Hard Light Productions Forums
Off-Topic Discussion => General Discussion => Topic started by: mikhael on June 04, 2003, 03:01:55 pm
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Since my main computer just fell over and died a horrible death involving the motherboard, RAM, and the primary slave drive (which also contained everything I have done in the last two years, thank goodness for backups), I'm buying new parts finally (this also means no Lightwave upgrade for me this year :(). The graphics card is pretty old too, so I'm not sure where to go. I'm using a Geforce2 GTS now.
Any card I get has to be reasonably decent for games, as well as Lightwave (naturally). I'm looking at a GeForce Ti4200-4600, 3D Labs Wildcat Model VP560, or a Radeon9600 Pro.
Comments, suggestions, horror stories?
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Take RADEON 9600 PRO he support Directx 9
He has the same peformance how a Geforce ti 4400.
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Radeon 9600. It's basically an underclocked 9700. Some hackers actually managed to hack it and enable 2 of the disabled rendering pipelines. Plus, the Maximum PC guys managed to overclock it almost 100Mhz!
Great deal for only 200 dollars.
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I have a 4200 over here. Handles quite well, and overclocks nicely too. It's overclocked 80 MHz (core clock), and still isn't overheating, and requires no extra voltage.
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I'd get the radeon, but just because of personal tastes.
check some benchmarks, I guess.
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There was a head-to-head review of the 5900 vs. the 9800 that also featured some benchmarks from the low-end cards over at Tom's Hardware, IIRC. That'd be a good place to compare.
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I'm at an unhappy stage where my bottleneck seems to be my hard disks, and I cannae afford a SCSI setup :sigh:
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Maybe get a PCI SATA card?
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The 9600 tops even FX, I believe.
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\/00o|00 2!!!!11
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Originally posted by Grey Wolf 2009
Maybe get a PCI SATA card?
Not to put too fine a point on it, :wtf:
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Radeon 9800 Pro.... Its fast, quiet, reliable and doesnt cover the PCI slot next to it....
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I'd get a 9800.
Oh wait, I am doing!:D
Oh, and it's free.
*watches as everyone turns green*
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*hurts Petrach*
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*Injury is healed by power of Radeon*:D
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Originally posted by diamondgeezer
Not to put too fine a point on it, :wtf:
I'm saying you could get a serial ATA card that goes in a PCI slot. Serial ATA is faster than normal ATA, and nearly as fast as SCSI.
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Originally posted by Unknown Target
The 9600 tops even FX, I believe.
Before, yes. Now, no. nVidia pulled an ATI and released incredibly crappy drivers. The 9600 is quieter though, or at least it should be.
And as a note, the fastest card out there for gaming right now is the FX 5900, but from what I've seen, the Radeon 9800 is quieter than it, even though the 5900 isn't a dust-buster like the 5800.
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Don't get a 9600, they're ****e. They may be underclocked 9800's but they have only 4 rendering pipelines. A much better bet is the 9500 Pro which has all 8 rendering pipelines enabled. You'll have to be quick though as ATi are in the process of withdrawing the 9500 in favour of the 9600.
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First, remember that I'm primarily getting this for slinging polys in lightwave/3dsmax/truespace/maya etc, not games. Triangle throughput is king here.
Second, I specifically didn't include ANY GeForce FX, SX, EX, SE or MX in my list, nor a any GeForce cards that began with a 5. They're all crap.
Third, I do not ever underclock anything or overclock anything. EVER. For any reason. I'll pay for a high clockspeed if I want it.
Now, I dont' like benchmarks. I like opinions and experience, which is why I didn't go to Toms Hardware or Anandtech or whatever. In the past I've been burned by 3dFx gear, and ATi gear, and had nothing but good experiences with Nvidia GeForce (not MX) chips. On the other hand, the Wildcat IS a professional card for professional work.
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Well I'm doing a system upgrade myself and here's what I've been reading and what my experiences to date are (the installation of new hardware is about to begin, so I'll tell you later).
The latest Radeon's are quite quite good. Alot of the problems that anyone had with specifics games seems to have been sorted out by the game programmers or the ATI Catalyst driver people. They seem to be garnering a very good reputation as making good, fast, efficient, clean, stable drivers. Until now I was nVidia all the way (I am a proud owner of a antique GeForce 2 GTS) but the latest FX models have made me think twice...and the Radeon 9700 Pro has a very nice price right now for top end performance.
The 9600 or the 9500 Pro's would serve you very well I think. Alot of people also consider the GeForce 4 TI4200's as the sort of workhorse of graphics cards these days as the prices are cheap and the performance is good. No DX9 support, but very solid cards.
I have no idea about the Wildcat card, I haven't read reviews or really know anything about it. But you cannot go wrong with what you have ther....the tossup between Radeon 9600 and GeForce 4Ti depends on if you want DX9 support and the ability to play the latest games at top speeds with top eyecandy.
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if its solely professional work, go wildcat as i don't know it d3d capabilites. most likely dx8
otherwise go 9600 or ti4600
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It isn't solely for professional work, Thorn. Its also for gaming. I've got one absolute horror story from a buddy on Lightwave site about the Wildcat. I've had bad luck with ATi in the past.
All this has me inclined toward the Ti4x00, part. Either a 4200 or a 4600. But Icefire has made a good point about Dx9 support. And I get more glowing reviews about the Radeon 9x00 Pro cards than I get horror stories.
This is turning into a very difficult choice.
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would this help any?
(http://users.bigpond.net.au/turnsky/images/compare.jpg)
note that a gigabyte maya 2 radeon 9700 pro got a 91% and a gold award...
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3DMark sucks, what other benchmarks did they test it with?
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they used to use a quake3 benchmark...
and given the fact that 3dmark03 sucks badly...
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I love my GeForce TI 4200, but seeing as I haven't ran a Radeon since the 7000 I'm not really the best one to give an unbiased opinion. Still, it has taken on the role of the workhorse in the community for a reason. It's cheap, good and reliable.
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i never used a nvidia card...(xbox doesn't count :p) my radeon 9000 has never given me an ounce of trouble... i actually bought the blasted thing to replace my kyro...(it didn't like games)
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Originally posted by Turnsky
would this help any?
[pic of a comparison between a Radeon and an NVidia FX card removed]
note that a gigabyte maya 2 radeon 9700 pro got a 91% and a gold award...
No, it really doesn't. I specifically am not looking at any GeForce cards unless they have a model number resembling "Ti4x00". No FX. No SX. No SE. no anything except "Ti"
For those who do not know, the Fx, MX, SX, and SE cards are NOT Geforce4 chipsets, they are budget cards. They are NOT in the running.
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Well, my GF4600Ti still takes everything I can throw at it but 3DMark 2K3. I'm happy with that for now. By the time HL2 is out in September I'll probably upgrade to whatevers now but for now there really is no need to spend the phat cash on something better. Of course, this is just my take...
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Just win gamer snap. Judging from the last two months you don't even need to try. Just load up an RTS and fill the screen with units, or make an "amusing" human tower in Counterstrike.
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Originally posted by mikhael
For those who do not know, the Fx, MX, SX, and SE cards are NOT Geforce4 chipsets, they are budget cards. They are NOT in the running.
uhh no. not quite. Of the GF FX's only the 5200 was supposed to be a budget card. The 5600 was supposed to be the mainstream part with the 5800 being the high-end fire-breather. It didn't quite work out that way with all of them sucking in one way or another but the NV35-based (compared with the NV30 the 5200, 5600 and 5800 are alls based on) FX5900 blows everything else away, even when it isn't cheating. It is by no means a budget card.
Oh and Thunder, you saw the need to spend the "phat cash" on the Ti4600, why not do the same thing now and get an FX5900 or a 9800 Pro? They're the fastest things around you know, and ridiculously overpriced too, just like your Ti4600 was and just the way you like it, no?
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Yeah, the fx5900 isn't any cheap card. Though there is coming out a budget version of it as well. With only 128mb. The 256 is going to be around the $499 range while the budget will be a around $399 in price. Both still pritty hefty prices, but if you want alot of power...
Though I've heard the Radeon 9800 comes pritty equal to the FX5900, and no doubt will lower in price a bit, for competetive reasons...
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Originally posted by Admiral LSD
uhh no. not quite. Of the GF FX's only the 5200 was supposed to be a budget card. The 5600 was supposed to be the mainstream part with the 5800 being the high-end fire-breather. It didn't quite work out that way with all of them sucking in one way or another but the NV35-based (compared with the NV30 the 5200, 5600 and 5800 are alls based on) FX5900 blows everything else away, even when it isn't cheating. It is by no means a budget card.
I stand corrected. However, the point remains: FX cards are not in the running, only Ti4x00s.
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If you get a Radeon 9800, don't get the new variant unless you need high AA settings.
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Originally posted by Admiral LSD
Don't get a 9600, they're ****e. They may be underclocked 9800's but they have only 4 rendering pipelines. A much better bet is the 9500 Pro which has all 8 rendering pipelines enabled. You'll have to be quick though as ATi are in the process of withdrawing the 9500 in favour of the 9600.
Hardware hackers have developed a way to enable all the pipelines.
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Originally posted by Grey Wolf 2009
Before, yes. Now, no. nVidia pulled an ATI and released incredibly crappy drivers. The 9600 is quieter though, or at least it should be.
And as a note, the fastest card out there for gaming right now is the FX 5900, but from what I've seen, the Radeon 9800 is quieter than it, even though the 5900 isn't a dust-buster like the 5800.
*cough, cough*
read: http://www.megagames.com/news/html/hardware/gfx5900caughtcheating.shtml
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Also, on another note, the 9800 has been PROVEN to beat the FX in terms of performance.
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They both cheated, you know that, right? And Futuremark has settled on calling both "optimizations" :rolleyes: They're all a bunch of cheaters.
And the 9800 beat the 5800, not the 5900. Read the damn review: http://www.tomshardware.com/graphic/20030512/index.html
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Originally posted by Unknown Target
*cough, cough*
read: http://www.megagames.com/news/html/hardware/gfx5900caughtcheating.shtml
This is but one reason the FX cards aren't in the running.
A little more research has me leaning toward a 9600Pro or 9700Pro. I feel dirty just typing that.:wtf:
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From what I know, I'd suggest the 9700 Pro. The 9600 is just crap.
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Originally posted by Unknown Target
Hardware hackers have developed a way to enable all the pipelines.
On the 9500 and only because the pipelines were still there, they just weren't enabled. That's impossible on the 9600 as, in order to save money in manufacturing it, the extra 4 pipelines were physically removed from the chip die leaving nothing to enable. Out of the mainstream R3X0 cards, the R300-based 9500 Pro is the one to get but as I said in that post, you'll have to be quick as the 9500 Pro isn't going to be around for much longer.
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Originally posted by mikhael
This is but one reason the FX cards aren't in the running.
A little more research has me leaning toward a 9600Pro or 9700Pro. I feel dirty just typing that.:wtf:
I'll let you know when my R9700Pro is up and running (a few days)...but I hear mostly good stories about these cards. Which is about as good as you can get. No card has a perfect track record.
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Originally posted by IceFire
I'll let you know when my R9700Pro is up and running (a few days)...but I hear mostly good stories about these cards. Which is about as good as you can get. No card has a perfect track record.
Indeed. I've been troubleshooting my R9800 Pro this week.
The card seems to work as it should, but there's a strange pattern in OGL & D3D games.
Splinter Cell pic (http://w1.520.telia.com/~u52019065/scartifacts.jpg)
Breed pic (http://w1.520.telia.com/~u52019065/breed.jpg)
Blood Rayne 1 (http://w1.520.telia.com/~u52019065/rayne01.jpg)
Blood Rayne 2 (http://w1.520.telia.com/~u52019065/rayne02.jpg)
This only occurs in D3D & OGL. Ordinary desktop stuff (3ds max, photoshop, DVDs) looks normal to me.
Looks like I have RMA it. :sigh:
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I can't see Fisher's head :eek2:
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Originally posted by Ryx
Indeed. I've been troubleshooting my R9800 Pro this week.
The card seems to work as it should, but there's a strange pattern in OGL & D3D games.
Splinter Cell pic (http://w1.520.telia.com/~u52019065/scartifacts.jpg)
Breed pic (http://w1.520.telia.com/~u52019065/breed.jpg)
Blood Rayne 1 (http://w1.520.telia.com/~u52019065/rayne01.jpg)
Blood Rayne 2 (http://w1.520.telia.com/~u52019065/rayne02.jpg)
This only occurs in D3D & OGL. Ordinary desktop stuff (3ds max, photoshop, DVDs) looks normal to me.
Looks like I have RMA it. :sigh:
Do you have Lightwave? I don't know what Max uses for its solid shaded previews, but Lightwave uses OpenGL for everything. You should be able to see that odd stippling pattern there too, if its a problem with the card.
Another possibility, is a sort of 'layered filter' problem. I know Lightwave, for example, antialiases the OpenGL displays automatically, regardless of the video card settings. If you enable FSAA when Liightwave is trying to AA the display, you get some truly ugly artifacts.
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Originally posted by mikhael
Do you have Lightwave? I don't know what Max uses for its solid shaded previews, but Lightwave uses OpenGL for everything. You should be able to see that odd stippling pattern there too, if its a problem with the card.
Another possibility, is a sort of 'layered filter' problem. I know Lightwave, for example, antialiases the OpenGL displays automatically, regardless of the video card settings. If you enable FSAA when Liightwave is trying to AA the display, you get some truly ugly artifacts.
You can either use a software, OGL or D3D for Viewport rendering. Strangely enough, I don't get that problem in MAX whith OGL. But that might not be so strange, considering MAX has been acting weird ever since I reformated the comp. and installed it again. Anyway, It'll be the RMA treatment for this card.