Graphics Card

uhhh....you should go post this in the lounge.

only advice i can give you is: dont buy a powerful video card unless you have the memory. a powerful video card will be useless if you have like 16/32 mb of ram

Also make sure you have a good processor. I bought a radeon9700pro when they first came out, i had a thunderbird800mhz then (oced to 950).. it hardly made any improvement. I shortly got a 1.73ghz athlonxp, and it made all the difference. (ram helps alot too)

its alright, im ok for that bit, im on a 2.66ghz processor with 256mb, i just got a crappy 64mb SiS graphics card. I didnt know anything about graphics cards until i had trouble playing games with this one, it forced me to learn about them and what to replace it with. But i havent learnt enough, so anyone still got an exact card they could reccomend or a link to a place (preferably in the uk) where i can buy the one i mentioned above?

This should probably be the last resource you'll ever need, at least until it gets outdated

http://www.tomshardware.com/graphic/20031229/index.html

Also, I usually buy from newegg.com They've got just about every part I've ever neeeded, low prices, reliable, and stuff arrives fast. I've bought over two dozen items from them.

In addition, you may want to upgrade to 512MB ram.

[edited by - Xaelect on January 31, 2004 7:38:41 PM]

Ati Radeon 9800 XT 256MB only $500

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Original post by DerAnged
Ati Radeon 9800 XT 256MB only $500

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I could get two good computers for $500, cluster them together, and be rolling in power.

Why blow that on a video card?

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Original post by DerAnged
Ati Radeon 9800 XT 256MB only $500

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I thought they went for around 400 USD.

GFFX 5900nu''s are amazing. Especially when considered that they can be overclocked to 5950 speeds without much difficulty.

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Radeon 9600 Pro/XT or 9500 Pro (if you can find it)

ATi Radeon 9800XT :: if you can afford it
ATi Radeon 9600XT :: best of the midrange market
ATi Radeon 9500 :: if you can find it

Please avoid the NVIDIA FX generation, they are slow, hot and loud (take up a PCI and AGP slot aswell). Currently ATi is the leader, NVIDIA generation 2, 3, 4 were good (but they are older generation DX7 and 8 so they wont run new stuff that well).

I should mention why the 9500 Pro rules...

It is based off of the 9700 Pro. It has a lower clockspeed, but twice the number of pixel/vertex pipelines (maybe not both, but one of them for sure) as the 9600s. It''s able to more than match performance of them. It also has a special z-buffer-thingy that the 9700 has which makes depth testing faster. the 9500 and 9500 Pro were discontinued though, because they were too good for their price . If you can find though them they are only like $100.

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Original post by particleG
Please avoid the NVIDIA FX generation, they are slow, hot and loud (take up a PCI and AGP slot aswell).

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Not entirely true. The EARLY generation of FX cards were loud, hot an bulky, but not anymore. The newer cards only take up the agp slot and the noise increase is neglible.

But I would stay away from older Nvidia cards though. You mentioned the Geforce 4. The last I read, it didn''t fully support Direcx 8(D3D), let alone DX9.

If you are on a budget, get an Nvidia FX card. If you got deep pockets go ATI.

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Original post by yspotua

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Original post by particleG
Please avoid the NVIDIA FX generation, they are slow, hot and loud (take up a PCI and AGP slot aswell).

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Not entirely true. The EARLY generation of FX cards were loud, hot an bulky, but not anymore. The newer cards only take up the agp slot and the noise increase is neglible.

But I would stay away from older Nvidia cards though. You mentioned the Geforce 4. The last I read, it didn''t fully support Direcx 8(D3D), let alone DX9.

If you are on a budget, get an Nvidia FX card. If you got deep pockets go ATI.

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-The 5700 takes up one slot but falls behind the 9600XT in Image Quality and performance.

-The 5900/5950 still take up two slots and are still noisy compared to the 9800XT.

-Geforce 4 supports DX8 (fully as far as I know), not meant to support DX9 since it is a previous generation (emulated mode)

-Geforce FX DOES NOT fully support the DX9 spec and runs very much behind ATi cards.


I dunno what your deep pocket things is about since both ATi and NVIDIA cards are priced the same except ATi outperforms NVIDIA.


In my opinion the Geforce FX line was the biggest mistake NVIDIA made, that and their PR crap and driver "cheats". They tried to push their architecture for DirectX but it was voted off, they said screw everyone and did their own thing and FAILED horribly.

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Original post by particleG
Please avoid the NVIDIA FX generation, they are slow, hot and loud (take up a PCI and AGP slot aswell).

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Wow another person that really has no idea what they are talking about =]

The GeforceFX 5900nu can be clocked to the highest performance card currently on the market. Don't believe me? Go try it and benchmark it. If you get a good 5950U than it is the fastest card on the market, OC that and you're really rockin.

Can you also explain why my 5900 clocked HIGHER than a 5950 Ultra runs cooler than a 9700/9800 pro?

Also loud? .. My system is perfectly quiet where do you get this rubbish information from? lol maybe read some Tom's "rigged" Hardware reviews?


Mind you, if you enjoy driver problems, not being able to play major games on release (or fully featured) than by all means go ATI =]

Call of Duty, Ultima Online, Anarchy Online, Shadowbane, FF XI, NFSU, .. I could go on. The majority of those games still have driver issues with ATI =]


[edited by - Imperil on February 1, 2004 3:13:14 AM]

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Original post by particleG
In my opinion the Geforce FX line was the biggest mistake NVIDIA made, that and their PR crap and driver "cheats".

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You just shot yourself in the foot there mentioning driver "cheats". Please note that ATI has been caught optomizing their drivers for certain applications for the past two years now lol =]

http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/video/display/20030526040035.html

[edited by - Imperil on February 1, 2004 3:19:25 AM]

whats wrong with a GeForce FX card?
from what ive been reading it seems much better than the radeon cards.

[edited by - __cLowN_pAiNt__ on February 1, 2004 6:49:06 AM]

"ive noticed lots of different types of GeForce cards, are there immitations or something?"

what i meant by this was i did a search for the card i wanted on some sites and i got results like.

"Leadtek Winfast A360-TD128 FX5700 Blindingly fast 128MB DDR"
"XFX Geforce FX5700 AGP 8x 128MB DDR"

I know very little about graphics cards, can someone just explain what leadtek, xfx and similar names are?

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Original post by __cLowN_pAiNt__
whats wrong with a GeForce FX card?
from what ive been reading it seems much better than the radeon cards.

[edited by - __cLowN_pAiNt__ on February 1, 2004 6:49:06 AM]

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nothing''s wrong, if you go with a fx5900+ they support (as ive read) dx9 fully and the only problem ive seen (compared to ati''s) is that when enabling fsaa to max and aniso to max you will get lower scores, but you have to know that ati has no real fsaa, only edges are antialiased on atis (so ive read, dunno if its still valid for last gen atis but the scores look as if)

btw my geforce ti4400 is broken, and ive also spend some time to look if i replace it with a cheap new card, my favorite at the momemt is the geforce fx5900xt, i dont like that it has only 128mb ram, but its a very good card for only 200bucks (IMHO), i havent found an ati card that would satisfy my needs for 200bucks


ps: i hate the word ''antialiased'', cant write it


T2k

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Original post by Imperil

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Original post by particleG
Please avoid the NVIDIA FX generation, they are slow, hot and loud (take up a PCI and AGP slot aswell).

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Wow another person that really has no idea what they are talking about =]

The GeforceFX 5900nu can be clocked to the highest performance card currently on the market. Don''t believe me? Go try it and benchmark it. If you get a good 5950U than it is the fastest card on the market, OC that and you''re really rockin.

Can you also explain why my 5900 clocked HIGHER than a 5950 Ultra runs cooler than a 9700/9800 pro?

Also loud? .. My system is perfectly quiet where do you get this rubbish information from? lol maybe read some Tom''s "rigged" Hardware reviews?


Mind you, if you enjoy driver problems, not being able to play major games on release (or fully featured) than by all means go ATI =]

Call of Duty, Ultima Online, Anarchy Online, Shadowbane, FF XI, NFSU, .. I could go on. The majority of those games still have driver issues with ATI =]


[edited by - Imperil on February 1, 2004 3:13:14 AM]

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The 5950 is NOT the fastest card on the market (with normal clocking) and neither is the 5900 (with normal clocking). There is not one DX9 benchmark (fully using PS2.0) that has the 5950 running faster than the 9800XT. Show me anything that fully uses DX9 along with PS2.0 only and runs faster on NVIDIA cards compared to ATi cards.

So what you are doing is extreme overclocking on the NVIDIA cards running against the standard clocked Radeon cards, ofcourse they will then be faster.

I doubt that your OC''ed card runs cooler then the standard Radeon cards (prove me wrong) and that huge fan runs much louder than the Radeon small fans.

btw Toms hardware reviews are biased toward NVIDIA, notice how all their test systems for CPU''s, memory, mobo''s, etc have NVIDIA cards in them? They also said true NVIDIA fans would love the noise the 5800 makes.

Claiming driver issues with ATi, yes two years ago that was true but not anymore. Now you don''t know what you are talking about, COD and NFSU run perfectly fine havent tried the other mentioned games.

btw NVIDIA does not implement the full DX9 spec, ever try running shadermark?

The only way NVIDIA can keep up with ATi is by brute forcing their cards to extreme clock speeds while the lower clocked ATi cards are still faster.

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Original post by Imperil

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Original post by particleG
In my opinion the Geforce FX line was the biggest mistake NVIDIA made, that and their PR crap and driver "cheats".

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You just shot yourself in the foot there mentioning driver "cheats". Please note that ATI has been caught optomizing their drivers for certain applications for the past two years now lol =]

http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/video/display/20030526040035.html

[edited by - Imperil on February 1, 2004 3:19:25 AM]

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ATi doesn''t say that they''ll keep optimizing every time 3DMark is patched. NVIDIA said that they would find new ways around the patch to keep their cheats going because they are "valid optimizations".


Again my opinion only, want a good card get a Radeon, want something hot, loud and slower then the competition get an FX.

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Original post by __cLowN_pAiNt__
whats wrong with a GeForce FX card?
from what ive been reading it seems much better than the radeon cards.

[edited by - __cLowN_pAiNt__ on February 1, 2004 6:49:06 AM]

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NVIDIA FX cards run much slower then the competition in every category. 5950U is slower then 9800XT, 5700U (along with 5600U''s) are slower than 9600XT, 5200 is the worst low end card on the market. They also run hotter and louder.