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Just got a GeForce FX 5200 Ultra today to replace a burned out
GeForce 4 4200 Ti....I'm pleasantly surprised at it - it never stuttered
during engine start up smoke in IL-2, while my old GF4 did....despite
tom's hardware rating it as very slow...for christ's sake, why do
those people always set the games to 1600x1200 resolution when
they benchmark the cards? No one is going to do that these days...

Anyway, I am a die hard NVIDIA fan, solely because of their
excellent driver support as far as their midlevel cards are concerned.

Many moons ago, I had an ATI All in Wonder card, and I had to
download new drivers because the drivers that came out of the
box were broken as far as video capture was concerned - and that
was a major selling point of the card

MKSheppard wrote:Just got a GeForce FX 5200 Ultra today to replace a burned out
GeForce 4 4200 Ti....I'm pleasantly surprised at it - it never stuttered
during engine start up smoke in IL-2, while my old GF4 did....despite
tom's hardware rating it as very slow...for christ's sake, why do
those people always set the games to 1600x1200 resolution when
they benchmark the cards? No one is going to do that these days...

Benchmarking is done at 1600x1200 as to stress the video card. If you run at something like 1024x768 you're in the CPU-dependance zone - you aren't testing the video card anymore.

And yes, quite a few people game at 1600x1200. People like their eye candy + anti-aliasing + ansiotropic filtering.

Anyway, I am a die hard NVIDIA fan, solely because of their
excellent driver support as far as their midlevel cards are concerned.

I've had both good and bad experiences with nVidia's driver support.

Many moons ago, I had an ATI All in Wonder card, and I had to
download new drivers because the drivers that came out of the
box were broken as far as video capture was concerned - and that
was a major selling point of the card

Ugh. ATI's support for the early AIW cards and several tuners has been nothing short of abysmal.

I love the fact that I can get fully functional drivers for my GeForce 2 off the net despite the fact of its device driver disk being long since disappeared.

And I also like the fact that it'll work even if it was a TNT2 or a GeForce FX...

GG nVidia!

GeForce 4 Ti4800 SE. Installed one driver from off the net. Has worked with every single one of my games and hasn't failed in anything since the very start.

Nividia hasn't supported DVD players since 40.72 on cards with TV Out. Gee, are DVD players obsolete now?

ATI may have had crappy drivers a long time ago, but that's irrelevant now. All problems with that have been resolved for a while now.

nVidia normally has great drivers, as they have had for a long time. But I've seen many problems with the ones for the nForce2 chipset. This chipset is itself awesome, but it's difficult to make it work, even harder if you want to try to use the integrated video on it.

The point of arguing over which is better escapes me when both companies' latest models are so obscenely fast they can run just about everything at incredible speed.

The point of arguing over which is better escapes me when both companies' latest models are so obscenely fast they can run just about everything at incredible speed.

You're looking at the wrong models. The super-high-end, $400-$500 cards are there for sheer bragging rights. The real meat 'n potatoes of debate lies with the mid-range cards, $100-$200 (which means the FX 5200, 5200 Ultra, and some 5600 models for nVidia, and the 9500 and, I believe 9600 for ATI).

Frankly, I prefer nVidia just because they've been more consistently reliable over the years. Even four years ago, they were a rock, while ATI was the laughingstock of the video card market. Sure, they managed to sneak ahead in the past eighteen months, but I'm going to wait a while longer to see if they can maintain it, to see if their current bragging-rights cards are merely a fluke.

The GeForceFX is something I wouldn't touch with a 10-feet ploe. Those things are sooooooo loud. It's like having a hair-dryer in your pc.

And ATi is the more efficient of the two. And has better anti-aliasing than Nvidia. Nvidia still needs some time to catch up on ATI

The GeForceFX is something I wouldn't touch with a 10-feet ploe. Those things are sooooooo loud. It's like having a hair-dryer in your pc.

Incorrect. The GeForce-FX 5800 is the culprit. The 5200, 5600, and 5900 (along with the Ultra variants of each) do not suffer from this problem. Indeed, the 5800 has been more or less "retired", replaced by the faster, quieter, and superior 5900... which, according to Tom's Hardware, is the fastest consumer-level video card on can acquire at the moment.

I just got the ASUS V9280-TVD. That is a GeForce 4 Ti 4200 with 128mb of DDR ram. Its a damned nice card and can run even my most intensive games with incredible quality.

As SPOOFE said, the mid ranged cards are the real cards out there because its what the standard computer savy users buy. Most idiots get the low range cards while only the rich kids get the hidh end. Us computer savies have to ballance between price and capability while trying for higher end.

As it is, I love my card and know its one of the better mid ranged cards. Is it the best? I seriously doubt that. But for my needs, it works more then perfect and with the cost its quite nice. You can find my card for as low as $202 and up to $250. So its a higher mid ranged card.

Anyway how do some of the other cards out there handle max resolutions and qualities on their games? So far I only have one game that can slow me down at max settings. That is Ghost Recon, specificaly the high quality shadows slow me down whenever I look at a large group of people. Other then that (lowering the quality on that alone) I can run at max settings and everything is perfect. Tribes 2 can run full shadow detail no problem. GTA3 runs max quality no problem.

Dahak wrote:The GeForceFX is something I wouldn't touch with a 10-feet ploe. Those things are sooooooo loud. It's like having a hair-dryer in your pc.

My PC is quieter since I installed an FX 5900.

Partly because of MSI's clever cooling system. (two large fans that spin slower than usual)

Seggybop wrote:nVidia normally has great drivers, as they have had for a long time. But I've seen many problems with the ones for the nForce2 chipset. This chipset is itself awesome, but it's difficult to make it work, even harder if you want to try to use the integrated video on it.

The nForce2 has had seriousl driver problems of late, I've heard, ranging from AGP to the IDE interface.

I bought a Dell which came with an ATI Raedeon 7200 I believe and I have upgraded to a GeForce 5600 128 Mb DDR. I can't really say which one I prefer; I go by the price and what I need for the near future. While I had it, the Raedeon was fine.

nVIDIA>ATI

If you never play games, just watch movies, get an ATI card. If you play any games at all, nVIDIA.

I bought a Dell which came with an ATI Raedeon 7200 I believe and I have upgraded to a GeForce 5600 128 Mb DDR.

The FX 5600 is far superior to the Radeon 7200, but the 7200 is a generation or two behind. The current ATI competitor for the 5600 series comes in the form of the Radeon 9500 and 9600, I do believe.

Actually, the 9600PRO is a match for the 5600 non-Ultra, whilst the standard 9600 is more a 5200Ultra eqivilant. Nasty marketing numbers, but there you have it.

Personally, I'd take the GF5200 over the 9200 because it's not based of the old 8500 core and supports DX9, I'm not decided when it's 5600 VS 9600PRO, and I think 9800PRO over 5900 (non-Ultra) mostly because I don't see the 5900 having any major performance advantage whilst they're not always perfect one-slot solutions (MSI's card, the one Vendetta has, for example, is a bit big because of its two fans). Since I have a 17" LCD, I can't excatly play games at 1600x1200 so I frankly I don't care about the 5900 Ultra, fastest though it may be. Today you won't need the extra juice, and by the time you need it a better card would be out... So unless you need the best today and excatly today, why fork out the extra cash?

YT300000, I just don't know where you're getting all this from. ATI 9800PRO and 9600PRO match their nvidia competitors spec for spec these days. It's reputated that ATI has better TV out, but otherwise I have no idea what you are talking about... Perhaps you could explain?

SPOOFE wrote:

I bought a Dell which came with an ATI Raedeon 7200 I believe and I have upgraded to a GeForce 5600 128 Mb DDR.

The FX 5600 is far superior to the Radeon 7200, but the 7200 is a generation or two behind. The current ATI competitor for the 5600 series comes in the form of the Radeon 9500 and 9600, I do believe.

The R7200 is about 2.5 generations behind (the R200, R300 and R350 all being newer).

Ypoknons wrote:YT300000, I just don't know where you're getting all this from. ATI 9800PRO and 9600PRO match their nvidia competitors spec for spec these days. It's reputated that ATI has better TV out, but otherwise I have no idea what you are talking about... Perhaps you could explain?

Certainly. ATI GPU's are designed with multimedia applications in mind. Nothing can give you better DVD playback quality than a top-of-the-line ATI card. They also supposedly have better TV-out and DV-I support. But for some reason, in games, their framerates are just a little lower. IIRC, ATI cards can't support 2 monitors, which almost all nVidia cards do. Also, ATI has more expensive cards.

A GeForce FX 5600 Ultra (like I have) matches the best ATI card in games, but lags a bit behind in movies. If you want to play movies, I recommend that you go with an ATI, or a GeForce FX 5900 Plain/Ultra/Pro.

I can't fully explain it, it's just the way it is.

YT300000 wrote:Certainly. ATI GPU's are designed with multimedia applications in mind. Nothing can give you better DVD playback quality than a top-of-the-line ATI card. They also supposedly have better TV-out and DV-I support. But for some reason, in games, their framerates are just a little lower. IIRC, ATI cards can't support 2 monitors, which almost all nVidia cards do. Also, ATI has more expensive cards.

My R8500LE supports two monitors, one VGA and the other DVI (it's a cheap OEM that didn't spring for second RAMDAC). In addition, all ATI video cards since the R8500 (and perhaps earlier) have had hardware DVD support.

A GeForce FX 5600 Ultra (like I have) matches the best ATI card in games, but lags a bit behind in movies. If you want to play movies, I recommend that you go with an ATI, or a GeForce FX 5900 Plain/Ultra/Pro.

A GFFX 5600 Ultra does not match an R9800 Pro. That requires a GFFX 5900, and even then it only acheives overall parity.

I'm still using a GF3 Ti200 and even the newest games still scream along, probably in no small part due to the 128 mb of VRAM.

Arthur_Tuxedo wrote:I'm still using a GF3 Ti200 and even the newest games still scream along, probably in no small part due to the 128 mb of VRAM.

The GF3 Ti200 only has 64 megs of RAM, if I recall...

But yeah, it still screams along.

Crayz9000 wrote:The GF3 Ti200 only has 64 megs of RAM, if I recall...

But yeah, it still screams along.

You recall correctly, but mine has 128MB because it's a Gainward Golden Sample.

phongn wrote:My R8500LE supports two monitors, one VGA and the other DVI (it's a cheap OEM that didn't spring for second RAMDAC).

Point conceeded.

phongn wrote:In addition, all ATI video cards since the R8500 (and perhaps earlier) have had hardware DVD support.

And IMNSFHO, ATI cards play DVDs and movies much better than nVidia cards. Which is what I said above.

phongn wrote:A GFFX 5600 Ultra does not match an R9800 Pro. That requires a GFFX 5900, and even then it only acheives overall parity.

Actually, with games a Radeon 9800 Pro is only marginally better than a FX 5600 Ultra (the 256 MB version). With multimedia however, it is much better. Which was my point.

Two questions phongn. When did you buy this card, and for how much?(remember to specific if in Can or US dollars)

A GFFX 5600 Ultra does not match an R9800 Pro. That requires a GFFX 5900, and even then it only acheives overall parity.

"Now, the FX 5900 is able to outpace the Radeon 9800 PRO in all relevant benchmarks and can reclaim the performance throne for NVIDIA."

"Thanks to the numerous tweaks, improvements and refinements, the card is finally able to beat the Radeon 9800 PRO."

http://www6.tomshardware.com/graphic/20 ... 00-32.html