Author Topic: Video Card suggestions... (Read 408 times)

Reschke · « **on:** November 10, 2003, 11:46:33 AM »

Christmas is coming soon and my 7 year old needs an update for my...err his computer and I have told the wife that I...err he needs to be up to speed with the latest and greatest video hardware if possible.

So what does a self gratifying....I mean a generous father buy his son for Christmas? After all its nearly Christmas and I will be in the giving mood and want something in the latest and greatest generation that will last a good while and have been looking at the FX5900 Ultra and the latest ATI9800. Quite frankly I haven't done much more than shop for prices and I know that these are steep cost cards but I tend to update my system about every 1.5-2 years and its close to that time for my Ti4400 card.

What I want to know is if springing for the 256MB versions is worth it or not and which one works best with the nForce2 chipset boards?

I have read all over the various boards where some people are having trouble with ATI cards on nForce2 based systems and vice versa with the FX5900 based cards. So if either Skuzzy or bloom could set a brother down the right path I would appreciate it.

Current System Specs:
AMD XP2600+ 333FSB
512MB (2 x 256MB PC2700 DDR333)
Gigabyte GA-7N400 Pro F12 BIOS
Abit GeForce4 Ti440 128MB 45.23 drivers
Maxtor ATA-133 40GB ans 80GB Hard Drives
TEAC CDRW
330W Antec power supply

DAVENRINO · « **Reply #1 on:** November 10, 2003, 02:01:37 PM »

No problems here.

Wanker · « **Reply #2 on:** November 10, 2003, 02:16:13 PM »

Go with the 128 MB ATI Radeon 9800 Pro. From what I've read, you're not going to get your money's worth out of the 256MB version.

mrblack · « **Reply #3 on:** November 10, 2003, 02:22:11 PM »

ATI 9800PRO skuzzy said it was a great card and he wernt a lyin:aok

Tarmac · « **Reply #4 on:** November 10, 2003, 03:12:31 PM »

Canning a 4400 already? My 4200 is still cutting edge to me.

Reschke · « **Reply #5 on:** November 10, 2003, 03:45:02 PM »

No its going in the computer I am upgrading for my son and mother-in-law to have here at the house. Right now its an old K6-3 400MHz that all he does on it is play Reader Rabbit and and Backyard Baseball/Football/Basketball/Soccer on but since he wants to play a few "airplane" games he needs something with a little speed. I am grabbing an inexpensive motherboard with onboard sound and a Barton core XP2500 to put build for him. Along with some RAM.

mrblack · « **Reply #6 on:** November 10, 2003, 03:54:00 PM »

LOL Oh.

Go to http://www.newegg.com

look around there you can get sme ideas and prices.

bloom25 · « **Reply #7 on:** November 10, 2003, 04:45:03 PM »

There are no hardware incompatibility issues that I know of between Radeon 9800 cards and nForce 1/2/3 based motherboards. (I run one myself.) It's actually a very popular option to use something like a Radeon 9800 Pro on an Asus A7N8X Deluxe. I'd say most of the problems you see are caused by an inadequate power supply, inadequate cooling, or just a faulty card. (I've seen a few reports on this BBS that sound like defective video cards right out of the box recently.)

Right now I'd pick a Radeon 9800 Pro or XT card over the GeForce 5900 or 5950. It's beginning to look like the Radeon's architecture is better suited to the Direct X 9 series games that are beginning to come out. (Meaning the Radeon will probably have a longer useable lifespan with future games.) On current Direct X 8 and Open GL games both cards tend to alternate benchmark victories, but I can't think of any case where one card delivers unplayable framerates on any current game.

bloom25 · « **Reply #8 on:** November 10, 2003, 04:52:29 PM »

On the memory issue, it's a tough call to make. At this point in time I'd tend to recommend the 128 MB card for the price savings. Future games may very well need 256 MB of graphics memory to run at high resolutions with antialiasing turned on, but by then faster cards will certainly be available.

The Radeon 9800 Pro 128 MB card is probably the way to go for a high end card at a somewhat reasonable pricepoint. The Radeon 9800 XT (which is a 256 MB card) is now available but is still very expensive. For a bit less money, the Radeon 9800 128 MB (standard) can be found for around $250 and offers 90% of the performance of the Pro. (Beware of the SE version of the 9800, which is much slower.)

rpm · « **Reply #9 on:** November 10, 2003, 05:33:51 PM »

Whatever chipset you go with, DO NOT buy a card by VisionTek. They do not honor their warranty.

Reschke · « **Reply #10 on:** November 10, 2003, 05:43:48 PM »

Thanks for the advice and heads up here. One thing I did notice is that for the "Xbox2" it will run using an ATI GPU. That much was in a press release back in August. So I wonder if ATI might be headed down the same road as nVidia did with the Xbox and get into the chipset market as well.