Time to upgrade? help me shop around

[Citabria]

http://www.abspc.com/gamezone/difference.html

already have a great monitor. looking for a new box with top of the line cpu,gpu, mobo,crucial ram etc.

found this sight is best deal so far.

havent decided if i like geforce 5900 ultra w 256mb of ram or the ati 9800 pro w 256mb

[Skuzzy]

If you are thinking about the 9800Pro, I would suggest the 128MB version.  It's performance is virtually identical, and it is $100 cheaper.

There is only one or two games that can use more than 128MB of memory.  The other reason for more than 128MB of memory would be is you are running high AA AND high video resolutions.  Of course, you would not do that with the 5900U, as the performance would choke, bu the 9800Pro could do it.

[Pfunk]

build it yourself if you have the know how

[Citabria]

thanks skuzzy

I run 1280x1024 ussually when playing ah and dont use any fsaa.

would you suggest the 9800 for hi res fsaa running on games like aces high, ww2ol etc?

[Animal]

9800 Pro. Once you run at 1280x1024 with high levels of anisotropy and FSAA, you will never be able to go back.

[Skuzzy]

The 9800Pro would be the card to get for that application Citibria.  The 5900U loads down really fast when you start applying AA and AF.
The 5900U's AA lacks something to be desired as well.  ATI has the edge in this area right now.

Keep in mind, you need a top notch CPU to really get the most out of the 9800Pro. (2.4Ghz or faster should do the trick).

[Sixpence]

Just ordered the 9800 pro. The responses in the H&S forum leaned heavily towards the 9800 pro. I ordered from here, it seemed like a good price  http://store.yahoo.com/pcavailable/atialra98pro.html

[Citabria]

aye skuzzy im looking into a 3.0ghz p4 cpu or faster.

[Eagler]

if your computer is only for games than it doesn't matter but if you use it for more, then consider the 2D abilities of both cards.

Can't speak for the nivdia card you are looking at but both the geforce2 and geforce 4 ti4400 card I had could not compare with the ATI 9800 Pro card (128mb) I'm running now at 1280x1024 both in AH and desktop. In order to get clear text with the nivdia card, I had to bump down to some weird res between 1024x768 and 1280x1024. Other than that the nivdia cards were fast in AH, though I could not run 4xAA like I can now on the ATI 9800.

I think there should be a law against you upgrading though

[Citabria]

the pc im looking at comes with hard drives in raid 0 mode

 what is that? why is it bad for important data and why is it a performance advantage?

[Eagler]

but I think raid 0 stripes the data across multiple drives which allows faster access to that data - problem is if one drive goes out, you lose everything.

raid 1 isn't as fast but it mirrors the data to the second harddrive automatic, in the background, so you always have a backup

.. I think ...

is that right skuzzy?