Can other system resources compensate for a video card's performance

[noblethrasher]

Quick question, I just bought I Matrox G450 that supposedly has poor 3D performance as it was marketed more for business apps. Now, I do have 512MB of RAM and an AMD 900, so I'm wondering if that can some how compensate for the video cards shortcomings. I've been playing a demo of Star Trek Elite Force and it looks fine with all the video settings maxed out (except resolution@1024x746) but as I'm not much of a gamer, I'm not sure how to appraise the performance

[Xayd]

In a word, yes.

In games that require tons of texture rendering and speed, such as first person shooters (Unreal/Unreal Tournament, Quake, Half Life, etc.) there'll be a noticeable difference in speed if you have a "lesser" video card. But, on the other hand, if you primarily play role playing games and the like which don't require alot of quick rendering by the vid card, you'll be fine as long as you have the RAM and CPU speed that you have now.

Xayd

[RJ]

It will improve game performance, but it won't run at full speed. A weak graphics card slows the CPU down.

I've made that experience:

In former times when I had my Pentium 133, I upgraded my graphics card (2D) to a 3D Card, ATI card with RagePro chip.
There was a performance increase, and the 3D effects were great.
After upgrading to the Pentium II 333 I kept the graphics card. Because of the incredible power of the PII I had a performance increase which satisfied me completely.

But nearly 2 years later, upgrading to the PIII800 there was no performance increase at all !!
In that time I had an ATI card with Rage128 chip from a friend. There were driver problems, but I found a driver that let the card run. Now I had a performance increase that . . well, it was great.
BUT: Just for fun I installed the PII with the same graphics card, and there was LITTLE difference.
In the game Drakan for example, I was able to play at 1024x768 with 15 to 25 fps, no matter whether the PII or PIII was in it. Difference was about 5 fps, I think.
Only then I realized what enormous power the PII had, slowed down all the time and I didn't notice it.
Therefore I decided to buy the GeForce 2 GTS for my PIII (Drakan 1024x768 now with 65 to 70fps), to be sure that this wouldn't happen again.

RJ

[noblethrasher]

Ok, thanks....