rad 9800/fx 5800 colors

[tspeakerfortdead]

hello, I am wondering whether the radeon 9800 supports 128-bit color, as the fx line does. I am looking for the best graphics card I can get for under 700$, and I think that this would go a long way in determining which is better. i could not see any posts asking this or any articles on tom's hardware that specifically mention this. please advise.

"What do you think the difference is between swords and guns? Wrong. There are only two differences: guns are made to kill lots of people, and swords don't run out of ammunition."

 

[ken1971]

what do you mean 128 bit color ? Where did you get the information that Fx5800 render such high precision pixel ?

 

[Willamette_sucks]

The radeon supports 128bit color just like the FX, but the FX supports 128 bit precision pixel shaders, while the 9800 is only 96 bit. If you are going to use this as a workstation card, i.e. cad and 3d rendering apps, then the FX is the to go. Either of these cards should be able to be modded into their more expensive workstation brothers, via some software moddage included in programs like riva tuner.
If you are going to use this card for gaming though, the 9800 is definately the way to go, because 128 bit color and 128 bit precision pixel shaders will not be important in games for a long time, and the 9800 owns the FX.

COMON PEOPLE DO YOUR MATH, 9800 > 5800, duh.
lol

Long live ATI.

 

[cleeve]

Remember that the Radeon's shaders ONLY support 96 bit precision, whereas the GeforceFX's shaders support 3 levels of shader support.

Since Nvidia released their new driver that bumped up the 3dmark2003 score, there is speculation that they are using lower precision shader calculations by default, and there is no way to know or set the precision in the driver manually...