Hard Light Productions Forums
Off-Topic Discussion => General Discussion => Topic started by: Black Ace on June 24, 2003, 02:44:20 pm
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Ok… here’s the deal. Once my mobo & processor are purchased, I will be in the market for a new vid card. Currently, I have a Geforce 2 Pro 32 MB, with a fan that kicked the bucket like 6 months after I bought it. That means… the card has been running hot (but without problems) for about 2 years. Here are my options:
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- GeForce FX 5200 - A big enough increase from my old card?
- GeForce FX 5600 - Too expensive right now?
- My old card is fine for a while?
- Read: ATI is NOT an option... only nVidia comments...
fine print: unless you have a pretty damn convincing argument... I will listen to ATI comments, if you will also answer the options I've listed above as well.
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What do you suggest?
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Why not ATI its much better ?
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Originally posted by Free Terran
Why not ATI its much better ?
There's always fine print...:blah:
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no ATI? well, your loss, no help for you :P
oh, I just realized! I have a Nvidia in my room!!!! Is it possible to change the videocard of an Xbox? :D
ok, arguments for ATI:
cheaper, more powerful, don't overheat anymore, with the new catalyst drivers, no driver pbs anymore, they've learned their job.
What's more to say?
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Originally posted by Venom
no ATI? well, your loss, no help for you :P
oh, I just realized! I have a Nvidia in my room!!!! Is it possible to change the videocard of an Xbox? :D
There's always fine print... :blah:
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well, I'd personally wait for the Geforce 5900 Ultra, though its quite a hefty price. but I wouldn't go with any other FX model, just for the fan loudness (and I'm talking LOUD AND IRITATING) and some bug issues. The FX5900 has a quiter fan and has shown some very promising results. Comes in 128mb and 256mb, each ranging from $399 to $499.
Now. ATI on the other hand has by far a larger and more diverce range of products, to suite your needs. You can pritty much pick a card that will best suit for you at a reasonable price instead of buying expensive "sometimes" less reliable cards. Don't get me wrong, I'm expecting my Geforce5900 ultra any day now, and I'm happy with nvidia, but I don't see anything wrong with ATI.
Oh yeah, and do not believe in benchmarks. Like futuremark to see which card is better. You should see how the card really works with games instead.
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Originally posted by Black Ace
There's always fine print... :blah:
what's that?
( I edited my post ).
anyway, if you're replying that every time, there's no point in arguing :doubt:
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Originally posted by Dark_4ce
Oh yeah, and do not believe in benchmarks. Like futuremark to see which card is better. You should see how the card really works with games instead.
indeed, look at game test results instead, lots of them on the net, I had a cool site, but I can't remember the name.
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Here's my convincing argument for ATI. I had a very similar card in my previous machine. A GeForce 2 GTS which served me very faithfully for over 3 years now. A slightly less powerful version of your GeForce 2 Pro.
Anyways, after all the reading, all the arguments, all of the technical support and problems and whatnot. I am now a convert to the ATI side of things. The latest FX models were both expensive and disappointing and although performance has been ramped up recently, the "Flow FX" fan/lawnmower is far too noisy, and takes up an extra PCI slot better left to something else. The Radeon 9700 in my machine performs at breackneck speeds...it has top notch image quality and so far my only complaints with anything video is that the really high resolutions in some games that I can achieve with constant FPS makes the text too small to read :D
The FX 5900 does improve apon these things and right now its neck and neck with the Radeon 9800 256mb. However, if you aren't going to buy the TOP OF THE LINE model such as those two cards then the ATI middle of the road is far better than the nVidia middle of the road in terms of new cards right now.
A bargin deal is a GeForce 4 TI 4200. Good card, but no DX9. You won't get a similarly powerful ATI model at that price. But in this sort of mid range where the FX 5200, 5600, 5800 and the Radeons 9500, 9600, 9700 reign...the Radeons are the better choice.
Or wait till next year when the FX 5900 is a bargin chip and nVidia has something new :)
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Ok Ice, fair enough... but which ATI card is the best bang for the buck... im NOT rich, but can afford a decent price.
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[color=66ff00]Good stuff this. I don't know my arse from my elbow when it comes to GFX cards.
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the best price/ performance ratio, is the 9500 pro.
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Go read the last couple of posts in my computer problem thread
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Originally posted by diamondgeezer
Go read the last couple of posts in my computer problem thread
That's what inspired this thread... ;)
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I think you mean the Geforce 5900, instead of the 5600. Anyways, it's for 500 right now. I'd wait, because that is definately enough to get you thru Doom 3. Anyways, I'd probably checkout a Radeon 9600. Really good-looking ccard, price-to-performance-wise right now.
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9500 pro is more interesting that 9600
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Originally posted by Black Ace
Ok Ice, fair enough... but which ATI card is the best bang for the buck... im NOT rich, but can afford a decent price.
Best bang for your buck is the Radeon 9500 Pro. I think they are still available from Saphire and probably still available from ATI for the time being. Its a revved down version of the 9700 Pro and it sells for a very good price (not as good a price as the 9600 will be I understand but the 9500 Pro is ironically faster).
In terms of the architecture, the 9500 Pro and the 9700 Pro are almost the same. Infact some people have taken the risk and gotten the 9500 to operate at 9700 speeds. So its a very similar card for a very good price. If it performs half as well as my 9700 Pro does, you'll be very happy.
In either case, the prices are dropping due to the new lineup of 9600 and 9800's. And in terms of the improvements on those cards, they are small (the 9800 is faster but not really changed in any features). In the case of hte 9600, its manufactured using a cheaper process with less things on the board in the first place so it runs close to the 9500. Which explains why ATI has come out with it.
Sorry for the ranting :D
I'd suggest reading some Toms Hardware.com and Hard OCP (google em, they are easy to find) and get the dealio on those cards.
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My just-built system has a 9700 (non-pro) in it, and I'm having some problems with it. Quite often, on boot-up, the text display will become scrambled for a few seconds. Worse, at any refresh rate above 60Hz I get a slight but visible shimmer/flicker in the corners of the screen. The fact that I had to hack the registry to get the drivers to respect the refresh rate setting on a non-PnP monitor didn't exactly endear it to me either.
Between this card and my Abit NF7 mobo problem (power button doesn't work after shutting down until PSU power cycled), I'm starting to regret going "alternative" on this system. Intel/NVidia, why did I forsake you?!
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Speed: nVidia 5900/ATI RAD 9700
Quality: Matrox Parhelia (sp?) 512MB
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However, the new 9600's core is actually next-gen tech. I believe all other cards are on a .32 micron chip, while the Radeon is bigger or smaller, I forget which, so it's actually better in performance to a 5600 (or whatever Nvidia came out with, just before the 5900)
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Originally posted by ZylonBane
My just-built system has a 9700 (non-pro) in it, and I'm having some problems with it. Quite often, on boot-up, the text display will become scrambled for a few seconds. Worse, at any refresh rate above 60Hz I get a slight but visible shimmer/flicker in the corners of the screen. The fact that I had to hack the registry to get the drivers to respect the refresh rate setting on a non-PnP monitor didn't exactly endear it to me either.
Between this card and my Abit NF7 mobo problem (power button doesn't work after shutting down until PSU power cycled), I'm starting to regret going "alternative" on this system. Intel/NVidia, why did I forsake you?!
That is your monitor, plus, wtf did you expect with a built-in card?
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Note: He said just built, not built-in. There's one hell of a difference.
Also the non-Pro 9700 is a known troublemaker.
I'm proud to say that until the laptop my father got from his work, that there has never been an Intel based computer in my home. I've never had any problem from an AMD machine.
As far as a new card, if you don't have to upgrade don't, the FX is not enough of an improvement to warrant it. If, however, you have got to get a new card and ATI is out, I would get an FX 5200, simply because it's the cheapest. At the performance level we're talking about, you won't notice a difference until Doom 3 or Half-Life 2 get here.
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Originally posted by Unknown Target
However, the new 9600's core is actually next-gen tech. I believe all other cards are on a .32 micron chip, while the Radeon is bigger or smaller, I forget which, so it's actually better in performance to a 5600 (or whatever Nvidia came out with, just before the 5900)
The thing with the 9600 Pro is that while it may have a higher clockspeed and the benefit of an R350 ancestry the fact that it only has 4 rendering pipelines (which is a hard limit as the chip was designed this way) it'll bog down quicker than the 9500 Pro which has all 8 R300 pipelines enabled. If you can find one, the 9500 Pro is still the better bet.
Oh, and my 8RDA+ (nForce2-ST, SPP+MCP-T) and Radeon 9500 Pro get along famously :D
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Originally posted by Liberator
Also the non-Pro 9700 is a known troublemaker.
I have a non-pro 9700 and have no pb with it...
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You can hack the 9600 it to enable all 8 rendering pipelines.
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most people can't do that, you know. most people wouldn't even want to try, actually.
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Originally posted by Unknown Target
You can hack the 9600 it to enable all 8 rendering pipelines.
That's only possible with the non-Pro 9500 AFAIK, the 9600 has 4 rendering pipelines by design (it was meant to be cheaper to produce than 9500) making such mods impossible.
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Originally posted by Unknown Target
That is your monitor
No, it's not. This thing is a 21" Trinitron that performed flawlessly with my last system.
Eh, maybe a 300W PSU just isn't enough for a 9700.
And why would an embedded 9700 (if it existed) be inferior to a non-embedded one? Not following your logic here.
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Originally posted by ZylonBane
And why would an embedded 9700 (if it existed) be inferior to a non-embedded one? Not following your logic here.
No dedicated V memory.
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Is that really that big a deal? Assuming it's not provided its own VRAM, it's given a direct pipe to main RAM anyway, isn't it?
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Anandtech compared the performance of the nForce2 IGP (essentially a GeForce 4 MX) in various RAM modes (both single and dual channel) to standalone MX cards and the results highlight the performance hit taken from relying totally on system memory for graphics:
http://www.anandtech.com/chipsets/showdoc.html?i=1731&p=7
It'd be an even bigger hit for a 9700 as even the non-Pro models have more than 6.4Gb/s of memory bandwidth available.