Development Graphicboard ?

5700 in a heartbeat.
Its the fastest one of the lot and it got some pretty nce features like the shaders and stuff + it suports dual side stencil in hardware.
Allthough i would prefer the 6800.

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For an overdose of l33tness, flashbang.nu

I got the Ti4200, no complaints but fragment shaders might be usefull to you (and this one doesn''t support it) so i''d go for an FX (5700+).

WWW.TREEPENGUIN.TK

well, who tha hell not ?
but there is something which makes it impossible for me to get that wonderful piece of technology... money
but 5700 sounds good.
are there ultra versions of this card ?
which one should i take and is there a difference in the brands ?
"noname" vs "wellknown" ?
thx in advance, stryx

nonames are normaly cheaper.
There are very few differences between them (normaly the more expensive ones have some extra stuff on them, like a tv tuner, a more silent fan or 3d shutter goggles).

I suspect that you will be just fine buying a cheap one.

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For an overdose of l33tness, flashbang.nu

anything with LE on the end of the name I'd suggest you steer well away from. Also, the 5600/5200 are based on the comparitvly poor NV30 architecture, where the 5700 is baesd on NV35.
The 5700s are nice. The 5900XTs are even better (for very little difference in price). That said it depends entirly what your doing. My experience is that if your doing a lot of 'old style' openGL - eg, display lists, glVertex, vertex arrays, combiners, etc, then an nvidia card is a good choice, but if you're looking at getting deep into fragment shaders and vertex shaders, then do consider an Ati chip.
With the demo I'm currently working on, I've tested using a pretty good range of hardware... From geforce MXs, through to radeon 9800s... These are the sorts of results I got:

card          framerate   m/tris/sec      other issues?

MX 440        poor          ~1.3          Would crash if using PBuffers
FX 5200       awful         ~1 (pbuffer)  Clipping problems and TexGen/Vshader problems
Ti 4200       average/good  ~2.4          Corruption on newer drivers (56s) with PBuffers
Radeon 9500   good          ~4.5          Some slight Z depth issues (minor)
Radeon 9800SE fast          ~6.5          More Z depth issues
GF FX 5900XT  good          ~4.2          Clipping problems and TexGen/Vshader problems
        

(for this I put the camera in pretty much the same place each time)

Odly enough the geforce tis worked great with 40 series drivers, but did weird things with Pbuffers and 50 series drivers (although on 40 series, I once saw MSN messenger in the reflection off the water )

Keep in mind that I use PS/VS 2.0 on almost every pixel where I can, so the PS/VS 2 cards have a _lot_ more complex drawing to do. And cards supporting PBuffers will be rendering a lot more (reflection/refraction effects)
Overall I was dissapointed with the speed of the 5900xt when it came to shaders and some very annoying bugs (no support for clip planes, and some significant shader problems). The 5200 was a joke. Sorry, but even the MX was faster, and with all effects enabled it was rediculous... the 9500 pro was significantly faster at 1600x1200 than the 5200 at 640x480. - and it had less visual errors.

I know you love nivida, (I had a geforce 1 myself before my current card) and I used to never consider other cards either, but do look around. I have never used a Volari/DeltaChrom chip, and they do seem to offer excellent price/performance.. if you can find them (But look into it first).

Avoid anything that is a cut back model, ie, it has a SE or LE on it. The one exception to this rule is the radeon 9800SE, as it's a very fast card for the price.
And do make sure you get a PS2/VS2 capable card. Games like farcry will simply blow you away when compared to older cards (especially on a radeon in this case).

I'm also in the situation where I'm looking at the new cards about to come out and am thinking about a change. Just choosing between the 6800 and the X800 is going to be difficult I think... :/ Probably will come down to price.

If you have the money, I'd say you should look at either a radeon 9600XT or nvidia 5900XT. Both chips will give you roughly equal performance for your money, so look around and see what you can get them for. below that, a 5600 or 5700 is fine, as would be a 9600Pro. But I would not suggest going any lower.

[edit]

BTW:
wait for both the 6800 and X800 to come out, so there is a price drop on older cards..

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[edited by - RipTorn on April 30, 2004 5:27:42 AM]

Hi i buyed an ASUS V9570 TD yesterday. (GF FX5700 with 256 DDR2)
After a few benchmarks I am pretty comfortable with it.

The problem was that i was pretty low on money so the 59xx cards were too expensive. Anyway I got rid of my geforce 1 and the FX5700 feels great. Thanks for all your help.
Greets, stryx