Aces High Bulletin Board
General Forums => Hardware and Software => Topic started by: JV44 on March 06, 2002, 09:42:56 AM
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Hello guys!
I upgrade my System with 600 Mhz Athlon to 1.8 Ghz Athlon
Next month I want trash my TNT2 32 MB and buy new graphic-card.
But what one??? Geforce 3 or Ati 8500 or even a Kyro???
Suggestions?? Whats the best price/power deal???
JV44 (Andreas)
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Originally posted by JV44
Hello guys!
I upgrade my System with 600 Mhz Athlon to 1.8 Ghz Athlon
Next month I want trash my TNT2 32 MB and buy new graphic-card.
But what one??? Geforce 3 or Ati 8500 or even a Kyro???
Suggestions?? Whats the best price/power deal???
JV44 (Andreas)
u want raw gaming power/fps get a GF4 TI4600.
u want pretty looking graphics but cont care
what the fps lost if, then Radeon 8500.
the 8500 in some cases is up to 40% slower then GF4 TI4600.
whels
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There are a lot of factors in that decision JV44.
I have a GF3 and ATI8500 as well. I prefer the ATI card as the quality of the image is better, but the GF card is a bit faster.
Although I am disappointed in ATI for one reason. They appear to be going the way NVidia has, which is creating/writting thier drivers to perform best for ID's Quake 3 graphic engine.
I do not think you would regret purchasing either a NVida or ATI solution today. I do not know a thing about the Kyro solutions, so I cannot comment.
Now the only real edge ATI has over anyone is in DVD playback. If that is your cup of tea, then ATI would be best.
Most people here will tell you to go NVidia, for any number of reasons, but what I would do in your situation is go to a store and see if they have any computers setup with ATI and NVidia running so you can see the differences. That way you can decide.
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best buy has a $50.00 Rebate on their 8500 cards.
Here's the math:
189.00 - 50.00 = 139.00
that's purty dern cheap for a ATI 8500!! best bang for your buck if your concerned about money.
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I saw that ad too. I think they are reduced because ATI is coming out with 128 MB 8500.
And they have a DV firewire 8500 and a All-in-Wonder with TV tuner for additional $$$
Plus dual monitor support...
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I've heard some awful things about ATI in regards to drivers.
GeForce, on the other hand, seems to be better in that regard
I'm seeing a lot of cards based on what GeForce/nVidia does, while ATI appears to be the odd-man-out.
Skuzzy brings up some good points. I LIKE ATI from past experience, but the most enthusiastic FPS reports I hear about are from GeForce users.
Skuzzy, what kind of FPS are you seeing?
Im at 19 in a Voodoo 5500. That sucker has an appointment with a .44 magnum shortly. Its days of causing me misery are numbered :)
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Between 8500 and Geforce 3: Radeon 8500 is the choice.
BUT...
I still recomend you get a Geforce 4.
No contest there.
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Originally posted by LePaul
I've heard some awful things about ATI in regards to drivers.
GeForce, on the other hand, seems to be better in that regard
I'm seeing a lot of cards based on what GeForce/nVidia does, while ATI appears to be the odd-man-out.
Skuzzy brings up some good points. I LIKE ATI from past experience, but the most enthusiastic FPS reports I hear about are from GeForce users.
Skuzzy, what kind of FPS are you seeing?
Im at 19 in a Voodoo 5500. That sucker has an appointment with a .44 magnum shortly. Its days of causing me misery are numbered :)
I used to get 35fps in flight and 30 in a furball on my 500mhz PIII with a TNT2. That baby was smooth. Very smooth.
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With the deals you can get on the ATI 8500 right now, its almost hard for me not to buy another one:D
Considering I play 1600x1200 2xFSAA and have framerates of averaging 40-75 near the ground, and 75+ high up, and never fall below 25-30 even in heavy smoke...yea, its a sweet card for the price.
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I think I'd probably go for the GF 4 if you can afford it. Nobody else has anything comparable in speed at the moment. In addition, the GF 4 added several new anti-aliasing options.
ATI image quality is always top notch, but I've had issues with their drivers in the past. (Updating drivers to make one game even work broke other games etc.) That is a nVidia strongpoint. They release drivers VERY quickly, so even though there may be bugs, they will get fixed rather quickly.
STMicroelectronics stopped production of the Kyro 1 and 2 chips (last I heard at least), which means sales were poor. I'd be worried about updated drivers being available.
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Originally posted by 2Late4U
With the deals you can get on the ATI 8500 right now, its almost hard for me not to buy another one:D
Considering I play 1600x1200 2xFSAA and have framerates of averaging 40-75 near the ground, and 75+ high up, and never fall below 25-30 even in heavy smoke...yea, its a sweet card for the price.
whats the specs on the rest of ur system?
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LePaul, I get anywhere from 90-100 fps with my setup:
1.8GHz P4 Northwood
512MB DDR Ram
DX8.1
NOTE: I run with V-Sync enabled for everthing. My monitor will do 120Hz rates at 1024x768, which is where I usually set my resolution at, depending on what I am doing.
Now, about drivers. In the days before the original Radeon came out ATI got a deserved bad reputation for having lousy drivers. With the original Radeon, they did a damn fine job, however, they released the 8500 line too early and got lambasted again, justifiably so.
NVidia's strenth is also thier weakness, in my opinion. How many threads, just on the BBS, start with, "Which NVdia drivers are best?". The following tirad of different opinions on which are best is mind boggling.
All video drivers have problems, regardless of who makes them. Accept that and it makes the decision a bit easier.
I think one of the really annoying things about NVidia comes to changing a video driver. They do not clean up after themselves very well and usually require some type of third party solution or manually purging the drivers from the system.
ATI, whether by accident or design, does a pretty nice job of cleaning up. Actually, it appears they use the same naming convention for any given product so upgrading/downgrading on the same video card just stomps the old driver.
Between the systems I have around here, I do not think twice about changing an ATI video driver, but for the NVidia based systems, I have to have a really good reason to change them due to the amount of time/effort required.
ATI does have one technical edge over NVidia, but it requires software to support it. ATI's TRUFORM technology is impressive. I wrote some simple tests to see what it would do (if you can call DX programming simple :)). Just a simple sphere and each pass I upped the TRUFORM level. With each step, the number of polys doubled. What I was looking for was two thing 1) frame rate differences and 2) fill rate versus drawing power.
In frame rate it works pretty much like ATI says. The frame rate drops was too negligible to measure.
In the second part, I was curious how much processing power was needed to do the work and how it would affect fill rates. I really thought fill rates would suffer given the procssing power need to effectivel tessalate the polys. But I was very surprised to see the cards fill rate stay constant.
NOTE: The sphere was textured using a WRAP. So the card had to calculate the UV coordinates as it tessalated the polys. I noted no artifacts from this.
If software gets behind this technology, FSAA will become a moot point, as this does what FSAA does, but it does it at the correct level of the draw with significantly better results and virtually no degradation in performance.
Sorry, I kind of deviated from the intent here. I think the real questions you want to ask yourself are pretty simple.
1) Do I want the best frame rates I can get regardless of anything else? (this is not a bad thing, by the way)
2) Do I place more importance on video quality and am willing to give up some frame rates for it?
If you like (1), then NVdia is the way to go, otherwise ATI is the way to go. Simple.
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You REALLY have to like the the 8500's image quality and REALLY dislike the Geforce's, to get an 8500 over the Geforce4
And the new modes of Anti Aliasing on the GF4 look better plus are almost free in performance. Image quality is already on the same floor as the 8500, probably a lil worse, you wont notice unless you look hard.
If you are dead set on getting ATI, then get their cheap 8500 OEM solution and wait for their next generation card, wich is gonna be rocking.
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nVidia's driver writing groups does things I REALLY don't like. I spend more time helping people fix problems the "latest" nVidia drivers caused than anything else. ATI may have had some problems in the past, but nVidia has gone downhill a great deal. nVidia can make fast drivers, but they have trouble putting out stable ones.
BTW, if you are a Voodoo 5 5500 user like I am, you'll find that the GeForce 4 STILL can't do FSAA worth a damn in comparison. Side by side, the V5's 2x FSAA is better than the GeF 3's 4x to me. I hear the GeForce 4's is better, but still markedly lower quality than my trusty V5's FSAA scheme. Shame nVidia didn't use that bit of technology. The 8500 is a bit better in my view for overall quality of the image. The 8500 is also much cheaper. I really don't care what the framerate number is, as long as it's over 60 or so most of the time. With this in mind, the 8500 is what I would choose right now if $ is a concern. If you've got lots of cash and want the fastest, the GeForce 4 Ti 4600 is clearly the way to go.
Personally, I want to wait a bit and see how the GeForce 4 Ti 4200 does and what it's price point ends up being. I think it's going to be a much more reasonable card for the price.
BTW... ignore Quake 3 benchmarks of any kind. The game is not graphically challenging enough to be relevent any more. RTCWolfenstein is a much better benchmark, and of course Ace High is the only real benchmark you should use. Bear in mind that most reviews focus on FPS type games that bear little resemblance to a game like Aces High. Where framerate is king in those shooters, for many of us in a game like AH, image quality is much more important. At least I find that to be the case.
I'm still crushed that 3DFX isn't around any more. :( The had the right priorities IMHO and killer technology to boot.
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Lephturn,
Go to simhq.com for FSAA comparisons between the GF4 and V5
You have to look hard to notice the difference, PLUS the GF4 runs about 4 times faster, wich to me is important, as stutters and FPS drops detract from inmersion more than a few jaggies wich you have to concentrate to notice.
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While we're on the subject of video cards:
What is a decent card for no more than $100? I'm currently using a Voodoo 3 2000 so use that as a basis of comparison.
I do have a condition--no products using the geforce chipset. The reason I use a 3-year-old video card is because TWO geforce cards have burned themselves up in my computer. I have no faith for the geforce (any version) and won't waste my money on another one.
Aside from that, things like brand and new driver production don't concern me. Heck, the drivers I'm using on my Voodoo are the ones that shipped with it in the box and it still works (just no longer performs well enough).
Suggestions anyone?
J_A_B
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Originally posted by J_A_B
While we're on the subject of video cards:
What is a decent card for no more than $100? I'm currently using a Voodoo 3 2000 so use that as a basis of comparison.
I do have a condition--no products using the geforce chipset. The reason I use a 3-year-old video card is because TWO geforce cards have burned themselves up in my computer. I have no faith for the geforce (any version) and won't waste my money on another one.
Aside from that, things like brand and new driver production don't concern me. Heck, the drivers I'm using on my Voodoo are the ones that shipped with it in the box and it still works (just no longer performs well enough).
Suggestions anyone?
J_A_B
I'd scrape together another $90 (you get $50 back so really only $40) and get a 8500 ATI. It blows away anything else for the same $$$$'s
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What monitor do you use? If you have a 21" inch or plan to upgrade, i would recommend the 8500. I havent seen any tests between a GF4 and the 8500 when it comes to 2D-quality, but some articles points out that the GF4 has a better 2D quality than earlier GF-cards. For hi-res monitors I would not recommend the GF3, except Leadtech's card which apparently has better filtering.
Trust me, a fuzzy 2D image in hi resolutions is reeeaaaly annoying. I used a Matrox G400 before, and my current Kryo II can't quite live up to its lush and sharp image. Used to have a perfect 1800x1400 res before, had to drop down 1600x1200 with the kryo, and its somewhat blurry at the edges. But it's far better than the GF2 i tried before getting the kryo.
IMO you should get a card that fits your monitor and not be blinded by miniscule diffrences in FPS.
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$180 for a video card? IMO that's a horrible rip-off and not worth it. I'm only interested in getting out of single-digit framerates in smoke and certain low-alt situations; I don't feel a need to have "150 FPS, all the time". I run in 800 x 600 and wouldn't mind using a somewhat higher resolution either.
J_A_B