Graphics Card Suggestions...

[MilitantB0B]

Ok, some of you may have seen my thread explaining my problem, some have not, but in short DirectX 9 seems to have taken a dump on my existing graphics card. I attempted to fix the problem by reverting to directX 8 with... err... Interesting results and a fresh install of windows.

Ok, now that the history is out of the way, on to my question.

What graphics card would you reccomend for gamming in the $150-$200 dollar range. I am not interested in overclocking and whould like to spend less if possible (duh :))


By the by, my computer specs are as follows:
CPU AMD|2200+
DDRAM 512M|DDR333 PC-2700
VGAABIT|SiluroGF4 TI4200-8X 128OTES (that is the one that was raped by DirectX 9)


Thanks in advance.

[dscytherulez]

$150-$200? Radeon 9600 XT.

[Rbstr]

$150-$200? Radeon 9600 XT.
Yeah the 5700 ultra is looking good too

[dscytherulez]

Booo! Down with NVIDIA! lol

[Ait'al]

DOWN WITH AMD LOVERS!!! :nazi:

[dscytherulez]

DOWN WITH AMD LOVERS!!! :nazi:

Heh, overclock your Intel and tell me how far you get!

Edit: w/o liquid nitrogen BTW ;)

[Ait'al]

They liquid nitrogen cooled the AMD 64FX too and only got 2.8 from a 2.2 and intel got a 5.25 from a 3.2. Its the ultimate say in the qaulity of hte chip. because with adequite cooling it can go alot farther. One day we may easily have something capable of getting near the cooling of liquid nitrogen withough the liquid nitrogen. Especially if companies decided to invest in making hte technology available. 8) It just tells you who put mroe into assuring how well there chip works id rather have a 3.2 that they made capable of doing 5.25+ then a 2.2 whatever only capable of doing 2.8. It just reminds me of the reason i used to like Intell 8) And i was refering maingly to nvidia as the AMD lover ;) but i meant all there users to :brow: not that im some big fan of ATI or anyone else.

Im a diehard fan of only three things i can think of. And thats Intell Creative works and Western Digital! Well Hardware wise anyway. I may have been a fan of some older stuff back inhte day but i cant remember anything back then all that well at the moment.

[Squick]

I would check out www.tomshardware.com (http://www.tomshardware.com) and www.anandtech.com (http://www.anandtech.com) for some (semi)non-biased reviews of video cards. I got my GeforceFX5900 for ~$250 and I have been extremely happy with it...

[Rbstr]

Intel chips are far more overclockable man, expecialy the 2.8's and 3's you can get 3.5 or mabee even four out of them if you water cool and have stable memory.

Get a 9600 XT its the best midrange card for preformance and price.

[martyr]

i have the FX5900 from nivida. it's ok, i guess, but my performance still kinda blows, even with 2gb ram, a clean xp pro install, and two (2) 2.4ghz xeons, HT off.

[Daleon]

Ha, overclocking is not the ultimate say in the quality of the chip. Performance is!

I've seen quite a few reports of 9800 Pro's going for $239 as of late. Save up a few bills and buy one.

[Biohazzard56]

Radeon 9600XT with the Overdrive Built in Overclocking feature, that automatically raises clock and memory speeds.

[I Hate Pants]

Radeon 9600XT with the Overdrive Built in Overclocking feature, that automatically raises clock and memory speeds.

I have that enabled on my 9600xt. It doesn't really make a difference. Atleast not a very noticable difference. And yeah. Go for the 9600xt.

[Fragmatic]

Ait'al... how can you be a diehard fan of Intel if you can't even spell it? :lol:

If you are referring to the 2 articles in Toms Hardware Guide... there are a few things...

1. Even though the P4 got to 5.25Ghz, it was nowhere near stable.

2. They did NOT cool the Athlon64 with liquid nitrogen, they used a compressor, which if you looked at the temps, were much higher (oh, only ~170�c higher)

3. The bios for that motherboard was limited, its pretty much a select speed and go, and that was the highest speed selectable. Don't forget that the processor architecture is different, and as such it performs higher than normal (IE - The Athlon64 FX runs at 2.2Ghz, but outperforms a 3.2ghz P4) Future released motherboards will be more suitable for overclockers.

4. The Athlon remained stable as a rock! So there!!!!! :p

The articles in question -
http://www17.tomshardware.com/cpu/20031230/ - P4
http://www17.tomshardware.com/cpu/20031021/ - Athlon64 FX

[NoSurrender]

Wow aital just got 0wn3d. damn nice work frag.

[MilitantB0B]

$150-$200? Radeon 9600 XT.
Excellent, that is the one I was thinking about buying already, nice to hear someone else say its a good buy though. ;)

Alright, think I'm gonna go with this one (http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=14-121-501&catalog=48&depa=1). Basicaly just because I have real good expeirences with Asus motherboards.

[Rbstr]

Go asus! there a good choise both my asus mobos and my video card have shown to be durable and stable (save the one time i shorted a memory chip)

[PaintballerEJG]

Okay,

DO NOT BUY THAT 9600XT!! Go to pricewatch.com and go to the videocard section and find the geforce fx5900. You can get one for 195 bucks and it its SO much better than the 9600xt. Just look at benchmarks. Oh, and if you go for the 5900, make sure you get one with the 256bit memory interface. I bought the XFX version, and it is absolutely amazing for the price.

Just promise me you dont buy the 9600XT, i will even give you a link.
Well I dont know where the XFX's went, but here is a 256bit 128mb Albatron 5900 for $209:
http://www.buyxtremegear.com/al4.html
trust me, this is a much much better deal. Also, you can look at other stores too, just make sure the memory interface is 256bit.

[Rbstr]

The FX5900 get slughtered at dx9 heavy benches by all the radys except the 9200 (and the se's)

[Ait'al]

Ha, overclocking is not the ultimate say in the quality of the chip. Performance is!

I've seen quite a few reports of 9800 Pro's going for $239 as of late. Save up a few bills

OCing taken to the limit of cooling is the ultimate qaulity of the chip. manufacturing wise.

And it takes a 64 bit processor form AMD to even match Intels 32 bit. 8p Intel if still finer quality manufacturing as it always has been either way. And i will alway prefer them because it will take a hell of a lot better design for me to like something else better.

And i hope Intel wipes AMD off the market or intel makes there 64 bits in a year or two completly seperatly from AMD designs and wipes them out of bussiness. ;) Though it would be funny if they did it with a 32 bit chip! Intels not even playing chip wise yet and AMDs already swinging hard 8) so there! I win. or will

What would be realy funny is if intel spent the money to resureect one of its competetors that gave it a real challange decades ago and had them cathc ther design up and take AMD out for good. Its not like it would be all that hard. :P~ AMD has never had to "Play with the big boys" per say, in there enitre history except intel, and would be wiped out if it had to compete with multipe real competetor coming down on it like intel and other companies have had to deal with in hte past.

FRAg do you own a duel 386 or drool evertime you see a 8086! i do :drool: Ive was around in the glory days man and im a real intel lover as i was back then! INtel had to face its own extinction literally back then before the P1s(and came out smelling like roses) and it has no competition anything near like back then. There flying easy right now and are going kick AMD and every thing short of the kitchens sinks ass whne you least expect it and im going to enjoy everymoment of it 8)

Intel is my first love! oops:

[PaintballerEJG]

The FX5900 get slughtered at dx9 heavy benches by all the radys except the 9200 (and the se's)

umm.. no

Try comparing Halo scores between a 5900 and 9600XT, I will bet $$ that the 5900 wins, since I am part of the gearbox halo forums. Trust me, the 5900 is much better.

Oh, and dont compare HL2 either, that game doesn't exist, and neither do real benchmarks for it.

[Rbstr]

SO i guess it's not possible to steal scorce code from a game that doen't exist, or have a trailer of it, or have people run test versions of the game on difffernt cards and use programs to meassure the FPS of them to see wich ones prefrome better at it.

Face it Nvidia screwed up when it came to DX9 games, and cheated at 3dmark 03 (there cheating acctualy made a huge difference in scores, while the whole industry does it no one whent to the extent the NV did), the image quality is not as good as an ATI, they suck at DX9, and the driver(especialy the latest ones) can be glitchy as hell.

I bought my card and have sort of regreted it becasue i could have got myself a better card but then i don't becuase it broudened my knowledge of ways to optomize my machine to make up for it and taught me a lesson on what to get next time.

[PaintballerEJG]

Face it Nvidia screwed up when it came to DX9 games, and cheated at 3dmark 03 (there cheating acctualy made a huge difference in scores, while the whole industry does it no one whent to the extent the NV did), the image quality is not as good as an ATI, they suck at DX9, and the driver(especialy the latest ones) can be glitchy as hell.



Again, the HL2 benchmark DOES NOT EXIST. That is unoptimized code, which is very very old. I can guarantee you that those results for HL2 will change dramatically.

Screwed up at DX9 games? I don't see any evidence of that, when I compare benchmarks in Halo if my 5900 compared to a 9800np, they are about the same. This is real-world, about the same sys specs. And my sys has crap 512mb DDR pc2100 ram in it.

3dmark.. dont care, those are synthetic benchmarks, im just saying what real-world performance he could see.

Image quality isn't as good as ATI. Well, in the technical sense its not, but nvidia does has some sharper textures. Also, the ATI cards have 16x AF, while the NVidias have 8x AF. This is because Nvidia's 8x is equal to ATI's 16x.

The new NVidia drivers can be glitchy as hell? I haven't had one problem with that at all, in Halo, CS, Q3, UT2003, bf1942, Raven Shield, Ghost Recon, Deux Ex 2, GTA3; all of these games run perfectly for me. I dunno about other games, but in Halo any ATI card lower than the 9200s will mostly likely have BSOD's and crashes, this is just a bug in the drivers and I realize its not anything to do with the 9600s.

This comes down to 5900 256bit vs 9600XT, and the 5900 will undoubtedly WIN.
Here is a Halo bench... 5900: ~50fps ... 9600XT: ~34fps that would be a DX9 benchmark my friend. Guess what, the 5900 won. Also, the 5900 beats the 9600XT in the aquamark 3 benchmark by about 7000 points. Also uses DX9. Face it, the 5900 is faster than the 9600XT. I should be comparing a 5900 to the 9700pro, because these two cards are about equal. The 9600XT is a mid-range card, while the 5900 is a higher end card. Bottom line.. get the 5900, you wont be let-down.

LoL, i love these debates... ;) I forgot to say this though: I am not a fanboy of either companies. If ATI have something I wanted, I would buy from them. I actually ordered a 9600XT, but it was backordered. So, I started looking again and found that the 5900 was a much better deal. Either way, if you pay 150-200 bucks for a videocard, you should be just fine. Unless you get ripped off :p... just look at some benchmarks and stuff. :)


***oh, and could someone inform me about the netcode in planetside? Is the firing client-side or server-side? If you had a 200ms ping, would you have to lead the guy or does it automatically compensate for that? I'm stuck with tri-56k :P (168k.. just 3 phonelines bonded together).***

LMAO another edit. The reason you may be unhappy with your 5600 is because that was one of the first-gen FX cards, which totally blew ass for their prices. The 5900 is a new generation of card, with many optimizations in the GPU (and not like those optimizations in 3dmark ;) )

[Fragmatic]

OCing taken to the limit of cooling is the ultimate qaulity of the chip. manufacturing wise.

And it takes a 64 bit processor form AMD to even match Intels 32 bit. 8p Intel if still finer quality manufacturing as it always has been either way. And i will alway prefer them because it will take a hell of a lot better design for me to like something else better.

And i hope Intel wipes AMD off the market or intel makes there 64 bits in a year or two completly seperatly from AMD designs and wipes them out of bussiness. ;) Though it would be funny if they did it with a 32 bit chip! Intels not even playing chip wise yet and AMDs already swinging hard 8) so there! I win. or will

What would be realy funny is if intel spent the money to resureect one of its competetors that gave it a real challange decades ago and had them cathc ther design up and take AMD out for good. Its not like it would be all that hard. :P~ AMD has never had to "Play with the big boys" per say, in there enitre history except intel, and would be wiped out if it had to compete with multipe real competetor coming down on it like intel and other companies have had to deal with in hte past.

FRAg do you own a duel 386 or drool evertime you see a 8086! i do :drool: Ive was around in the glory days man and im a real intel lover as i was back then! INtel had to face its own extinction literally back then before the P1s(and came out smelling like roses) and it has no competition anything near like back then. There flying easy right now and are going kick AMD and every thing short of the kitchens sinks ass whne you least expect it and im going to enjoy everymoment of it 8)

Intel is my first love! oops:


You forget young padawan

Without competition, Intel will become the ONLY mainstream CPU manufacurer, no?
You know what that means?
They can set whatever the hell they want pricewise... heck, if it weren't for AMD and their cheap cpu's, we'd be paying $1k per ghz right now, so count yourself lucky. (The other 2 contendors are Transmeta and VIA, but theyre not very big)

Please, get some facts with your posts as well, not some bullshit "Intel tore me a new one and I love them for it!" crap.

I got some old 486 chips lying about, and I comb my hair with a p133 (cause that's all they're good for, pics on request), but that's not the point. Since the introduction of the Athlon, AMD literally kicked Intels arse price and performence wise, a few months after the Athlon XP was introduced, AMD found the limitations of it's Palomino core, and moved to a 0.13� process with the Thoroughbred (enhanced Palomino) and Thoroughbred-B (utilising extra power due to 0.13� process), unfortunately, for once, Intel got the jump on AMD and beat them to it with the Northwood core, which beat AMD. Intel were experimenting with this smaller size before AMD and had the lead.

Trust me, they'll bounce back ;)

Oh wait! They already have! *cough* Athlon 64! *cough cough*
And it takes a 64 bit processor form AMD to even match Intels 32 bit

I presume this is an Athlon 64 vs a Pentium 4 3.2ghz Extreme Edition? (Which may I add IS 64bit, and was rushed extroadinarily quickly)
The thing is, AMD have been trying out 64bit processor instruction sets for a long time, and know more than Intel do.

Benchmark wise, it goes a little something like this -
Gaming = Athlon 64
Application work = Pentium 4

Either way, AMD have created a CPU that can stand up to the P4ee, and considering it runs 1ghz slower and can perform just as well (give or take a little bit) then I have to say -

BOLLOCKS to you Mr. Intel fanboy

Edit - Pentium Comb!
http://freedomcorp.planetside-universe.com/pentiumcomb.JPG

[NoSurrender]

dont get that Asus. Ive read many forums with probelms with that 9600XT.

[Squick]

Why are people even thinking about DirectX9 anyways? Cards are not powerful enough to handle pixel shaders on a global level, and vertex shaders are extremely inefficient, the same effect can be made with texture shaders from DX8!

When a big game comes out that is fully using DX9, then I will consider it. Otherwise you are just seeing how cards handle an inefficient way of doing things.

Why would I care how fast my car goes from 0 to 60 with a flat tire compared to your car with a flat tire; I won't be using the car with a flat tire!

[Rbstr]

Because DX9 is the thing that games are starting to be made on untill dx10 comes out and it will be the same thing again, also if it does DX9 well the other dx versions run very well.

[Squick]

Because DX9 is the thing that games are starting to be made on untill dx10 comes out and it will be the same thing again, also if it does DX9 well the other dx versions run very well.

But what if that is a year or more down the line? If trends keep up a GeforceFX 5900 or ATI 9800 will easily be 25% slower then current cards.

[Rbstr]

yeah, but its also "Look i have the best card out there!" braging rites, and as i said card the do well ad dx9 so well at the other dx versions. I guy said that "if you keep puting off buying a new electronic thing becuase it was gona be cheaper and better next month you will never own another electronic gizmo ever again" (or something to that effect :))

[Squick]

I only buy what is necessary though, and I would consider a DX9 card unnecessary right now. That would be like saying bragging about your car because it can run on hydrogen or gas. Thats great, except there are no hydrogen stations around, so you will be paying extra for a feature that you can not use.

[PaintballerEJG]

I only buy what is necessary though, and I would consider a DX9 card unnecessary right now. That would be like saying bragging about your car because it can run on hydrogen or gas. Thats great, except there are no hydrogen stations around, so you will be paying extra for a feature that you can not use.

Yes, but what if you have an aging videocard and you would like to upgrade? why upgrade to a dx8 card and then buy ANOTHER dx9 card for HL2 or something? I needed to upgrade, so I chose a dx9 card..

[MilitantB0B]

Ok, I still haven't purchased my replacement card, I have been procrastinating...

I have been taking a gander at the FX5900s and they look really cool looking. I know that isn't a very big factor in graphics cards, but I like hte inside of my case to look nice, thats why I put a window in it after all.

My question is (and I am sure darn near everyone has an opinion on it...) is what would you get and why? Would you get the 9600XT or the FX5900?

Thanks in advance.



PS: I think I am comming back home to Planet Side as well! :) Can't wait to see you all on the battle field. :p

[Rbstr]

get a 5900U or nonU and do a bios flash to a 5950, it ups the voltage for OCing it up to the 5950 speeds and it can give prefomance on par if not better than a real 5950, instructions can get found on the forums here www.guru3d.com

EDIT: oh yeah, get one with a good cooler like the BFG

[NoSurrender]

well me and rbstr have discussed this throughly. and i feel safe to show off this model.EVGA GeForce FX 5900SE, 128MB $188
http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=14-130-179&depa=1&section=1
(http://firingsquad.com/hardware/evga_e-geforce_fx_5900_xt_review/ )
if i had to choose id go 5900XT.

[Rbstr]

you can also get An ultra or nonultra for just over 250/230 repectivly if you want a bit beter performance, i also do not know if a 5900xt will fash up to a 5950

[PaintballerEJG]

also, if you get a 5900, make sure its one with a 256bit memory interface and 8 pipelines. If you can find an XFX 5900, thats what I got for $195 and I have been very happy with it.

[NoSurrender]

Well if you had looked at what i posted it was $188 and it had the 256bit bus and all that crap. but you probaly didnt.

[Rbstr]

Like i have said before 256mb of video memory does nothing for performance, unless its faster than the card with 128

[PaintballerEJG]

256bit is different than 256mb. 256bit give is 2x the bandwidth for the memory, huge performance increase. And no, I didn't look at ur 5900SE link because you should go for the 5900, not the SE.

[NoSurrender]

256bit is different than 256mb. 256bit give is 2x the bandwidth for the memory, huge performance increase. And no, I didn't look at ur 5900SE link because you should go for the 5900, not the SE.
yet that card can be clocked higher stable without any special cooling AND has 256 bit memory. SO HA HA HA MOTHERF*@#%&

[Ait'al]

This thread is a month old atleast :lol: The conversation is over ^^

[PaintballerEJG]

umm Pyro_man, you just made no sense at all, lol...

I said the 256bit was better, and so did u... then u laugh at me like a crazy mofo :p

[MilitantB0B]

umm Pyro_man, you just made no sense at all, lol...

I said the 256bit was better, and so did u... then u laugh at me like a crazy mofo :p
Lol, my nickname at school is Crazy Mofo. Anywho, I still can't decide, but seeing as how there is no consensous here, I am taking it to the bit-tech boards to see what those guys say. I REALLY want to get the most for my buck, this is going to be the most expensive thing on my computer and my computer is the most expensive thing I own. (not counting my car, cause, hell, its a car!)

[PaintballerEJG]

Oh, and if you buy a 5900, you can flash the bios to 5950 speeds, just did it last night. Works with virtually all 5900's. Very easy, just go to the guru3d.com forums.

[Rbstr]

suposadly a 5900 flashed to a 5950 can even out perform the stock 5950

[PaintballerEJG]

I believe it..

the 5950 is just a 5900Ultra with more voltage to the gpu and ram. And the 5900Ultra is just a 5900 with 256mb of ram. So basically, the 5950 is just a 5900non-ultra with higher voltages and more ram, and the ram does nothing for performance. If you do the bios mod, then you are running a stock 5950 with 128mb ram. When you OC in addition to the 5950 mod, you are going higher than 5950 speeds :)

Anyways, the 5950 is very much faster than the 5900s at all, so its up to you if you wanna do the bios mod or not, I just think its cool to see Geforce FX5950 in the display properties. I also gained 50mhz on the clock and ~120mhz on the memory with the new bios, stable. So, I guess its worth the "risk", and the risk isn;t really there if you backup your bios first and don't do something really stupid.

[MilitantB0B]

I think I have decided, what do you guys think about this one? (http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=14-130-179&depa=1&section=1) Anybody have anything to say about it? :p

It has good reviews and whatnot, so I think I'm gonna go for it, unless there is any reason I shouldn't...

[Rbstr]

SE? thats the one i'm unsure of, it my not flash. Go for a BFG 5900 nu http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=14-143-008&catalog=48&depa=1

many people say these are nice cards

[MilitantB0B]

SE? thats the one i'm unsure of, it my not flash. Go for a BFG 5900 nu http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=14-143-008&catalog=48&depa=1

many people say these are nice cards
I read a review that said it would flash, but that it does not do much for it, performance wise. Will probably just buy this card and use as it, no flashing.

[NoSurrender]

flashing doesnt do much though. I dunno its your choice. Flashing can kill your vid card. i endorse the Evga but im sure that BFG is also good. Id make sure it has a 256 bit bus though.

[Rbstr]

well its flashing + ocing the flash raises voltages (can even cool the card down a bit) for a more stable overclock(so you overclock it to 5950 speeds), and it makes it just as good as the Top of the line card, it also does stuff with the memory timings

[GreyFox]

I got a Radeon 9600XT 256Mb for my new computer (now... if I could just get all the other parts ;) ).

And about this Intel vs AMD bit. The fact that a 2.1 Ghz AMD Athlon can perform as many instructions as a P4 3.0Ghz per second, says quite a bit. :P

[556mmJay]

Thats cool...



For me...... to pewp on.

[Liquidtide]

:ban:

[Rbstr]

Thats cool...



For me...... to pewp on.

Who are you? The new tech forum rule is to not post unless its semi constructive, and you know about what we are talking about.

Get out if your gona be an idiot

I got a Radeon 9600XT 256Mb for my new computer (now... if I could just get all the other parts ;) ).

And about this Intel vs AMD bit. The fact that a 2.1 Ghz AMD Athlon can perform as many instructions as a P4 3.0Ghz per second, says quite a bit. :P

now it doesn't realy. when you start to get to any p4 above 3ghz the p4 starts to take off and its scales far better than the Athlon, i would go with the p4 if its between those speeds (and not 64bit that is)

[556mmJay]

now it doesn't realy. when you start to get to any p4 above 3ghz the p4 starts to take off and its scales far better than the Athlon, i would go with the p4 if its between those speeds (and not 64bit that is)


Care to back up those claims?!?! specs? benchmarks?

[Rbstr]

Ok think of it this way

a 2500+ performs a on par (sometimes a little/faster slower in things) than say a p4 @ 2.4/2.6
but if you take a 3200+ and pit it against a 3.2ghz p4 the p4 wins almost everything hands down

kinda worded it wrong the first time

[NoSurrender]

Basicaly that 2500+ on a AMD is their marketing. But Since AMD is alot more efficient. IE i have a overclocked 2500+ Barton core (to 2.1-2ghz range basically 300-400mhz) and i peform better than a friend who has a P4 2.5ghz