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I want a mid range video card with Two outputs so i can replace the godawful Geforce 4 Mx 440/S3 Virge Combo I have going. The Contenders are as follows
1
2
3
4
So i ask you all, Which card should i get considering my requirements. (yes i'll be getting a seperate DVI-VGA adapter for 2 of them but they're relatively cheap so that only factors in when 2 cards are equal and one of them is the one that comes with it).

Get the 9600 pro. It's far superior to the non-pro version, and way better than that FX5500.

I totally agree, 9600 Pro is a quality card. If you can, look specifically for the Tyan Tachyon G9600 Pro. It has some extra enhancements over the standard 9600 Pro for relative same cost. Like specially designed for clocking up the memory.

I can't argue with either of them. For the ~$100 crowd, the 9600 Pro is a great card. I was hoping that we'd see some cards based on the new architectures soon, but ATI's new X600 and X300 look like a big disappointment and nVidia is keeping its cards (heh) to itself right now.

Of the four options, either 1 or 4 (preferably 4, the extra VRAM couldn't hurt).

Which chipset is better Radeon or GeForce ?

evilcat4000 wrote:Which chipset is better Radeon or GeForce ?

That depends on the price range and features you want.

I am looking for a card around $100 shipment excluded.

evilcat4000 wrote:I am looking for a card around $100 shipment excluded.

The 9600 Pro 256MB is availible for that price and is your best bet. You can also get a 5700, but it isn't quite as good.

I'm quite happy with my 9600 Pro.

Are there still problems with ATI's driver support for Linux?

Slartibartfast wrote:Are there still problems with ATI's driver support for Linux?

Yes. Besides, I believe ATI lacks certain nVidia OpenGL extensions required by some games such and UT2K4.

Lacking good OpenGL, it probably isn't very 3DSMax-friendly either. Guess I'll stick to nVidia when I can afford one.

Meh, I would say go with the 9600 Pro. I'd REALLY recommend going for the 9600 XT, if you're willing to drop another $20-$30. I'd say it's worth it.

Although if you're more of a renderer, as I suspect Slartibartfast is, then go with the GeForce FX 5700.

SPOOFE wrote: Although if you're more of a renderer, as I suspect Slartibartfast is, then go with the GeForce FX 5700.

GPU's are almost never used in the professional raytracing rendering process, that is almost exclusively CPU territory.

The Kernel wrote:

SPOOFE wrote: Although if you're more of a renderer, as I suspect Slartibartfast is, then go with the GeForce FX 5700.

GPU's are almost never used in the professional raytracing rendering process, that is almost exclusively CPU territory.

Didn't nVidia release something to utilize the GPU for rendering or something? Anyway, he probably means it's useful in the actual modeling stage before one renders.

Pu-239 wrote:

Slartibartfast wrote:Are there still problems with ATI's driver support for Linux?

Yes. Besides, I believe ATI lacks certain nVidia OpenGL extensions required by some games such and UT2K4.

I can't believe Epic would actually design their game to be unplayable on ATI cards.

Pu-239 wrote:

Slartibartfast wrote:Are there still problems with ATI's driver support for Linux?

Yes. Besides, I believe ATI lacks certain nVidia OpenGL extensions required by some games such and UT2K4.

I'm going to disagree, as I often play UT2004 on my laptop which has a mobility 9200, and it's not just an ATI driver, it's a COMPAQ ATI driver, and it works like a charm. Might want to check your sources.

What OpenGL extensions exactly? Because OpenGL afaik has nothing hardware specific about it. And the latest ATI AND nVidia stuff works fine with OpenGL 1.5 and down.

Super-Gagme wrote:What OpenGL extensions exactly? Because OpenGL afaik has nothing hardware specific about it. And the latest ATI AND nVidia stuff works fine with OpenGL 1.5 and down.

OpenGL is somewhat limited in what it can do 'natively' so it is generally extended quite a bit to support newer functions.

InnocentBystander wrote:

Pu-239 wrote:

Slartibartfast wrote:Are there still problems with ATI's driver support for Linux?

Yes. Besides, I believe ATI lacks certain nVidia OpenGL extensions required by some games such and UT2K4.

I'm going to disagree, as I often play UT2004 on my laptop which has a mobility 9200, and it's not just an ATI driver, it's a COMPAQ ATI driver, and it works like a charm. Might want to check your sources.

I meant on Linux. Then again, it probably only applied to older ATI drivers and UT2K3, since a quick google search seems to show that UT2k4 does run on ATI. It doesn't change the fact that nVidia drivers are superior on Linux though (more stable, x86_64 support, among other things, and nVidia's better OGL (on Linux DX performance is irrelevant)).

Not that it matters to me, since I still run a Riva TNT2 .

GPU's are almost never used in the professional raytracing rendering process, that is almost exclusively CPU territory.

If I recall correctly, the GeForce FX series can be soft-modded to work more akin to a workstation card.

And it's no secret that nVidia's cards have consistently thumped ATI's in OpenGL rendering.

SPOOFE wrote: If I recall correctly, the GeForce FX series can be soft-modded to work more akin to a workstation card.

Yes and no. For previews, yeah there are a few plugins that turn out some good results. For final renders...well...while there is a lot of interest in this application for GPU's (due to the enormously increased speed) most of the results so far have been held back by the lack of general programmability in GPU's. What you are talking about will happen soon, but we aren't quite there yet.

And it's no secret that nVidia's cards have consistently thumped ATI's in OpenGL rendering.

Quite true.