Advice on upgrading video cards

[jdpatt]

Hello all,

I've been 6 boxing EQ1 lately, 4 of my own accounts and 2 belonging to friends. I got some new computer equipment, and am looking for advice on what upgrades to do.

My main box is a Dell Dimension E310, P4ht 3.0, 2G RAM, Integrated video card.

2nd box is Dell Dimension 4500, P4 2.26, 1G RAM, ATI Radeon AIW 9600 128 video card AGP (can run 3 accounts with minimal loss of playability).

3rd box is Dell Inspiron 5100 laptop, P4 2.6, 1G RAM, 64MB ATI Mobility Radeon 7500 video card (can run 2 accounts on this box with some loss of playability).

4th box is Dell Optiplex GX110, P3 866Mhz, 256MB RAM (can upgrade to 512), ATI RAGE PRO video card PCI or AGP. Haven't tried gaming on this yet, I just got it.

5th box is Dell Inspiron 7500 laptop, P3 750Mhz, 512MB RAM, ATI 8MB graphics card (formerly used to run Linux and SEQ, might try playing an account on it).

6th box is Gateway G4 P2 350Mhz, 320MB RAM, NVIDIA GeForce2 MX/MMX 400 video card...will use this box to run Linux and SEQ.


So my questions are:

1: What video card should I get for my main computer? I don't want top of the line (can't afford it, haha), but would like a solid, economical card that would be an improvement over the integrated card.

2: Should I upgrade the card on my second computer? It was a great card a couple years ago, but what improvements would I notice if I picked up (again) a solid, reasonably priced card?

3: Should I try running all 6 accounts off of the main two computers, or should I spread it out a bit? I know I can run 3 accounts fairly smoothly on my second box, and probably could run 3-4 on the main box when I get a better video card. I can run 2 on my laptop if I need to, but it's choppy. I'd imagine the Optiplex and maybe the second laptop could probably handly one account each. I guess I'm asking for advice on how to set the machines up for the best performance and easiest time running all those toons around.

ANY help would be appreciated. There's a ton of info on video cards on the net, but I guess I wanted more specific information from multi boxers of EQ1.

Thanks in advance,

Dave

[fearless]

The limitations to playing eq are system ram (approximately 512mb of ram per session depending on options), video ram (approximately 50mb of vram per session), system cpu, video cpu. Also, do not discount the speed of the hard drive.

A 1ghz machine should still be fast enough to run 2 sessions, 3 would be difficult. A 2ghz machine should be able to run at least 3 to 4 sessions. Much more then 4 sessions on a single machine is difficult, but not impossible, and requires a fairly high end machine.

Personally, I ran 2 sessions on a 1ghz machine with 2gb ram and 3 sessions on a 1.8ghz machine with 2gb ram. The 6th session was on my main machine and the only session on it.

[jdpatt]

Thanks for the reply...any recommendations for specific video cards to look at?

I'm sure I need new cards for the main box and the Optiplex, not sure if something new would be a vast improvement on the 4500.

Dave

[fearless]

Unfortunately I have no specific recommendations, I haven't bought a video card in over a year and have not kept up with any of the releases.

One of the suggestions I would make is to confirm what your agp slot can handle. A lot of agp slots on those dell's are 2x, so if you buy an 8x agp card you won't see the full performance of the card.

[jdpatt]

Actually, upon further research, the Dell E310/3100 can only use PCI cards, since there's no AGP slot and the PCIe card is X1 not X16. It's really quite a shame, since it's otherwise a really good deal. So I went with a Geforce FX5500 256 MB card, which was fairly reasonably priced and seems to have decent performance.

Thanks for the help, though, I was a little lost.

Dave

[fearless]

I wondered about that after I last replied. Grats on finding a decent card.