Which Video Card is better?

[Guest]

Archived from groups: microsoft.public.windowsxp.hardware (More info?)

Hello, I need to upgrade the video card on my computer.
However, since I am a student I don't have a whole lot of
cash. So, I researched some "budget" cards and came up
with the following:

1) ATI Radeon 9200
2) nVidia GeForce FX5200 (From MSI Corp.)

The above two cards are affordable for me, but I just can
not decide which is better. I have Windows XP
Professional, SP1, and DirectX 9.0. The card will be
used for maily games and a 3D modeling application.

Any Thoughts?

Thanks in advance.

Fred

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: microsoft.public.windowsxp.hardware (More info?)

>1) ATI Radeon 9200
>2) nVidia GeForce FX5200 (From MSI Corp.)

The two are actually about the same, only if you performed
a benchmark or something would you notice any difference
between the two statisticly.

But I'd go with the Radeon as it features all this:

Eight parallel rendering pipelines
Four parallel geometry engines
256-bit DDR memory interface
AGP 8X support

SMARTSHADERT 2.1
Full support for Microsoft® DirectX® 9.0 programmable
vertex and pixel shaders in hardware
2.0 Vertex Shaders support vertex programs up to 65,280
instructions with flow control
2.0 Pixel Shaders support up to 16 textures per rendering
pass

New F-buffer technology supports pixel shader programs
with unlimited instructions
128-bit, 64-bit & 32-bit per pixel floating point color
formats

Multiple Render Target (MRT) support
Shadow volume rendering acceleration
Complete feature set also supported in OpenGL® via
extensions

SMOOTHVISIONT 2.1
2x/4x/6x full scene anti-aliasing modes
Adaptive algorithm with programmable sample patterns
2x/4x/8x/16x anisotropic filtering modes
Adaptive algorithm with bi-linear (performance) and tri-
linear (quality) options

HYPER ZT III+
3-level Hierarchical Z-Buffer with early Z test
Lossless Z-Buffer compression (up to 24:1)
Fast Z-Buffer Clear
Z cache optimized for real-time shadow rendering

TRUFORMT 2.0
2nd generation N-Patch higher order surface support
Discrete and continuous tessellation levels per polygon
Displacement mapping

VIDEOSHADERT
Seamless integration of pixel shaders with video

FULLSTREAMT video de-blocking technology
Noise removal filtering for captured video
MPEG-2 decoding with motion compensation, iDCT and color
space conversion
All-format DTV/HDTV decoding
YPrPb component output*
Adaptive de-interlacing and frame rate conversion
Dual integrated display controllers
Dual integrated 10-bit per channel 400 MHz DACs
Integrated 165 MHz TMDS transmitter (DVI 1.0 compliant and
HDCP ready)

Integrated TV Output support up to 1024x768 resolution
Windows® Logo Program compliant

**************************
All that preceding would go good with any 3D editing
application.

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: microsoft.public.windowsxp.hardware (More info?)

http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1558,1552184,00.asp

"3D Price/Performance Shootout"

It's a gaming comparison, rather than one for graphics applications.

I believe that the Radeon 9200 is not a DirectX 9 part; rather, it's a DX
8.1 card. (See www.ati.com.) That may not be important for most games at
this time.

If the MSI card is a vanilla FX 5200 (rather than a 5200 Ultra), it will
have slower graphics processor and (I expect) memory clocks than the Ultra.

You might do better with a Radeon 9600 family product. (www.newegg.com
allows you to search video cards by chipset, so you'll find several makers
of cards that use the 9600 GPU.) The non-Pro has a lower clock than the Pro,
but some models are less than $100US. Avoid the SE version.

HTH.

Address altered. Replace nkbob with bobkn.

"-----Fred-----" <anonymous@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:1394f01c41ab4$e4d00510$a001280a@phx.gbl...
> Hello, I need to upgrade the video card on my computer.
> However, since I am a student I don't have a whole lot of
> cash. So, I researched some "budget" cards and came up
> with the following:
>
> 1) ATI Radeon 9200
> 2) nVidia GeForce FX5200 (From MSI Corp.)
>
> The above two cards are affordable for me, but I just can
> not decide which is better. I have Windows XP
> Professional, SP1, and DirectX 9.0. The card will be
> used for maily games and a 3D modeling application.
>
> Any Thoughts?
>
> Thanks in advance.
>
> Fred

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: microsoft.public.windowsxp.hardware (More info?)

The specs that you listed (below) are for a Radeon 9800.

http://www.ati.com/products/radeon9800/radeon9800pro/specs.html

The 9200 is a lot less powerful:

http://www.ati.com/products/radeon9200/radeon9200/specs.html

(no 256-bit wide memory interface, no 8 pipelines, etc., no DX9, etc.) Even
the 9600 lacks the 256 bit memory bus.

"miffy900@hotmail.com" <anonymous@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in
message news:1832001c41abe$7eaa60a0$a401280a@phx.gbl...

>1) ATI Radeon 9200
>2) nVidia GeForce FX5200 (From MSI Corp.)

The two are actually about the same, only if you performed
a benchmark or something would you notice any difference
between the two statisticly.

But I'd go with the Radeon as it features all this:

Eight parallel rendering pipelines
Four parallel geometry engines
256-bit DDR memory interface
AGP 8X support

SMARTSHADERT 2.1
Full support for Microsoft® DirectX® 9.0 programmable
vertex and pixel shaders in hardware
2.0 Vertex Shaders support vertex programs up to 65,280
instructions with flow control
2.0 Pixel Shaders support up to 16 textures per rendering
pass

New F-buffer technology supports pixel shader programs
with unlimited instructions
128-bit, 64-bit & 32-bit per pixel floating point color
formats

Multiple Render Target (MRT) support
Shadow volume rendering acceleration
Complete feature set also supported in OpenGL® via
extensions

SMOOTHVISIONT 2.1
2x/4x/6x full scene anti-aliasing modes
Adaptive algorithm with programmable sample patterns
2x/4x/8x/16x anisotropic filtering modes
Adaptive algorithm with bi-linear (performance) and tri-
linear (quality) options

HYPER ZT III+
3-level Hierarchical Z-Buffer with early Z test
Lossless Z-Buffer compression (up to 24:1)
Fast Z-Buffer Clear
Z cache optimized for real-time shadow rendering

TRUFORMT 2.0
2nd generation N-Patch higher order surface support
Discrete and continuous tessellation levels per polygon
Displacement mapping

VIDEOSHADERT
Seamless integration of pixel shaders with video

FULLSTREAMT video de-blocking technology
Noise removal filtering for captured video
MPEG-2 decoding with motion compensation, iDCT and color
space conversion
All-format DTV/HDTV decoding
YPrPb component output*
Adaptive de-interlacing and frame rate conversion
Dual integrated display controllers
Dual integrated 10-bit per channel 400 MHz DACs
Integrated 165 MHz TMDS transmitter (DVI 1.0 compliant and
HDCP ready)

Integrated TV Output support up to 1024x768 resolution
Windows® Logo Program compliant

**************************
All that preceding would go good with any 3D editing
application.

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: microsoft.public.windowsxp.hardware (More info?)

"-----Fred-----" <anonymous@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:1394f01c41ab4$e4d00510$a001280a@phx.gbl...
> Hello, I need to upgrade the video card on my computer.
> However, since I am a student I don't have a whole lot of
> cash. So, I researched some "budget" cards and came up
> with the following:
>
> 1) ATI Radeon 9200
> 2) nVidia GeForce FX5200 (From MSI Corp.)
>
> The above two cards are affordable for me, but I just can
> not decide which is better. I have Windows XP
> Professional, SP1, and DirectX 9.0. The card will be
> used for maily games and a 3D modeling application.
>
> Any Thoughts?
>
> Thanks in advance.
>
> Fred

Wait, wait and wait and you will find that cards like the Radeon 9600xt
will be affordable. Basically the others are junk