Out with the old…

In with the old!

As all gamers have to do from time to time, I’ve swapped my ageing PC for a shiny new one. I won’t go into the spec and all that as it’s not MMO related. However the graphics card is a key element in an MMO PC. I decided as the next generation of Nvidia cards were not released I’d go for the ATI 5850.

The card flew through EQ2, even on a full 4 group raid with max graphics turned on. Battleground Europe was another story however. Once I worked around the mouse freeze which was actually Windows 7 related, the most I managed to play was maybe 2 mins before the screen froze. This was repeated each and every time I loaded the game, screen freeze but sound continuing as normal.

A scan of the Battleground forums found a few posts about it but no real response from the game devs, the only response I could find was that they didn’t have one of the cards to test. Now as the new Nvidia cards are not likely to be out until the new year and Battleground Europe has a big graphics update coming, I found that a bit strange.

I mean a lot of people are going to be upgrading and at the moment the 5000 series ATI cards are the best option. ATI were no better as a scan of their forums found nothing and a post by yours truly gained no response.

Now Battleground Europe is one of the 2 MMO’s I play more than once a week so it was important my PC could actually run it. Thankfully the place I bought the PC from allowed me to return the 5850 and get a credit note in return. I am now running my old 8800 GTX until the new Nvidia cards are released, I won’t be going ATI again.

I know some ATI fans are likely to abuse my post, but it’s not the first time I’ve had driver related issues with ATI cards as before my current card I had an old 9600 and that had problems too.

It’s not entirely ATI’s fault as for me Cornered Rat Software should have acquired a 5000 series card for testing, if not before then after they realised there was a problem.

These things happen and I will now await the release of the next generation Nvidia cards. In the meantime I can continue to play WW2OL with my trusty old card, so more posts will follow shortly.