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What GPU?
Posted: 2005-09-10 07:00am
by Tolya
Im slowly getting sick & tired of my Radeon 9500 card and Im thinking about getting something else&newer&faster&better. (Im using my comp for gaming & typing).
My specs are:
AMD XP2000+
Gigabyte GA7VA
512mb kingston
Radeon 9500
Should it be Nvidia or Ati? Nvidia is slowly taking over the gaming industry, but the two last cards I've used were Radeon 8500 & 9500 (8500 actually broke on me).
Now, i know my comp isnt the sharpest tool, but I manage to get most of the modern games running in 1024x768. I don't want to get the best of the best of the graphic cards today, I just want reasonable hardware for a reasonable price. The best cards today will be crap tomorrow, and Im thinking about buying something cheaper and older. They will still be crap tomorrow but I wont lose too much money that way.
So, what would you guys recommend?
Posted: 2005-09-10 07:29am
by Ace Pace
Remarkably similer to my current specifications.
With that rig, I advise on a 9800Pro/XT, anything bigger will be bottlenecked, and the 9800 will be powerful enough to drive alot of things today at 1024.
Posted: 2005-09-10 07:42am
by Tolya
Thanks!
Dont you have problems with games made with Nvidia in mind? I mean, they put so much cash into the gaming industry I wonder if the Ati performance isnt tweaked down.
Posted: 2005-09-10 07:43am
by Ace Pace
No, from using the 9700Pro, the 9xxx line definetly trumps its equilivent the FX 5xxx line.
Anyone telling you otherwise needs to have their heads checked for a TWIMTBP tatto inside their mind.
Posted: 2005-09-10 08:06am
by Xon
The definitive video card performance thread
This is a general reference to help with basic decision making and help people from making bad decisions. Feel free to dispute Hat Monster's rankings, but unless the differences are very significant, they aren't going to be changed.
Two cards next to each other, on the whole, will perform very closely to one another, although some will show significant performance advantages and disadvantages in specific games, or games utilizing a specific engine
Stupid
These cards tend to perform very very close to each other. Which is moronically fast.
GeForce 7800GTX - A cut above anything else you can get today.
Radeon X850XT PE
Radeon X800XT PE (Very slightly faster memory)
Geforce6800 Ultra Extreme
Exceptional
These cards will play any game of today or tomorrow with detail settings very high or maximum and at high resolutions.
These cards will not be cheap and neither will the Pentium4EE or Athlon64FX required to keep them fed.
Radeon X850 XT
Radeon X800 XT
Geforce 6800 Ultra
Radeon X800XL
GeForce 6800GT
Great
You won't be complaining with one of these cards. In fact, you're unlikely to have a CPU capable of making them the weak spot.
Radeon X800 Pro
Geforce 6800
Radeon x700 XT
GeForce 6600GT
Radeon X800SE
Radeon x700 Pro
Radeon 9800XT
Radeon 9800 Pro (9800+)
GF FX 5950 (5900U+)
Radeon 9800
GF FX 5900U
Good
You won't be wanting an upgrade for a while with one of the following cards, but you probably won't be winning any pissing contests either. This is roughly "mainstream" for our purposes. If buying new and to stick with the card for a while, this is the category you should be looking in.
Radeon 9700 Pro - 9700s core clocks tend to overclock very very well, but
Radeon 9700 - RAM tends not to overclock much.
GF FX 5900
GF FX 5900XT/SE (5900-)
GF FX 5800 Ultra (5800+)
GF FX 5800 (4x2, 128 bit)
Radeon 9500Pro (8x1, 128bit)
Average
These cards won't win any awards, and won't really attract many buyers, but they are to be taken seriously. They'll run most games at respectable frame rates. If you can pick one up used, you won't regret it.
Radeon x700
GeForce 6600 (Beats the x700 in Doom3)
Radeon 9600XT (Pro+)
GF FX5700U (5700+)
Below Average
These are passable cards, but nobody is going to want one for gaming on.
Radeon 9800SE
Radeon 9600 Pro (9600+)
GF FX 5700
GF4 Ti4800/4600 (4400+)
GeForce 6200
Poor
These cards have simply been outclassed by too many cards to make them worth considering but they do have strengths and are servicable.
GF FX 5600U (Only consider the new version, which is much improved)
GF4 Ti4400/4800SE
Radeon 9500 (4x1, 128bit)
Radeon 9600 (4x1, 128 bit)
GF4 Ti4200/4200SE (4400-)
Awful
Not really worth considering unless it's for a very good price and you're not wanting to push the envelope anywhere. These cards should be considered as bare minimum monitor drivers and old-game players. You will be reducing settings for newer games. Note that the listed FX series cards here all do *much* better at DX7/8 games than they do at DX9 games, but are still inferior to the GF4 Ti series.
Do not buy new.
Radeon 8500
GF3 Ti500 (GF3+)
GF FX5600
Radeon 8500LE/9100 (8500-)
Radeon 9000 Pro (9000+)
GF3
GeForce4MX 460 (DX7 only)
Radeon 9000/9200
Radeon 8500 OEM ("LELE", 8500--)
GF3 Ti200 (GF3-)
GeForce4MX 440 (DX7 only)
GF FX5200U
Laughable
Now these are even worse than crap. They're an insult to the market.
GF FX5600XT/SE
Radeon 9600SE
Radeon 9200SE
GF FX5200 Be very careful with FX5200 cards. I have seen SDRAM based cards which are so painfully slow that an old GF2MX would make them look silly.
GeForce4MX 420 - I had a Voodoo3 which ran faster than this
Posted: 2005-09-10 08:08am
by Ace Pace
I'd very much suggest against buying any FX card, while they preform on equal with the 9xxx cards in current games, they lag behind any reletively new game, such as Far Cry, D3, HL2.
Posted: 2005-09-10 08:14am
by Dahak
EmKay wrote:Thanks!
Dont you have problems with games made with Nvidia in mind? I mean, they put so much cash into the gaming industry I wonder if the Ati performance isnt tweaked down.
ATI isn't exactly ignoring game market. They both put cash into it. HL2, for instance, is working better with ATI than with nVidia...
Posted: 2005-09-10 08:18am
by Ace Pace
Neither HL2 nor Doom3 should be judged as the be all end all, both have used tricks to improve one sides preformance, such as changing a small line in a config file in Doom3 to improve ATi preformance by leaps and bounds.
Posted: 2005-09-10 12:08pm
by Arthur_Tuxedo
A 9800 Pro or XT will indeed give a nice performance boost, but they're now in the same price range as the GeForce 6600 GT, which has support for newer features, and will be much more future proof. It's also decently faster than the 9800 series.
Posted: 2005-09-10 01:23pm
by Xon
Ace Pace wrote:I'd very much suggest against buying any FX card, while they preform on equal with the 9xxx cards in current games, they lag behind any reletively new game, such as Far Cry, D3, HL2.
The FX 5xxx series sucks ass at DX9 games.
A cheap 6600 GT or the like is a good bet.
ATI is also designing a radically different video card for the xbox 360 in addition to their next gen desktop line. It isnt a wonder that they are taking longer to get the next gen out.
Posted: 2005-09-10 01:33pm
by Ace Pace
A cheap 6600GT, I think however that would be severely bottlenecked with his current PC, so unless he plans to upgrade and carry on the card, its wasted money.
ATi can design what they want(I LIKE the Xenos though, free AA), but its not here right now.
Posted: 2005-09-10 01:55pm
by Tolya
The problem is, that in many games today I see the dreaded (for me) Nvidia logo, which suggests that any Ati card is at disadvantage.
Examples that made me want to change my GPU
1) Full Spectrum Warrior - low details, all low. FPS just plain sucks, below 10. And I dunno why (few months ago I managed to run it just ok, but now its crap, any ideas? I upgraded RAM, got a bigger & faster HDD, upgraded graphic drivers, but the FSW performance instead of going up, it went down).
2) Vampire Masquerade: Bloodlines. Now I know this game sucks in terms of optimization and performance, but my friend who has 1.2Ghz comp with an Nvidia 6600 had no problems with it. Mine comp drops to 5-6FPS in the open areas like the street in Santa Monica.
And I noticed strange behaviour of graphics (color changes, missing textures and the like) in GTA:SA when I upgraded to 5.7 Omega (tried 5.8 Catalyst also).
Which leads to another question: which driver is the best? My latest experiences deny that new=better.
Posted: 2005-09-10 02:19pm
by Ace Pace
Wrong, my ATi card runs UT2K4 full speed, it just means nVidia is faster, not that it makes ATi inherently slower
Right now the 5.8 drivers are 'stable' for me.
Posted: 2005-09-10 02:28pm
by Xon
Ace Pace wrote:A cheap 6600GT, I think however that would be severely bottlenecked with his current PC, so unless he plans to upgrade and carry on the card, its wasted money.
The shader preformance simply cant be understated.
Geometry and texture sizes havent been the problem for the last 2-3 generations of video cards, but shader preformace has. And shader preformance is fairly independant to how much geometry and textures the CPU pumps into the card.
Adding some really expensive shader operations requires almost jack from a CPU, but hits the GPU heavily and can make a big difference to the final look. And for an extra $50-$100, thats not bad value.
Posted: 2005-09-10 02:37pm
by Crazy_Vasey
EmKay wrote:The problem is, that in many games today I see the dreaded (for me) Nvidia logo, which suggests that any Ati card is at disadvantage.
I've been using ATI cards since the 9x00 series was released and I've played a load of games and demos with the Nvidia logo thing and never had any performance or stability issues.
Posted: 2005-09-10 05:03pm
by SPOOFE
Here's a
GeForce 6600GT for $145 (plus a $20 mail-in rebate, if you're interested). Good deal.
Conversely, here's a
Radeon 9800 Pro for $136. I'm sure you can also find them cheaper, probably right around $100. However, as has been mentioned, you lose a few features and is a little less future-proof.
Either one of those would be perfect for your needs. If those are too expensive, you can always go with the GeForce 6600 vanilla, which is usually hovering around the $100 mark, but I'd recommend the GT.
Posted: 2005-09-11 06:28am
by Dahak
EmKay wrote:The problem is, that in many games today I see the dreaded (for me) Nvidia logo, which suggests that any Ati card is at disadvantage.
The logo thing does not automatically mean that the game is developed soley for use with nVidia. It just means that they pay you money to put it there and offer you a test center to run your games there with a wide range of hardware.
2) Vampire Masquerade: Bloodlines. Now I know this game sucks in terms of optimization and performance, but my friend who has 1.2Ghz comp with an Nvidia 6600 had no problems with it. Mine comp drops to 5-6FPS in the open areas like the street in Santa Monica.
I had no problems with Vampire, and I have an X800 XT PE. Worked like a charm (apart from the in-built annoying bugs...)
Posted: 2005-09-11 08:37am
by Ace Pace
To expand on what Dahak said, it also liasons the programming team with a team of nVidia engineers who help to improve preformance on nVidia hardware(and generally improve it)
Posted: 2005-09-11 01:59pm
by Tolya
SPOOFE: Thanks, but Im from Europe, shipment prices are the nail to the coffin here, as is payment method. But thanks anyway
Ace Pace wrote:
To expand on what Dahak said, it also liasons the programming team with a team of nVidia engineers who help to improve preformance on nVidia hardware(and generally improve it)
Life's a bitch, and I wouldnt be surprised if during one of the unofficial meetings something like this would be said:
"you remember that yacht you always wanted George? Say you make our product 10% faster in this particular case, whaddaya say George?"
It looks more like a conspiracy theory, bu
t I've seen stranger things.
Posted: 2005-09-11 06:38pm
by Vertigo1
Guys, he's running an XP2000+ chip. For those not in the know, that is SUB 2GHz. Anything remarkably faster than a high-end GF4 would be bottlenecked by that processor. Keep this in mind when recommending a new video card. (Hell, my GF4 Ti4600 easily stomps his R9500.)
Since he's already running an ATI product, I honestly wouldn't shoot for anything faster than a 9700. Anything more would be a waste of money for a system that old. You should be able to find one for dirt cheap.
Posted: 2005-09-12 08:23am
by Ace Pace
9800Pro would fit nicely and its hard as hell to find a 9700Pro. Well...I could sell him my burned 9700 which lacks DX9.
Posted: 2005-09-12 02:11pm
by Arthur_Tuxedo
It's already been mentioned, but was apparently ignored. Newer games rely heavily on shaders, and shader performance is not bottlenecked by the CPU. Therefore, a 9800 Pro is a much better choice than a 9700 Pro, and the 6600 GT is better than the 9800 Pro.
Posted: 2005-09-12 05:48pm
by SPOOFE
Anything remarkably faster than a high-end GF4 would be bottlenecked by that processor.
Absolutely true, but at this price point and level of performance, it's only a few dollars more (figuratively speaking) to get a higher-performing, more future-proof card.... sure, it might be bottlenecked, but if he wanted to upgrade proc/mobo in a few months, he can. Sure, he'd still be limited to AGP, but there's plenty of life in that interface still, especially for mid-range performance.
Posted: 2005-09-12 08:23pm
by Braedley
Just bought a 9800 Pro and loving it. Best bang for buck.
And as my brothers say, SE on an ATI card stands for "Shit Edition", so stay away from them.
Posted: 2005-09-12 09:38pm
by Enigma
Hey! I have 9200SE and I haven't had any trouble with it. Best card I've bought so far.