These forums have been archived and are now read-only.

The new forums are live and can be found at https://forums.eveonline.com/

EVE New Citizens Q&A

 
  • Topic is locked indefinitely.
 

Dual boxing graphics card recommendation?
Author
Previous Topic Next Topic
Adonis Ouranos
Doomheim
#1 - 2012-03-25 10:38:14 UTC
Hello all, not sure if this is the right section so please don't flame me if it is :)
Basically... i wanted to start dual boxing, now my current graphics card can barely run 2 clients of eve and doesnt even have a second monitor slot. Anyhow i was wandering if you could recommend me a decent graphics card to dual box on two monitors with decent performance and hopefully at least have decent visuals.

Im probably being a bit optimistic with it but i have around a £50 budget although I guess I could attempt to stretch it :P

Here are my current computer specs (according to my computer, hope i got the right ones)

Intel(R)
Pentium(R) 4 CPU 2.30GHz
3.19 GHz, 2.00 GB of RAM
Windows XP

Many thanks in advance :)
Liam Mirren
#2 - 2012-03-25 17:23:03 UTC  |  Edited by: Liam Mirren
I highly doubt that with the latest graphics updates you could find a videocard that fits and/or makes sense in your current PC would help you, or even make a useful difference. That thing is pretty much archaic, a lot of things have changed fairly soon after P4s stopped being new, PCIe videocards (and they've evolved since then as well, new cards won't fit in old PCIe slots) is your main issue. So even IF you'd find a card that actually fits in your PC it by definition means it's something you found in a dusty corner, it won't new new or great or anything useful.

Other than that, I don't think that investing any money into a P4 PC is logical. I realise you're in a "this is what I have and it'll have to do" situation but honestly, keep it to 1 account and pray CCP doesn't alter graphics any further (they're thinking about it, actually) so you won't even be able to run a single account.

Excellence is not a skill, it's an attitude.
Baneken
Arctic Light Inc.
Arctic Light
#3 - 2012-03-25 17:44:55 UTC
I think you're better off with upgrading the whole system while you're at it, your system would just bog down any relatively modern GPU-card making it useless to buy a new one.

I have:
Athlon x2 dual core 6400+ 3,2ghz
3 gigs of ram
Gforce 8800 GT 512mt
win 7 64bit
1 Tera byte HD

And this setup is damn old as well (too old to be worth keeping anything but HD) but runs EVE just fine when multiboxing but I'd say mine is pretty much a minimum you should be getting if you end up buying used parts.
Sir Substance
Sebiestor Tribe
Minmatar Republic
#4 - 2012-03-25 21:29:12 UTC
The Pentium 4 will be as much a bottleneck as any graphics card issues.

You need a new PC.

The beatings will continue until posting improves. -Magnus Cortex

Official Eve Online changelist: Togglable PvP. - Jordanna Bauer
Reaver Glitterstim
The Scope
Gallente Federation
#5 - 2012-03-25 22:46:38 UTC  |  Edited by: Reaver Glitterstim
Sir Substance is right.

You'll want a dual core processor if you're running them both on the same machine. You can also do fine with one monitor. I dualbox by having both of my EVE clients set to run in windowed mode, but I fullscreen them. Playing that way in windowed mode is about the same as playing in fullscreen mode, except I can easily switch between windows by clicking tabs at the bottom of the screen. It also keeps windows loaded, so I can look at stuff on the internet or whatever without waiting for the game to minimize and restore again. This works great if you have enough active memory room to run all that stuff, and it doesn't have an impact on the graphics card that I can tell. I have both clients' graphics settings optimized for memory and it works well even with a youtube video running in the background. My graphics card is fairly up to date but I don't think it needs to be for what I'm doing. The main thing that helps me do all this easily is having a quad-core processor and 4GB of RAM.

Your 2GB of RAM is probably sufficient if you optimize the video settings and try not to do anything heavy duty, and don't run anythign else in the background. But your single-core processor is what's really going to hold you back. Trying to run two clients on one processor is inefficient and will take more than twice the processing power.

FT Diomedes: "Reaver, sometimes I wonder what you are thinking when you sit down to post."

Frostys Virpio: "We have to give it to him that he does put more effort than the vast majority in his idea but damn does it sometime come out of nowhere."
Herping yourDerp
Tribal Liberation Force
Minmatar Republic
#6 - 2012-03-27 02:11:39 UTC
see what kinda slot you have in your motherboard for gfx card and buy the best that will fit tbh. but seriously, upgrade.
Sir Substance
Sebiestor Tribe
Minmatar Republic
#7 - 2012-03-27 09:27:03 UTC
Herping yourDerp wrote:
see what kinda slot you have in your motherboard for gfx card and buy the best that will fit tbh. but seriously, upgrade.


Pentium 4? It's an AGP slot, guaranteed.

The beatings will continue until posting improves. -Magnus Cortex

Official Eve Online changelist: Togglable PvP. - Jordanna Bauer
Sin Pew
Ministry of War
Amarr Empire
#8 - 2012-03-27 10:35:33 UTC
While others already pointed out, your whole computer is quite outdated, but as your budget seems fairly thin (you mentionned 50£), I think replacing the whole computer would be out of question. Not to mention the insane price on hard drives that's slowly starting to fall back, but still expensive.
In the long run, you will need to change your computer, it's a given, but in the meantime, look for a PCI slot graphic card that you might find in second hand stores for next to nothing, adding a spare card to handle the second monitor might be the best solution until you have the funds to replace your computer.

[i]"haiku are easy, But sometimes they don't make sense, Refrigerator."[/i]
Kyshonuba
Science and Trade Institute
Caldari State
#9 - 2012-03-28 14:21:15 UTC  |  Edited by: Kyshonuba
Baneken wrote:
I think you're better off with upgrading the whole system while you're at it, your system would just bog down any relatively modern GPU-card making it useless to buy a new one.

I have:
Athlon x2 dual core 6400+ 3,2ghz
3 gigs of ram
Gforce 8800 GT 512mt
win 7 64bit
1 Tera byte HD

And this setup is damn old as well (too old to be worth keeping anything but HD) but runs EVE just fine when multiboxing but I'd say mine is pretty much a minimum you should be getting if you end up buying used parts.


Second Hand AMD Athlon 64 X2 PC's can be bought at ebay for approx. 150 $ ... might even get it a bit cheaper if you place a lucky bide.

I upgraded my old Pentium4 PC in 2007 with an AsRock 4CoreDual Sata Mainboard and and an Intel Dual Core prozessor. This mainboard works well with old hardware since it has IDE connectors an even has an extra AGP grafic card slot. Alas it might be tricky to get one since its not manfactured any more

http://www.asrock.com/mb/overview.asp?model=4coredual-sata2
Sin Pew
Ministry of War
Amarr Empire
#10 - 2012-03-28 14:55:08 UTC
Baneken wrote:
I think you're better off with upgrading the whole system while you're at it, your system would just bog down any relatively modern GPU-card making it useless to buy a new one.

I have:
Athlon x2 dual core 6400+ 3,2ghz
3 gigs of ram
Gforce 8800 GT 512mt
win 7 64bit
1 Tera byte HD

And this setup is damn old as well (too old to be worth keeping anything but HD) but runs EVE just fine when multiboxing but I'd say mine is pretty much a minimum you should be getting if you end up buying used parts.

Just wondering, why win7 64b with only 3Gb of RAM? Shocked

[i]"haiku are easy, But sometimes they don't make sense, Refrigerator."[/i]
Kyshonuba
Science and Trade Institute
Caldari State
#11 - 2012-03-28 15:23:22 UTC  |  Edited by: Kyshonuba
Is there a reason to use the 32 Bit windows 7edition (with its 3,6 memory limit) instead of the 64 bit edition if you run a low end system ? I dont know.

Its probaply a micro atx based desktop pc with only 2 ram slots