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Geek Culture / which graphics card

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Cras
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Posted: 24th Jan 2004 01:55
im using a geforce 4 mx 440 at the moment and its useless so ive decided its time to upgrade. Ive chosen 2 graphics cards around £140 each and was wondering which i should get:

Radeon 9600XT 256MB

Nvidia fx 5700 128MB

You people know stuff like this, thats what your here for Ill need it for games games games oh and games programming. the story of my life.

uk.geocities.com/maniacimagine check it out. ill soon be formally opening it.
mm0zct
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Posted: 24th Jan 2004 02:01 Edited at: 24th Jan 2004 02:05
go ati (ie the radeon 9600xt) it has more memory and can in many cases do better.
Because u live in the UK ,like me, u can make up your own mind by going to a local newsagents and look for a mag called "pc extreme" great mag for pc hardware and stuff, they benchmark the top cards using many different programs. get the one that scores highest in the price range


edit: you can get my card for<£100 and it runs everything i throw at it perfectly, (including halo at 1024x748 full settings) i have had no problems with ati yet.
also look at [href]www.ebuyer.com[/href] and select uk, they are an internet computer store and have great prices. (i have no problems with them)
good luck

http://www.larinar.tk
AMD athlon thoroughbred 2200, 512Mb ram, 40Gb HD, ati saphire radeon 9600 atlantis w/128mb ddr ram, good creative-labs soundcard, cd-rw + dvd drives.
Ian T
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Posted: 24th Jan 2004 02:04
The radeon is faster and has twice the RAM! Go for it.

--Mouse: Famous (Avatarless) Fighting Furball

I am the chainsaw paladin.
Phaelax
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Posted: 24th Jan 2004 02:05
You're wasting money on the XT. There's nothing to use that 256mb yet. 128mb would be plenty. I'd say get the 9800 pro.

Oh, and the 9800 XT is 256mb ($500), the 9600 XT is only 128mb($160)

"eureka" - Archimedes
james1980
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Posted: 24th Jan 2004 02:07 Edited at: 24th Jan 2004 02:08
RADEON 9800 you dont need 256mb for games but you do for
3d modelers.

but the fire_gl card kicks A
Cras
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Posted: 24th Jan 2004 03:03 Edited at: 24th Jan 2004 03:11
erm 9800 was never a choice... its about £300 and that is on ebuyer. but from your responses im assuming i shoudl shun nvidia so ill look into ati some more.

update: i looked, now the choice is as follows:
(all ati radeon)

9600XT 256MB (yes 256mb no mistake)
9800SE 128MB - cheaper.

uk.geocities.com/maniacimagine check it out. ill soon be formally opening it.
Represent
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Posted: 24th Jan 2004 03:04
I have a 16MB Voodoo3 and it is fine for me. Modeling and playing games. Go for the Radeon.
Ian T
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Posted: 24th Jan 2004 03:06
Quote: "There's nothing to use that 256mb yet. 128mb would be plenty"


Absolutely, completely totally untrue. Deus Ex 2, the upcoming Half-life 2 and probaly many other games will choke on max settings with just 128mb of video card memory. That's awful advice!

On top of that the XT clocks faster!

Definatly go with the Radeon.

--Mouse: Famous (Avatarless) Fighting Furball

I am the chainsaw paladin.
Ian T
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Posted: 24th Jan 2004 03:10
Quote: "And mouse, 128 mb is more than enough. Its unneccessary for such an amount. I have a Radeon 9700 pro 128 mb and the HL2 beta runs at 50+ fps all the time."


HL2 beta dosen't have the full settings of the original, does it? I have a Radeon 9500 pro and there are a number of circumstances where it runs out of video memory, in development and gaming. On top of that, there's no such thing as 'more than enough' with computers.

--Mouse: Famous (Avatarless) Fighting Furball

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Cras
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Posted: 24th Jan 2004 03:12 Edited at: 24th Jan 2004 03:16
just to make sure people see it:

update: i looked, now the choice is as follows:
(all ati radeon)

9600XT 256MB (yes 256mb no mistake)
9800SE 128MB - cheaper. - only 4 rendering pipelines on SE, whatever that means.

uk.geocities.com/maniacimagine check it out. ill soon be formally opening it.
james1980
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Posted: 24th Jan 2004 03:33 Edited at: 24th Jan 2004 03:33
hate to sound like a know it all but,
don't buy by clock speed buy by bthe GFLOP because that is
what the graphic side of games need very much.
the clock speed is pretty much for refreshing the screen.
STE
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Posted: 24th Jan 2004 03:44
Mouse said:

Quote: "Absolutely, completely totally untrue. Deus Ex 2, the upcoming Half-life 2 and probaly many other games will choke on max settings with just 128mb of video card memory. That's awful advice!"


You can add to that list, Call of Duty (the Max texture settings use 256MB of video memory), and also the FarCry demo (the Very High texture settings will kill a 128MB card).

STE ;¬!
Ian T
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Posted: 24th Jan 2004 03:45
'the clock speed is pretty much for refreshing the screen. '

WHAT THE HELL?

The forum is invaded by newbies who have no idea what they're talking about!

The clock speed is how fast the damn thing runs, and the basis of the speed of all games using hardware 3d acceleration!

STE, thanks for having brains.

--Mouse: Famous (Avatarless) Fighting Furball

I am the chainsaw paladin.
Ian T
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Posted: 24th Jan 2004 03:46
'9600XT 256MB (yes 256mb no mistake)
9800SE 128MB - cheaper. - only 4 rendering pipelines on SE, whatever that means.'

Tough choise, but I'd go with the 9600 as it will have more lasting power.

--Mouse: Famous (Avatarless) Fighting Furball

I am the chainsaw paladin.
james1980
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Posted: 24th Jan 2004 05:30 Edited at: 24th Jan 2004 05:34
Quote: "The clock speed is how fast the damn thing runs, and the basis of the speed of all games using hardware 3d acceleration!"

your wrong with videocards the clockspeed is in the GPU is a core clock and it just refresh's the whole screen and any thing else on screen the faster the clock the faster the it get new data and the faster it dumps it to free the vram, but the power wich moves the polys or anything else the card can do is the floating point known as flops but the radeon has gigaflops it is the real measure of power of any processsor and that is also the thing that will make a difference in speed.

i no newbie in computer hardware was a A student in that.
so you might be the newbie MOUSE.
CattleRustler
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Posted: 24th Jan 2004 05:53
don't get any ati SE card, it's a paired down pipline just like nvidia MX cards (gf4 family) where the retarded-redheaded-step-syblings of the TI series.

-RUST-
"What the... Mooooooooooo!"
Shadow Robert
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Posted: 24th Jan 2004 07:10
which to go for?

ATI Radeon 9600 XT 256MB
nVIDIA GeForce FX 5700 128MB

first of all, where the hell did you find a place that does the highend XT for only £140?
Also is the GeForce FX 5700 a Standard or Ultra version?

Just a side note... everyone who's giving you reasons for ATI and going for a PRO are quite frankly MORONS. Why?
Let's see, firstly we'll look at the ram issue.

128mb over 256mb, although in terms of gameplay no this means jack all difference. In terms of Shader Complexity, FSAA this means the WORLD of difference.

Radeon 9600 Pro 128mb FSAA 6x Max Res 800x600
Radeon 9600 XT 128mb FSAA 6x Max Res 1280x1024

although you'll never use it that high, this also expands to 4x being useable at 1600x1200 rather than 9600 Pro's pathetic 1024x768.
If this wasn't good enough also note that if you happen to use Shaders, particularly 2.0 variety ... this will also exponencially increase you VRAM requirements.

Each Vertex Operation Requires 2.0x your original object mesh size in bytes for rendering - as will your pixel shaders require the same per image used.

We get past this and get to the fact that the XT Cores are running 125% faster than their Pro variations.
What this means is basically the XT ACTUALLY has just an ounze more power than the GeForceFX 5700 Ultra; whereas the PRO doesn't even come close!

Next we come to another major difference;
Both the GeForceFX Series and the Radeon XT Series are capable of UNLIMITED FRAGMENT PROGRAMS ... this means they can process fragment programs of anysize and they do not need to be optimised or compressed code.

Radeon Standard and Pro cards on the other hand are only capable of handling around 114 lines - which means they REQUIRE optimised code to run on, which pisses off alot of developers (and is also a reason why they appear to be faster than the FX Series in this area)

As for the original question, let me know the answer to my first questions and i'll recommend which i believe would be better.
unlike the other FX Series the FX 5700 is quite frankly THE best nVIDIA card on the market. (not the most powerful, the BEST)

Really it's upto you to what you want, i could feed you the technical data ... i could explain which is better for overclocking, which has the more stable drivers, everything but really you have to make the decision.

and James BEHAVE, nothing even comes close to the QuadroFX in terms of industry power and compatibility... don't believe the hype from ATI the FireGL are THE WORST professional card on the market, the only reason they sell is because they're CHEAP.


P4-M 1.3Ghz | 512mb DDR PC1800 | GeForce FX 5600 Go! 53.03 | DirectX9.0b SDK | C-Media 8738/C3DX | Windows XP 2004
STE
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Posted: 24th Jan 2004 13:38
Mister Mold Rat said:
Quote: "Call of Duty (the Max texture settings use 256MB of video memory)
OMG you are correct sir. Except for the part about everything. I have max texture settings. Runs fine. Feh."


With my 9800Pro 128MB & Call of Duty.
I have everything maxed apart from Number of Bodies lying around (which is set to one less than insane, Large), I use a res of 1280x1024, 4xAA 8xAS, and if I select the last General Texture setting (it's called Extra and wasn't in the demo) I start to get artifacts appearing on screen in some levels (e.g. The one with the yanks, minefield & cows near the beginning), a usual symptom of not having enough Video RAM.

If I turn the General Texture settings down to High, the card starts behaving again.

STE ;¬!
Phaelax
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Posted: 24th Jan 2004 15:35
Would someone mind posting a link to a 256mb 9600 card? I have yet to see anything less than a 9800 with 256mb. I searched on pricewatch.com and 128mb is all I found.

Quote: "The forum is invaded by newbies who have no idea what they're talking about!"

Aww, cut the kiddies some slack.

"eureka" - Archimedes
Ian T
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Posted: 24th Jan 2004 19:04
Quote: "your wrong with videocards the clockspeed is in the GPU is a core clock and it just refresh's the whole screen and any thing else on screen the faster the clock the faster the it get new data and the faster it dumps it to free the vram, but the power wich moves the polys or anything else the card can do is the floating point known as flops but the radeon has gigaflops it is the real measure of power of any processsor and that is also the thing that will make a difference in speed."


And it's all determined by the core clock speed of the GPU. Sure, high vram will help, but it's the cpu that determines the performance of the whole bloody thing.

Quote: "i no newbie in computer hardware was a A student in that."


No offense but you didn't get As did you?

Raven for once has some good advice and facts to remember in that thread. Simple fact is, if you find the XT for the same price as the other card, buy it. If it's considerably more expensive...

Quote: "Aww, cut the kiddies some slack."


Generally I do.


I should also point out that the 9000 line of Radeons is famed for its superior FSAA quality and speed. The primary attraction of the mid-line (IE 9600) pre-XT cards was the speedy FSAA, making it a viable option to play a plethora of games with 4x whereas with nVidia cards of equivilant price, you might get more fps with none but they fell short in FSAA. The XTs have a faster core as well, making the 9600 XT a very nice card.

--Mouse: Famous (Avatarless) Fighting Furball

I am the chainsaw paladin.
UnderLord
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Posted: 24th Jan 2004 20:35
Commander - General the flaming has started.

General - Prepare the....superweapon....

Commander - Are you sure sir?

General - DO IT!

Commander - Yes sir

General - Damn ATI vs Nvidia wars....we shall distroy them with our...hybred ATdia!
QuothTheRaven
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Posted: 24th Jan 2004 20:38
I say radeon...but only out of brand loyality, which I'm sure is what's driving most of the people's opinions here. I have a 9800 and it's the best thing that's ever happened to me.

UnderLord
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Posted: 24th Jan 2004 20:42
Oh not even getting laid tops that eh? pretty sad indeed...
AlecM
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Posted: 24th Jan 2004 20:44 Edited at: 24th Jan 2004 20:45
I wouldn't buy a 256 meg card. Its just a waste of money. There arent any real performance gains and its expensive. I dont know where nvidia drivers stand right now so I would say its really a toss up between an FX5700 and a radeon 9600XT


EDIT:
I was just comparing prices on newegg and you can get the Radeon for $155. 5700s are more like $170. I would go with the radeon because its cheaper and the drivers are better.

Ian T
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Posted: 24th Jan 2004 21:50
I really can't believe people are saying 256mb is a waste of money. Few games might use it now, but in under two years it'll be the standard that all games need to run at top settings. Most people can't buy a video card every year you know...

--Mouse: Famous (Avatarless) Fighting Furball

I am the chainsaw paladin.
james1980
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Posted: 24th Jan 2004 22:04 Edited at: 24th Jan 2004 22:08
i know QuadroFX is the god of viedo cards but $2000 is a bit much.
and i like ATI's cards because they give you a lot in open_gl
in terms of power.

if you have a 3d modeler 256mb is not a waste but for current games yes it is.
Ian T
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Posted: 24th Jan 2004 22:54
Current games never stay current. Unless you're a rich ^%^% and can afford to update your video card every 6 months, you should always be ready for upcoming titles.

--Mouse: Famous (Avatarless) Fighting Furball

I am the chainsaw paladin.
Gery
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Posted: 25th Jan 2004 00:16
buy GeForceFX... it has much better image quality!
Ian T
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Posted: 25th Jan 2004 00:25
Thanks for urging him to buy the Radeon, geri

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I am the chainsaw paladin.
Gery
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Posted: 25th Jan 2004 00:29
hmmrgggrr buy FX
Wik
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Posted: 25th Jan 2004 00:48
Arg. I knew Raven would show up with a loooooonnnnngggg post as allways <rolls eyes>


BTW, thats just a semi joke thing and is not to be taken seriously. Raven, just make your posts shorter


RADEON ALL THE WAY


Gery
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Posted: 25th Jan 2004 00:49
o.k. DUAL Voodoo2 SLI 2x16 Mbyte is the best!
Ronaldaveo
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Posted: 25th Jan 2004 02:06 Edited at: 25th Jan 2004 02:06
256mb of ram for a graphics card is not needed IMO. Running the farcry demo with everything on medium and then everything on very high I get near enough the same performance, and it is perfectly playable. Very high looks absolutely stunning too . The thing which is limiting my computer is the ammount of ordianry ram that I have, the level is huge, the more ram the better. I'll be buying some more ram soon though

AMD Athlon XP 3000+ 200FSB ; 256MB PC3200 ; Radeon 9800SE AIW SoftModded to Pro
Neophyte
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Posted: 25th Jan 2004 03:40
@Mouse

"Raven for once has some good advice and facts to remember in that thread"

Ummm. Didn't he just contradict everything you said?

Quote: "Just a side note... everyone who's giving you reasons for ATI and going for a PRO are quite frankly MORONS."


And I'm not going to even get into the whole "2.0x of the size" thing.

As for the vid ram thing:
"Deus Ex 2, the upcoming Half-life 2 and probaly many other games will choke on max settings with just 128mb of video card memory"

Deus Ex 2: Recommended Vid ram: 64 MB
http://www.ebgames.com/ebx/categories/products/ssWindow.asp?file_path=/ebx_assets/product_backs/224171_back.jpg

Half Life 2: Recommended Vid Ram: 64 MB

http://www.gameshype.co.uk/GAMES/PC/H/HALF_LIFE_2/REQUIREMENTS
Go in and select the highest ratings for everything except Vid Ram. Put Vid Ram at 32 MB and hit check PC. It will throw a warning saying 64 MB is needed.(Oh, and sorry to make to take this test thing, but I for the life of me, can't find any specs on the recommended amount of vid ram other than there.)

"I have a Radeon 9500 pro and there are a number of circumstances where it runs out of video memory, in development and gaming. "

My curiosity is killing me here but what the hell are you loading into your vid ram to exceed the 128 MB limit? I mean, damn, you have to be making some monsterous levels to use up 128 MB.

I'd also like to know how you know that it runs out of Vid Ram. DBPro's command to check how much Vid Ram one has has been bugged for quite some time. So how do you know that you are running out of Vid Ram?
AlecM
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Posted: 25th Jan 2004 08:03 Edited at: 25th Jan 2004 08:36
"I really can't believe people are saying 256mb is a waste of money. Few games might use it now, but in under two years it'll be the standard that all games need to run at top settings. Most people can't buy a video card every year you know..."

Bigger isnt always better. There are other bottle necks in the cards that prevent 256 megs of ram from being usefull. Theres an example somewhere on toms of a radeon 9800pro 128 and 256 compared in doom3. Still no difference.

Shadow Robert
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Posted: 25th Jan 2004 12:33
You know my thoughts on this man ... wonder if your going to check back cause really this thread has gone from usless to pathetic, and it needs a moderators touch.


P4-M 1.3Ghz | 512mb DDR PC1800 | GeForce FX 5600 Go! 53.03 | DirectX9.0b SDK | C-Media 8738/C3DX | Windows XP 2004
Phaelax
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Posted: 25th Jan 2004 13:10
Quote: "I really can't believe people are saying 256mb is a waste of money. Few games might use it now, but in under two years it'll be the standard that all games need to run at top settings. Most people can't buy a video card every year you know..."


But in two years, you think games will contain today's shader versions and technology? I just bought a GF3 last year, and Nvidia already has demos out that I can't run because I don't support the newest technology yet. It's a 64mb, enough to run that kind of demo, but the card simply does not support the features. In the world of computers, you can't really by something today expect it to be adaquate 2 years later, no matter how much you spend. If you really want a 256mb card, buy it. But until games start using that much vram, its really just money going to waste in my opinion.

"eureka" - Archimedes
Gery
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Posted: 26th Jan 2004 20:30
wth the s3TC (dxct) is the low memo is no more problem. (1:6)

but the compressed textures are looks very uggly sometimes.
Some times (when a tree is) u can't use DXTC...

And a 128 is very need by some games. 64 is not enough.
Lord Ozzum
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Posted: 27th Jan 2004 00:26
With my vast computer knowledge (stop snickering), use the one with bigger numbers because 99999999999999 is bigger than 0. What would the world do without my logic?

Then comes tomorrow and you're a little shorter of your breath and one day closer to your death...
Chenak
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Posted: 27th Jan 2004 01:46
http://www.dabs.com/uk/channels/components/graphicscards/productView.htm?quicklinx=2Z21

I found a radeon 9600 256mb, it is really bad though, memory clock speed (am i right to say the higher this is the faster it runs with games and stuff?) is very low.

im considering buying a radeon 9600 too... since the last geforceFX card i bought was really bad compared to my old trustworthy GF4ti4600 card . Now i dont know what to get, lol

Once you start down the Dark Path, forever will it dominate your destiny...
Lord Ozzum
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Posted: 27th Jan 2004 03:53
think big numbers

Then comes tomorrow and you're a little shorter of your breath and one day closer to your death...
Ian T
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Posted: 27th Jan 2004 04:11
Googleplex cubed

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Lord Ozzum
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Posted: 27th Jan 2004 04:20
again, big numbers

Then comes tomorrow and you're a little shorter of your breath and one day closer to your death...
Neophyte
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Posted: 27th Jan 2004 04:55
@Inferno

" it is really bad though, memory clock speed (am i right to say the higher this is the faster it runs with games and stuff?) is very low."

Not quite no. There are a lot of other contributing factors that can determine rendering speed and memory clock speed is by no means the be all end all of what will render faster.

There are a lot more factors involved, like say number of pipelines and driver optimizations that can make a card with lower clock speeds perform much faster than one with higher speeds.

In fact, from what I heard, the Radeon 9600 pro is a pretty damn good card considering the price to power ratio. It won Maximum PC's kickass award and beat out the GeforceFX 5200 in cheapest yet most powerful card category(or something like that. I have that issue around here somewhere). Though I don't entirely agree with it beating out the GeforceFX 5200(its way cheaper) it does seem to be a pretty damn good card for its price.

P.S. This is slightly O.T. but didn't you post asking for help with a per-pixel shader that you found on the net? I remember trying to help but the example of the per-pixel shader used a custom file format and it couldn't be loaded into pro. I was wondering if you still have that shader or a link to where you found it. I'd like to take a look at it again and see if I can get it to work in Pro.
Lord Ozzum
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Posted: 27th Jan 2004 05:05
i was right all along

Then comes tomorrow and you're a little shorter of your breath and one day closer to your death...

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