. Mobo spec is Athlon 64 X2 Dual 4600 with 2GB RAM. PSU is 500W.

I quite like the Nvidia cards (mainly because that's all I've had), but open to ATI if there's a similar card for the same price. Basically just need something that will allow me to play with LFS, rF, GTR2/Evolution etc etc at a decent frame rate with fairly high settings (I wanna see what these sims should look like!!).

I was looking at the 8600GT and then the 9400GT which seems slightly faster. Not bothered about DX10 stuff like Crysis!

Oh, I also dabble with a little Linux as well - Ubuntu, OpenSUSE - the main flavours. I've read somewhere that Nv cards are better supported under Linux. Anyway, hope someone can advise....

I would seriously look at the 4850 - check out this review at PCPro....http://www.pcpro.co.uk/reviews ... k-ati-radeon-hd-4850.html

Quote from Gills4life :

Zero7: Your M3GTR sound is done

Sweet!! Nice whine you've managed to recreate

Thanks very much.

Quote from Gills4life :

If it is the car you request then it is the car that i will TRY to do it for.
Give me a few days ? i'm not at home over the weekend

Much appreciated Gills - if you can get anything that sounds like that for the FXR that would be awesome!

Quote from Gills4life :

I might be if you told me what car it is for

hehe

I think the FXR personally (mainly because it's the closest looking to an M3), but I guess it depends if the sound system is more suited to the other GTR's.

What do you think, are you up to this challenge?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1q8ZNkhxT04

Congratulations!!

Happy Birthday!!

+1 here, I think it's a great idea.

I regularly use a mouse and any further options made available to control your car would be welcome.

Feel free to use these Police skins I created awhile ago...

Quote from Scawen himself on Beta/Alpha:

Quote :

Just a note about BETA / ALPHA.

LFS must be called ALPHA while there are blatantly unfinished things. Such as : AI drivers can't pit. F11 and F12 don't work in single player. These have still not been fixed, because there were more important and more interesting things to be done for this patch.

BETA has a clear definition : The software is 100% finished, and is in final testing before release. So... in Beta stage, only very minor changes and bug fixes can be made. Beta is a shorter stage of development, unless the developer seriously underestimated how complete the software was.

So... the next patch is still Alpha, just a better Alpha than you have at the moment, and with some new features and improvements, which I am sure you will like.

http://www.lfsforum.net/showthread.php?p=99226#post99226

I tried a Gamepad I bought from GAME but that seems way to sensitive for me. I'll give it another go, but like JasonJ, the stick movement is too quick to drive properly i.e. in a straight line, hence I stuck with the mouse and kb inputs.

Very minor, but has the Keys.pdf document in the docs folder been updated with all the new key combinations? Only, I noticed that SHIFT+A for the sound editor was missing from the Controller/Sound section.

Why not try the UFR and/or XFR against the FXR and XRR for a real challenge. Choose a twisty circuit so the faster cars don't have the advantage on the straights.

I've got Vista RC1 on my laptop and LFS runs fine (apart from some server connection problems which i've had on XP as well, so I don't think these are Vista specific problems).

I had the same problem on my laptop. Same setup - router --> laptop.

I've only purchased LFS, rF and recently GTL. Was playing rF quite a bit after I got it and tried many mods, but have recently been playing this a lot less as I saw GTL in the bargan bucket for £8.

The feel on GTL imo is better than rF so far, but it also suffers from that "point of no return" when you spin out. Also, watching the car from TV view is terrible, the car doesn't move realisticlly like it does in LFS, there seems too much shake. In the cockpit it's pretty good though.

Still gone back to LFS though and it's the one sim I've played more than any other PC game I've picked up.

I've got a HP TC4400 Core 2 Duo 2Ghz, Intel 945 GMA, 1GB RAM and Tablet XP SP2 and running a few tests for you I got the following:

Settings:

(hardware vertex is not available as already mentioned above)
high res +mirror
user 0.80
mirror 0.20
dust 1.00

full size textures
full car and helmet skins

z-buffer 24
simple track off

FPS:

15 - 20 back of full grid on SO (AI's - this may have impacted the fps possibly??)
30 - 40 in front

20 - 30 back of full grid on WE (AI's - this may have impacted the fps possibly??)
30 - 40 in front

Even though the 15-20 is low, its still playable. Playing around with these settings e.g. dust and high res setting would give me slightly better performance, but to be honest when you go over 25 - 30fps then the frame rate is pretty smooth anyway so personally I'm not bothered that I don't get 40+ fps.

Hope this helps....

/edit - I just joined SO1 with 8 racers and got 60 fps - FYI

Last edited by Zero7, Wed 4 Apr 2007, 07:09.

How about until something better comes along...?

Hard to believe at the moment though I must admit (although personally I've just got GTL at a budget price and quite enjoying it actually).

Still, LFS is my main pastime when I can.


/edit - although I'm not comparing them, just trying another racing title (probably do the same when GTR2 is bargain basement!!).

www.liveforspeed.net
The Online Racing Simulator

Quote from kamo2000 :

It's bad that we need to unlock again..or is it only me?

Thanks Scawen!!

Unlocked here too.