[Liberator]

I don't want this to turn into a ATI vs. NVidia free-for-all, so you ATI folks stay away.

I'm going to have a little extra money in a couple of months(schools gonna pay me the rest of the grant they held from me for letting my GPA drop) and I am curious, who makes a good GeForce FX card?  I know to stay away from anything below 5700 and bear in mind I only have a 4x AGP slot.

[ChronoReverse]

Seriously, while I'm not an ATi fanatic, I'm advising you _not_ to get a FX series Geforce.

Wait a bit and get a 6800 (XT for low mainstream, Normal for Mainstream, Ultra for highend) if you really want a Geforce.

[Bobboau]

"who makes a good GeForce FX card?"
nobody

[mikhael]

Originally posted by Liberator
I don't want this to turn into a ATI vs. NVidia free-for-all, so you ATI folks stay away.

I'm going to have a little extra money in a couple of months(schools gonna pay me the rest of the grant they held from me for letting my GPA drop) and I am curious, who makes a good GeForce FX card?  I know to stay away from anything below 5700 and bear in mind I only have a 4x AGP slot.

The only decent FX series card, Lib, is the 5900 based board. I've had good luck with Asus and Elsa cards.

[Drew]

Originally posted by ChronoReverse
Wait a bit and get a 6800 (XT for low mainstream, Normal for Mainstream, Ultra for highend) if you really want a Geforce.

Only if you have an extra PCI cooling slot; oh and not to mention, a 480 watt power supply.

[ChronoReverse]

Wrong, tests have shown the 6800U draws at most only 20 more watts than the 9800XT and about 7 more watts than the 5950U.  Using a high quality 200W power supply, the 6800U has been run through a non-stop loop of 3dmark overnight without any overheating problems.

The only time you'll have problems is if you have a crappy powersupply, in which case even a 480W one will be outperformed by a 350 watt one.


Moreover, only the Ultra is a two-slot solution.  The XT and normal are both single slots.


Finally, who uses the PCI slot next to the AGP slot?  It's been standard practice for years not to use that slot anyways.


I still recommend waiting if you want a 5900 board.  The prices should drop a bit more when the 6800 comes out.  Beware that the 5900XT is actually the low-end card and is the successor to the 5700U.

[mikhael]

You know, I've got a problem with dual slot GAME cards (IE Radeons and GeForces) but not professional cards like a Wildcat.

However, Chronoreverse is right: I've not put anything in the first pci slot in... um... wow. Since my TNT2, which was my first video card to have a fan on the chipset. That's been a long damn time. *heh*

Of course, I can't remember the last time I had more than three PCI cards in my machine at once. I've always got at least two (usually three) PCI slots open.

[Nix]

I was a hardcore nvidia user, proud of it, almost was swayed to ATI's side till I saw the reviews on a Geforce 6800 Ultra.  My GOD that card blew my socks off when I saw the difference.  I believe there's hope for nvidia after all!  I honestly would wait for the 6800's to come down in price and/or wait for the next revision to come out.  Simply to see what kinds of bugs they might have in them and such.  ATI's still got the visual quality but Nvidia's comin back from what I've seen.

[Liberator]

I just don't like the Drivers support, rather a lack thereof, that ATI is famous for.  With an Nvidia, regard of actual performace, it almost always works in fashion it's supposed to.

Bear in mind I've owned 2 3D cards in my life that weren't salvaged.  A 3Dfx Voodoo 3 2000 PCI w/16mb of RAM and a VisionTek GeForce 4 MX 420 PCI w/64mb of RAM.  ANYTHING is going to be an improvement.

[Admiral LSD]

I've had my 9500 Pro for over a year now and I've yet to have a serious problem with the Catalyst drivers. In fact, they've been so good I'd go as far as saying I had more trouble with nVidia's drivers than I've ever had with the Cats.

[Drew]

the only problem i had with cats was when i failed to update them from the time i bought them to about the time i bought halo. I was running 2.4 cat drivers forever and that was the main source for my problems


and on my mobo, i only have 3 pci slots, and the top one is to close to my radeon 9000 to put anything other than a slim little ide controller card in there.

[Setekh]

My current GeForce was built by ASUS too, I can recommend them.

[Fineus]

And mine was by MSi, who're very good - the cards held out fine and only died on my (frame rate wise) a handful of times:

The Far Cry demo.
The Doom 3 alpha.
The Half-Life 2 alpha.
Battlefield: Vietnam with everything on full including sound settings.

As you can see - that's a fairly good indication that a GeForce 4 4600 Ti isn't going to be good enough for this years crop of games, but it'll cope just fine with everything before that (within reason, you need a system good enough to back it).

I would seriously recommend looking at ATI cards though, apparently the support is a lot better and, when the prices drop, I'm going to pick up a top-of-the-range 9800.

[Sandwich]

I just spent the whole week (literally) reading up on Tom's Hardware all the relevant nVidia vs. ATi articles in the Graphics section. Aside from the spanking-new nVidia GeForce 6800 Ultra, which can't even be purchased yet, ATi cards are pretty much the equivalent of nVidia cards without quality enhancements (FSAA and/or anisoptropic filtering), but easliy take the lead with said quality enhancements turned on - with one exception: OpenGL. Most OpenGL games run a slight bit faster with nVidia.

That said, those quality enhancements make so much of a difference to games that I'm buying my next card with the "requirement" that it be able to use FSAA and anisoptropic filtering at the higher resolutions (1280x1024 is ideal for my monitor) without frame rates dipping below "very playable".

I'm getting an Hightech Radeon 9800 Pro ICEQ card from NewEgg.com for $250. A steal.

[Setekh]

You may have just argued me into going ATi for my next chipset, Sandwich.

[Kazan]

Nix: wait until ATI releases their next card

i highly advise against nVidia at all times due to their thermal problems

once again someone said there is a radeon taht uses two slots- NAME IT last time someone said that hey ate crow because they realized they were not thinking of an ATI board at all

[IceFire]

Both ATI and nVidia are fairly closely matched in terms of performance, hardware ability, technical ability, and driver quality.  The notion that ATI drivers are of any less quality than the nVidia ones are utter bollocks because I have both GeForces and Radeons around here and I run into the same shenanagins on both sets of Deonators (or Forceware or whatever you call it now ) and Catalysts.  Find the drivers that work best and stay there.

Presently my powerhouse is a Radeon 9700Pro.  Its fast, its pretty, and it looks really good in games.  No problems, no issues, nothing to suggest that I made a bad purchase.

That said, see what card is best for you.  The FX 5700 and 5900 are the best of the bunch, the FX 5200 is a budget card and the FX5600 and FX5800 are to be avoided.  The Radeon 9800Pro, or XT are top of the bunch right now, the 9600XT is an excellent buy, and so on.

Be aware that budget versions of all cards in the ATI brand are known as SE (so 9600SE for instance) and the budget cards in the nVidia brand are XT (in an obvious attempt to sow confusion since the ATI top level cards are labled XT).

Read the reviews and see where it lands you.

Certainly the ATI cards, as Sandwich mentions, loose less FPS for enabling FSAA or AF....while without they are virtually identical to the nVidia cards.  The GeForce 6 brand is supposed to redress that problem as well....

[ChronoReverse]

Originally posted by Kazan
Nix: wait until ATI releases their next card

i highly advise against nVidia at all times due to their thermal problems

once again someone said there is a radeon taht uses two slots- NAME IT last time someone said that hey ate crow because they realized they were not thinking of an ATI board at all

Kazan, stop jumping on anyone who says anything remotely like it's against ATi in any way.

You know, I've got a problem with dual slot GAME cards (IE Radeons and GeForces) but not professional cards like a Wildcat.

This is saying that game cards like Geforces and Radeons _shouldn't have to use two slots unlike a professional card.  It doesn't actually imply that the Radeon uses two slots.




Moreover, even if I owned a Radeon (I haven't upgraded), I'd still be using a two-slot solution since I like silent cooling.  If I do upgrade though, I'll probably use a two slot active cooling to vent air out of my case though.

[.::Tin Can::.]

I guess the verdict rules that ATI is better or something?

[IceFire]

Originally posted by .::Tin Can::.
I guess the verdict rules that ATI is better or something?

Find a relatively indepth review of any series of video cards at any of the notables that suggests that one company has a major advantage over the other...

The fact is that neither of them do.  But there are different issues to each and strengths and weaknesses....

I don't see any verdict that ATI is better...just that their FSAA performance is better (this is a verifiable and quantified performance result - not subjective in any way) and that their speed performance is neck and neck with nVidia.