To all the Future and Visual Pinball gurus

[mwong168]

I have always been curious about pinball emulators and had some success in the past with FP but not VP unfortunately until recently when I followed a step by step guide on setting up VP9.  I got some tables to play such as Funhouse or World Cup Soccer 94 but others like The Simpsons won't render or give some sort of error about the Z-buffer.

Let me list off my gaming computer specs which I built back in May '08.

E8400 Dual Core CPU
Asus P5K
8GB DDR2 1066 Ram
BFG Nvidia 8800GT 512mb Video Card
Samsung 750gb HD
Antec Sonata III w/500w PS

Running windows 7, now I think my problem is my video card is not up to par with VP standard requirements.  I was wondering what you guys would recommend for a dual monitor setup?  As much as I would like to have a third screen I am quite content with a setup like njay's shown here:



Right now I have a 24" Samsung LCD which is running 1,920x1,080 resolution which I plan on using for the backbox and DMD.  I am currently trying to source out a 37"-42" LCD or Plasma for my playfield.

Any help or advice would be greatly appreciated, thanks guys.

Mike

[mwong168]

Right now I am starting to look at different video cards and here is what I was considering:

EVGA GeForce 9800GT 1GB (01G-P3-N988-TR) nVidia GeForce 9800GT Chipset (550Mhz) 1GB (1800Mhz) GDDR3 Dual Dual-Link DVI/HDMI/D-Sub PCI-Express 2.0 Graphics Card  $139.99 - $25MIR  ~ $114.99 after MIR



EVGA GeForce GTS 250 1GB (01G-P3-1145-TR) nVidia GeForce GTS 250 Chipset (675Mhz) 1GB (1800Mhz) GDDR3 Dual Dual-Link DVI/HDMI/D-Sub PCI-Express 2.0 Graphics Card  $154.99 - $20MIR ~ $134.99



XFX GeForce GT 240 (GT-240X-ZHFC) nVidia GeForce Chipset (550Mhz) 1GB (3400Mhz) GDDR5 HDMI/Dual-Link DVI/VGA PCI-Express2.0 Graphics Card  $129.99



Would I be able to get away with running this for half of the price and still have 1gb of ram?

BFG GeForce GT 220 1GB DDR2 (BFGEGT2201024D2BE) Nvidia GeForce GT 220 Chipset (625Mhz) 1GB DDR2 (1000Mhz) Dual Dual-Link DVI/D-SUB/DisplayPort PCI-Express 2.0 Graphics Card  $71.99



I also want to make sure I can run the latest or more compatible Nvidia drivers for VP and FP.  It's too bad my Asus P5K motherboard only supports CrossFire and from what I have read ATI isn't very reliable for this type of setup otherwise I would consider running a dual matching video card setup.  If I wanted to add a third display for the DMD I could always add another lesser performing video card right?  I think I read somewhere that H4CKER uses a eVGA usb VGA output for his third display.

Thanks!