Which Card??

gfunk · Dec 4, 2003

Newbie here......
After some advice please. Currently have a Radeon 9600 non-pro and I hate it. I am after a new card and am considering the following. Which one do you think???

Asus Radeon 9600 XT
Geforce FX5900 LX (2.8ns Memory)
Geforce FX5700 Ultra

Would any these cards show a marked improvement over my 9600? I do like a bit of AA and AF enabled at 1024x768.

Cheers
G

cleeve · Dec 4, 2003

Why do you hate it exactly?

If it's just because of the poor framerates you're getting with Antialiassing, then I suppose an upgrade is in order. But I wouldn't bother considering anything below a 5900 non-ultra or a 9700/9800 non-pro if you're an AA fan.

The 5900LX has slower memory so it probably won't give you the AA performance you're looking for... and if you're an image quality fan, you'll find that the GeforceFX antialiassing is noticably inferior to the Radeon's antialiassing.

Because of this I'd recommend nothing less than a Radeon 9700/9800 non pro. $199 at circuit city...

________________
Radeon 9500 PRO (hardmodded 9500, o/c 322/322)
AthlonXP 2600+ (o/c 2400+ w/143Mhz fsb)
3dMark03: 4,055

shadus · Dec 4, 2003

They're all going to be faster, but pretty much you're going from the low end of middle range to the high end of middle range.

Shrug. Not a huge performance difference. Are you absolutely sure you aren't having some kind of configuration issue that is causing your problems/lack of speed/whatever? Do you have a bottleneck elsewhere in the system that is causing problems?

If you are looking for significant differences I'd suggestion going up to a 9700 pro, it's only slightly more then the 5900lx. It's really does a nice job for the price... gets you about middle of the road on the high end vid card market.

ShadusEdited by shadus on 12/04/03 04:01 PM.

gfunk · Dec 4, 2003

reason why I hate it is if I try and play say MOHAA at 1280 x 1024 with no AA or AL I do get a bit of slow down when alot is happenin. As far as I know my system should not be a bottleneck?>? Athlon xp 2500 BArton 512kb 2700 ram.
Perhaps if I ignore my other list and go for a 9800 non- pro, do you think that would be a marked inprovment?? is 9800 non-pro quicker than 9700 pro?

cleeve · Dec 4, 2003

9800 non-pro is practically trhe same card as the 9700 PRO. They have identical core/memory clocks (or very close anyway).

________________
Radeon 9500 PRO (hardmodded 9500, o/c 322/322)
AthlonXP 2600+ (o/c 2400+ w/143Mhz fsb)
3dMark03: 4,055

Spitfire_x86 · Dec 5, 2003

Get at least Radeon 9800 (non-PRO) or better for good performance boost

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TheGreatGrapeApe · Dec 5, 2003

The F-Buffer (feature of the R9800 and R9600 lines), may come into play in later games. But until you have shader code that exceeds 1024 instructions you may not see any return on that. And by that time you may not get playable frames in the first place. We shall see.

Quick blurb from THG(Lars);

<A HREF="http://www6.tomshardware.com/graphic/20030306/radeon9800pro-03.html" target="_new">http://www6.tomshardware.com/graphic/20030306/radeon9800pro-03.html</A>

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GeneticWeapon · Dec 5, 2003

The F-Buffer is an approach for supporting longer pixel shaders, but I think only professional visualisation software will really benefit from this feature. We have to keep in mind that some pixel shaders that have only 50 instructions can choke a 3D board to death. And 50 is still a much lower count than the 96 that is the minimum number of instructions supported in PS2.0... Not to mention that with 20 instructions, programmers can write shaders that look really sweet..

9800 3DMark03 Score = 5,342
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Crashman · Dec 5, 2003

My overclocked 9600 Pro (400/750)gives me TWICE the framerates of a stock 9600 I tested. The 9600 could not be overclocked.

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TheGreatGrapeApe · Dec 5, 2003

Yeah, that's kinda what I meant. Likely by the time it makes a diff. in games, the R9XXX/R3XX series of cards will be outdated. I think the R9700 can support 1024 IIRC, and even that I was thinking (when the R9600/9800 came out mentioning F-buffer), 'are we even close to that already?'. I think the F-buffer was just a reaction to the FX's longer pixel shader instruction support (it' like 60K+ or 120k+ something ridiculous). Now the F-Buffer allows even more insane shader lengths (much longer than the FX), but so what? We'll likely not see those for some time. I seriously think it was a peni$ not pixel length thing

.
I remember reading that w/ HLSL (or Cg for that matter) a few lines of code can be be converted into 100s of lines of machine language, so maybe they will take advantage of it later, but who knows. I agree likely the 'practicality' of it on current hardware is very limited.

- You need a licence to buy a gun, but they'll sell anyone a stamp (or internet account) ! - RED GREEN GA to SK :evil:

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GeneticWeapon · Dec 5, 2003

I agree

9800 3DMark03 Score = 5,342
<A HREF="http://service.futuremark.com/compare?2k3=1666744" target="_new">http://service.futuremark.com/compare?2k3=1666744</A>

Vimp · Dec 5, 2003

Sorry if this is off topic at all. But I'm curious. I notice many will rattle off what card they think someone should get without knowing any info about that persons computer. Doesn't the computer someone has have a fairly significant barring on compatibility? For instance I have an Asus Nforce2 mobo which is supported in a large way by Nvidia so wouldn't an Nvidia Video card in a situation like this have the least likly hood of complications compared to an ATI card? Or do things like this make no difference?

Rabbitrunner51 · Dec 5, 2003

Sone of these people probably know a bit more than me but I am very happy thus far with my FX5900
I just put MY 8x on with a setting of 4x antilaising and the differnce is quite extrodinary.
The colors are very good and rich and there is no noticable speed difference that I can see.
I played BF 1942 on line and it showed moving to these settings. Before it still was a very good Quality picture,framerates and smoothness of detail is excellent.
All three of the cards you mentioned would be a good choice. It seems that AMD owners prefer the ATI cards and the P4 people go more for Nvidia. Don't quote me on that.
I have also played it on Max Payne 2 and Vice City ( alot of difference there-fantastic!! )

Coyote · Dec 5, 2003

Vimp, I'm hearing no diff. Yes, the nForce motherboard chipset is made by nVidia, but there are no problems with ATI cards in such boards. Many people with nForce mobos have ATI cards in them.

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shadus · Dec 5, 2003

> For instance I have an Asus Nforce2 mobo which is
> supported in a large way by Nvidia so wouldn't an
> Nvidia Video card in a situation like this have the
> least likly hood of complications compared to an ATI
> card? Or do things like this make no difference?

It makes next to no difference. The nforce2 boards run the ati cards as good as any other board and there isn't any difference in running an nvidia card on an nvidia board that I've ever seen. Even if a nv board brought the nv card up to par with a 9800 xt i'd still be inclined to recommend the ati just because it has better iq and isn't having all the present fallout about cheating.

Shadus

shadus · Dec 5, 2003

Actually, no one has said the 5900 isn't a good card. It just really doesn't compare favorably to the 9800 line of cards. The IQ is slightly lower, the frame rates in dx9 apps are considerably slower, and that doesn't even include all the bs that has happened with degraded iq to give higher fps.

The fx line of cards are good... just not as good as the ati equivilent. Personally, I'm waiting for the new nv/ati cards to come out begining of next year before I purchase my new computer. I'm really hoping nv makes a come back, I've owned a nv card of every generation except the fx's... which I just can't justify buying since the ati's are better in so many ways.

Shadus

gfunk · Dec 5, 2003

Thanks for all your help on this........ went for the fx5900 lx in the end as money in me back pocket does not last if me other half finds it! looked at radeon 9800 but it was just over budget and was made by gigacube??!!??

My new card has given me a boost of 4000 in 3dmark 2001SE.

Is 13,750 any good for a atlon xp 2500 512mb pc2700 and fx5900 lx 2.8ns memory ???

Vapor · Dec 5, 2003

That seems pretty low...I get 13100 on a Ti4400 (average OC @ 300,600), 2.66B, 1GB PC1066 RDRAM. You sure you removed all Catalyst drivers properly?

Damn Rambus.

Which Card??

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