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Nov 3, 2004, 11:14pm

Im looking into buying a new gfx card, and have check quite a number of
forums anyoen here know a good graphics card for under 400? or so

Nov 3, 2004, 11:31pm

depends if you wanna use ti for AW , or play games also , for 200 $ you can
get a 9800pro ( the one i have ) and run any game on full details , DOOM 3
, half life 2 , battlefield etc

http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=14-131-247&depa=1

newegg link

Nov 4, 2004, 12:07am

Agreed - I second that.
*waits for Bowen to storm in* :D

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Nov 4, 2004, 1:35am

[View Quote] I recommend nVidia's 6800 for $280. Albatron has some great technical
support and great benchmarks in comparison to other brands. I use them
for my system (motherboard and graphics card).

http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=14-170-056&depa=1

I don't recommend ATI at all though. Some people are lucky, a lot of
people aren't in getting them to work.

Nov 4, 2004, 1:44am

uhm , first time i ever heard of ppl not getting them to work ...

ATI all the way , i will get out some becnhmarks if i have to :)

Nov 4, 2004, 1:46am

[View Quote] That's great. There's some bad driver problems, my friend and have had
two burn out on us, my other friend that lives in cali had his all out
just stop working. Another friend can't even get his computer to
recognize it (will work in another computer, but won't in his), but it
will recognize the nVidia card that he bought after that didn't work.

I have no problem admitting that the 9800 is better than the FX series,
but in my experience the ATI chipsets tend to be a pain to deal with. I
just want to set it and forget it.

Nov 4, 2004, 2:28am

weird , for sure they arent perfect , but i havent had any problems and i
dont think most ppl did , and the drivers are very good , monthly updates
and huge performance increases lately , also CP , i wonder , you dont mind
spending 400 on it ? cause in that case i know another card for you .

Nov 4, 2004, 2:37am

[View Quote] Yeah, it doesn't seem to be a large scale problem. It's enough for me
not to use them though. In comparison though, nVidia has little to no
problems with anyone I know. I haven't heard of anything bad with their
chipsets either. Drivers tend to be great as well.

They're both good, the differences in them are null, 5 fps in Doom3 when
you already have 130 isn't that much of a difference. Just get whatever
you like, but get the best you can get.

Nov 4, 2004, 12:16pm

Agreed :)

I have had trouble with some ATI cards.

Rick


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Nov 4, 2004, 3:57pm

My friend has an ATI 9800 video card and there are so many games that he
has played now that perform terribly. In addition to that, most of the
newer ones don't work well with the video card and lock up a lot of the
time. I was thinking of getting one myself, but now I have my doubts.
Guess I'll stick to nVidia, which is what I have now.

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Nov 4, 2004, 4:41pm

well i talk about 9800 pro , there also is 9800 , 9800 SE and 9800 128 bit

Nov 4, 2004, 4:51pm

[View Quote] There is little difference in the general performance, excluding the 128
bit, which I hear performs horribly. (in reference to powercolor brand I
think)

But I'm sure since he's using it for gaming he picked the pro, or at
least the standard version.

Nov 4, 2004, 4:58pm

True that its not a large scale problem. Graphic cards are complicated,
people are bound to have problems.

In personal experience, I build systems for my business, and have used ATI
everytime up to this point without problem.
Prolly the only real problem I had with ATI was the stock cooling fan died.
Luckily the card still not got hot enough even in games to do any damage
because I got it fixed.

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Nov 4, 2004, 5:02pm

[View Quote] Both are good cards, as I said, the differences in them are null really.
If you like to be a leet h4x0r, I guess you can look at the numbers
and benchmarks. But both are going to perform pretty close to the same.

I'd say get whatever you feel most comfortable with. Installing,
configuring, and troubleshooting.

Also your operating system might play a large part in determining it.
ATI has horrible compatibility with xwindows in *nix systems. I'm going
to assume that CP is using Windows though, which should present no
problems finding compatible drivers.

Nov 4, 2004, 5:32pm

A lot companies are building there games on nvidia card like doom 3, they
don't take the time to make necessary adjustments for the ATI cards. You
could get more updated version of the ATI card like X800.

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Nov 4, 2004, 6:02pm

"because I got it fixed." Before I got it fixed, I mean.

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Nov 4, 2004, 6:05pm

There's a huge different in performance.
9800 pro has higher memory and core frequeny, and an 8x1 pipeline at 256
bit.
You can softmod the 9800se to do the same if your lucky and manage to find a
256 version, but most of them are 128 bit which suck compared to the 9800
pro (I have one a 128 bit 9800SE =\).

In short, 9800 SE = 9600 speed.

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Nov 4, 2004, 6:11pm

According to nvidia, 156 games total have that "the way its meant to be
played" seal. A lot of it is EA, as they control so much now, nvidia has
the big bucks and got their foot in the door before ATI did. Can't say I
blame them, but it upsets me the game manufactures would ignore such a large
market especially now that ATI has a higher market share.


[View Quote]

Nov 4, 2004, 8:15pm

well the x800xt beats the 6800 ultra in everything since the opengl
optimatisation in the 4.9 drivers , and the AI option for enhanced shaders
in 4.10 . now in 4.11 drivers there will be a hige bug fixed with the mem
allocating on 256 mb cards , you can already download the beta drivers from
the ati site , and wow , even see the difference in games .

http://graphics.tomshardware.com/graphic/20041004/index.html

nice becnhmarks , but remember they run the old 4.9 drivers on ATI , with
4.11 you get 15 - 20 % more performance.

the best bang for your buck is the following , there are X800pros , with the
same ram as the x800xts , they are the so called X800pro vivo editions ,
they also have the same core as the x800xt , only that they disabled 4 of
the 16 pipelines to sell it as a pro . now you can flash the bios to make it
a perfect x800xt , did it at 2 friends and it worked fawlesly .

but if i was you i would decide between the 9800pro 256 bit for 200$ , or
the x800pro for 400$ , this is the link

http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=14-129-038&depa=1

the 9800 pro you can set almost everythign at high , or even at high , but
games like farcry take it to the edge , with the x800pro you can set
everythign at max and enable AA and AF ( important to make the game look
better ) and dont have to worry about a new video card for almost 2 years .

Nov 5, 2004, 12:53am

[View Quote] They were evenly placed. ATI excelling in games that use DirectX,
nVidia in games that use OGL. Again, it won't matter for the little
difference (there were some where even older FX cards beat out the
x800). There were even some where the difference in them was about .25%.

Clearly in some of these benchmarks even the non ultra versions are
outperforming the x800xt versions.

I would say still, go with whichever. You'll see little difference in
the end. 5-10 fps isn't that big, until 5 years from now when the card
only runs at 20 on games. At which, put away $5 a week and you'll be
set when that time comes. You'll probably have enough to build a whole
new system. $1200 is a decent amount to get you nearly everything high end.

E N Z O says nVidia, so that automagically gives it betterness. ;)

Nov 5, 2004, 7:52pm

Well thanks for the help :) i decided on the geforce :)

BFG GeForce FX 5500 OC 256MB DDR AGP

i got a recomendation, and its on sale at bestbuy :)



plus im splurging on new memory lol, ANYTHING is betetr than these
integrated intel gfx giving me 3 fps

Nov 5, 2004, 8:48pm

i'm currently using ati raedon 9600 XT, haven't really used it too much. But
I think I might be convinced to upgrade to a better nvidia card in the
future. If I can learn how to instll it. >_<
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Nov 5, 2004, 9:13pm

nvidia=user friendly...

old goes out...new goes in...insert cd...
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Nov 5, 2004, 10:10pm

how much is that card ? cause it totally sucks ...... but i guess you only
need one to play aroudn in AW ?

Nov 5, 2004, 11:52pm

nah , keep the card , it can run any game still , even on medium settings .

Nov 6, 2004, 1:13am

[View Quote] I've never heard of the fx5500 though. And that's more than enough if
all he needs it for is AW.

Nov 6, 2004, 1:55am

http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=14-143-015&depa=1

found the BFG 5500 for 120$ on newegg , for that money you can get a 9600pro
that costs even 15$ less

http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=14-131-221&depa=1

http://www.guru3d.com/article/Videocards/124/8/

this is a test of the 5500 card , you see that 9600pro almost goes double as
fast .

Nov 6, 2004, 2:05am

[View Quote] Yeah I agree, the 5500 fx is a pretty bad card to get. But If he's not
doing anything too intensive he's fine.

Nov 6, 2004, 7:35am

Was on sale for a reason lol. They aren't too hot =0


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Nov 6, 2004, 10:53am

[View Quote] Yeah I would've paid the extra $7 for :

http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=14-170-055&depa=1

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