Cheapest way to boost game performance?

placeboplacebo
Posted:
in Current Mac Hardware edited January 2014
Hi, I have a completely stock G5 Single1.8, and needless to say, its graphics capabilities leave more to b desired. But I'm on a budget, and I'd probably want to avoid buying a new GPU. RAM seems like the easiest option, but I don't know what kind of performance boost that would offer.



What's the best graphics card available, and how much money could I expect to recieve for my Geforce FX 5200 Ultra on Ebay? Finally, WILL IT WORK IN PCs? I might sell it to a Winderz friend of mine, but I don't know whether it would work.



I just want to be ready for UT2k4!



Thanks.

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 8
    ebbyebby Posts: 3,110member
    The three top ways to boost speed. In order:

    Graphics card

    Processor speed

    Ram



    You have a good processor. That does not need to be upgraded. I'm guessing you don't have the ATI Radion 9800. That would make the biggest difference. A ram upgrade would help if you have less than 1GB.



    You have to flash the graphics card to get it to work with a PC but that is a tricky and dangerous thing to do. If you mess up you have a dead card.
  • Reply 2 of 8
    alcimedesalcimedes Posts: 5,486member
    in order



    Gamecube

    Playstation

    Xbox

    PC



    then do stuff to your Mac.
  • Reply 3 of 8
    keilwerthrebornkeilwerthreborn Posts: 129member
    The single cheapest way to improve game performance is to turn down the detail settings and resolution. Guaranteed to work.
  • Reply 4 of 8
    ebbyebby Posts: 3,110member
    That may work in this case, but that is not necessarily true. I have a Voodoo 5500 in my 333Mhz beige G3 and I get the same frame rate at any resolution/color depth/detail. The weakest link in that machine is the processor.



    But with a G5, it has to be something else.

  • Reply 5 of 8
    mmmpiemmmpie Posts: 628member
    Unfortunately the geforce 5200 ultra that Apple sold you blows goats.



    Turn off all of the eye candy that you can. It has 64mb or vram, so it'll probably do medium texture detail in new games.



    Turn off shadows.

    Turn off bump mapping.



    etc etc



    The 5200 does ok in higher resolutions until you ask it to do anit aliasing and anisotrpic filtering, which are very demanding.



    You dont say what games you want to play, but if they are available on a console, Id buy one of them. However broke people ( who cant afford new video cards ) probably cant afford a new console either, and buying games to go with it.
  • Reply 6 of 8
    curiousuburbcuriousuburb Posts: 3,325member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by alcimedes

    in order



    Gamecube

    Playstation

    Xbox

    PC



    then do stuff to your Mac.



    true.



    there are some steroids that allegedly boost performance, but they make your equipment shrivel
  • Reply 7 of 8
    messiahtoshmessiahtosh Posts: 1,754member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by mmmpie

    Unfortunately the geforce 5200 ultra that Apple sold you blows goats.



  • Reply 8 of 8
    algolalgol Posts: 833member
    I don't see why you have to make fun of blowing goats. I see them blowing around all over the place. It happens when tornados come through the pasture and its surely not the goats fault.
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