just wonderin, got a Geforce 4 MX 440 and wanna upgrade, but with Doom 3 and half-Life 2 around the corner was a bit curious.

Thanks

doom3 it's optimized for nvidia cards and hl2 will be optimized for ati cards. both are good but i think ati on the last round won with their ati 9x00 cards. personally i preffer ati because it's cheaper and less power consumer than nvidia.

i like ati.. but i dont see the point in this thread personally.. its been asked.. & its like saying "whats better.. apple's or oranges" ppl that like apples will go for apples.. same for oranges

apples own oranges hands down! lol

just wondering about benchmarks and all that crap...

try somewhere like tomshardware.com or just search google

I just got doom3 and erm i've geforce 4 440 64mb and can't really play smooth on lowest res.
this nvidia ati question lies for me as well. looking for something below $200.

I'm a nvidia fanboy
though I've lost track of graphic cards after the nvidia's took 2 slots.
so i was looking at fx5700 256mb winfast a360, is it worth paying for?
my previous gf cards were winfast. I was pretty happy with them.

well okay nvidia or ati. 1 thing confuses me so much. which brand to get?
and what's so different about the different brands using the same chip getting more out of it?

so at the end whats a good brand good card under $200?
THanks

@XtremeMaC i would choose a shappire card. the problem it's that the price goes over with this brand. for 200$ i will select a shappire atlantis radeon 9700/9800 pro 128mb.

same here

i've always heard rumors of: Ge-Force cards were for the serious gamer, and ATI were for people that liked doing multimedia crap, but after seeing the benchmarks on Tomshardware.com i'm leaning towards the ATI cards.

another thing about Geforce that i hate is they have like 50 vendor companies that use Geforce such as PNY, BFG, Arcade FX, etc.... Example...so its hard too get support for your specific card. Where as all the ATI cards are all made by ATI.

yea, my next card is definently gonna be an ATI now that i think about it.

could someone confirm the shappire? I've heard of it but never bought 1.
I always liked asus cards though they're expensive..

are there any pages that compare brands instead of chipsets?

okay 1 other question
would one go and buy a

256mb ati 9600?
256mb ati 9200?

128mb ati 9800 pro?
128mb ati 9800 se?

128mb ati 9600 xt?
128mb ati 9200 se?
etc.. u get the picure..

would buying an 256mb (non-xt) be a better choice then buying a 128mb xt?

[price limit $200...]

Thanks

@XtremeMaC i remember seeing a page with comparatives of radeon 9600s and i think google-ing it could give you a good result if you decide for example for the 9800 chipset.

1.- 256mb ati 9600? (because there is not much difference between prices)
2.- 128mb ati 9800 se? (only if i know that it's a card with 2.2ns memory (can be modded to 9800pro), club3d for example)
3.- 128mb ati 9600 xt? (this is pretty good if it's from a good brand. the 9200 it's a little "slow" for nowdays games)
personally i preffer the 128XT, there is not much difference between ati PRO and XT (the only one it's that XT have a chipset that shows card temperature) but the XTs have normally 100mhz of core more. this means that a 128XT 500/300 would be faster (in general) than a 256PRO 400/300. finally note that the XT models in ATI are the fasters but nvidia uses the XT model as the low-market model. hope it helps

Some of it is a personal preference but if you want the best card for gaming go with ATI, they are both good though.

i've just searched for some prices in spain:



ps: if someone wants to make me a present please the last one will be appreciated

I was suitably inmpressed when I found I could play Doom 3 on my laptop. I've always had an ATI card in atleast 1 computer.

If I do go for a nVidia chipset again, I won't buy a PNY. I had a 5200FX, and sure it did it's job but after 6 months the fan started dieing and it took awhile for a replacement (ended up buying a ATI 9800 because it took so long).

As pointed out, ATI's are built by ATI. Which means of course ATI knows how to get the most out of their cards (unless they're low end, where they have a high end chip but hold it back, 9800se and pro for example)


My advice is for a ATI X800. Don't worry about PCI Express yet. It's still alittle immature, and by the time you'll need it, you're card won't support the high quality graphics you want from the game you want it for

/me always been an nVidia fan, since the days it was an under-dog to 3dfx, until today where it has become *THE* establishment.

According to me, nV always has the best features and innovation, and value for money (show me an X800's price tumbling below $150 in 3 months!). ATi has just had a temporary flash-in-the-pan with the last 2 generations of cards (9600 and above) - all older versions of their gfx suck in comparison to their nVidia equivalents. I'll say "go ATi" only when they are consistently able to provide sufficient supplies, and maintain leadership in the mainstream "Value" segment for atleast 4 years.

LOL, if anyone gets ya that i call dibs on your current Graphics Card

another thing that i just though of, is it seems Nvidia updates their drivers more often then ATI, I'm running a Geforce but i'm still using the older 56.16 or whatever drivers since anything above that seems too cause my comp too restart during gameplay.

@Bi0haZarD about the drivers updates of ati, i must say that in the last 5 months i've passed from catalyst 4.1/.2/.3/.4/.5/.6/.7... and now they have released beta versions... 4.8 beta specially optimized for farcry and 4.9 alpha optimized for doom3... final versions will be out on middle september. i must say that download 30mb every 3/4 weeks ... but anyway it's pleasant to see that problems with actual games are solved in a short of time. if you to see how often the drivers are updated from ati and nvidia check omega radeon archive.

ps: waiting that call

Nvidia rules

if your only looking to spend $200 pick up an ati 9800 pro. great cards at that price point. also nvidia is releasing their 6600 line in about 2 weeks, but solid specs on what it has (pipes/clock speeds/type&speed of the mem) are hard to come by right now. that card will retail at $199.

as for the current cards, i really wanted an ati x800pro. found out that all x800's are incompatible w/ my mobo. waited 6 weeks for a bios revision. got fed up went out and grabbed a 6800gt.

but the latest and greatest cards are so close performance wise its hard to tell who is the clear winner (unlike the gf4/8500 and9700/fx days..)

@SiMoNsAyS *or how ever your capitals are...*

been a while since i had my Radeon 7500 PCI card. but when i had that for probably a year and a half and they only updated the drivers once in that year and a half....

First, ATI all the way...though the 6800 Ultra seems to benchmark faster than the X800XT, I tend to trust boards made by the designers of said board.



I'm not sure how much 529 euros are (being too lazy to go find a conversion website, but I got my X800 Pro for $400 US (Which I'm pretty sure is MUCH less, as the dollar has fallen against the Euro) ...and I'll never go back to slow cards.

BTW, my machine, without optimizations of any kind (e.g. no overclocking, extra cooling, hardware tweaking), does about 7700 +/- 100 3DMark03 points

EDIT: using Xrates.com, I've found that my card cost 325 Euros, and your price is 651 US dollars...I'd wait

@Bi0haZarD *or how ever your capitals are...*
there was a looong time faaar faaar ago from today... when this was a pci's world... in the last year more than 10 updates from ati have come... (lol imagine starwars letter coming from the bottom lol)

Golly Phy,

That is a pretty high score.....

My 9600 SE got like a ....... 1900 and it was OC'ed a bit

It lagged through the whole thing

That's higher than my 9600SE ever scored by about 200 points (with Duron 1.3 and 384 of PC133 in an MSI mobo) You have to love the 0 framerate in the Troll's lair sim So mebbe I should say that ATI is the best EXCEPT for the SE series...

LOL

Lowest Framrate i ever got was 2,

I'm gonna OC my 9600 to the max (just got some arctic silver and ramsinks) and let's see what i get .

Definitely true about the SE's Phy.

Well, after looking around on pricewatch.com and some others, I cannot find a single vendor with stock on an X800 XT Paltinum Edition. Does anyone in here know of any vendor with stock selling these boards? I think I want an Asus brand, but I think they're all the same.

Thanks.

I don't think it's being sold yet...otherwise, I'd have one...

they are being sold, just hard to find.

its kinda hard to find the x800xtpe at this point (the 6800 ultra is hard also, but a little easier), and there are many theories..

i like the gddr3 low yield theory. while the manu's can crank out gddr3 at 2.0ns, they are having problems w/ the 1.6ns, which is the spec'd memory speed for both cards.

just keep looking you'll stumble across one eventually.

edit keep an eye on newegg. they say eta on 8/14 how long they actually be available for/if they actually get them... who knows? but ouch $589!!!

Sorry, gotta go with ATI...

Yeah, but I sold my GF4 5200 to a friend a while ago and am stuck with this crappy 440MX until I get an X800. I don't even wanna see what doom3 looks like on this board so I'm not going to get it until I have the video board

I'd get a 6800 ultra, but I don't like the fact that one needs a 480 W PS to use it. I think having 2 connectors is wastful. Tomshardware.com showed some crude power consumption at idle and gaming and the 6800U used more than the X800 did. That's reason enough for me to get the ATI Plus it's susposed to look better.

...now if I can just find one!

doom's not that bad
I had started with lowest quality, high performance options
but now I've increased it to medium quality in game and best quality in nvidia and enabled 2x anti aliasing
and it still runs smooth on my gf 4 440mx

what kind of cpu do u have? how many running processes?

well don't but the x800 by the time u're going to get it pci express will be common.

dont know how long this will last but dell supposedly has the x800xtpe in stock and they are only $416!!!!!

That's an advice I'm gonna take.
$416 still isn't something I would spend on a graphics card just to make a game run well. Heh run out, get an FX5200 ($50 or lower) and enjoy gaming - most games will run atleast at low quality on that card.

currently have 27 running processes and my CPU is an AthlonXP 2400+ (clocks at 1.9 ghZ) and 2 512 DDR at 2700 (1 gig of memory)

is PCI Express gonna be like a new conector on the main board or what?

Open up your box and see your MoBo. PCI-E is going to be like those (white, large) PCI slots that you have already - only, smaller, faster and better.

actually peg slots are gonna be rather large, almost comparable to agp slots but keyed differently... the pci-expressx1 slots are gonna be about 1/4 of what the pci slots are now...