Aces High Bulletin Board
General Forums => Hardware and Software => Topic started by: CavemanJ on January 27, 2004, 12:12:29 PM
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Ok, time to start shopping. I haven't kept up with'em much lately, so what's the best bang for the buck? I'm running an XP 2100+ (probably gonna upgrade that to a Barton chip) on an nForce2 board.
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on a budget? = 9600 XT or GF5700 ULTRA
i'm loaded? = 9800XT or GF5900 ULTRA (if there is one)
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CavemanJ,
If you are looking for best AH2 performance the ATI cards are not all up to par in AH2. Skuzzy is working the probs so im told.
I have an ati radeon 9800xt w 256 megs on it.
Just my three cents
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Originally posted by guttboy
CavemanJ,
If you are looking for best AH2 performance the ATI cards are not all up to par in AH2. Skuzzy is working the probs so im told.
I have an ati radeon 9800xt w 256 megs on it.
Just my three cents
My ATI 9800 pro works great in AH2
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Originally posted by guttboy
CavemanJ,
If you are looking for best AH2 performance the ATI cards are not all up to par in AH2. Skuzzy is working the probs so im told.
I have an ati radeon 9800xt w 256 megs on it.
Just my three cents
Since ATI is skuzzy's video card of choice, I think they'll work the bugs out before it comes outa beta
the 2100 isn't enough cpu to properly push the 9800, my 2600 doesn't tax it to its limits
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Gaming performance is a key factor =)
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No idea how the Nvidia's are doing, but I haven't seen less than 50 fps with all settings best image quality, FSAA x4 and 1280x720 in AH2 Beta 12.
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Every ATI card Ive had was a headache. Then went with 3DFX cards til nVidia bought em up. Since went with nVidia and havent had a game I couldnt play due to video limits/drivers. Ive had this GeForce 4 ti 4600 for 2 years now, love it. Will definately go nVida on the next one.
My 2 cents
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Originally posted by LePaul
Every ATI card Ive had was a headache. Then went with 3DFX cards til nVidia bought em up. Since went with nVidia and havent had a game I couldnt play due to video limits/drivers. Ive had this GeForce 4 ti 4600 for 2 years now, love it. Will definately go nVida on the next one.
My 2 cents
Yeah got a Ti 4600 card been very good card for me.
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sorry
nividia still can't match desktop quality at higher resolutions
had a geforce2 ultra and then a geforce4 ti4400 - ATI blows them away on desktop apps (text) at resolutions above 1024x768.
very happy with ATI 9800 Pro in AH, AH2, FB and other desktop apps including video & graphics editing
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How much does a RADEON 9800 go for? (Or whatever its called ;))
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Even Tom's Hardware, which is heavily ATI biosed, rates the G4 TI 4200 as the best bang for the buck by a huge margin.
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United,
I got mine (ATI RADEON 9800 XT with 256 mb ram) for 500 smackers.
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Originally posted by zmeg
Even Tom's Hardware, which is heavily ATI biosed, rates the G4 TI 4200 as the best bang for the buck by a huge margin.
Sure it's a great card and probably was best bang for the buck a year or two back. I also have an ATI 9500 Pro and the 4200 can't get near that level of performance.
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Best bang for the buck right now is NOT the radeon9600XT at 150-175 bucks, but....
http://www.newegg.com/app/viewProductDesc.asp?description=14-131-199&depa=1
radeon9700Pro for 200 bucks.
See the charts here: http://www20.tomshardware.com/graphic/20031229/index.html
for why.
less than half the price of a 9800XT but 80% of the performance.
And only 30-50 bucks more than the 9600XT, but 40-50% more performance.
BB
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Caveman:
I just put a buget minded system together and I am happy with the results.
Starting with an Asus A7N8X-E with a Barton 2500+. Set the bus speed to 200 and you have yourself a 3200+. At this piont I bet all new Barton 2500+ are 3200+ packaged as 2500+.
My past 3 cards have been ATI. This time however I took a chance and bought a eVGA GeForce FX 5900 SE. Applied a reg. hack to open up the overclocking feature built into the driver and have been happy with the results. Both in performance and the effect the new system has had on my wallet. Res is turned up and I never see it drop below 75fps. AH2 beta is never below 60fps. Bought everything at New Egg and had a great experence.
I noticed Eagler wrote about desktop quality at higher resoulutions. You have to remember he is looking at the screen with Eagle eyes.:) Non expert eyes like mine say it cost a hundred bucks less and therefor it looks great!
Hope this helps. If you can give up a few fps, the reward will be less of a hit on your hard earned dolloars.
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Originally posted by zmeg
Even Tom's Hardware, which is heavily ATI biosed, rates the G4 TI 4200 as the best bang for the buck by a huge margin.
Been running on an Asus Ti4200, but it died (again) and I gotta send it back (again). Was thinking about getting a Ti4600 or 4800, or maybe even one of the FX cards. Put the Ti4200, when it comes back, in the old lady's machine.
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Originally posted by guttboy
United,
I got mine (ATI RADEON 9800 XT with 256 mb ram) for 500 smackers.
Thanks! Little outta my budget for a video card though!
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$165 BFG FX 5900 @ BuyXtremeGear
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Unfortunately the ATI/nVidia debate is anything but clear cut. Here's my opinions on the subject:
1. ATI's cards have significantly better image quality (I say that based on many experiences with both brands of cards recently). This goes for both 2D (where it is greatest) and 3D. ATI's antialiasing also works MUCH better than nVidia's.
2. ATI's recent cards are generally overall slightly better performers than nVidia's cards with comparible price points. AH2, however, currently does not run well on ATI 9500 and up cards though. My Ti4200 performs better in AH2 than my Radeon 9800 does. Considering that no other game I know of benchmarks results for, or have played on my machine, are the same I'm fairly certain this is a software issue with either ATIs drivers or AH2 itself. I'm really hoping HT can find the reason before AH2 goes final.
3. nVidia's drivers are still FAR superior to ATIs drivers. It pains me to say that, but so far every new ATI driver version I've used (3.7s, 3.8s, 3.10s, 4.1s) all seem to break one game while they fix another. To make matters worse, newer drivers sometimes reintroduce a bug that was fixed in a previous release or sometimes cause performance in one game to plummet. At least there doesn't seem to be any major 2D application issues in ATIs drivers, as in the past where my experience with ATIs drivers were in a word - terrible. (One Rage 128 driver version I tried about 3 years ago corrupted one of my Win2k machines to the point where a reinstall was necessary as it wouldn't even boot in safe mode.) With nVidia's drivers, there's a good chance that installing a new game even with older drivers will not result in the game having too many issues to play. With ATIs drivers, I can't say the same thing. It seems like it takes at least 2 driver revisions to get rid of most of the bugs in any new game. To ATI's credit, they have been releasing new drivers every month, so at least they are making an effort to address driver issues on a regular basis. Unfortunately, I don't exactly like to be updating video drivers on a monthly basis without knowing for sure that the new set won't break something that worked in the previous version. (I was joking with someone recently that ATI needs a "select video driver" prompt at bootup with the past 5 releases available... )
All is not perfect with nVidia though, as their more recent drivers (40 and 50 series) are not nearly as good as the 30 series drivers were. nVidia also seems to be sacrificing image quality for performance in an attempt to draw closer to ATI recently as well. I can definately say that the IQ with my TI4200 card is notibly better with the 30.82 drivers than with the newer 40 and 50 series sets. They also haven't been matching ATI in how quickly they resolve reported driver issues recently either.
So, basically what you are left with is: ATI - superior hardware, nVidia - superior software. Take your pick...
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Re ATI vs Nvidia:
It may certainly be my imagination, but when I changed from a GF3 Ti500 to a Radeon 9600XT I seem to notice more problems with Z-buffering, i.e. objects that should be behind other objects appear in front of them instead. This is particularly annoying when trying to range targets in a tank as the dust from your shot appears in front of the target when the round actually hit behind it.
Then again, maybe it's my imagination. Or perhaps there is some hidden Z-buffer resolution setting I am missing.
715
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Originally posted by BB Gun
Best bang for the buck right now is NOT the radeon9600XT at 150-175 bucks, but....
http://www.newegg.com/app/viewProductDesc.asp?description=14-131-199&depa=1
radeon9700Pro for 200 bucks.
BB
To make it even more interesting, should you spend $202 on the 9700 Pro or up the ante to just $230 and get a 9800 Pro at Newegg?
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bloom25:
Thanks for all of your consistently competent and informed posts.
You're a high-value contributor.