[mikhael]

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?

[FreeTerran]

Take RADEON 9600 PRO he support Directx 9
He has the same peformance how a Geforce ti 4400.

[Unknown Target]

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.

[Grey Wolf]

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.

[Nico]

I'd get the radeon, but just because of personal tastes.
check some benchmarks, I guess.

[Grey Wolf]

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.

[diamondgeezer]

I'm at an unhappy stage where my bottleneck seems to be my hard disks, and I cannae afford a SCSI setup

[Grey Wolf]

Maybe get a PCI SATA card?

[Unknown Target]

The 9600 tops even FX, I believe.

[Fineus]

\/00o|00 2!!!!11

[diamondgeezer]

Originally posted by Grey Wolf 2009
Maybe get a PCI SATA card?

Not to put too fine a point on it,

[Thorn]

Radeon 9800 Pro.... Its fast, quiet, reliable and doesnt cover the PCI slot next to it....

[Petrarch of the VBB]

I'd get a 9800.

Oh wait, I am doing!:D



Oh, and it's free.




*watches as everyone turns green*

[Unknown Target]

*hurts Petrach*

[Petrarch of the VBB]

*Injury is healed by power of Radeon*

[Grey Wolf]

Originally posted by diamondgeezer

Not to put too fine a point on it,

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.

[Grey Wolf]

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.

[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.

[mikhael]

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.

[IceFire]

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.   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.   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.